Chapter 146 Venture Capital and the Prince of Tennis

Although he was busy with the script of the animated film, Meng Zhe did not forget the "Yanjing Cartoon" after Tang Gexuan became the master - after successfully pulling Zheng Xusheng and others from Tianjiao Club, North Carolina almost caught all the serial comic authors who were popular in several other domestic animation magazines!

Under the squeeze of Tianjiao Society, the management of other comic magazines has only gained a market share of about 20% of the national market. Some magazines have even been unbearable for so long, but there are still some familiar or unfamiliar Meng Zhe in these comic magazines. A cartoonist who is more popular with readers.

Meng Zhe is familiar with Hu Rong, who has painted comics such as "A Chinese Ghost Story" and "Bai Qiu Lian", Tang Weiqing, who has painted "Female Ship King", Yang Yinghong, who has painted "I met dinosaurs on the street" and "Ice Man", and Zhao Jia who has painted "Black Blood" and so on.

As for Meng Zhe, he didn't have any more impression before his rebirth. For example, the pillar of "Comic King" is called "Di Qiu", and the long serial he drew is called "King Cuju of the Song Dynasty"; for example, Yue Congrong, who published the long comic "Long Song" on "Yanjing Cartoon" at the beginning.

Of course, now these cartoonists who are impressed or not impressed by Meng Zhe have all been taken over by the rich North Carolina and have become the exclusive signed cartoonists of North Carolina.

After these signed cartoonists, Tang Gexuan proudly announced in the latest issue of "Yanjing Cartoon" that he would open 12 new serials at the same time next month, and also said that he would change "Yanjing Cartoon" to a semi-monthly magazine or something... These Meng Zhe actually didn't care much. He cared more. It was Tang Gexuan who said in the declaration that there would be two popular cartoonists serialized in a semi-monthly comic magazine who were about to join the unclear hint.

There is no doubt that the so-called semi-monthly comic magazine is Meng Zhe's "Anime Boy"!

But Tang Gexuan didn't make it clear who the two popular serial cartoonists were, and Meng Zhe couldn't figure out who they would be - since the separation of the short comics into "Animation Time" and the implementation of the quarterly serialization conference system to determine the new serialization and waist cut, now the long serialization comics on "Anime Boy" have reached 2 Part 0.

At present, the results are still relatively ideal. They are "0P", "The World of Struggle", "Princess Pearl", "Infinite Horror" and "The Strange Talk of the Republic of China". The new serials are difficult to stand out in front of these powerful comics, two of which have reached the edge of being cut in half - no, to be precise, it should be There is no doubt that it will be cut in half in the next issue.

So after thinking about it carefully, Meng Zhe felt that Tang Gexuan should be pulling the flag to pull the tiger's skin. What he pulled away may be the serial cartoonist whose two works are about to be cut in half.

As for Chen Xiang and Yao Fei, these 'old people' of Tianjiao Club, Meng Zhe is not worried that they will be pulled away by Tang Gexuan, which he has enough confidence.

But he is confident that Meng Zhe must be in a bad mood for being dug up in such a row, so he feels that if he doesn't say a word and fight back, he will be too sorry for the people and the party.

But, is it better to fight back like this?

Meng Zhe thought for a long time, and finally came up with a plan that he thought should be able to disgust Tang Gexuan's counterattack, and this counterattack was to dig the foot of the wall.

Meow, since you dare to send someone to dig the corner of our Tianjiao Club, don't blame me for sending someone to dig the corner of your North Carolina!

It's just that after Meng Zhe told Kong Lan about his idea, Kong Lan smiled and vetoed it. She said, "Brother Xiao Zhe, this is a hurtful way. They can use it in North Carolina, but it's not too necessary for us."

"We... don't have much need?"

Meng Zhe didn't understand it very well, but he felt that he was thinking of a good idea.

"Yes, there is no need to use it too much - Xiao Zhe, have you forgotten? At present, our Tianjiao Club is still the leader of the animation magazine publishing house, which occupies 80% of the market share. In addition, the transparent and responsible editing system you set has lowered the threshold for newcomers to enter, so most of the new cartoonists who want to start drawing comics, the first manuscript was submitted to us. Anime time and animation teenagers will only consider other magazines after the manuscript is not selected.

Kong Lan nodded before saying so.

After Kong Lan said this, Meng Zhe finally understood a little, so he suddenly realized and shouted, "Ah! That's true! Sister Lan, we are not short of short stories and serial cartoonists. If we spend money to dig people in North Carolina, in order to appease the people who have been dug up, we must let their comics be serialized in magazines, which is bound to destroy the original fair serialization conference system, so that others may lower their recognition of our magazine. Feeling... Well, Sister Lan, you didn't say anything..."

Meng Zhe felt a little blushing. After all, it was not easy to think of such a way that he felt that he should have done well. As a result, as soon as he said it, he was rejected and found something wrong. How could he not feel ashamed at all?

