hunt hollywood

However, Simon understood that in the original time and space, it was because the World Wide Web was completely free and open in 1993 that it promoted the explosion of the Internet industry. Whether it was Cisco, America Online or Yahoo, they all rose rapidly under this background.

If the authorization of the World Wide Web is limited, or a fee-based model is adopted, then this technology is likely to be phased out gradually like other fee-based networks.

The two chatted for a while, and they didn't go downstairs together until Jennifer reminded that lunch was ready.

Sitting down in the restaurant, James saw the two tall girls bringing in lunch, and couldn't help but look at his own daughter who was quietly sitting next to Simon.

Let's fight, silly girl.

Simon waited for the maid to leave the restaurant, picked up the cutlery and asked James, "How is the discussion at Cisco?"

According to the original development track, Cisco should have been listed in February of this year.

However, Cisco's IPO has been delayed until now because of Westeros' involvement.

After completing the absolute holding of AOL, James' focus immediately shifted to Cisco.

Cisco now has a very simple shareholding structure. The founders, Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner, hold 30% of the shares, Sequoia Capital holds 30%, and Westeros holds 15%. Two Silicon Valley VCs hold 15% and 10% of the shares respectively.

So it's a very easy to privatize shareholding structure.

Apart from Westeros and the founder Bosacks, venture capital institutions such as Sequoia Capital prefer to cash out as soon as possible because of their own business nature, rather than holding shares in a company for a long time.Therefore, when companies such as Apple, Cisco, and Oracle invested by Sequoia Capital successively rose up, Sequoia Capital was no longer among the major shareholders of these companies.

The operating nature of Sequoia Capital's venture capital also gave Westeros the opportunity to directly buy more shares in Cisco.

In fact, the reason why various shareholders agreed to Westeros' request to delay the IPO is largely due to this consideration.

According to the federal "Securities Law", after a company goes public, there are many restrictions on the reduction of major shareholders.

Although the equity can still be sold through private transfer at that time, no one can determine the specific trend of a company after the IPO.Maybe, for some reason, the market value of the company after listing will be lower than that under the privatization state.

After James finished negotiating with AOL shareholders, he began to contact Cisco's shareholders about the acquisition.

Hearing Simon's question, James let go of his hatred for his daughter, and said: "The three Sequoia Capitals all agreed to sell half of the shares to us. After completing this transaction, our shareholding in Cisco will increase." To 42.5%. There is a better chance now, though."

Simon nodded, waiting for James to continue, and was not in a hurry to ask about the price.

Regardless of whether it is listed or not, with Simon's current strength, it is no problem to buy Cisco completely.The company's current revenue is only about 5000 million US dollars. According to some previous estimates, even if it goes public, its market value will only be around 3 million US dollars.

3 million US dollars, whether it is mobilizing some funds from overseas or continuing to adopt the bank loan model, it is a breeze for Westeros.

Therefore, Simon doesn't care too much about how much money is spent, and he believes that James will not let himself suffer.Moreover, considering Cisco's development prospects, it is definitely worth paying even a 100% or more premium now.

James continued: "It's like this. The founder of Cisco, Leonard Bosak, has recently had a worse relationship with Cisco's CEO, John Murridge. Several venture capitals are also very dissatisfied with Bosack. He He is likely to be kicked out of the company by the board of directors in the near future.”

When Simon heard James say this, he immediately remembered something.

In memory, because of the ideological conflict between the founders Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner and Cisco shareholders and management, the two left Cisco in 1990, and then they sold it. most of the holdings.

James' subsequent words proved this point: "I have already contacted the Bosacks, and they probably also expected that leaving the company would be inevitable, so they are considering selling their shares."

Simon stopped eating and said, "All of it?"

James shook his head and said: "Probably, it will only be half. If it weren't for our interest in this company, other private equity would sell, and Sequoia Capital would be happy to cash out in advance. Now, because Westeros Intervene, other shareholders have more expectations of Cisco. Therefore, they will not let go completely. Of course, on the other hand, there is not much obstacle for us to take control of this company.”

Simon understood immediately.

Westeros Corporation has become a golden sign because of Simon's rapid rise of wealth miracle in just a few years. Now, most of the companies involved in Westeros Corporation have gained a lot of benefits from this aura.

