Rebirth 98, the rise started from ripping off Microsoft

Chapter 519 You Know Technology
In the conference room of Confinity's headquarters, Lu Yiming saw all the founding team members of Confinity.

"Mr. Lu Yiming, after careful consideration, we have decided to cooperate with you." Peter Thiel said to Lu Yiming.

Lu Yiming smiled and said: "I believe this is the most correct decision you have made. I can let you beat all competitors. As I said before, I am optimistic about your future. Then, let's make a price .”

Several other shareholders of Confinity Company who had never met Lu Yiming showed curiosity about Lu Yiming. This Xia Guoren, who has been stirring up trouble in the US stock market recently, is really too young and does not conform to their perception.

Pan Yu asked: "Mr. Lu, I actually have another question. You know, what we are doing is a payment channel, and we want to cooperate with content providers. If we accept your capital injection, it is very likely that eBay will Will refuse to cooperate with us and choose other payment solutions. How do you solve this problem?"

It is now the consensus of Confinity to accept Lu Yiming's investment. After all, the company can no longer attract investment. If there is no money to continue burning, it is only a matter of time before it dies.But accepting Lu Yiming's investment will bring another problem - what if no one uses PayPal?At that time, the company will still have to go bankrupt - after all, Lu Yiming has offended too many companies in the US stock market. In the past two weeks, many companies have almost lost their pants because of Lu Yiming.

Lu Yiming said confidently: "Didn't I just say that? I can let you beat all competitors. As long as you are the only option, who can they cooperate with if they don't cooperate with you?"

What Lu Yiming said was so reasonable that everyone present was speechless and didn't know how to refute.

Ross Simmons said: "Mr. Lu, there is nothing to prove, why do you think you can help us do all this?"

Lu Yiming asked back: "If I can't do it, why should I spend money to buy shares in your company? Burn too much money?"

Ross Simmons: "…"

You're so right, I'm speechless.

Peter Thiel said: "Mr. Lu, according to the result of our negotiation, we are willing to take 20.00% of the company's shares. The price is 3000 million US dollars. I wonder if you can accept this price?"

Without thinking about it, Lu Yiming said immediately, "No problem."

When everyone heard it, they couldn't help but look at each other, and they all had a common thought in their hearts.

Wouldn't it be cheap?

In fact, this price has already been raised after they negotiated. After all, with Confinity's current situation, it will be difficult to say whether the company's total price will be worth 3000 million US dollars in a few days.

Unexpectedly, Lu Yiming agreed so simply.

This makes them a little suspicious of life.

How about paying back the money on the spot after asking the price?

You don't play by the rules.

Seeing everyone's expressions, Lu Yiming couldn't help laughing and said, "What's the matter? Don't want to sell it anymore?"

The water that was poured out of what I said, although I murmured in my heart, has already been said, and it is a big taboo to regret it on the spot. Besides, 3000 million is definitely not a loss. If Lu Yiming does not buy it, the 3000 million will If you can't get it, it will be too bad - after all, now everything depends on Lu Yiming's face, and you absolutely dare not offend Lu Yiming.

"Sell it, of course it's sold."

"Then what are you waiting for? Let's sign the contract now."

One bids a high price, the other does not counter-offer, and the transaction goes smoothly.

The reason why Lu Yiming is so straightforward is because he knows very well that this price is definitely a bargain!

Although he doesn't know how Confinity survived the difficulties in the original history, he knows that in the era when he lived, the PayPal software was almost the Alipay of the Western world.This 20.00% stake, after two years, is estimated to be worth [-] million US dollars.

In terms of yield alone, a ten-fold premium is nothing to Lu Yiming, but the greatest value of the company Confinity is not the PayPal payment software itself, but the group of geniuses in front of it.

After PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$15 billion, the core members of Confinity quickly left and scattered things since then.

They got a lot of rewards, but instead of waving big checks to spend the rest of their lives on small Pacific islands, they devoted themselves more actively to new careers, and they achieved astonishing results.

Elon Musk created SpaceX and Tesla, SpaceX is a space exploration technology company, successfully launched the rocket and successfully recovered the first-stage rocket, creating the first in the history of human space, greatly reducing the cost of humans entering space; Tesla, Become the most popular electric vehicle in the first 21 years of the 20st century, and gradually expand to clean energy businesses such as Powerwall energy walls and solar roofs.

Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn, the world's largest professional networking site and a social network for business customers.

Chen Shijun, Chad Hurley and Veed Karim co-founded the YouTube video website, the world's largest video website with more than 15 billion users.

Jeremy Stoppelman and Russell Simmons founded the Yelp review website, the largest review website in the United States.

David Sachs founded Yammer, an enterprise social networking service.

Max Lovchen founded Slide, which was later acquired by Google for $[-] million.

Prema Shaq promotes a non-profit P2P lending venture that lends to very low-income businesses in developing countries.

