Chapter 91: An Unsolvable Stratagem

“No. If we do that, we’ll be walking straight into our own graves!” Pony Ma rejected Zeng Qing’s suggestion once again, without the slightest hesitation.

“Why?” Zeng Qing asked, unconvinced.

“If we didn’t have a rival, then charging would be fine. I’d support it. But now we do have one. If they don’t charge and we do, then in less than a week, all ten million of our users will be gone. Even ten million pigs wouldn’t run that fast!” Pony Ma truly lived up to his reputation as a man favored by fate; in an age when the free internet had not yet become the norm, his instincts were already that sharp.

“So if we don’t use money, how do we control traffic? By seeing who types the most?” Zeng Qing complained.

“Hey, that actually might work through typing more!” Pony Ma nodded. “I’ve been thinking: could our QuickChat users also have levels, like in a game?”

“We could base it on how long they stay online. The longer they’re online, the higher their level. And the highest-level users could get priority access to QuickChat Voice.”

“Exactly!”

“That’s a brilliant idea!”

Everyone voiced their agreement at once. Yet Pony Ma felt the bitterness of it in his heart. The idea really was excellent. Under normal circumstances, he could already imagine the moment the policy went live: the entire internet would be swept into a frenzy over QuickChat.

Human nature would drive every QuickChat user to remain logged in all day long. In that way, user loyalty would climb sharply, and so would ad revenue.

At present, QuickChat’s only source of profit was advertising. They made money by selling ad space on the platform. According to the rules, the more advertisements users saw, and the longer they saw them, the more money they would earn. It was a good way to increase revenue.

Unfortunately, they were now faced with the rival service. Although this level system was still highly useful, it could not stop a large number of users from fleeing to the rival platform in order to experience voice chat.

More importantly, it would further increase the burden on the servers.

Introducing a QuickChat level system at this moment was hardly ideal, but for the sake of keeping users loyal, the policy had no choice but to be implemented immediately.

Thinking of this, Pony Ma at once ordered Zhang Zhidong to produce a simple traffic-throttling program within a single day, one that would allow a small number of lucky users to use QuickChat Voice while keeping the main body of the platform running normally.

At the same time, he demanded that the design and upgrade of the QuickChat level system be completed within half a month, and that QuickChat Voice be throttled according to the new rules.

“Only half a month?” Zhang Zhidong looked troubled. A simple server-throttling program was manageable, but the QuickChat level system was truly a headache.

It would require not only programming, but also integration with the entire platform. In addition, all the data models and rules for the level system would have to be built in parallel. In the past, let alone half a month, even half a year might not have been enough to get it right. Now they had only fifteen days, and Zhang Zhidong felt the pressure like a mountain.

“Zhidong, work hard on this. Once we make it through this crisis, I’ll give you half a month... no, a full month of paid leave!” Pony Ma promised.

“All right. I’ll give it everything I’ve got!” Zhang Zhidong could not guarantee success, so that was all he could say. Pony Ma knew his character well; if he said he would give it everything he had, then he would not slack off. As for the final outcome, they would have to leave it to fate.

“Chairman, throttling traffic is only a temporary measure. We can’t keep most of our users from using voice forever. We still need to find a way to expand our servers,” said Xu Chen, who had remained silent until now.

“That sounds easy enough to say, and it’s easy enough to do too, as long as we have money,” Zeng Qing said. “Zhidong, tell us: if we want to satisfy all our users, how many servers would we need?”

“At least four times what we have now,” Zhang Zhidong answered. In truth, he had already been thinking about this for some time. Ever since the servers crashed, he had been calculating how much hardware would be needed to stabilize QuickChat’s network.

“Four times? That means another 320 million in servers!” Zeng Qing’s mouth fell open. The number made his head spin. “The rival company only bought 150 million’s worth. Why do we need twice as much as they do?”

“Because our active user base is twice theirs,” Zhang Zhidong replied. “I checked the backend data. Today, a total of 4.87 million people tried to access QuickChat Voice. If we use that number as the baseline, then we really do need to expand by another four times.”

“Boss, can we even come up with 320 million?” Zeng Qing said with a bitter laugh.

“Should I go rob a bank for you?” Pony Ma complained helplessly. As he had said before, Ascend had long been living beyond its means. Hoping to rely on its own profits was impossible; the only real source of funds was financing.

Back in June, just a week before Huang He came to Ascend, HIM had invested 12.5 million dollars, about 100 million yuan, giving Ascend a huge shot of blood. At the time, Pony Ma had even said optimistically in a meeting that the company would not lack development funds for the next three years.

That was also why he had refused Huang He without even meeting him. At the time, Pony Ma simply had no shortage of money.

But that 100 million yuan had vanished faster than anyone expected.

The biggest expense was 50 million yuan spent on server expansion. After that came a scattering of smaller costs: employee salaries, network fees, office expenses, and so on, adding up to another 10 million or so. In the end, the usable cash left in Ascend’s hands was only 40 million yuan, not even a fraction of what they now needed to buy servers.

“Damn it, where are we supposed to get that kind of money? Our entire company is only valued at about 500 million yuan right now. Unless we sell Ascend outright, there’s no way we can raise enough to buy the servers!” Xu Chen cursed.

“Even if we wanted to sell, I doubt anyone would buy us,” Zeng Qing said darkly. “After this huge mess, and with a rival like that breathing down our necks, I’m afraid our company’s value has already been cut in half in everyone else’s eyes.”

“The only option left is financing. Otherwise, why not ask HIM whether they’d invest more? We could offer them shares,” Li Dan suggested.

“No need to think about HIM anymore. I actually spoke with them yesterday about increasing their investment, but the people at headquarters said the situation is too chaotic right now. They want to see how things turn out first.”

“Heh. Our servers were wiped out by a janitor, and the whole world knows it. If HIM is still willing to invest after that, I’ll eat my hat!”

“Then how about talking to IDG and Pacific Century Digital?”

“The so-called Little Superman from Pacific Century never believed in us from the beginning. Otherwise he wouldn’t have sold all his shares to HIM. As for IDG, I can go and talk to them, but whether they’re willing to invest is another matter. IDG is famously strict about procedure. It could take more than a month just to get the money finalized, and there would still be layers of approvals to go through. Time is a huge problem.”

“Then let’s find a few more investment firms. Surely someone will be willing to back us!”

“What investment firm would be willing to put three hundred million into server hardware for us?”

Ascend’s executives argued endlessly over money, but not a single person could produce a truly reliable source for it. Meanwhile, Pony Ma sat in silence, staring blankly at the distant sky.

Could this be your plan? he muttered to himself. You knew we didn’t actually have any money, so you dragged us into a server war and intended to crush us with capital?

If so, then that really is a flawless scheme—an overtly brilliant move with no solution at all.