Chapter 24 Thursday, November 24th

In the Yuanmeng Venture Capital conference room, only He Desheng and Pei Qian were present, though the projector screen displayed over a dozen video call windows.

He Desheng said, "President Pei, everyone's here. Shall we begin the meeting now?"

Pei Qian took a sip of his tea. "Yes, let's start."

Pei Qian was at Yuanmeng Venture Capital today at He Desheng's insistence, just to make an appearance.

To date, Yuanmeng Venture Capital had strictly adhered to the rules set by Pei Qian, investing in approximately ten companies with investments ranging from one to two million yuan per company.

This investment amount was determined by He Desheng based on the size of these companies and the approximate amount of capital required to launch their entire business model.

Simply put, if the company was a startup and the business model didn't require much capital, He Desheng would approve a smaller investment.

Since the investments were made strictly on a first-come, first-served basis, the first batch of companies invested in were primarily startups. After all, these companies needed money the most and were the first to seek investment.

If any of the first few companies made money, He Desheng would immediately sell their shares, as per President Pei's instructions, and continue searching for the next company to invest in, in order of the queue.

If all the companies consistently lost money… then President Pei would be popping champagne to celebrate.

Although the money had been invested, Yuanmeng Venture Capital had assigned dedicated financial personnel to each company to oversee their daily expenses and hold regular remote meetings to report on the financial situation.

These financial personnel were all veteran employees of Tengda, deeply influenced by the Tengda spirit, and received generous subsidies after being dispatched. Moreover, their financial statements were also supervised by Tengda's financial department.

It couldn't be said that there was absolutely no possibility of them being bribed, but the likelihood was very low.

The first video window showed a female accountant in her thirties with short hair and glasses, a core employee of Tengda and the most experienced and capable among all the dispatched financial personnel.

Her name was Jing Haibing, and she was responsible for the financial work of Cold Noodles Girl (Leng Mian Gu Niang).

The reason she was sent to Cold Noodles Girl was mainly because this project had left a deep impression on He Desheng, making it a key project among the current batch of invested companies.

The report officially began.

Jing Haibing looked down at the report in her hand, then looked up and said, "President Pei, President He, everyone. Before reporting on Cold Noodles Girl's financial situation, President He wants me to emphasize some common tricks in financial work to everyone again, which will take a few minutes of your time."

Not all of the financial personnel dispatched by Tengda were well-informed.

Because the dispatched financial personnel had to be people from Tengda, who had been influenced by the Tengda spirit and were thoroughly familiar with the situation, they were basically veteran Tengda employees.

However, many of them had joined Tengda shortly after graduating and had not seen many tricks.

After all, Tengda strictly enforced laws and regulations, and everything from procurement and reimbursement to taxation was completely clean and transparent. These people would not have the opportunity to witness various shady operations.

But when they went to external companies, they would inevitably encounter all kinds of tricks, and some inexperienced financial personnel might fall for them.

Therefore, He Desheng also wanted to use this meeting to have Jing Haibing emphasize the problems that might be encountered in their work to the other financial personnel, to give them a heads-up in advance so that they could detect some shady operations in time.

Pei Qian also wanted to hear about it.

After all, financial statements were just a bunch of numbers, which sounded overly boring, while these "tricks" sounded a little more interesting.

Jing Haibing gathered her thoughts and began to explain.

"The money we invest is all transferred to the company's public account. No one would be stupid enough to transfer the money directly to a private account. The so-called tricks are just that these company managers use some means to spend the money on real business, and then secretly pocket a portion of it through some hidden means."

"So, there are several common areas that must be carefully reviewed and verified. For example, when a company purchases office supplies, it insists on buying things that cost one yuan at a place that sells them for two or three yuan. Or, the unit price of the supplies is fine, but the bulk purchase price is not significantly reduced. There must be a problem behind this."

"There's also the promotional material aspect, posters, banners, display boards, flyers, etc. On the surface, 5,000 flyers are ordered, but in reality, there are only 4,000, or these materials are a mix of genuine and fake. There's also a considerable profit margin in this."

"In addition, is there a situation where the company is hanging on to employees and drawing salaries for doing nothing? Is there collusion with headhunters to secretly return commissions and engage in yin-yang contracts? Are there any tricks in the advertising channels found during the advertising campaign? How much of the App's registered users are from real promotions, and how much are from people using programs to generate them? Are there any phenomena of order farming, fake delivery, or false marketing in the various physical items, rebates, and coupons sent out during marketing activities?"

"If it's auditing or supervision, it's very difficult to investigate these problems thoroughly, but now that we're directly responsible for the finances of these companies, these problems can all be avoided by finding ways."

"For example, for the purchase of office supplies, we can uniformly purchase from channels that Tengda trusts to avoid the money being spent indiscriminately."

"Of course, everyone's abilities and energy are limited, and it's difficult for us to guarantee that every penny will be spent correctly, but we must strive to keep the company's accounts clean and avoid making some low-level mistakes…"

Jing Haibing told the other financial personnel about the common "methods" in these startup companies, and taught everyone which aspects to be more vigilant about and how to prevent them.