Seeing that Meng Zhe basically figured it out, Kong Lan smiled and pulled Meng Zhe in front of her affectionately, and then Meng Zhe reacted and kissed Meng Zhe gently on the forehead: "Xiao Zhe, are willing to help me find a way. Sister, I am very happy and like it very much."

But then Kong Lan naturally let go of Meng Zhe and asked, "Xiao Zhe, how's the script of the animated film going? I have almost been in contact with Shangmeiying, and I also hinted to them that our Jiji Animation will make New Year's commercial animated movies. They seem to be very interested, so they should soon use the script of the animated movies.

This question successfully resolved the embarrassment that had just arisen in Meng Zhe's heart, and made Meng Zhe's attention shift to the animated script - "The script is almost done!" At most, it will be completed in two or three days.

Meng Zhe nodded and replied, although at the suggestion of Guan Yuluo, the original two monsters of the third master of the fox were finally integrated and adjusted into a fierce Li Mochou-style human woman pretending to be ghosts, but as Meng Zhe said, the script has almost finished, and even the brief effect of the shot. He has already drawn some pictures.

After all, Meng Zhe has known the main line of the story for a long time. Things like adding subordinates to Mr. Hu can only be regarded as a branch plot that does not affect the main line, so in fact, it does not affect the 'fullness' speed of the script. Otherwise, Meng Zhe has no time to fight back against Tang Gexuan and North Carolina. Isn't it a way?

The so-called two or three days will be completed. In fact, Meng Zhe ordered everyone involved in the script creation to turn around the completed script to check the errors and modify the lines. According to Meng Zhe's requirements, the plot should be more funny and interesting to be qualified.

"Well, after the script is completed, ask someone to print a copy and send it to me. It's already the end of March. If you don't work hard, I'm afraid you can't catch up with the New Year's schedule you mentioned by Xiao Zhe.

Kong Lan did not urge the script at all, but now that the script has almost been completed, it is naturally different.

Meng Zhe nodded. Although the release time of New Year's movies in later generations can be a long period from the end of November of the first year of the Western calendar to the beginning of March of the following year, but now this era, this New Year's movies have not yet appeared in the mainland... It is said that the Lunar New Year of 1997 is the first of the Gregorian calendar. In early February 997, Meng Zhe felt that it was more appropriate to put an animated film with a New Year's gimmick in early or mid-January of the 7th year of the Gregorian calendar.

So after this calculation, there are still ten months left for this "Fairy Sword - Lamp Like Day". If we remove the beginning and end of the pre-coordination and post-production, the real time for animation is actually only five or six months.

Considering that it is the first time to make an animated film that is more exquisite than that of TV animation, and it has been basically confirmed that it will be a way to cooperate with Shanghai American Film, it can only be said that this is not tight but not too abundant production time.

In this way, Meng Zhe and Kong Lan talked about the issue of film animation for about ten minutes. The two learned about the progress of each other's work - Kong Lan, who fully accepted the investment business, went to contact not only Shangmeiying's family, but also successfully contacted two overseas venture capital companies. These days, China's economy is developing at a high speed, and countless foreign capital predators, large and small, are flocking to profits. How can there be no venture capital companies?

A typical venture capital company, the main business is naturally to invest funds in potential new companies. After helping these new companies' assets increase to a successful 'listing', they sell their shares to investment companies to investment companies or individuals, and then switch to the next potential new company. ...However, the 'potential stocks' suitable for venture capital are not so easy to find, so these venture capital companies occasionally invest their capital in places such as making movies.

Although the superficial difference between 'venture capital companies' and 'investment companies' seems to be more risky, the actual difference is quite large - investment companies are actually just a kind of financial intermediary, which concentrate the funds of individual investors and invest in many securities or other assets. Yes, so most of them don't want to take too much risk.

Venture capital is the pursuit of high returns, and high returns are naturally high risks. And movies are obviously a kind of high-risk and high-return venture investment object - in the world of movies, there are dark horses with millions of investments but tens of millions of dollars at the box office, but there is also no lack of tens of millions of big productions but only tens of millions of bad guys and bad movies at the box office.

Well, in fact, the two venture capital companies that Kong Lan contacted are actually just 'investment angels' with the brand of venture capital companies. All companies or individuals who have spare money and are willing to invest outside the main business can be called investment angels... Of course, it is right to say that they are angel investors.

One of the two angel investors is very interested in the Fairy Sword - The Lamp Like Day, which is known as China's first New Year's film and the first commercial animation film.

In this investment angel portfolio with the brand of a venture capital company, there is a director of the media laboratory of the Massachusetts Business School (MIT) named Nicholas Negroponte.

So when Kong Lan inadvertently mentioned this information, Meng Zhe's expression was a little strange, because he knew this Negroponte. Let's not talk about the name of the chairman of each child's notebook (OLPC) project, just talk about Sohu - Zhang Chaoyang, a student of Massachusetts Institute of Commerce and Commerce, founded Sohu, who founded him in the early days, obtained the venture capital of his teacher and teacher and another MIT professor.

