When Chen Mo dragged his suitcase out of the Shanghai train station, he only had 1,836 yuan left in his pocket. This rural boy with three undergraduate degrees couldn't even afford the deposit for a youth hostel. But when delivering his first takeout order, he discovered his secret - he could see the "time value" above everyone's head: white-collar workers were worth 8 yuan per minute, programmers were worth 15 yuan, and the girl in the cafe frowning at her laptop was actually worth 200 yuan per minute.
Relying on this talent, he designed a "dynamic route algorithm" and became the platform's ace rider. When Sister Lin, the owner of the milk tea shop, was worried about losing money, he pointed to the monitor and said: "Customer traffic between 3 and 7 pm accounts for 83% of the whole day, but you queue 60% of your employees in the morning." He redesigned the "Combat Manual for Hot Order Periods" to allow the store to make back its money in three months.
In the era of self-media, his video "Shanghai Hourly Earning Map" became a hit, revealing that one hour for a white-collar worker in Lujiazui is equal to three days for a suburban factory worker. When his fans exceeded one million, he made a bolder attempt - developing a "time bank" APP, which allowed a lawyer's one-hour consultation to be exchanged for a designer's logo production. This idea that breaks the boundaries of time and space made the 28-year-old appear on the cover of Forbes.
From sleeping in an Internet cafe to buying an apartment on the Bund, Chen Mo proved one thing: in this city, the most expensive thing is never the house, but the golden minutes that are wasted by most people.
