Yi Anguo did not reject the olive branch extended by Penguin Company, nor did he raise any objections to its investment terms.

Penguin Company made this move not only because they were optimistic about the development of Anjing Online Supermarket but also out of a sense of helplessness. To strengthen its own position and combat the competition from Taobao Company, Penguin had established a C2C shopping website called Paipai, similar to Taobao, several years ago and subsequently added a few subsidiaries. However, they were all unsuccessful, suffering continuous losses and proving to be no match for Taobao.

The root cause, of course, was Mr. Ma of Taobao. Through a maneuver akin to a snake swallowing an elephant, he not only acquired Yahoo China but also secured one billion US Dollars in cash financing, defeated the rival eBay China, and significantly increased his company's strength. Originally, this had nothing to do with Penguin Company. They were operating in different spheres—one developing an internet shopping website, the other a social media messaging application—so there was naturally no direct competition. But Penguin QQ was, after all, free social software. Besides developing games for revenue, it could only rely on advertising income, which was why many people were not optimistic about it in the beginning.

It was Ma Huateng who saw that Taobao's e-commerce was developing quite well. He believed the future belonged to the internet economy and that online shopping was a major developmental trend. In September 2005, Penguin Company launched the C2C-focused Paipai, just two years after Taobao had gone online. Leveraging hundreds of millions of Penguin QQ members, Paipai's registered users neared 50 million within two years, making it the second-largest C2C platform in the country. But as Taobao continued to power forward, Paipai was quickly crushed. Ma Huateng, however, did not want to give up on e-commerce and was incredibly frustrated that the Paipai platform he had worked so hard to build had been so thoroughly defeated by Taobao.

He then began preparing to create a B2C e-commerce platform to compete directly with Taobao's B2C offerings.

If I can't beat you on the C2C e-commerce platform, then I will defeat you on the B2C e-commerce platform.

However, opinions within Penguin Company were divided. Some believed that launching another B2C platform would likely fail to compete with Taobao as well. They saw it as a thankless effort that would only lose more money. It was at this moment that Zhou Mengdie approached Ma Huateng, informing him that Hualong Investment Company wanted to invest in Penguin Company.

And since Hualong Investment Company was the investor in Anjing Online Supermarket, Ma Huateng's thinking began to change. If Penguin Company couldn't succeed in e-commerce, then I'll just invest in a platform that's already developing well to counter Taobao. I could even invest in and support several e-commerce platforms at the same time to deal with Taobao together!

With this new strategy in mind, Ma Huateng connected with Yi Anguo and proposed the idea of mutual investment. To facilitate this cooperation, Ma Huateng personally negotiated with their major shareholder, a South African company. He argued that their large holding was detrimental to Penguin Company's equity structure, especially now that its development had hit a bottleneck. Amidst the global financial crisis, Penguin's share price had plummeted, and its market value was shrinking. Coincidentally, an investment company was interested in acquiring Penguin shares at a 25% premium over the market price. This reason alone wasn't enough, so Ma Huateng also revealed Penguin's desire to invest in Anjing Online Supermarket.

The South African company had invested 32 million US Dollars in Penguin, eventually acquiring over 46% of its shares. In just a few years, when the share price peaked the previous year, their return on investment was nearly two hundredfold. Even with the recent stock market crash and the shrinking market value, their return was still as high as one hundred and fifty times. Moreover, the firm was staunchly optimistic about Penguin's future prospects. Despite the global financial crisis and some financial strain, they had never considered reducing their stake. Therefore, when Ma Huateng tried to persuade them to sell their shares, they were initially very resistant.

But Ma Huateng was not without a temper. He bluntly stated that if the South African company refused to sell, he would still accept the investment from Hualong Investment Company by issuing new shares equivalent to 50% of the company, potentially at or even below the current price. In that scenario, the South African company's stake would be diluted by half, leaving them with only 18.75% and demoting them from their top position. As for the Penguin founders' diluted shares, Hualong Investment Company was willing to compensate them; after all, Hualong would still hold a large stake even after doing so.