However, Negroponti's investment in Zhang Chaoyang's Sohu is still a counterpart support. He intends to invest in our commercial animated film "Fairy Sword - Lamp Like Day" full of rich Chinese elements. It's strange that he can understand it.

"Negloponte, director of MIT's media laboratory? Is this world... crazy?"

Meng Zhe couldn't help muttering that he would rather believe that the people who are interested in investing in this commercial film are Sequoia, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and even Masayoshi Son, who is bombarding software banks.

"Oh, I also felt quite strange at the beginning. Finally, I didn't know the reason until the other party took the initiative to explain to me. This Negroponti intends to invest in this commercial film, which seems to have the same purpose as our initiative to send money to the American film."

Kong Lan said with the corners of her mouth slightly upturned. Obviously, she was in a good mood at this moment.

"Huh?"

Meng Zhe didn't understand again.

"Xiao Zhe, I think what he really wants to invest in is your Shengteng information that has just been registered."

Kong Lan didn't sell anything and casually said her guess.

"Shengteng Information? No way?"

Meng Zhe is a little surprised, because so far, the merger of Shengteng Information's Qidian Chinese website, hao123 and QQ are still in the stage of losing money.

"Yes."

Kong Lan said firmly that although the products of Shengteng Information are still in the stage of losing money, Kong Lan has fully seen the broad prospects of these three gadgets made by Meng Zhe!

Focus on the starting point of the online novel reading business in Chinese. Now the number of registered members has exceeded 100,000, and the number of reading IPs online at the same time during the peak period every day is about 10,000, and there are also about 1,000 people in the low peak period!

hao123 now has about 90% of the home page of Internet computers in China. Netizens are used to navigating web pages through this website to link to the websites they want to visit.

The latest localized instant messaging software QQ is even more powerful. Although it has just completed the localization and opened the client to download, the number of account registrations has exceeded 10,000!

Kong Lan knows very well what the snowball is and what the Matty effect is... When she said this, Kong Lan suddenly remembered another thing, so she asked Meng Zhe what she thought of and said: "Xiao Zhe, Uncle Song said that there have been letters from readers recently that the domestic football league is so popular now. There are also comics of "Football Player" in Japan, but there are no football comics on "Anime Boy" and "Anime Time", and even sports comics are rare... Xiaozhe, do you have any football or sports comics on hand?

Before Di Qiu, who was serialized "King Cuju of the Song Dynasty" in "Comic King" in North Carolina, "Comic King" relied on this comic to maintain about 9% of the sales of comic journals in the country.

Therefore, Kong Lan feels that there is no need to make a sports cartoon in "Anime Boy". There is no need to do it in the way of digging the wall, but this way of squeezing the other party's living space with similar comics is very necessary to do it.

"Sports comic themes?"

Meng Zhe blinked his eyes. Although he wanted to complain that "Ches Soul" and "Go Boy" were sports, although he took the elegant route... However, the sports comics that took the team confrontation route... Meng Zhe was also in stock in his stomach.

I can't help it. Who let Meng Zhe be a reborn?

The only problem is that there are a few sports comics in my mind, which one is better to draw.

Of course, there are super long legs according to the proportion of characters, but there is no way to draw "Football Player" in several episodes of cartoons, because it has been serialized since 1980.

In junior high school, he was rejected by 50 girls, but he couldn't draw a hot-blooded fool with amazing talent on the basketball court, because he also began to serialize it on the weekly teenager jump in 1990.

"Flywheel Boy" can't be drawn, because it will definitely be said to be discordant... "Initial D" is the same. The drawing of racing and so on will definitely be criticized by others, especially now there are still unauthenactful opponents such as "Yanjing Cartoon" controlled by Tang Gexuan.

Well, if you calculate it like this... What you can draw are "The Prince of Tennis", "Iron Horse Boy" and "Light Speed Sports Car 21".

So among these films, which one is better to draw?

Meng Zhe frowned slightly, and his appearance fell in Kong Lan's eyes, which was understood by Kong Lan as a painsperation story, so Kong Lan couldn't help but feel a little sad.

If it weren't for my sister's inability to draw comics, I wouldn't be able to think of the talented comic story themes you conceived... "Ha! Yes, let's draw "The Prince of Tennis" first!"

Just as Kong Lan was thinking to himself, Meng Zhe suddenly clapped his hand and made the final choice. The reason is very simple - if you draw "The Prince of Tennis", it should be more popular than other comics.

"Prince of Tennis? But Xiao Zhe, those readers seem to want to see the theme of football?

Kong Lan really didn't expect that Meng Zhe would draw cartoons about tennis.

"It's because they want to watch football that I draw tennis! Sister Lan, you don't understand. I'm saving them from the sea of suffering..."

Hey, those readers really, why don't you watch Chinese football? Is there anything more annoying than Chinese football?

So, I definitely don't want to see my football-themed comics!

Meng Zhe replied with a solemn expression, although his answer was completely different from his question in Kong Lan's opinion.

(to be continued)