High-Stakes Gamble

Han Luyi knocked on the door of 501.

The door opened a crack. Duoduo poked her head out first and called, "Brother Han," before Lin Wanqing gently pulled her back inside.

When Lin Wanqing came out, her apron was stained with blue paint.

"Lin, I have something I'd like your help with."

"What is it?"

"Brand design. Our company's logo, visual system, UI style guide—the whole package. A formal commercial commission, paid at market rates."

Lin Wanqing froze for a moment.

"Why me?"

"I like your paintings."

"I mainly do illustrations. Brand design isn't..." She paused. "I've never done a complete branding project."

"Have you done commercial design before?"

"I've taken freelance jobs. E-commerce product pages, images for official accounts." Lin Wanqing wiped the paint from her hands. "That doesn't count as brand design."

"Do you want to give it a try?"

Duoduo called out from the side, "Mommy makes everything look pretty!"

Lin Wanqing ignored her daughter. She looked at Han Luyi in silence for several seconds.

"We're neighbors. You don't have to pay me. I'll just draw it for you."

"That won't do," Han Luyi said. "A commercial commission is a commercial commission. If you don't take the money, I won't dare give you revision notes."

Lin Wanqing smiled.

"Then what's your budget?"

"You name the price. Quote whatever you think it's worth."

"...I'll think about it. I'll send you a quote tomorrow."

"Sure." Han Luyi sent her the link to BugKiller's website on WeChat. "I make AI programming tools."

He pointed toward Duoduo's crayon drawing.

"The product is called BugKiller. I really like the ladybug you drew. We can keep using that element."

Lin Wanqing blinked.

"Ladybugs eat aphids," Han Luyi said with a smile.

Lin Wanqing looked at him for a while.

"I'll give it a try."

As Han Luyi left 501, Duoduo chased after him and stuffed a piece of paper into his hand. It was a crayon drawing of a... snake flying through the sky?

He folded the drawing and slipped it into his pocket.

Saturday afternoon, at an independent coffee shop in Hongkou.

Lu Mingzhou had picked the place, saying their pour-over coffee was good.

By the time Han Luyi arrived, the other man was already seated by the window. He was tall and thin, dressed in a dark blue polo shirt and gold-rimmed glasses. The watch on his wrist looked expensive.

When he saw Han Luyi enter, Lu Mingzhou stood up.

"Han Luyi? I'm Frank."

They shook hands.

Lu Mingzhou ordered two pour-overs first and asked whether Han Luyi had any beans he avoided. Han Luyi said anything was fine.

"Your company is in Pudong?" Lu Mingzhou asked.

"An old residential complex. The office is where I live."

"That's how it is in the early days of a startup," Lu Mingzhou said. "I once saw a SaaS team—four people crammed into a loft attic coding. The AC broke in summer, so they opened the windows. There were more mosquitoes than users."

Han Luyi chuckled.

"Zhang Haoran mentioned you several times. Said his college roommate had started a company in AI and was insanely good technically. At first, I didn't pay much attention. There are too many startups with strong tech."

"Then he was exaggerating."

Lu Mingzhou shook his head.

"That livestream two months ago," Lu Mingzhou said. "The comparison between BugKiller and CodeSafe—I watched the replay. A solo developer steamrolled a Stanford PhD team. That was genuinely impressive."

"You watch technical livestreams too?"

"I watch the data." Lu Mingzhou accepted the coffee the server brought over and took a sniff. "After the stream, I looked into BugKiller's community. The discussions on GitHub are more active than those for many mature products. People in the Issues section are voluntarily writing plugins, translating documentation, and submitting feature requests. You can't buy that kind of community engagement."

Han Luyi took his coffee as well.

"Then I saw that comparison post written by an indie developer. Screenshots for every point—detection rate, false-positive rate, impact assessment. You were ahead across all three, and the comments had over three hundred replies." Lu Mingzhou took a sip of coffee. "You didn't arrange that post, did you?"

"No."

They fell silent for a few seconds. Lu Mingzhou set down his cup and shifted his posture.

"How many monthly active users do you have now?"

"Sixty-three thousand, free and paid combined."

"And revenue?"

"One hundred forty-seven team subscribers. Monthly revenue is four hundred twenty thousand."

"Gross margin?"

"After inference costs and servers, around sixty percent."

Lu Mingzhou swiped on his phone a couple of times. "Retention?"

"Eighty-seven percent for the community, ninety-three percent for paid users."

"Eighty-seven percent." Lu Mingzhou repeated the number. "I've been in this business for years. It's rare to see community retention hit eighty-seven percent."

Han Luyi looked at him.

"You've spent quite a lot of time researching us."

"On and off, for over a month." Lu Mingzhou didn't hide it. "I started watching after the livestream. Your public beta launched at the end of April. Your numbers took off after the livestream in mid-May. Dingsheng began squeezing you in July. I followed the whole thing."

"And then?"

"Zhang Haoran mentioned you over dinner last week. That was when I found out his roommate was NullPointer." Lu Mingzhou smiled. "So he didn't introduce me to you. I waited a month for an opportunity."

Han Luyi took a sip of his iced Americano.

"You want to be our FA?" Han Luyi asked.

An FA who invited a founder for coffee, discussed data, and praised the product was obviously here to do business. Though this was Han Luyi's first time dealing with something like this.

"No," Lu Mingzhou said.

