Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
The dinner was over. As planned, in front of everyone, Lu Zhou rejected Fat Wu’s proposal of splitting the bill. Instead, he went and paid himself.
The squad of drunk people then returned to school.
After they separated, Lu Zhou said to Fat Wu, “I think this isn’t too good.”
Fat Wu laughed and said, “90% of startups are doing this, we’re considered kind. Also, it’s not like we’re not giving them benefits. If this is still against your morals, you can give them some of your shares. However, I don’t think you should do this. It’s meaningless and it might bite you in the ass later.”
Lu Zhou did not say anything.
Fat Wu was responsible for company operations, so Lu Zhou should just listen to what he said.
Lu Zhou knew that he was not cut for this line of work, so it would be best if he did not participate.
As for giving out shares…
It did seem meaningless.
If they did not get the round of angel financing, their share would be useless.
…
The second day after the dinner, Fat Wu borrowed a classroom and started the first [Campus Train Club] activity.
The main topics of the meeting were regarding market and product analysis.
Everyone had to come up with ideas, brainstorm, and find ways to save hundreds of thousands of users. The best way was to make constructive suggestions about adding new features to Campus Train.
Almost everyone was energetic. They brought a notebook and was prepared to make meeting notes.
When Fat Wu walked into the classroom, he had two plastic bags in his hand. He then handed everyone a bottle of energy drink. Once he was done, Lu Zhou walked up to the stage and announced the start of the meeting. He then handed the podium over to the product manager, Yuan Liwei. Yuan Liwei was a genius that had a guaranteed master’s entry spot.
“To save some time, I’ll get straight to the point,” said Yuan Liwei with his hands resting on the podium.
“… Campus train users are mostly college students. In the user group classification of Internet products, this kind of users can be regarded as high-quality users. They have the ability to quickly accept new things, have higher than average socializing skills, with higher than average consumptions. The most critical part is to tap into the high-end users’ spending capacity!”
Yuan Liwei stood up straight and pushed his glasses before he continued, “It’s not difficult to monetize this high-quality user base. It’s not difficult to achieve profitability now! Our first task is to enhance the user’s activity! It’s not just the user base that measures APP valuations, numbers like daily active users are also important!”
“… Using common sense, the concept of a college student and train booking software is not a good combination. At least for me, the number of times that I’ll open the booking software will not exceed ten times per year. No matter how good we upgrade the user experience of the booking service, it’d not actually make a big difference, since the users don’t use the app often anyway.”
“My suggestion is to develop new features and no longer limit us to train bookings.”
“Everyone please speak up if you have any good ideas.”
The ministers applauded with Fat Wu and Lu Zhou followed suit.
Professional!
Lu Zhou thought in his heart.
Business school students are so good at marketing and product operations.
Most of Lu Zhou’s Weibo followers were college students. Furthermore, when he made it, it was the back-to-school season. Therefore, he developed a lot of functions for college students and as a result, he ignored many marketing principles.
After genius Yuan’s market analysis and user demand analysis, Lu Zhou immediately understood a lot of the problems he had.
A first-year student raised his hand and proposed, “How about we add a timetable function? The curriculum in university is much more troublesome than in high school. In addition, sometimes there are classroom changes.”
Yuan Liwei did not immediately judge this idea. Instead, he just smiled and wrote the idea on the blackboard with chalk.
Similar software already existed, but copying similar feature from one another was not uncommon in the software industry.
The discussion started to get intense.
Another person suggested, “Why don’t we add a note for class? Taking photos of the powerpoint is way too difficult. Saving pictures into the gallery is also troublesome. If there is a camera function built into the software, users can take photos and save them in different classes…”
Although in theory, the students could download the powerpoint from the teacher, most people could not be bothered. They would take photos of the important slides.
This led to a lot of pictures saved in their phones. In addition, due to the many courses the students had, the pictures were messy and difficult to find.
Lu Zhou’s eyes lit up.
This feature is good.
But not something I can use…
Yuan Liwei still did not say anything. He continued to smile and nodded before he wrote the idea down on the blackboard.
After that, a lot of ideas starting to emerge.
For example, some people recommended adding a sub-model of “new campus things” where people could share new and exciting things that were happening on campus. It could also be a public platform for publishing news. For example, if someone lost a textbook or a meal card, they could make a post on the app… It would be much more convenient than posting it on their WeChat news feed.
The discussion continued. Soon, they came into the conclusion that school news, events, and job information could also be posted.
Of course, they would have to be careful with information related to money transactions. They would have to discuss this in detail at a later date.
At the end of the discussion, the blackboard was almost filled with ideas.
As they looked at the lines of features, someone asked, “Can we still call this Campus Train?”
Lu Zhou suddenly had a moment of realization.
Yeah, should we still call this Campus Train?
The ticket booking software combined class schedules, class notes, campus news, etc. It felt a bit nondescript.
Even facing questioning voices, Yuan Liwei was not intimidated. He pushed his classes and said, “It’s obvious that the Campus Train app would be more than just a booking software. Therefore, I propose a name change.”
He looked at Lu Zhou when he said this.
As the Campus Train Club’s president and chairman, this important task was naturally Lu Zhou’s decision.
Lu Zhou did not answer but he started to think carefully.
About a minute passed…
Just when Yuan Liwei wanted to speak, Lu Zhou suddenly spoke up.
“Makes sense.”
He paused for a second before he continued, “Then we’ll change the name to… Campus Assistant!”