Hollywood Hunter

Remember in one second [End of the God Station] Mobile phone user input address: m.xinwanben.com

San Francisco Bay Area.

Igret corporate headquarters near Stanford University in Palo Alto.

Simon came to San Francisco on April 23, and a conference room in the company's office building was occupied, and people came in and out every day to attend the meeting.

In addition to the high-level executives of Igret, Steve Case, the CEO of AOL, headquartered on the east coast, also flew here, and occasionally executives from companies such as Cisco, Oracle, Sun and Microsoft were invited to participate in the event. It was discussed several times, and finally even the media in the Bay Area noticed this.

Simon didn't let the media down, and the second day of his trip to San Francisco released a piece of valuable news that Westeros would invest an additional $50 million in exchange for another 50% stake in AOL.

After the deal was concluded, Westeros' shareholding in AOL increased from 25% to 75%, achieving absolute control.

Speaking of which, this thing started before Simon came to San Francisco.

In the next few years, Simon's layout in the Internet field may lose his original opportunity if he takes a wrong step. Therefore, he must ensure absolute control over the most important part of AOL's layout.

In order to achieve this purpose, James Raybold made a strong statement when the offer was launched. If other AOL shareholders did not agree with this capital injection, Westeros would withdraw from AOL and instead support other AOL shareholders. companies of the same type.

AOL executives and shareholders such as Steve Keys initially disagreed with Westeros' demands for a sudden and forcible increase in its stake.

However, because Simon did not ask for a wholly-owned holding, and retained 25% of the shares for the original shareholders, and the firm attitude of Westeros, after weighing the pros and cons, AOL still accepted the conditions of Westeros.

With this capital injection, AOL's headquarters will also be relocated from the East Coast to San Francisco.

In a villa in the Woodside Mountains in the western suburbs of Palo Alto, after a week of meetings and discussions, it came to Saturday, April 28, that Simon still did not return to Los Angeles.

Near noon, James Leibold came to this mountain mansion by car, and Jennifer welcomed her father into the villa in the courtyard.

The father and daughter went upstairs. In a somewhat empty study room on the second floor, Simon was standing in front of a large writing board with his arms in his arms, thinking about something. Various words were densely written on the white writing board with black ink pens.

James Redbold roughly scanned the whiteboard.

Portal, instant messaging, e-mail, personal homepage, online news, e-commerce, online forums, online games, cloud computing, big data, search engines, firewalls, online payments...

Some words James can understand at a glance, some words make him a little puzzled.

It wasn't until many years later, when many of the ideas on the whiteboard today were realized one by one, that James Redbold really understood how valuable the ideas on the whiteboard were.

Seeing that his daughter didn't mean to disturb Simon's thinking at all, but instead looked at the young man in front of him with a little admiration in his eyes, James Leibold sighed inwardly that the girl was outgoing, and had to cough lightly.

Simon heard the movement behind him, turned around, and stretched out his hand with a smile: "Good afternoon, Jim."

Shaking hands with Simon, James gestured to the whiteboard and said, "This is the result of your recent discussion with everyone."

"Some are, some are not," Simon said. "Only a few of them can be implemented for the time being."

Simon said, letting his body down, James took another step forward and looked at the blackboard in front of him more closely.

James Leibold has fully proved his personal ability in recent years, and Simon did not hide most of his things from him, and took the initiative to point to some keywords that he had circled, saying: "In the next few years, With the cooperation of AOL, Igreat will focus on the business of portal websites, e-mails, personal homepages, online news, online forums and online games. Some of these functions have been developed by Igreat last year. You must know."

James nodded.

The portal website is basically the graphical interface browser home page setting that Igreit has named ie (intercom explorer), which acts as a portal guide for Internet surfing.

However, James also knows that the Internet content is very scarce now, and the portal website envisaged by Simon still needs to produce a lot of content on its own.

In contrast, e-mail is a very practical function developed by Igreit.

Hollywood has a very large demand for mail delivery. Major studios and talent agencies have their own dedicated mailrooms. The first step for talent agency employees to join the job is often to practice in the mailroom.

If the e-mail system can be extended to these enterprises, the office convenience of these companies can be greatly enhanced.

The Malibu Daenerys Studios, which will be officially opened next month, has specially customized the e-mail system of Igret Company. James found that if this business can be promoted, it can definitely become a revenue focus of Igret in the next few years.

Any company wants to grow and develop, it needs solid revenue and profits as support.

Thinking of this, James added: "In addition to the basic software services of Igreit, e-mail, online news and online games can all be paid for.

fee model. Portals, personal homepages and online forums rely on advertising revenue, but this requires a sufficient number of Internet users, which is probably hopeless in recent years. And, Simon, if you're going to de-license the technology of the World Wide Web, these applications developed by Igret are very easy to imitate. "

"It's good to have competition. If a company lacks competitors, it is destined to fall into a situation where it does not want to make progress, and it is not good for its own development." Simon said in a relaxed tone: "Also, we have taken the lead, if You can only blame yourself for losing to your competitors when you have so many advantages."