Therefore, neither Cisco nor AOL shareholders, out of interest, will insist on control of these two companies, because they believe that handing over control to Simon should be able to gain more benefits.Similarly, in order to obtain more benefits in the future, they will naturally not completely let go of their holdings of the company's equity.

This phenomenon actually started when Simon acquired Gucci.

In this world, after all, not many people are fools.

Even if Bill Gates and Paul Allen agreed to transfer 10% of the shares to Westeros, and companies such as Intel did not rebound much against Westeros’ continuous increase in their own company’s stock, basically This is the reason.

Simon didn't actually think about owning these companies outright.

For companies such as Microsoft and Intel, Simon’s holdings are mainly for investment purposes. He is well aware of the future development potential of these companies, but he also knows that he has no experience and ability to manage these companies, and he has no intention of competing for the control of these companies right.In order to express this attitude, after Simon completed the increase in Microsoft's holdings, he also directly authorized the voting rights of his holdings to Bill Gates.

However, for Cisco, America Online and Eaglet, Simon intends to be completely in control.

Among the three companies, Cisco is a network equipment provider, AOL is a network service provider, and Eaglet is a network content provider. This actually represents a complete Internet industry chain.

If it is 10 years later, if Simon wants to do this, he will definitely face strong anti-monopoly pressure. It is impossible for the federal government to allow him to control the three industrial giants that can influence the structure of the Internet industry. He probably did not have enough capital at that time Control these three enterprises.

Now, similar resistance does not exist.

The Internet industry is in the ascendant, and some people can see the development prospects of this new technology field, but no one can be sure how large it can develop.

Simon is now starting to make plans, and when the Internet industry reaches its peak at the end of the century, his control of the three companies will become an established fact.

Moreover, although it is necessary to achieve absolute control now, Simon does not intend to firmly control most of the shares of these three companies like Bill Gates and Paul Allen did. All three companies are going to conduct IPOs.

At that time, even if there is another anti-monopoly investigation, as long as the layout is made in advance and enough allies are brought in, the pressure on the three companies should be much less than that of Microsoft.

Chapter 344 Investing in People (Revised)

Simon stayed in San Francisco for a week, but he found that there were many more problems to be dealt with than he had imagined in order to expand his layout of the Internet industry.

Just as the founders of the predecessor of America Online had the concept of online music and online games in the early 80s, in the Internet field, ideas are not so valuable. The mature Internet industry model in Simon’s memory, before the rise of this industry, probably There are many people who have had countless similar thoughts.

The key is execution.

Therefore, whether it is Eaglet or AOL, apart from the general direction of Simon, what is most needed is a management team with real efficient execution.

Speaking of which, many of the companies that Simon invested in based on his prophetic advantage, in the final analysis, are actually investments in the management team.

More precisely, it is an investment in people.

Simon invests in Microsoft because Microsoft has Bill Gates; invests in Nokia because Nokia has Yorma Ollila; invests in AOL because AOL has Steve Case.

During the week in San Francisco, Simon also sent an invitation to John Chambers, who brought Cisco to its peak in the original time and space, and hoped that Westeros would let the other party take charge of the company after it realized absolute control of Cisco.

Because of this philosophy, it is easy for Simon to find that Tim Berners-Lee, who is in charge of Eaglet at this time, may be very suitable as the chief technology officer of Eaglet, but as a company similar to the founder of Apple Inc. A technical executive like Wozniak is not competent for the overall management of Eaglet.

Besides Tim Berners-Lee, Simon desperately needs a 'Steve Jobs' from Eaglet Corporation.

Of course, this is just a metaphor. Simon will never invite Jobs, who is completely out of his control, to manage Ygritte. It is hard to imagine which direction Jobs, who has his own distortion field, will take this company.

On the plane returning to Los Angeles from San Francisco, the time is Sunday, April 4.

Simon didn't go to the suite in the front cabin, and sat casually by a porthole in the middle of the cabin that could be illuminated by the setting sun. While thinking about finding a manager for Ygritte Company, he looked through the results of this week's work.

It is mainly because of the readjusted development plans of Eaglet and AOL after realizing the absolute holding of AOL.

As for Cisco, Simon intends to let go and hand it over to John Chambers, who has already confirmed that he will join. The two had a detailed discussion on Cisco's future development direction. Chambers' business philosophy of customer first and rapid expansion through mergers is basically consistent with The information in Simon's memory was consistent, and Simon did not make any adjustments without authorization.

