America 1979

Chapter 121 Company Headquarters in Hawaii
Sun Workstation, San Jose, Friday afternoon.

After parking the Volvo 760, Bill got out of the car and walked towards the first company he invested in.

After discussing with Sophia Moritti yesterday about starting a sporting goods company, he began to plan the development of Under Armour.

There is not much market for sweat-absorbing and quick-drying underwear. At most, they are popular among NFL stars. Football-related products can’t sell much. The real money can only be made from sneakers, such as Air Jordan, which has been imitated by countless counterfeit manufacturers in later generations. AJ series.

AJ1 was released in the mid-80s. The main reasons for the fire of this pair of classic sneakers were the red and black color scheme and Michael Jordan.

Nike signed the basketball player in the fall of [-], when Air Jordan was the third overall pick in the NBA draft.Since then, Nike, which has been losing money for years, began to package the star rookie player who won the NCAAB championship with the University of North Carolina team, and launched the "Jordan Generation" named after Jordan in [-].

At that time, the NBA stipulated that the white part of the sneakers worn by players must not be less than 50.00%, and the red and black color of the AJ1 obviously violated this regulation, so the rebellious young people saw the NBA rookie wearing a pair of distinctive sneakers. Immediately after taking the shot, I had the urge to buy, buy, buy.

It takes about 1 to [-] months to build a pair of sneakers. Bill calculated the time before and after, and found that if it works well, signing Jordan first and copying the success of AJ[-], his own Under Armor is entirely possible. Alternative to Nike.

Therefore, he was full of enthusiasm and wanted to pull up the team to do a big job.It's just that this end hasn't been settled yet, and the Sun Workstation Company has a new situation.

In its financing in October last year, the company introduced KPCB Venture Capital, which is active in Silicon Valley, and let KPCB professionals serve as the CEO of the company. After nine months of rapid development, Sun Workstation has proved itself R & D strength, began to go on the right track.So this venture capital firm wanted to buy out the shares in the hands of "irrelevant" shareholders in order to pave the way for the subsequent listing of Sun Workstation.

Of course, KPCB will naturally not say that Bill Ferrari is an irrelevant shareholder. This is his own guess.

"Mr. Bill, thank you for coming to our company to discuss this matter after training."

After entering the door, there was a blond middle-aged man in a high-end suit with his head slightly raised, showing six teeth with a standard professional smirk, leading a male assistant and a female secretary to welcome Mr. Ferrari.

This person is the new CEO of Sun Workstation, Henry Griffith.

"Where's the Garcias? Are they here?"

KPCB's action this time is aimed at Mr. Ferrari and the Garcia couple.

"We have discussed with Mr. Garcia for a while, please go upstairs and discuss it in detail."

Henry spit out words very quickly, giving Bill the feeling of communicating with a lawyer.

The specific meeting place was in a long-table meeting room full of commercial atmosphere. When Mr. Ferrari entered, Dr. Andy Bechtolsheim, the representative of the founder shareholder, was chatting with Mr. Garcia.

"Hey, Bill." Dr. Andy gave a high-five to No. 88 who came in.

Mr. Garcia, who is also a Stanford alumnus, was more disciplined. He shook hands with Bill before sitting down with his suit hem folded.

"It's like this. The company under our feet was valued at 500 million when we raised funds last time. After nine months of market testing, the reasonable valuation given by our KPCB company is about 500 million. The two You are all financial investors..."

Henry made a phone call, mainly meaning that KPCB wanted to use 240 million US dollars and 190 million to buy the shares held by the Garcia couple and Mr. Ferrari.

According to this person, they are willing to raise the valuation of Sun Workstation to 3000 million, and then buy the shares in the hands of two individual shareholders. However, the Garcias do not know what they have been bewitched by, or there is something they cannot explain clearly. The reason is that they were planning to sell the shares before Sun Workstation went public.

But Bill can also understand the Garcias. The investment has quadrupled in less than a year and a half, from 60 to 240 million. When will they stop running away?
Mr. Ferrari's mentality is different. He now has more than 100 million cash in his hand. Whether it is investing in Cisco or starting his own sports goods company, it is enough. He does not need more cash, so at least he will not exit this business now. A hardware manufacturing company in good shape.

Halfway through the conversation, Bill broke off the conversation with the excuse of having a private chat with Dr. Andy.

"If I don't sell this stake now, what are they going to do in the future?"

In Dr. Andy's own office, Bill discussed the matter with the founder.

Dr. Andy poured a glass of wine for himself and the football player, and walked over to pass it to the visitor, "According to my superficial opinion, they will introduce new financing again to dilute your shares. But you don't have to worry, our Sun The current valuation of the workstation company has already exceeded 2000 million US dollars, unless tens of millions of US dollars are used, it will be difficult to dilute your shares to 5.00% or less than [-]%."

It only cost more than 400 million yuan to directly buy the shares held by the Garcias and Bill, and it would cost at least more than 2000 million US dollars to dilute the two people's shares to half of the original.

"But I don't want to be diluted. In fact, according to my understanding of the computer industry, I am very optimistic about your development prospects. In the next ten years, our company should reach a peak that ordinary people can't imagine."

Although the company's founders and new employees are extremely keen on going to Hawaii for vacation, and there is even a joke that the company's headquarters is in Hawaii, but this does not prevent Bill from being optimistic about the hardware manufacturing industry.

Ten years later, in the mid-90s, Al Gordo, the vice president of the Donkey Party, built the information superhighway. Since then, the information technology industry has taken off directly. At that time, the market value of both software companies and hardware companies has risen rapidly.

It will take the late 90s for Bill to sell a large amount of shares in this company he has already invested in, or the company that the Bosacks are about to invest in.

"There is no way around this. Although our engineering team is very willing for you to stay in the ranks of shareholders, KPCB behind Henry does not think so. Our listing must be led by them. In order to obtain the maximum benefit, there must be new actions during this period. .”

He took a sip of his wine, and said another guess of his own: "Your shares are only a few o'clock. After getting the Garcias and his wife's eight o'clock, Henry and the others should be satisfied, and the follow-up financing is only for the company's Scale up normally, without extra money to dilute your stake."

"What's the reputation of this company? I have a project and may cooperate with them in the future."

After taking a sip of his wine as well, Bill asked.

"At least it is better than Sequoia Capital. This company mainly enters start-up companies in the second and third rounds, and takes away their shares according to normal financing. Sequoia Capital is very happy to find investment companies in laboratories and research institutes. Engineers, and invested a lot of money along the way. For the founders, Sequoia Capital took a lot of shares, which is the main reason why August and I chose KPCB.”

PS: Ask for a recommendation ticket and ask for a monthly ticket.

(End of this chapter)