As a professional manager, for the benefit of employers, James Raybould has repeatedly suggested that Simon limit the licensing of World Wide Web technology, or adopt a fee-based model, as some other commercial networks have now begun to operate.

However, Simon understands that the original time and space, officially because the World Wide Web was completely free and open in 1993, promoted the outbreak of the Internet industry. Whether it is Cisco, AOL or Yahoo, they all rose rapidly against this background.

If the licensing of the World Wide Web is restricted, or if a fee-based model is adopted, the technology is likely to be phased out like other fee-based networks.

The two chatted for a while, until Jennifer reminded that lunch was ready, and then went downstairs together.

Sitting down in the restaurant, James saw the two tall girls who brought in the lunch, and he couldn't help but hate the iron and glanced at his daughter who was sitting quietly next to Simon.

Fight ah, silly girl.

Simon waited for the maid to leave the restaurant, picked up the cutlery and asked James, "How's the talk on Cisco's side?"

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

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

Completed the absolute control of AOL, James' focus immediately turned to Cisco.

Now Cisco, the shareholding structure is also very simple, founders Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner hold 30%, Sequoia Capital holds 30%, Westeros holds 15%, and The two Silicon Valley venture capitalists hold 15% and 10%, respectively.

Therefore, it is an ownership structure that is very easy to privatize.

In addition to Westeros and the founder Bosak and his wife, venture capital institutions such as Sequoia Capital, because of the nature of their own operations, prefer to cash out as soon as possible, rather than holding shares in a company for a long time. Therefore, when Apple, Cisco, Oracle and other companies invested by Sequoia Capital have risen in succession, Sequoia Capital has long been no longer among the major shareholders of these companies.

The business nature of these venture capital investors, Sequoia Capital, also gave Westeros the opportunity to directly buy more equity in Cisco.

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

According to the federal Securities Act, 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 going public will be lower than when it was privatized.

After James concluded negotiations with AOL shareholders, he began approaching a group of Cisco shareholders about the acquisition.

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

Simon nodded, waiting for James to continue, and did not rush to ask about the price.

Regardless of whether it is listed or not, with Simon's current strength, there is no problem even buying Cisco completely. The company’s current revenue is only about $50 million. According to some previous estimates, even if it goes public, its market value will only be around $300 million.

$300 million, whether it's mobilizing some money from overseas or continuing the bank loan model, is a no-brainer for Westeros.

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

James continued: "It's like this, the founder of Cisco, Leonard Bosak, has recently had a bad relationship with Cisco's CEO John Merrich, and several venture capitalists are also very dissatisfied with Bosak. He is likely to be kicked out of the company by the board in the near future.”

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

In memory, the founders Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner left Cisco in 1990 because of the conflict of ideas with Cisco shareholders and management, and then they sold their hands. majority of the holdings.

James' subsequent words proved this: "I have been in contact with the Bosaks, and they presumably expected to leave the company and were considering selling their shares."

Simon stopped eating and said, "All?"

James shook his head and said: "Probably, it will only be half. If we are not interested in this company, other private equity will take action, and Sequoia Capital will definitely be happy to cash out in advance. Now, because Westeros Company Step in, other shareholders expect more from Cisco. So, they're not going to let it go completely. Of course, on the other hand, we want

Taking control of the company isn't much of a hindrance either. "

Simon understood immediately.

The Westeros Company has become a golden sign because of the miracle of Simon’s rapid rise in wealth in just a few years. Now, most of the companies involved in the Westeros Company have benefited a lot from this halo.

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

In fact, this phenomenon has already begun in the process of Simon's acquisition of Gucci.

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

Even if Bill Gates and Paul Allen agreed to transfer a 10% stake in Westeros, and companies such as Intel continued to increase their holdings in Westeros, there was no big rebound. This is the reason.

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

For companies such as Microsoft and Intel, Simon's shareholding is mainly for investment purposes. He is very 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 plans to compete for the control of these companies. right. In order to express this attitude, Simon also directly authorized the voting rights of his shares to Bill Gates after completing the increase in his holdings of Microsoft.

However, with Cisco, AOL and Igret, Simon intends to be completely in control.

The three companies, Cisco is a network equipment provider, AOL is a network service provider, and Igret is a network content provider, which actually represents a complete Internet industry chain.

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

Now, such 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 the layout. When the Internet industry develops to a peak at the end of the century, his control over the three companies will become an established fact.

Moreover, although it is necessary to achieve absolute control now, Simon does not intend to be like Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who has always firmly controlled most of the equity of these three companies, and all three companies are going to carry out IPOs.

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

Support (end this site) and share this site with those who need it! Can't find the book, please leave a message!