Four-Person Company

When Han Luyi left that morning, the door to 501 happened to open as well.

Lin Wanqing was crouching in the doorway, helping Duoduo adjust her backpack straps. Duoduo wore a white school-uniform shirt with half her collar tucked in. Her backpack was wider than her whole back, wobbling as she wore it.

"Brother Luyi!" Duoduo bounced when she saw him. "I'm going to elementary school!"

Han Luyi crouched down to meet her eyes. "Wow! You're going to elementary school already!"

"Class Three, Grade One!" Duoduo held up three fingers.

Then Duoduo spun around to show him her backpack. A handmade ladybug charm hung from its side, red cloth stuffed with cotton, its black spots uneven in size and its stitches crooked. It looked like Duoduo had sewn it herself.

"I made it! Mom didn't help me!" Duoduo flicked the ladybug. "Does it look like yours?"

Duoduo's backpack was so large that Han Luyi could not help reaching out to lift it. To his surprise, it was light—empty.

Lin Wanqing noticed his confusion. "It's the first day of school. She has to bring her textbooks back."

Duoduo tugged Lin Wanqing toward the stairs. "Mom, hurry, hurry! We'll be late!"

"Coming, coming." Lin Wanqing was pulled forward two steps, then turned back and waved to Han Luyi.

The mother and daughter's footsteps went down the stairwell, their voices drifting back up.

"Mom, will there be kindergarten teachers at school?"

"Mm... there will be teachers."

The stairwell fell quiet. Han Luyi locked his door, picked up his bag, and left.

During the morning rush on Line 2, Han Luyi was squeezed between two men in suits, gripping a handrail with one hand and replying to messages with the other. Half a year ago, he had commuted the same way, except then he had been going to work at Dingsheng. Now he was heading to Source Code.

It was still the same subway train, only the journey was longer.

He was also meeting Gu Siyue today. The three contracts had been reviewed, so he got off midway to pick them up.

The café was on the left after the subway exit, and there were not many people there on a weekday morning. Gu Siyue sat by the window. The coffee in front of her was nearly gone, while an unopened iced Americano sat beside her.

Han Luyi sat across from her. She had already taken out the three contracts and spread them across the table.

"I reviewed them all and changed two points." Gu Siyue opened the first one and tapped the marked section with her fingertip. "Azure Peak's contract. I made the promotion terms more specific, including the banner placement and duration, so they can't play word games."

She turned to the second contract.

"Celestial Pivot's data ownership clause—'data generated during the cooperation period.' Wording like that can be interpreted however they want in arbitration. What counts as generated? Generated by whom? Generated where? I added qualifying language. Take a look."

Han Luyi flipped through it. Sticky notes with pencil annotations had been attached beside every revision, the handwriting neat and the logical chains laid out with perfect clarity.

"The rest is fine. Let's set a time to sign."

"Attorney Gu, you're reliable."

"Don't praise me. I charge for this."

Han Luyi put the contracts back into the bag. "That's different. Once the contracts are signed, I'll treat you to dinner."

Gu Siyue had already picked up her takeaway cup and stood.

"Send me the scanned copies after signing."

"Got it."

Han Luyi ordered himself an Americano to go, then took the subway again. It was nearly ten by the time he reached the office.

On the third floor of a Zhangjiang co-working space was an independent office for eight people. To the right of the door hung BugKiller's ladybug logo, black spots on a red background.

Outside the window was no longer a market alley, but elevated highways, cranes, and the Zhangjiang skyline.

He set his bag down at his desk. Both monitors were filled with code, and on the desk sat only a mechanical keyboard and a gaming mouse. It was the workstation of a seasoned developer through and through, nothing like a CEO's.

Across from him, Lu Mingzhou greeted him. Both of his monitors were packed with reports; at last, he no longer had to spread them across a dining table.

Su Niannian had gone out to get coffee. The wall opposite her had already become a huge task board: To Do, In Progress, Completed, three columns in all, densely covered in colorful sticky notes. The writing was small and round, with a date marked in the lower right corner of every note.

Zhou Li sat by the window. Recommended by Lu Mingzhou, she was the wife of his former colleague and had worked in finance for eight years. She had only started yesterday, yet a row of numbered folders was already neatly arranged on her desk.

They were still hiring developers and operations staff. For now, it was a four-person company.

"President Han, President Su, come over for a moment?" Lu Mingzhou stood and walked to the whiteboard.

Han Luyi and Su Niannian both went over.

"I updated my valuation model. Let me bring you up to speed."

Lu Mingzhou wrote the current situation on the left side of the whiteboard. "Current monthly revenue is 380,000. The bleeding from CodeSafe's offensive has basically stopped, and we've started recovering this month."

"I pulled the registration and payment data from the past three months." He drew a curve on the whiteboard. "Organic growth brings in around eighty new paying teams per month on average."

He drew a second line above the curve.

"After moving to the cloud, we'll get traffic directly from the platforms. Combined with the developer bases of all three, even at the most conservative estimated conversion rate, this number should at least triple. There's a chance monthly revenue will break one million within six months."

He switched to a different colored marker.

"For the last valuation, I used existing data and an ARR multiplier of five to eight times. Now that the terms with the three cloud platforms are in place and the growth outlook is clear, the valuation can go up to eight to ten times."

On the right side of the whiteboard, he wrote a line:

Valuation range: 60 million–80 million

Lu Mingzhou put the marker back and turned to Han Luyi. "I've arranged to have coffee with two venture capital firms next week. President Han, want to come with me?"

"Are we raising funds?" Su Niannian asked.

Lu Mingzhou looked at Han Luyi.

Han Luyi was silent for a while before speaking. "No rush. I can see where BugKiller needs to spend money right now, but if we raise funds, I haven't figured out where we'd spend them."

Lu Mingzhou said, "We can at least get acquainted. Let them know what we do."

Han Luyi nodded without saying anything.

Lu Mingzhou's phone rang. He gestured to the two of them and walked out to answer it.

Su Niannian leaned close to Han Luyi and asked quietly, "Isn't he a little too eager?"

Han Luyi looked at Su Niannian and gently shook his head.

Lu Mingzhou hurried back. "President Han, take a look at this."

He handed over his phone.

On the screen was Prosperity Group's official public account, with a pinned post—

"Dingsheng Cloud announces: CodeSafe has officially become a built-in development tool on Dingsheng Cloud. Starting today, all Dingsheng Cloud users can use it directly—no registration, no payment, no installation required."

It was not just free.

It was integrated automatically.

Users did not even need to make a choice.

"How many developer users does Dingsheng Cloud have?" Su Niannian asked as she pulled out her phone.

"150,000 corporate clients," Lu Mingzhou said. "At least three million developers."

Three million people. Starting today, whenever they opened Dingsheng Cloud, CodeSafe would already be there. The thought of Should I try BugKiller? would never even occur to them.

Han Luyi handed the phone back and looked at the whiteboard.

The growth curve, the valuation range, the prediction of breaking one million.

They had not even had time to erase it.

Lu Mingzhou put away his phone and looked at Han Luyi.

"Should we cancel next week?"