159. The World’s New Richest Person Is Born

Wealth has always been the most captivating word in the world.

Even when it was created by someone else, having nothing whatsoever to do with oneself, it was impossible to suppress one’s curiosity about the story behind its creation.

Li Daniu had created quite a bit of wealth before, including TC Entertainment, but none of it had been truly shocking.

For ordinary people, an income measured in billions of dollars was a figure they could imagine only in dreams. But for someone who had already become a world-famous public figure, a billion-dollar fortune was merely the starting price.

When news of TC Network’s first successful round of financing was delivered by the reporters stationed in Tuvalu to their respective media outlets, people all over the world were stunned by the amount involved.

Financing was not the same as going public. Once a company was listed, it was not unheard-of for its market capitalization to exceed ten billion or even a hundred billion dollars on the very first day. An IPO reached stockholders across the globe; when everyone added fuel to the fire, a company with promising prospects could be driven upward with astonishing ease.

Many companies, after going public, were able to raise enormous sums simply by issuing additional shares once their market capitalizations had been inflated.

But never before had a company, while still private and merely completing its first round of financing, created a miracle so unimaginable.

The Wall Street Journal ran the headline: “$10.2 Billion Raised in One Round, Breaking the Record for Internet Companies.”

The Washington Post’s headline read: “Founded One Month Ago, Valued at $130 Billion.”

The Huaxia Daily proclaimed: “A New World’s Richest Man Is Born, with a Fortune of $80 Billion.”

And so on.

Whether they focused on current affairs or entertainment, virtually every major newspaper and media outlet in the world devoted its front page to Li Daniu and TC Network.

He had exchanged 33 percent of TC Network for $10.2 billion in cash and $9.6 billion worth of Facebook shares. In other words, TC Network had already reached a valuation of $60 billion.

Of course, a company’s valuation fluctuated constantly according to its performance and prospects.

Although only half of the $10.2 billion in cash would actually be injected into TC Network, that sum was more than enough to seize the mobile social-media market within a short period of time.

Facebook had exchanged its own shares for a stake in TC Network. This meant that Facebook’s more than one billion registered users could potentially be converted into WeChat users. It was impossible to achieve a complete conversion, of course, but given WeChat’s convenience as a mobile application, how many people would truly be able to resist it?

Taking these factors into account, along with the other industries controlled by Citibank and Sequoia Capital, it was entirely possible for WeChat’s registered users to reach Facebook’s level in the near future—or even surpass it.

As a result, virtually every financial institution and investor raised its valuation of TC Network.

The valuation that commanded the greatest confidence naturally came from Wall Street: $130 billion.

In other words, after only one round of financing, TC Network’s valuation had more than doubled.

And Li Daniu, who owned 67 percent of TC Network, saw his personal fortune instantly rise above $80 billion.

The world’s richest person before that had been Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, whose personal assets had reached $56 billion.

Thus, if an authoritative institution compiled the global rich list again, there would be no dispute about who occupied first place: Li Daniu.

Furthermore, if TC Network went public, its market capitalization would continue to rise. As long as Li Daniu’s stake was not diluted too severely, he might very well become the first person in the world to possess a fortune measured in hundreds of billions of dollars.

But even if TC Network never went public, the entire world would still believe that Li Daniu’s fortune would one day reach that level. After all, his wholly owned TC Entertainment was already advancing into the music market with astonishing ferocity.

Relying on the fan base accumulated through The Voice, the singers signed by TC Entertainment took the hit songs written by Li Daniu, combined them with other tracks gathered from the market, and embarked on a frenzy of record sales.

At present, TC Entertainment’s leading female star, Jewel, had achieved monthly sales of three platinum records while presenting herself as nothing more than an ordinary middle-aged Black woman. One platinum record meant one million copies sold; three platinum records meant three million copies in a single month.

And that was merely the income from record sales. Paid downloads of the songs, royalties, commercial performances, and endorsements had given TC Entertainment extraordinarily abundant cash flow. It had no need to seek financing at all.

The other singers had also achieved impressive results. If the second or third season of The Voice produced another sufficient crop of performers, then by the time TC Entertainment went public, its market capitalization would reach at least the tens of billions of dollars.

A company with dozens of singers who each had more than ten million fans could generate astonishing revenues as long as its records were not shoddily produced. Companies of that kind had always been the stock market’s most favored investments.

Most importantly, every song Li Daniu had written for his singers so far had been a classic.

With TC Entertainment generating cash flow and TC Network creating an astronomical valuation, Li Daniu’s status as the world’s richest man was beyond question.

The only question was when his fortune would surpass one hundred billion dollars.

Li Daniu badly wanted to tell the whole world, “There’s no need to hurry. Wait another dozen or so days. Once my auction ends, my fortune will exceed one hundred billion dollars—and at least twenty billion of that will be in cash.”

But he could not say so, because he had claimed that all the items being auctioned belonged to other people.

Once TC Network’s financing had been completed, Li Daniu no longer needed to devote all his energy to WeChat. The functions he had released so far were already enough to keep TC Network occupied for some time.

Although he still had many ingenious ideas borrowed from his previous life, it would not be wise to introduce new features too quickly.

For now, WeChat’s task was to use its ample funding to promote itself aggressively. Before competing applications could emerge, it needed to build an enormous user base and make WeChat the habitual means by which people communicated.

Moreover, simply connecting WeChat’s red-envelope function with the banking systems of every country in the world would be a considerable undertaking.

Once the red-envelope function had matured completely, and people had grown accustomed to keeping money in their WeChat accounts, Li Daniu would be ready to change the world’s banking industry.

For the moment, however, the matter demanding his attention was the construction of New Tuvalu.

Now that he had money, how could he possibly fail to invest it in New Tuvalu? Li Daniu was eagerly anticipating what kind of assistance the system would provide once New Tuvalu had been completed and the people of Tuvalu had relocated there.