Chapter 9: Choosing Dishes by Reading People

The group entered a small conference room. Inside, a few people were already busy arranging the venue. Long Wuyang approached a laptop at the front and began fiddling with the projector equipment.

Old Jia asked, “Xiaolong, have you prepared the business plan?”

Long Wuyang replied, “Yes, it’s on this laptop. Uncle, why don’t you take a look first? I wrote the business plan myself. I’m not really sure how to write it properly, so I just copied the format more or less.”

Old Jia nodded and sat down in front of the laptop, flipping through the PowerPoint slides.

After a while, Old Jia said to Long Wuyang, “You’ll be the main presenter, right?”

Long Wuyang nodded.

Old Jia continued, “When you present, just cover the first half—the product features, application scenarios, and a rough overview of the market. You can skip the second half that you wrote.”

Feeling a little embarrassed, Long Wuyang lowered his head and mumbled, “Ah, I didn’t know how to write the second half. Sorry about that, Uncle.”

Old Jia smiled slightly. “Actually, you did fine. It’s just that the second half needs to be tailored to your audience. Different investors require different investment scales and valuation estimates.”

Long Wuyang looked at Old Jia, puzzled. Old Jia explained, “Investment projects like this often face various types of investors: local government platform companies, professional private equity funds, strategic partners, or business collaborators. Each group has different expectations. For example, local governments usually don’t focus on short-term or future financial returns; they care more about industrial chain implementation, job creation, and GDP growth. Private equity funds, on the other hand, prioritize financial returns. Strategic investors focus on industry synergy and supply chain cooperation. So you have to prepare different versions for different investors—you can’t use just one.”

Long Wuyang suddenly understood but still asked, “But the investment valuation should be a fixed number, right? It can’t vary depending on the investor?”

Old Jia gave a sly smile. “Which company these days doesn’t have a few sets of books?”

Dr. Yu, standing nearby, listened with growing confusion and asked Old Jia, “Then how should we report to the government? Shouldn’t we be honest?”

Old Jia shrugged, smiling gently. “Actually, it’s the opposite. For early-stage projects like yours, if you’re completely honest, the government won’t be interested at all. When dealing with the government, if you have one dollar, you need to say you can do a hundred dollars’ worth of work, but you break that hundred dollars into five phases. The first phase only involves twenty dollars of work. That way, the project catches the government’s eye and gains their interest—the government will approve it. If the scale is too small, the government won’t care.”

Dr. Yu asked hesitantly, “But what if the government believes it and decides to invest? We don’t have that kind of money.”

Old Jia laughed again. “The government isn’t stupid. They know you don’t have that kind of money. When you present, you treat one dollar as a hundred dollars, but when it comes to actual investment and implementation, they treat a hundred dollars as one dollar. They prioritize getting the project off the ground first. These are some common tactics used in government investment promotion.”

Dr. Yu and Long Wuyang suddenly understood. Long Wuyang, with a socially anxious expression, said, “The world is terrifying, and the waters are deep.”

Old Jia said, “Today, just focus on presenting the product. I expect the people here are mainly coming to meet each other, not to discuss any substantive issues. Just make friends for now. In the future, I can handle these materials. If I have questions about the product, I’ll ask you. Also, remember, the business plan needs different versions for different audiences. You should focus on your research. Don’t waste too much time on this—these projects take multiple rounds of negotiation to finalize.”

“That’s great!” Dr. Yu slapped his thigh. “I’ve been worried about this. We really don’t understand this stuff. Mr. Jia, if you join our team to handle this, it’ll save us a lot of effort and give us peace of mind.”

Old Jia replied, “Exactly. Professionals handle professional matters. You engineers should focus on your research and production. Business negotiations and financing are for us finance people to manage. That’s what financial services for the real economy are all about.”