She also emphasized that if they found any problems, they must report them immediately.

Pei Qian was also listening carefully, appearing calm on the surface, but actually having his eyes opened.

These operations were really quite something!

Obviously, in the realm of defrauding investors' money, all kinds of geniuses were emerging one after another, developing all kinds of tricks.

Of course, these problems weren't necessarily all the fault of the entrepreneurs. Some naive entrepreneurs might have been led astray by the investors. Investors would lead entrepreneurs to fabricate things and then pass them on to the next sucker, while they quietly made a fortune.

Pei Qian's original idea was simple: he just didn't want these entrepreneurs to use the money he invested to live luxuriously, so he chose the more troublesome method of supervision by assigning financial personnel.

Now it seemed that this step was really the right one.

Pei Qian didn't think this would have any impact on his losing money. After all, the probability of startups failing was too high. Even if they operated completely legitimately, most startups would not escape the fate of bankruptcy.

It was all about going bankrupt and losing money. Some investors made a fortune through various shady means, while others could only get a fixed salary or even incur debts. If Pei Qian had to choose, he would definitely choose the latter.

Anyway, the money has been invested in you. If you have the ability to make money, that's your good fortune, and Tengda will immediately withdraw its investment. If you have the ability to lose money, you will receive President Pei's gratitude.

The only thing is, you can't use Tengda's money to do things that are not human, and then end up making a fortune for yourselves. That's something President Pei absolutely cannot accept.

Soon, Jing Haibing finished talking about the common problems in the finances of startup companies and began to continue reporting on her work at Cold Noodles Girl.

Pei Qian had briefs on the situation of each company in front of him, and he picked up the brief on Cold Noodles Girl and flipped through it.

From the current situation, Cold Noodles Girl's development was very smooth, completely following the script of Meng Chang's initial plan.

Cold Noodles Girl's first flagship store had already opened in the capital. Pei Qian glanced at the photos and saw that the store was quite well decorated.

The front of the store was all huge floor-to-ceiling windows, which looked clean and tidy. The sign above had Cold Noodles Girl's iconic logo, which was both fashionable and a little ancient.

The interior of the store was probably designed to be similar to Western fast-food restaurants. There were beautiful photos of the food above the cashier, and the tables and chairs were similar to those in Western fast-food restaurants, but with a little bit of Chinese elements added.

In the store, all the servers were young and beautiful girls, without the signature polite smiles and without the standard six teeth showing. Although they seemed aloof, their seemingly indifferent smiles were still a bit alluring.

After that was a series of marketing activities taken by Cold Noodles Girl, and the enthusiastic response they had generated online.

For example, Meng Chang had specially rented a supercar and had a beautiful woman drive the supercar to personally deliver grilled cold noodles, which landed them a trending topic.

The grand opening promotion was that the first 100 customers to visit the store would receive a free serving of grilled cold noodles.

Girls who came to Cold Noodles Girl to eat and posted a picture on Weibo @ the official account could periodically win a fashion gift package worth 1888 yuan.

They also launched the "Largest Order" campaign, where the largest order placed at Cold Noodles Girl in the first week of operation would be completely free, and the second and third place winners would also receive gifts.

In addition, they also arranged some special holiday activities. For example, December 7th was "Major Snow," and on this day Cold Noodles Girl would launch a unique "Snowflake Grilled Cold Noodles." Any customer who came to the store to consume and send a Weibo post on this day would receive a free serving.

Behind these marketing activities was the rapid consumption of Cold Noodles Girl's on-hand funds.

Meng Chang had taken 2 million yuan from Yuanmeng Venture Capital and 1 million yuan each from two other investors, for a total of 4 million yuan.

But the money was being spent quickly.

The rent and decoration of the store in the downtown area of the capital, the salaries of a bunch of beautiful girls working as servers, various expensive subsidies, buying trending topics on Weibo, etc., all required money.

Four million yuan seemed like a lot, but it was actually being spent very quickly, especially since Meng Chang was planning to continue opening branch stores. Each additional branch store was just another bottomless pit.

But even so, Meng Chang didn't engage in any tricks with the money, after all, Jing Haibing was in charge of the finances at Cold Noodles Girl.

If Meng Chang wanted to play tricks on office supplies, promotional materials, and labor costs to squeeze out some money, it would be impossible for Jing Haibing to be unaware.

Of course, as a high-level player, Meng Chang had no intention of using such low-down methods to squeeze money.

Putting aside the feasibility issues, even if he tampered with the accounts, the next company would just conduct an audit when he sold it to the next sucker, and they would be able to send Meng Chang straight to jail.

Therefore, tampering with materials and marketing expenses was too low-end, and Meng Chang disdained doing it.

Soon, Jing Haibing finished her report.

The financial personnel of the other companies also reported on their respective situations.