Of course, in order to facilitate Cisco's expansion, the company must also conduct an IPO as soon as possible.

After gaining absolute control over Eaglet and AOL, Simon graciously subdivided the businesses of the two companies, insisting that AOL divest its content business and focus on its role as an Internet service provider.

Ygritte is in charge of the content.

The content such as online games that AOL originally provided to customers was originally a value-added service based on basic access services, because the current user base is too small, only more than 6, and it is not possible to make up for expenses by implanting online advertisements. Being able to divest these could actually save AOL money.

Of course, Steve Case didn't think so, especially after seeing Simon's conception of a lot of content arranged by Ygritte.

However, Simon did not give Case too many choices.

A large part of the reason why America Online in the original time and space declined rapidly after the Internet bubble burst was that its business coverage was too large and comprehensive, but it did not have core competitiveness.In terms of content, it cannot compare with Yahoo, which came from behind, and in terms of access services, it is easily surpassed by traditional operators with infrastructure advantages. As a result, the market value of 90 billion US dollars at its peak has shrunk by more than [-]% in just a few years.

This time, Simon positioned AOL as an accurate Internet service provider. In the early stage of the development of the Internet industry, this business was maximized, and then closely followed the general trend of telecommunications network, TV network and Internet triple play before and after the new century. Choose the right time to annex an old traditional telecom operator and completely consolidate its position in the industry.

In addition to long-term planning, considering its own scale, in the next few years, AOL will first expand its business in California on the west coast and the coastal metropolitan area from Boston to Washington on the east coast. The vast central region includes the Great Lakes and the equally prosperous The southern coast of China can only be given over to other companies for the time being.

Most of the population of the United States is concentrated on the east and west coasts, and these two regions are the essence of it. As long as it can gain a firm foothold in these two regions, AOL can easily expand to other regions.

In order to save money, in addition to the top-level server, AOL will temporarily rent the line network of traditional operators as much as possible in terms of terminal network.

Of course, this has to be temporary.

If you want to avoid being choked by traditional operators such as AT&T, it is necessary to gradually build and improve your own network. However, this obviously means a huge expenditure of billions of dollars, and it is simply unrealistic to achieve it in the short term.

Another reason for the rapid decline of the original space-time America Online is that it believed too much in its own content advantages. Until the traditional operators had begun to provide ISP services, they still rented other people's lines, and were slow to improve their own network, and did not even follow up with high-speed broadband. The promotion, the end can be imagined.

In addition to these major plans, among the confirmed plans, AOL will open 100 Internet cafes in Los Angeles, Boston, New York and other cities in the next few months.

This plan was naturally proposed by Simon.

The first time Simon came into contact with the Internet in his previous life was at an Internet cafe.

However, the Internet cafe industry has not caught on in North America.

The main reason is the difference in consumption capacity.

Like video recorders, video halls across the ocean should be popular now, but in North America, this is not necessary at all, because the penetration rate of video recorders in North American households has exceeded 70%.

Similarly, since the birth of the 70s, the number of PCs owned by American families has also increased rapidly. The reason why they have not been popularized in just ten years like video recorders is mainly because PCs in this era lack sufficient entertainment. More Prefers to work.

The number of PC ownership in American households began to explode, which happened to be the 90s when the Internet was rapidly promoted.

Although Simon's trip to San Francisco this week has drawn a lot of media attention to the new technology companies he is deploying, such as AOL, Igret, and Cisco, most Americans don't even have the concept of the Internet in their hearts right now.

Simon did not intend to make a profit when he put forward the idea of ​​an Internet cafe, but mainly to promote Eaglet and AOL to the public, as long as people can experience online news, e-mail, online games, online forums, personal homepages, etc. in Internet cafes With all the benefits of Internet applications, it is natural to consider accessing the Internet at home.

100 Internet cafes, even with a minimum budget of $10 for each Internet cafe, will require a total of $1000 million in expenditure.

If it is fully paid by AOL, only this fee is equivalent to 5000% of Westeros's $20 million capital injection, and this is not counting the development and later operating expenses of the Internet cafe management system.

Such a huge sum of 'marketing expenses', AOL is completely unbearable.

