dkrc Chapter 106 A New Blueprint
Chapter 106 A New Blueprint
On the day they moved in, the four of them held a brief meeting in the new office, sitting around a desk that had been pieced together.
Lin Feng said enthusiastically, "We have an office now. The MP3 business is our foundation, and we can't afford to slack off in the slightest."
"Understood!" the three replied.
Lin Feng changed the subject: "However, you've all experienced the process of finding an office firsthand. How did it feel?"
Wu Wenjie immediately complained, "This is so frustrating! All the information is fake, and we can't find the real stuff. It's fucking exhausting!"
Lin Xiaoqiang muttered, "Running around until my legs give out, having to put up with everyone's attitude."
"Yes, that's the reality." Lin Feng leaned forward slightly, his voice clear and powerful. "Information is like an isolated island, channels are like a maze, efficiency is terribly low, and scammers are rampant."
This is just finding an office. For the millions of people who come to Shenzhen to work, how difficult must it be for them to find housing, jobs, buy and sell secondhand goods, fix a plumbing problem, or unclog a toilet? How much time, energy, and money must they waste?
His question silenced the three of them, and the painful experiences of those days of travel flooded back into their minds.
Lin Feng explained his plan: "I want to create a website. An information platform specifically for local urban life. Anyone who wants to rent out a house can post it for free, along with photos, address, and price."
People looking for housing can open the website, sort by area and price, and find a suitable place in just a few minutes.
More than just renting apartments, this platform offers everything you need for local life: finding jobs, part-time work, buying and selling secondhand goods, moving services, repairs, cleaning... It's like shopping in a supermarket – everything is clearly and transparently available. Information is transparent, it's free to use, there are no middlemen taking a cut, and no scammers.
Wu Wenjie's eyes widened. His mind flashed back to the painful experience of renting a room, the crowded job market, and the layers upon layers of "rent" signs plastered downstairs...
If such a website really existed... he seemed to see a vast and boundless blue ocean!
"If this were to succeed..." Wu Wenjie exclaimed, "It would be a savior for so many people! The market... it's limitless!"
Lin Xiaoqiang didn't say anything. He didn't understand the internet, but he had personally experienced the helplessness of looking for a house.
Lin Xiaowen pondered more practical questions: "Brother Feng, where does the information come from? How can we guarantee its authenticity? How do we build the website? It'll require a lot of people, right?"
"Good question." Lin Feng looked at her approvingly. "Information is like sowing seeds at first. We can send people to copy from those bulletin boards and newspapers, and collect it from small shops and neighborhoods."
Although it's slow, it's the foundation. Regarding authenticity, we'll initially rely on manual verification, then gradually establish rules and a credit system. How to build the website? This is the first tough battle we'll face.
We need to recruit programmers to build the website, good designers to make it user-friendly and visually appealing, and operations staff to ensure information flows smoothly.
He looked around at the three people: "I'll call it 'Same-City Life Network.' We'll start with Shenzhen. This city is a window to reform and opening up, with abundant talent, a large market, and strong demand. We'll use Shenzhen as a pilot city. From now on, the company will have an additional core task: preparing for 'Shenzhen City Life Network.'"
Wu Wenjie immediately declared, "Let's do it! I have connections in Shenzhen, handling information gathering and contacting local businesses!"
Lin Xiaoqiang was also full of enthusiasm.
Lin Xiaowen's eyes were firm: "Brother Feng, just tell us what you need us to do."
Lin Feng nodded: "What we need most right now are technical talent and a development team. Let's get the website up and running first. Shenzhen has a thriving IT industry and plenty of talent. I'll stay here and personally interview and recruit the technical lead and development team."
He looked at Wu Wenjie: "Brother Jie, you have three tasks: First, ensure the MP3 business, which is our cash cow. Second, use your connections to help me find and contact experienced website developers, especially those who know PHP and MySQL."
"good!"
"Xiaoqiang, you're in charge of collecting information. Starting tomorrow, go to the surrounding universities, urban villages, and industrial areas, and record all the rental information you find in detail. Then give it to Xiaowen to organize."
"good!"
"Xiaowen, you are responsible for establishing information classification and preliminary verification processes, and standardizing the collected information."
"Okay, Brother Feng." Lin Xiaowen replied with great enthusiasm.
……
With the office ready and the blueprint finalized, the next step is to recruit people.
Lin Feng didn't spend money on recruitment websites. In 2004, although Zhaopin and 51job existed, their effectiveness was far less than later.
