oo Network's total of 7 roadshows is quite astonishing, not because 7 is too many, but because it's too few.
Generally, a company going public usually conducts twenty to thirty roadshows, as more roadshows attract more subscribers and push the company's stock price higher. Roadshows don't cost much, just venue rental. However, oo Network only held 7, with a week-long gap between the first and second, which is rather peculiar. Most roadshows run consecutively from morning to afternoon, sometimes even three times a day, trying to lure investors every moment.
Yet, this decision proved to be very effective. The financial institutions that attended the first roadshow seemingly had no time for a second one, dedicating all their energy to figuring out how to obtain as many listing codes as possible. With a listing code, $300,000 could buy 10,000 shares of oo Network, which was guaranteed to rise to at least $400,000 in the future. Missing out would be foolish.
Moreover, this required virtually no capital from these investment institutions. Since these institutions had invested in numerous program development companies, it was a simple matter to temporarily pull staff from these companies to develop a few programs, incurring no cost at all.
Thus, the first thing these investment institutions did upon returning was contact their controlled program development companies, stating their requirements: to develop the Tianzhou Mall application. Naturally, these program development companies were bewildered, not understanding why their investors would make such absurd demands, especially since they were members of the Alliance and forbidden from developing such things. Furthermore, this was a quintary system program, which they didn't understand.
In their helplessness, these program development companies relayed their difficulties to their benefactors. Initially, the benefactors were somewhat persuaded, thinking that if their invested companies found the request so challenging and costly, perhaps they should abandon it. However, they soon received news that Goldman Sachs had obtained over 250 listing codes, which translated to 2.5 million initial shares of oo Network.
This news greatly spurred these financial institutions. They hated not being able to earn money that was within their grasp, and even more so, they couldn't stand watching others profit while they, despite the potential, could only observe. It was the most agonizing experience. They also wondered why Goldman Sachs could obtain 250 listing codes while their respective companies weren't hindered.
Goldman Sachs wasn't discreet; in fact, this matter was inherently unhideable. oo Network had publicly disclosed all subscription information on its own website, including the origin of each listing code. This was a requirement from the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission for publicly traded companies to ensure complete transparency in their financial status, especially regarding securities trading, to prevent insider trading.
Consequently, the major financial institutions quickly traced the listing codes back to their parent companies, thereby understanding the entire situation. It turned out Goldman Sachs employed a strategy of “replacing the plum with the peach,” creating new shell companies, transferring personnel from their existing companies for research and development, and then transferring them back, effectively circumventing the Alliance's sanctions.
Innovation might be difficult, but who couldn't copy? And copying a strategy carried no legal responsibility, which was even better. Soon, these financial institutions immediately replicated Goldman Sachs' approach, instructing their companies to transfer personnel to newly established companies for development.
To save time, these financial institutions became even more audacious. Goldman Sachs at least set up new office spaces and had its employees resign from their old companies to work in the new locations. However, these financial companies employed more direct methods, ordering existing employees to develop programs within their original companies. Once the required items were developed, they were simply handed over to a few nominal individuals in the new companies, to be listed on Tianzhou under the new company's name, completely disregarding the Alliance's penalties. They were Wall Street, after all, what fear did they have of some Alliance?
This command, however, put the software development companies in a difficult position. While there were ways to bypass the Alliance's restrictions, program development required specialized talent. Their staff hadn't attended the developer conference and didn't even understand how to use the quintary development language, yet they needed to list on the Tianzhou network in a short period. It was extremely difficult.
As these network enterprises lamented their predicament, oo Network's official website released another announcement. The announcement was simple, conveying the same message that Boss Huang had told Dr. Cooper earlier, regarding the condition of having Jiangnan University students work for free. This time, Jiangnan Group had fully disclosed and formalized the entire process.
By calling the number on the announcement and contacting an oo Network specialist, and upon identity and capability verification, one could immediately rent a Jiangnan University student to lead and guide a team in developing Tianzhou applications. It was guaranteed that after a three-day period of team adaptation, a single student could produce at least one Tianzhou application per day.
Upon seeing this announcement, these companies naturally knew what to do. The relevant phone numbers for oo Network were immediately overwhelmed. The next day, over 200 students at Jiangnan University received new work assignments. Jiangnan University also stated clearly that all students would receive a monthly salary of $2,000, with the university taking no cut. However, if they failed to meet their commitments, there would be no profit, which sent all the students into a frenzy of excitement. They enthusiastically and efficiently began training the programmers.
Facing this situation, the students of Jiangnan University were delighted, as was Boss Huang of Jiangnan Group and the major financial institutions. The only ones unhappy were likely the programmers forced to develop Tianzhou applications. These programmers were seasoned professionals with years of experience in the industry, some even being big names. Now, they were assigned by their companies to assist students, developing quintary system applications under their direction.
Most ridiculously, the development language was Chinese. They seemingly had to relearn how to program using Chinese. To maximize work efficiency, under the guidance of Jiangnan University students, everyone began template-based programming. Template-based programming involved using over a dozen standard Tianzhou application templates developed by Jiangnan University. These programs were mostly simple games, photo editing apps, note-taking apps, and similar functions that were relatively easy to write. By simply changing art assets and other elements, they could immediately become new applications.
Another advantage of template-based programming was its ability to overcome the programmers' lack of Chinese proficiency. The entire template would be divided into ten to twenty fixed modules. These programmers only needed to learn the fixed programming language within those fixed modules. According to the university students, each fixed module required mastering over 200 Chinese characters and their underlying grammar, which was very simple. Even a middle school student could master all work tasks within a day.
For these foreign programmers, it would be a bit more difficult, hence the need for three days of adaptation. The primary task during these three days was to forcefully instill those hundreds of Chinese characters into their minds. Thus, these programmers experienced a Chinese-style cramming education. Those three days were agonizing, their minds filled with various Chinese characters, Pinyin, and the logic behind these characters. They were nearing madness.
However, they had no ability to resist, as their companies and the capital behind them were watching, expecting them to produce new applications as quickly as possible. These capitals even explicitly stated that anyone who didn't work diligently would be collectively blacklisted by these dozen financial capitals, terrifying these unfortunate programmers. Consequently, they were compelled to endure over a month of the darkest period in their lives.
It could be said that the work performance of these Jiangnan University students was excellent. The most efficient team completed a note-taking application on the second day of its formation and uploaded it to the Tianzhou Mall. It passed review in less than three minutes, obtaining the coveted listing code for the capital. In the following days, various capitals gained the ability to mass-produce listing codes. Then, during the second roadshow, representatives from Goldman Sachs and USA Preferred could only watch enviously as their peers submitted ten to twenty listing codes each, happily gaining reservation rights from Jiangnan Group.
Of course, the representatives of these institutions later watched with envious jealousy as Goldman Sachs and USA Preferred each presented over a thousand listing codes, acquiring reservation rights for tens of millions of shares. After all, Goldman Sachs had requested 50 Jiangnan University students at once, even though Boss Huang had limited each institution to a maximum of 50 university students; otherwise, Goldman Sachs would have wanted to buy out all the students. As a result, the output of these two companies was naturally extraordinary.