Botha joined Sequoia Capital, a top venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, as a partner.

Keith Labuis served as the technical operations officer of Square, a well-known mobile payment company. He was the second person in Square and greatly promoted the development of the company.

Peter Thiel, the leader of the PayPal gang, is in charge of a hedge fund with a total capital of 30 billion US dollars, and is an investor in hundreds of companies such as Facebook, Yelp, Linkedin, SpaceX, Airbnb, Palantir, and Zynga.An early $50 investment in Facebook has been valued at about $[-] billion ten years later.

In general, the members of the PayPal gang later left PayPal and made amazing achievements in all walks of life, holding a large part of the wealth and power in the IT and Internet fields.

For Lu Yiming, selling PayPal and earning from eBay is at most a little pocket money, and building a good relationship with this group of good guys in front of him will have more opportunities to make money in the future!
Those companies mentioned above can make a lot of money by investing in them casually.

After everyone signed various documents, Lu Yiming did not leave immediately, but started discussing with everyone.

In order to get closer to each other, Lu Yiming didn't even put himself in the position of an investor, but talked with them like a friend: "I think the Internet is the general trend of the future, and online payment software is a way different from banks. A whole new model for money transfers and cash transactions."

As soon as they talked about the Internet, the two sides immediately had a common topic.

Peter Thiel seemed very happy. After all, it was really difficult to find an investor who could agree with PayPal's core philosophy.So, he couldn't help complaining and said: "Although Nokia gave us the initial investment, but recently they refused to continue to provide financial support because we did not find a profit model. Their minds are full of thinking about how to make money."

Regarding Peter Thiel's complaints, Lu Yiming expressed empathy: "I have also started my own business, so I know the urgency of these investors. Although making money itself is not a bad thing, but eager for quick success and quick profits, I want a company that is still in the growth stage to make profits as soon as possible. , that would be tantamount to killing the chicken and picking the egg.”

Ross Simon immediately looked at Lu Yiming with admiration and praised him, "Mr. Lu, you know technology."

Lu Yiming glanced at Ross Simmons, and then said: "So when PayPal will be profitable, I don't make a request for the time being. I just hope that you will expand as soon as possible after getting my investment. I need more registered users and active users. .”

"I think so too."

Peter Thiel had never met such an easy-talking investor as Lu Yiming.

Investors who don't ask about profits are good investors!
Other people in the company also began to be satisfied with this deal.

Without the pressure of profitability, they can focus more on technology.

As for attracting new users, the technical problem has been solved, are you afraid that there will be no new users?
Lu Yiming suddenly said: "The company's name is Confinity, but the payment software's name is PayPal. It's too troublesome. I think it's better to unify it. How about calling it PayPal? This name is easy to pronounce and easy to remember."

With such a simple request, and Lu Yiming's words were justified, Peter Thiel immediately nodded and agreed, and then continued: "In the future development of PayPal, I plan to use the 'hamburger tactic'."

"Hamburg tactics?"

Lu Yiming was a little confused.

What the hell is this?

Suddenly touched the blind spot of knowledge ah.

Lu Yiming thought it was some kind of business model on the American side.

After all, the people of the United States are playing well, and it is not surprising that any weird tricks appear.

Peter Thiel explained: "The so-called hamburger tactic means that we intend to spend the money that can buy a hamburger to attract young users to use our payment software, as long as they introduce more family and friends to register our account. , you can get this reward."

Lu Yiming finally understands now that it is nothing more than the same way of burning money for the market in the bad streets of the Internet in later generations.Users don't get many rewards, just enough to buy a chicken leg or a hamburger, but people who can't stand it are always like to take advantage of it.

As long as the function of the software itself is good, users who are attracted by a hamburger or a chicken leg will be able to stay and continue to create value.

The resulting benefits will definitely exceed the hamburgers and chicken legs paid for at the beginning.

In the 21st century, this is how the Internet attracts newcomers.

I have to say that as expected of the leader of PayPal, he was keenly aware of the core characteristics of this emerging market at the early stage of the rise of the Internet industry, and did not hesitate to use this kind of style of play that does not talk about martial arts. In the next two years, it was able to defeat eBay's own payment software at eBay's home court, so much so that eBay had to spend 15 billion US dollars to "recruit" PayPal.

Lu Yiming agreed with Peter Thiel's hamburger tactics, and also made a suggestion: "We can implement stepped rewards, such as attracting a new user, we only reward two dollars, but if the other party can attract ten users, Then we will reward [-] dollars, and so on, the more users we attract, the greater our reward.”

This trick of viral marketing was learned from Mou Xixi in the later generations. At that time, in order to attract new users, Mou Xixi’s coquettish routines were really endless. He just made a bloody way under the eyes of Ali and Jingdong, and even came from behind. .