Lin Feng chose the most primitive and direct method.
Wu Wenjie went to the job market and posted several handwritten job advertisements on the information board: "Urgently hiring website programmers and web designers, salary negotiable, those with website development experience preferred."
The office's landline number was left below.
Lin Feng posted recruitment ads on the technical recruitment section of CSDN forum and on campus BBS forums such as Shenzhen University.
With limited manpower in Shenzhen, Lin Feng temporarily transferred Xu Qiang, the channel manager, Zhou Zhongcheng, the HR manager, and Tan Zhao, the administrative staff, from the Chengdu headquarters.
Through his connections at the research institute, Lin Feng rented several apartments in the institute's staff dormitory for the employees to live in temporarily.
He lived in one apartment; Lin Xiaowen and her brother Lin Xiaoqiang lived in another; and employees from Chengdu who came on business trips lived in yet another. Wu Wenjie didn't need to stay in any of them; he had his own place in Shenzhen.
A few days after the job posting was sent out, we started to get responses.
The office's landline phone started ringing incessantly. Wu Wenjie answered so many calls his throat was hoarse; most were inquiries about job openings, asking about the work location, the specific job duties, and the salary range.
Lin Feng instructed Wu Wenjie to give a unified reply: those interested can come directly to the office in the science park for a face-to-face meeting.
The first person to come for an interview was a young man wearing black-rimmed glasses and carrying a backpack. He seemed a little reserved when he knocked on the door.
He found us through a post on the Shenzhen University BBS. He just graduated this year and works as a website maintenance worker at a Taiwanese-owned factory outside the city center.
Lin Feng asked him to sit down, and Lin Xiaowen poured him a glass of water.
"What technology did you mainly use before?" Lin Feng asked.
"ASP, Dreamweaver, and a little Flash." The young man pushed up his glasses. "You're making a classifieds website? Similar to 'Zhantai.com'?"
Lin Feng knew about "Zhantai.com," which was an earlier attempt at classified information, but the model was quite different.
"Not exactly the same. We need faster deployments, simpler browsing, and a greater focus on local and lifestyle services. How much do you know about PHP and MySQL?"
The young man paused for a moment, then shook his head: "I've never actually used it, I've only seen it in books. We use ASP in our factory now, along with Access."
Lin Feng nodded and asked him a few more questions about database design and front-end page loading optimization. The young man answered with some difficulty, relying mostly on textbook theory.
After chatting for about twenty minutes, Zhou Zhongcheng saw him out and politely said that he would let him know if there was any news.
Back in his office, Zhou Zhongcheng asked, "President Lin, what do you think of him?"
Lin Feng shook his head: "We are short on time and need experienced workers who can get started immediately, at least able to build the scaffold independently."
The second interviewee was someone GG found at the job fair. He was in his early thirties, a bit balding, and claimed to have worked for several internet companies, including forums and corporate websites.
He spoke with great confidence, even to the point of being somewhat slick.
"I understand your idea immediately. It's just online forums and information posting, right? Simple. I can lead the team, and it'll be online in two or three months. But as for the salary, I earned eight thousand at my previous job, plus double pay at the end of the year."
Lin Feng ignored the topic of salary and went straight to the point: "If you were to design the user posting process for this website, how would you approach it? How would you prevent people from posting random or fake information?"
"Oh, this?" The man touched his thinning hair. "You could do a verification process, with manual review in the backend. Or you could have users register, with only one account per phone number."
"What if there are thousands of messages to review every day?"
"Then... let's hire a few more customer service representatives."
"The website is just starting out, so it's impossible to maintain a large customer service team. Are there any technical methods to perform initial screening?"
"This... needs to be studied."
Lin Feng asked a few more questions about server capacity and database index optimization, but the other party's answers were either vague or simply "just spend money to build up the server capacity."
"Okay, we understand. We'll let you know when we have more information." Lin Feng ended the interview.
After the man left, Zhou Zhongcheng pursed his lips and said, "That guy was all talk, but he didn't seem very honest. He was just after money."
"He's not the type to work diligently," Lin Feng simply commented.
Two more people came in the afternoon. One was a graphic designer from a small company in the city who only knew how to use tables to slice images and had no concept of user experience. The other was a recent graduate from a training school who wrote "proficient in PHP" on his resume, but got stuck when Lin Feng asked him a simple question.
After a day of interviews, he hadn't gained much. Lin Feng wasn't discouraged, though; he knew that recruiting suitable talent required time and luck.