When Simon left San Francisco, Steve Case was already in contact with various PC manufacturers to find partners. These 100 Internet cafes that do not plan to make money will also be operated independently in the form of AOL subsidiaries, and they will even be packaged and sold at the right time. go.

Simon also personally called Damen and asked him if he was interested in sponsoring a batch of the latest Windows 3.0, or he could ask Apple himself.

Then successfully got 1000 sets of free operating system software.

There must be many manufacturers willing to participate in the project initiated by Simon himself. The most expensive PC equipment expenses should be saved, and even the operating system software of Internet cafes can be handed over to interested software companies.What AOL expects to pay is only the Internet access expenses and the rental cost of the production site for Internet cafes.

Saved money, AOL can be used for the development of its own core business.

As for Ygritte Company, most of Simon's thoughts this week were on it, which is why he was eager to find another suitable manager for Ygritte, and even the self-aware Tim Bo Nas Lee himself agreed with Simon's decision.

The most important thing for Eaglet is to confirm the revenue model.

It is still the same point of view. Any company that wants to grow and develop must have a sustainable revenue and profit model.

Portal membership, e-mail charges, online news subscription, etc., have all been considered by Eaglet's team.

Simon rejected them all without hesitation.

In order to quickly attract users, basic content services such as portal websites, e-mail and online news must be free.

Although the Daenerys Studios in Malibu, which is about to be opened, has installed an enterprise email system, Simon also rejected the idea of ​​developing the email system that Eaglet has patented to the enterprise market.This matter may be handed over to other companies in the form of technology authorization and equity participation, but Ygritte must adhere to Simon's popular development route.

Simon's positioning for Eaglet in the next ten years is an Internet technology company wrapped in a network media platform.

Internet media, this is a new technological concept that was very capable of stimulating corporate stock prices in the 90s.

However, from the fate of Yahoo and AOL in the original time and space, we can know that online media is not sustainable, and the Internet giants that survive and grow in the end, whether it is Amazon, Facebook or Google, are all technology companies at their core.

Create a platform through technology and attract a large enough user base to produce "content" on their own. This is the way for Internet companies to dominate.

In comparison, the business model of online media is to produce content by itself to meet the needs of users. This was feasible in the early 1.0 era of the Internet, but in the 2.0 and 3.0 eras after the explosion of Internet users, if you want to meet the needs of more than a few by yourself. The content needs of billions of Internet users are simply impossible.

Since it is impossible to obtain revenue through portal websites, e-mail and other services in the short term, everyone's attention will naturally turn to software again.

The server software, web design software and other applications developed by Eaglet based on World Wide Web technology have been confirmed to be commercialized.

Simon's original idea was that the IE browser with a graphical interface would be promoted in a free form. This idea was not accepted by the Eaglet team. Most employees believed that the software developed by the company with huge investment was very good. , and even has the value meaning of creating a new era, it should not be free.

After several discussions and even disputes, Simon had to make a compromise.

In other words, Simon also admitted that his ideas were too radical.

Just like he hopes that AOL's network access service should be billed monthly instead of hourly. At least in recent years, this idea is not realistic. , still billed on an hourly basis.

On the other hand, the server software, web design software and other applications developed by Eaglet have a small market capacity in the short term, and even more are only used by Eaglet's own team.

Therefore, IE, a terminal application software expected to have a wide audience, is very important.

The final solution is that the IE browser will also adopt a charging model.

This is also the most practical means for Eaglet to obtain real revenue as soon as possible.

However, compared with Netscape’s browser pricing of up to US$50 in Simon’s memory, the team finally confirmed that the retail price of the IE browser was US$15, and the installation costs of Internet service providers such as America Online were lower, and each set was charged at US$10 .

At $10 a set, it's actually very affordable for AOL.

Moreover, Igret will not only authorize AOL as a service provider. After all, AOL's expansion focus in recent years will only be limited to a few densely populated states on the east and west coasts, and most areas in the United States are still out of reach. , Seeing the development of America Online, there will definitely be other Internet service providers.

Although Eaglet will open most of the authorizations of World Wide Web technologies for free, but for the core website and terminal application software, Simon will not allow a second manufacturer to appear for a long time in the future.As long as the World Wide Web can reach the speed of popularization in the original time and space, only software income will be enough to cover most of the expenses needed for the development of Eaglet.