After hearing Lu Yiming's suggestion, Peter Thiel's eyes lit up, he patted the table and shouted: "Lu! This idea is really great."

Later, Peter Thiel remembered the merger he had told Penning before, and said, "Lu, do you know X.com? Under the leadership of Elon Musk, this company's combat effectiveness is still very strong. , We discussed the merger of the two companies before, what do you think?"

How could Lu Yiming have never heard of the name Iron Man of Silicon Valley?

But the current Elon Musk, who is not well-known in Silicon Valley, is just an ordinary South African immigrant.

Speaking of Elon Musk, Lu Yiming became interested and said: "This idea is good, but why did PayPal merge with X.com instead of X.com to merge with PayPal? I am more interested in this matter. give it to me."

Half an hour later, Lu Yiming and Li Yiwen left PayPal and headed to X.com not far away.

At this moment, X.com, Elon Musk is sitting in his office, frowning.

Right now, more than a dozen Internet companies go down every day throughout Silicon Valley, and people who have gone bankrupt can be seen everywhere, and he is very worried that he will become one of them.

At this moment, Eddie He, the company's chief financial officer, came in and reported to Elon Musk: "There is only less than $100 million in the company's account, and we may not be able to survive next month. .”

In 2, Elon Musk decided to start a business after just two days of Ph. Random angel investors started Zip[-].

一九九九年，电脑制造商康柏公司以3.07亿美元现金和3400万美元股票期权收购了Zip2公司，28岁的埃隆·马斯克在这笔收购中获利2200万美元。

Two months after the company ZIP2 was acquired, Elon Musk set up X.com with 2000 million dollars belonging to him and spent 1000 million dollars to establish X.com. Less than $400 million.

After a year of tossing, there is only 100 million US dollars left in the account.

Right now, X.com's situation is not good. It has Confinity, a strong competitor, and investors will criticize it later. At the same time, the market environment is very unfavorable to the entire Internet industry.

Not to mention the employees under him, even Musk himself has little confidence in the future.

Just as he was thinking hard about how to keep his company alive until June, an employee said, "Sir, there is an Asian outside who wants to see you."

Hearing that he is of Asian descent, Elon Musk was a little surprised. In his opinion, the probability of African descent here is higher than that of Asian descent.

"Let him in."

Not long after, Elon Musk met this Asian-Lu Yiming.

After just one glance, he immediately stood up from his seat, went around the desk, came to Lu Yiming, bent slightly so that he looked about the same height as Lu Yiming, stretched out his hands, and said, "Mr. Lu! You are welcome! I can often hear all kinds of news about you during this time. You are really amazing!"

In the eyes of many uninformed people, Elon Musk should be an image of an aloof technical genius who is ashamed to be with ordinary people.But in fact, anyone who knows a little bit about him knows that he is actually very lively, even funny.The skill of bragging is beyond the reach of ordinary people.

Now Lu Yiming knows, this guy is still a licking dog.

Facing Elon Musk, who is less than 30 years old this year, Lu Yiming said straight to the point: "It's good that you know me, then I won't talk nonsense, will your company sell?"

The smile on Elon Musk's face froze immediately.

Currently, X.com is still in a low period and has lost a lot of money, which is unacceptable for the "genius" Musk.

In his opinion, Lu Yiming's acquisition of X.com at this point in time is obviously an attempt to buy the bottom.In the current situation, X.com will definitely not be able to fetch a good price.

Therefore, he simply refused: "Not for sale!"

Facing the tough Elon Musk, Lu Yiming kept smiling and said unhurriedly: "Business can be negotiated, do you want to hear my quotation first?"

Elon Musk said grimly, "I don't think so."

Lu Yiming didn't care much about being rejected. After all, compared with the huge value that Elon Musk can bring in the future, the little profit that can be brought by lowering X.com now is really not enough.

So Lu Yiming did not continue to tease Elon Musk, but chatted with him about business: "I just left Confinity, and I invested $3000 million in them."

When Elon Musk heard this, he immediately calmed down. He is a smart person, so he naturally understood what Lu Yiming meant.

X.com and Confinity were originally competitors. Now that the opponent has received a large amount of financing, but I am still waiting for the rice to be cooked. Once the war starts, can X.com withstand the opponent's offensive of burning money?
Seeing that Elon Musk's face was cloudy and uncertain, Lu Yiming continued: "I'm here to tell you this now, and I don't intend to bring PayPal to declare war on you."

Elon Musk frowned slightly, and muttered in doubt: "PayPal?"

Lu Yiming smiled and said, "That's right, Confinity has officially changed its name. PayPal represents a new beginning and a new journey. I hope that you can lead your team and join us together. Only by joining hands can we fight against the real enemy."

"The real enemy?"

Lu Yiming said: "Yes, I think that after we unite, the real enemy is eBay."

(End of this chapter)