How to Join a Startup (Full Draft in Progress)

[The complete manuscript is in progress] This novel is also known as: 1. Better to build a business than chase a man; 2. Men only slow down how fast I make money; 3. I have a cinnabar mole (money) in my heart.

Mo Xin fell for her college senior Chu Sixiu's... startup project.

By the time Mo Xin noticed the project, Chu Sixiu's team had already been assembled and the company had been founded. They were all programmers, and had no need for one more liberal arts student studying management.

How do you join a promising startup?

Mo Xin tossed and turned, thinking it over day and night, then decided to take an unconventional approach.

The seniors might turn down a useless junior who wanted to join the team, but how could they refuse a junior who was secretly in love with their boss, Chu Sixiu, and wanted to give her labor out of a desire to get closer to him?

How could these innocent college students take advantage of a junior's unpaid labor without offering her at least a little equity and profit-sharing?

Just as expected, the seniors welcomed Mo Xin onto the team. They all felt sorry for the junior, though: Chu Sixiu had a woman he adored! Her sincere love was destined to go unrequited!

Mo Xin: Perfect! If he didn't have a woman he adored, I wouldn't have picked him as my "secret crush"!

~

Mo Xin joined her senior Chu Sixiu's startup team in college. Over several funding rounds, she helped build the company from nothing. She never complained or said she was tired, and was always her senior's right-hand woman.

When the company went public, her senior not only reached the pinnacle of his career, but seemed to have won the favor of the woman he had adored since school. Mo Xin, meanwhile, received only a few percent of the original shares.

The seniors on the startup team felt sorry for Mo Xin: So what if she succeeded in business? She was in a nontechnical role, so her share of the profits was small, and the person she'd secretly loved for years was about to get together with the woman he adored!

Mo Xin, the billionaire everyone pitied: I told you I have great taste! I've got connections, original shares, and dividends. And my "secret crush" will soon be a thing of the past. Here I come, beautiful life!

~

Chu Sixiu had always known that the junior who'd suddenly joined the team had a crush on him.

She handled all kinds of logistics for everyone, accompanied him to pitch to investors and present proposals, and took care of practically every administrative task.

But it was a shame that Chu Sixiu was devoted to his career and couldn't return her feelings. He could only look after her in small, inconsequential ways and give her a portion of the founding shares in recognition of her contributions.

But over all these years, not only had the junior memorized all his little habits and built good relationships with everyone on the team, she had also worked alongside him through the startup grind without ever complaining or saying she was tired... Chu Sixiu felt his heart slowly warming, until he couldn't let her go.

Just as Chu Sixiu had made it and was ready to accept the junior's advances, he discovered that she was always hanging around the college sports field, drooling over the abs of male college students.

What did that mean?! Wasn't she secretly in love with him? Chu Sixiu was furious.

To his face, she'd say things like, "You're like a rainbow; I only knew you existed when I met you, Sixiu." But behind his back, she'd been eyeing young, handsome men the whole time?!

The male lead doesn't actually have a woman he adores... everyone misunderstood.

Or put another way, the male lead's one true love is building his career, while the female lead's cinnabar mole is making money~

Theme: Encourage entrepreneurship and work hard