Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 1977 The Failed Entrepreneur

The next day, Duan Yun and Li Yun left New York and went to the south of San Francisco on the west coast of the United States.

Silicon Valley is the kingdom of the electronics industry and the computer industry. Although the United States and other high-tech areas in the world are constantly growing, Silicon Valley is still the pioneer and center of high-tech innovation and development in the world. The venture capital in this region accounts for the total venture capital in the United States. One-third of Silicon Valley's computer companies have grown to about 1500.A century ago, it was still an orchard, but since the headquarters of Intel, Apple, and other high-tech companies settled here, many prosperous towns have emerged.In just a few decades, Silicon Valley has produced a large number of technology tycoons.

The main part of Silicon Valley is located in Santa Clara County at the southern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, mainly including a section of valley about 25 miles long from Palo Alto to the county capital San Jose.

The main location feature of Silicon Valley is that it is supported by some of the top universities in the United States with strong scientific research capabilities nearby, mainly including Stanford University and UC Berkeley, as well as several other universities in the University of California system and Santa Clara. pull university.Structurally, Silicon Valley is based on a group of high-tech small and medium-sized companies, and also has large companies such as Google, Facebook, HP, Intel, Apple, Cisco, Nvidia, Oracle, Tesla, and Yahoo, integrating science, technology, and production.

Duan Yun's American branch is located 15 kilometers north of Santa Clara University, and less than 40 kilometers away from their R&D center in the United States.

After learning that the boss of the company, Duan Yun, was coming, more than 100 American employees of the branch stood up to welcome him, and the scene was very enthusiastic.

At present, the US branch of Telling Group has a total of more than 140 employees, more than half of whom are Asians or elites who have studied in the United States from the Mainland. The main reason for recruiting so many Asian employees is that compared with European and American countries. Among the employees, Asian employees are more able to endure hardship, and most of them also recognize the overtime culture. Li Yun has a deep understanding of this when he was the general manager of the Hong Kong branch. Therefore, this time when he came to the United States to set up a branch, he also gave priority to hiring Asians. employee.

What's more, unlike the employees of Telling's R&D center in the United States, apart from the dozen or so technicians sent to the United States by Telling Group in the early stage, the rest of the branch office are basically clerks and managers with certain business experience, because There are certain differences in the legal and economic conditions of the states in the United States, so many employees of the branch office have worked in other states and are relatively familiar with the local area, and some of them have business experience before.

In the current United States, the cost and environment of starting a business are far more relaxed than those in China. It is relatively easy to borrow money from banks to start a business. If you are good enough and have a business plan that seems feasible, you will also attract investment from the United States. In other words, capital is pervasive in the United States, and they will occupy every corner with commercial potential.

But in fact, the probability of success in starting a business in the United States is not high. Only a very small number of people can realize their "American Dream", and the vast majority of people end up bankrupt, or become poor with nothing, or can only To work in another company, everything starts from scratch.

In the U.S. branch that Duan Yun opened, there are two such entrepreneurs. They have certain business experience and management ability. After the inspection, let them take up the management position of the branch company and assist Li Yun in some work in the United States.

"This is Brown Jones. He used to run a private logistics express company, and wanted to establish an online shopping platform covering the entire United States through the computer network..." In the conference room, Li Yun began to ask Duan Yun one by one. Introduce the senior management of your branch.

"Online shopping platform?" Duan Yun was taken aback when he heard the words, so he said repeatedly: "Then how far has he achieved?"

Speaking of online shopping platforms, Duan Yun first thought of the famous Alibaba in China, and then Amazon in the United States.

Amazon is said to be the largest online e-commerce company in the United States in later generations, located in Seattle, Washington State.

This company is one of the earliest companies on the Internet to start e-commerce. Amazon was founded in 1995. At the beginning, it only operated the online book sales business, and later expanded to a wide range of other products, including DVD, music, etc. CDs, computers, software, video games, electronics, clothes, furniture, etc.

The emergence of the online shopping platform can be said to be a subversion of the traditional business system, and it is also an epoch-making innovation, but Duan Yun did not expect that in 1994, someone in the United States had already thought of establishing an online business platform .

"Unfortunately, he failed. In fact, Brown Jones is a very good talent. He first engaged in software research and development. He was already a millionaire at the age of 29. He is very proficient in Internet things, but this idea is a bit too much. Exaggerating, online shopping is too difficult, almost impossible, he lost all his net worth, and owes the bank nearly 40 US dollars..." Li Yun shook her head and said.

"Then why did he choose our company?" Duan Yun asked curiously.

"It's not because of the high salary you gave." Li Yun smiled slightly, and continued: "He is now in huge debts, but because he didn't graduate from university, he couldn't meet the requirements of large companies, and small companies can't pay much, so Come here to apply for a job..."

"Didn't graduate from college?"

"Yes, he used to go to the University of Southern California, but he dropped out of school, maybe because he thought the school life was not interesting?" Li Yun smiled, and then said: "Everyone's ideas and possibilities are different from ours. In China, it is absolutely a matter of glory to enter a university. It is impossible to give up studies for a diploma, but in the United States, many people’s ideas are beyond our comprehension, just like Bill Gates, the richest man in the United States. Giving up school to start a business, so in this country, there always seems to be endless possibilities.”

"This is a talent." Hearing this, Duan Yun couldn't help but sigh with emotion.

Undoubtedly, it is indeed a great thing to be able to think of using the Internet to create a sales platform in the early 90s, but his idea is a bit too avant-garde at present, and the time to realize it is not mature enough. Because at present, even in the United States, the popularity of the Internet is not too high, and it also involves online currency transactions and logistics, so if you want to build a mature and convenient online shopping platform like Alibaba, The difficulty is very huge...

(End of this chapter)