At that time, the Penguin founder team held 37.5% of the shares, with Ma Huateng personally holding approximately 14.43%. Yi Anguo had an undisclosed personal stake of 10.43%, and the South African company held 37.5%. Yi Anguo's shares were divided among several people to remain undisclosed: his eldest daughter, Yi Xinyi, held 2%, while Yi Yunlong, Yi Yufeng, Yi Meifeng, and Chen Feilong each held 1.5%. Yi Anguo held the remainder himself. This was not a distribution of assets; rather, since holdings of over five percent required a public declaration of identity, Yi Anguo had no choice but to use his children's names to hold the shares.

In the end, after weighing the pros and cons, the South African company agreed to Ma Huateng's request. They sold 16% of Penguin Company's shares to Hualong at a 25% premium over the market price. After divesting 16% of their stake, the South African company was left with 21.5%, remaining the largest single shareholder. Hualong Investment Company became the second-largest shareholder.

Yi Anguo was very satisfied with this outcome. The founding team, including Ma Huateng, was also content, as they had suffered no losses.

Meanwhile, after completing her investment in Qiangdong Company, Chen Xuejiao immediately flew to Silicon Valley in the United States to establish the American branch of Hualong Investment Company. But even before the branch was formally established, she began actively seeking out investment targets. This was because Yi Anguo had given her a long list of targets, complete with strict requirements on the optimal timing for each investment.

Chen Xuejiao didn't know where Yi Anguo got the information on these investment targets, but that wasn't important. She knew she just had to follow her boss's strategy and objectives to complete each investment; she didn't need to worry about anything else.

As for the US Dollars needed for the investments, she had no concerns at all, as Yi Anguo had already prepared a substantial amount of capital for their ventures in Silicon Valley.

As soon as Chen Xuejiao arrived in the US and settled in, she dove straight into her work. Her first target was to find a small company named The Point and deliver a four-million-US-Dollar angel investment to a young man named Andrew Mason.

The Point was a small startup founded by several partners and had not yet raised any external funding. It was originally established by a man named Eric Lefkofsky and was, in fact, the predecessor to Groupon, the company that would pioneer the group-buying internet business model. Groupon had two main founders: Andrew Mason and Eric Lefkofsky.

Back in 2006, Andrew Mason was a music student at Northwestern University who had a keen interest in programming and ran his own website called "Policy Tree." A local entrepreneur, Eric Lefkofsky, noticed Mason's skills in programming and web design and recruited him. After several months of observation, in January 2007, Lefkofsky moved Mason to another of his companies, The Point, which became the launchpad for Mason's co-founding of Groupon.

The Point was a social media site akin to a task-posting platform, where users could post a goal or event and rally others to help achieve it within a deadline. The startup failed to gain traction, its influence limited to Chicago with no capacity to expand nationally. Lefkofsky, Mason, and the other senior executives held weekly meetings, trying to figure out how to grow the business.

In mid-2008, the team came up with a new idea: if The Point could gather people to accomplish a task, why couldn't it gather dozens of people who wanted to buy the same product and negotiate a group discount for them? Andrew Mason had actually proposed this idea in the early days of The Point, but it had never been implemented. Now, Lefkofsky thought it was viable, but he faced opposition from other early executives, including Mason himself, who argued it didn't align with the company's core mission.

The 2008 American subprime mortgage crisis, however, altered their thinking. The crisis brought credit markets to a standstill, putting immense financial pressure on the company. The desperate need for cash flow compelled the people at The Point to change.

In November 2008, Groupon was born. At the time, it was merely considered a side project within The Point, and no one anticipated its future explosive growth.

However, it was still well before November 2008. The ongoing subprime mortgage crisis in the US had already frozen the credit markets, making it difficult for The Point to secure financing and maintain its cash flow. The executives, desperate for cash, knew they needed to make changes. But making changes and launching new projects required capital, the very thing the company lacked most. The company was trapped in a vicious cycle: do nothing and die, or try to change without any money. Their only hope was to find investment from a venture capital firm.

Just then, a major event shook the United States: Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, sending shockwaves through the global economy. Within a single month of the announcement, international crude oil futures plummeted from a high of 147 US Dollars a barrel to 111. The US subprime crisis worsened and spread across the globe. Securing funding from venture capital firms became nearly impossible, as they all pulled back and virtually ceased investment activities. Everyone was in a wait-and-see mode. In such a climate, who would even consider investing? Cash was king.

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