Chapter 255 - 187: Scolding Someone in a Meeting

Chapter 255: Chapter 187: Scolding Someone in a Meeting

"President Li, don’t worry. I guarantee you won’t lose money on this."

"President Chen, for you to help me like this..."

Chen Xiao cut off his expression of gratitude. "President Li, we’re friends. No need for formalities."

"You won’t lose money on the business, and if you need capital, you can come to me. I’ll personally provide you with some support."

Li Guoqiang was moved, so excited he didn’t know what to say.

All he could do was thank him profusely and invite him to stay for tea.

He never imagined that a simple invitation for President Chen to come over and chat would turn into such a massive opportunity.

"I’ll pass on the tea. I have to go upstairs to discuss some things with President Xu. In the future, feel free to come find me upstairs anytime you’re free. Of course, that’s assuming I’m here, haha!"

Chen Xiao stood up and laughed heartily.

Li Guoqiang knew that from the moment he committed to Junxing Auto, he had taken another step into President Chen’s inner circle. Chen Xiao had never told him he could come upstairs anytime before.

Upon entering the Junxiao Investment Group office area, he happened to run into Xu Wu’s assistant. "Xiao Liu, is President Xu in?"

"Hello, President Chen! President Xu is in a conference call with the Junxing Auto team," Xiao Liu said with a sweet smile.

"Okay. When she’s done, please have her come see me."

The Junxiao Group was changing by the day. When it was first established, the office was quiet. Now, the common areas were bustling with people coming and going.

On a whim, Chen Xiao decided to take a look around. He had never actually toured the company, and since Xu Wu was in a meeting, he figured he would wander around by himself.

He was familiar with the layout. He definitely wouldn’t go into the main open-plan office to avoid causing a stir. But he was overthinking it; almost no one in the open-plan office would recognize him anyway.

Within this company, only those at the vice president level or above were qualified to know who he was. The exception was Xu Wu’s team of assistants.

He gave the area a quick look. As he passed a meeting room and saw people inside, he subconsciously glanced in.

’Hou Fei? Yuan Kai?’ Chen Xiao was puzzled. ’What are they doing here, pitching a project?’

Several people from the investment department were seated facing Chen Xiao’s direction. Hou Fei and Yuan Kai had their backs to him, so they didn’t see him.

Chen Xiao didn’t linger. He went back to Xu Wu’s assistant, Xiao Liu, and said, "Send me a copy of the business plan for the project that’s being pitched right now."

Xiao Liu didn’t know why President Chen would be interested in such a small project, but she replied without hesitation, "Understood, President Chen. I’ll send it to you right away."

In a meeting room on the 28th floor of Junxiao Investment, Hou Fei was in front of a large screen, giving his pitch.

"Esteemed leaders, the project I’m here to pitch today is based on robotics for materials science labs."

"As we all know, laboratories exist across many industries. For example, testing agencies have labs for analyzing rocks and fragments, and of course, there are labs in the fields of medicine and biology."

"These labs all have one thing in common: the scenarios within them are relatively simple, but the environments are extremely harsh, which means very few people are willing to work in them."

"However, this work demands a high level of experience and technical skill, making it dependent on experts."

"This has created a major pain point for labs everywhere: recruiting is difficult. And often, after recruiting a new person, they spend a year or two training them."

"Just when they’re finally trained up, they get poached by another organization. This causes immense problems for these testing facilities."

"To address this pain point, our technical team has proposed this project."

"We’ve done our market research. If we can successfully develop this product, the domestic market alone has a demand worth over ten billion a year."

"And our product is in a league of its own. There are no competitors. You could call it an exclusive business."

"So, esteemed leaders, take a look! This page shows our five-year sales plan!"

The large screen displayed his five-year sales forecast: 50 million in the first year, 200 million in the second, 600 million in the third, 2 billion in the fourth, and 5 billion in the fifth, with plans for an IPO.

Hou Fei glanced at the review panel across from him. Seeing that they were all listening intently, he shot a smug look at Yuan Kai.

This was Yuan Kai’s first time at this kind of pitch. He was stunned by the grand vision on Hou Fei’s business plan. ’Can you really bullshit this much?’

Next up was the introduction of the technical team.

For the technical team, Hou Fei had embellished his own resume and positioned himself as the project’s CTO.

He had also found a few people with postdoctoral titles from who-knows-where and listed them as key technical staff. Yuan Kai had never heard of these people before; ’they’re probably just some of Hou Fei’s friends,’ he guessed.

Finally, for the management team, Hou Fei designated himself as CEO, claiming to have extensive management experience and a resume that included being an executive vice president at a ten-billion-dollar company.

And Yuan Kai was supposedly a sales director at a major ten-billion-dollar corporation...

This whole spiel was so over the top that Yuan Kai was getting scared. ’No matter how hard he hypes this shit, the moment they do their due diligence, it’s all going to fall apart!’

What he didn’t know was that Hou Fei had done his homework. He knew that Junxiao Investment Group was relatively flexible and that for very good projects, their due diligence process was comparatively simple.

More importantly, he knew Mr. Gao. He was pinning his hopes on Mr. Gao putting in a good word for him, maybe even getting the due diligence step waived entirely.

Besides, if he didn’t embellish things, how would they even get past the first round?

Finally, Hou Fei stated his fundraising goal: he was hoping for 20 million in angel investment, for which he was willing to give up 10% of the company’s equity.

Yuan Kai was dumbfounded. ’Does that mean this thing is already valued at 200 million?’

’What is this nonsense? Isn’t this just a tiny piece of that project Chen Xiao was discussing with the Jiangzhou Design Institute? The one they both shelved because they were too busy to deal with it!’