"No?"

"An FA helps you find money, takes a commission, and leaves." Lu Mingzhou set down his coffee cup. "I don't want to be a middleman."

He leaned forward.

"I see your situation very clearly. The product is excellent, and the community is active, but Dingsheng's moves have suppressed your growth. People in the industry are saying the competitive landscape is already set. Your valuation has been pushed down to between five and eight million."

Han Luyi said nothing.

"But those people are looking at static data. They don't see what an eighty-seven percent retention rate means. They don't see that your flywheel is already spinning." Lu Mingzhou said, "BugKiller's problem isn't the product. It's survival. Get through this, and your valuation will increase by more than tenfold."

"What do you want to do?"

"Join you."

Han Luyi paused.

"I have resources and connections in the capital circle, as well as experience with the entire fundraising process. I can get your finances, equity, and fundraising pipeline running properly," Lu Mingzhou said. "What you need to do next—negotiations, cap table upgrades, meeting VCs—every one of those things requires someone who has dealt with money before."

Han Luyi activated Sight.

He was serious.

He wasn't here to do business. He was here to gamble.

"How much do you make now?" Han Luyi asked.

"A little over a million."

"You'd give up a million to join a two-person startup being squeezed out?"

"I've handled billions. The best projects passed through my hands, then ended up in someone else's pocket," Lu Mingzhou said. "I want to sit at the table myself for once."

He paused.

"Hot sectors have high valuations. I can't afford the price. Dingsheng has pushed your valuation down, but your product is good and has potential. I trust my eye. You're at your lowest point right now, and I can help you get out of it."

Han Luyi didn't state his position immediately. "What do you think our biggest problem is right now?"

Lu Mingzhou took out his phone and pulled up an equity structure chart he had prepared in advance.

"When you registered, your lawyer gave you a standard structure: two individual founders plus an option pool. It's enough for now. But if you're going to meet VCs next, this structure needs upgrading." He pointed at several blank boxes on the chart. "Founder vesting. Shares vest over four years, signaling to investors that you won't take their money and run. Anti-dilution clauses, so future money doesn't dilute you into nothing. An ESOP distribution mechanism, exercise conditions, exit rules. Right now, you only set aside the pool, but you haven't written the rules. That won't be enough for a VC's legal team."

Han Luyi looked at the chart. He truly had never considered any of this.

"And one more thing." Lu Mingzhou put away the equity chart and swiped to another page. "Your current monthly revenue is four hundred twenty thousand, and growth has been suppressed. You might think Dingsheng is the problem. But from a VC's perspective, the problem is that you don't have a convincing growth story. How do you go from four hundred twenty thousand to 4.2 million, or even 42 million? What does that path look like? What will get you there? How many steps are there? What resources does each step require? If you can't answer those questions, no VC will sit down and listen."

Han Luyi said nothing. Sight had shown him the way, but that was the output of a cheat ability, not something he could hand to investors.

"These are the things I can do," Lu Mingzhou said.

"What are your terms?"

"A monthly salary of fifteen thousand, enough to cover my mortgage. Plus ten percent equity."

Han Luyi leaned back in his chair. In Sight, Lu Mingzhou's bottom line was crystal clear: five percent.

"Ten percent is too high. Five percent."

Lu Mingzhou looked at him.

"Fifteen thousand a month is fine. But on the equity side, five percent is worth two hundred fifty to four hundred thousand at the current valuation. The total package isn't low. The three issues you just mentioned are real work. If I do them well, only then will there be room for additional option grants in later funding rounds. Five percent is the starting point, not the end."

Lu Mingzhou smiled. "You're not the pure tech guy Zhang Haoran described."

"I was forced to learn."

"Five percent, with one condition," Lu Mingzhou said. "Within a year, Source Code Technology must complete a financing round at a valuation of no less than fifty million. If that happens, add another two percent from the option pool for me. If not, then nothing."

"Fine," Han Luyi said. "I'll have the lawyer draft the agreement."

They shook hands again. Lu Mingzhou stood up and scanned the code to pay the bill.

After Lu Mingzhou left, Han Luyi called Su Niannian.

"I met the person Zhang Haoran introduced today. Lu Mingzhou, a finance guy."

"How did it go?"

Han Luyi briefly explained what had happened.

"Wait, he wanted ten percent?"

"I negotiated it down to five percent. If we can raise money at a fifty-million valuation within six months, he gets another two percent."

There was silence on the other end for a moment.

"How did you negotiate that? He asked for ten percent, and you immediately cut it in half. What is this, buying groceries at a market?"

"It's no different from buying groceries at a market. No one starts by naming their bottom price," Han Luyi said.

"Five percent plus a performance bet... Do you think he's reliable?"

"He has a good eye, and he's decisive."

Su Niannian fell silent for a while. "This... really wasn't something I expected."

"Have Lawyer Gu draft the agreement. We'll set another time to meet him together, and you can take a look."

"Okay," Su Niannian said. "You're the boss. Your call."

After hanging up, he received another call from Zhou Yan while walking toward the subway station.

"Mr. Han, the audit report is out. I set up a meeting with Qingyue Cloud for you—Liang Yu, Director Liang from the Developer Ecosystem Department. Next Tuesday at two in the afternoon."

Han Luyi sent Su Niannian a message.

Su Niannian replied instantly: "Go go go!!!"