King of Capital

Chapter 55 Fire Thief

Late at night, Moffett Avenue, Mountain View.

In front of the abandoned and desolate Building 101 for many years, a few homeless people hiding in the darkness stared at the uninvited guest in front of them with dazed and unfriendly faces. It was a clean Porsche sedan.

Why the hell would rich people drive their cars into other people's living rooms in the middle of the night even though their homes don't have doors.

"Leave far away."

The window of the Porsche was lowered and a large bag of food was thrown out. The homeless people took the food, smiled numbly, and turned away.

They recognized the guest, Jan Borisovich Koum, the most popular celebrity in Silicon Valley. He came every month to give out free food, and a homeless man often boasted that he had worked at Yahoo at the same time as Koum.

"Yang, what happened?"

WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton asked, bleary-eyed and slack-eyed, as he sat in the passenger seat, having returned from a business trip a few hours earlier to check on the servers.

Koum said simply: "I think it's time for us to meet with Mr. Larry Page, the leader of Google."

"Okay, maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing to try different collaborations." Acton agreed without hesitation.

He understood that there was some problem in the communication with Tencent, but he didn't want to ask. He trusted his old friend of more than ten years and hated the messy management work, which was much more troublesome than writing code.

Kum fell silent as he looked at the outline of the abandoned building looming in the night, not knowing how to express his thoughts to his friend and partner.

This building was used to distribute free food stamps to the poor many years ago. When he was a child, he immigrated to Mountain View from the Soviet Union with his mother as a refugee. At first, he had to line up here almost every day to get food stamps. During that time, he had to be careful to guard against being caught and beaten up by Chinese, Mexican, and African gangs who were in a bad mood.

Even those days were better than in the Soviet Union, when everyone knew the Soviet Union was doomed, the hammer and sickle were covered with rust, and the Stars and Stripes were shining.

But his father, who had personally experienced the great era, still had a bright red attachment to his hometown and always said that he would immigrate here after a while, but he never did until his death. He left him and his mother to depend on each other in a foreign country and chose to bury them in that rotten land.

Jan Borisovich Kum, so he hid his middle name and began to hate that land, the ideology that had obsessed his father like a wandering ghost and could not be forgotten until his death.

Fortunately, he was a genius and received a full-time job offer from Yahoo during college. He resolutely dropped out of school to join Yahoo to make money and improve his family's life, and worked there for more than ten years.

I met Acton at Yahoo! We were the same kind of people, who loved purity and hated trouble, were tired of working in an advertising agency, and wanted to go to a great Internet company.

Then they resigned together and applied for jobs at Facebook. OK, now Facebook has become an advertising company, but it was not like that when they applied for jobs. At that time, Zuckerberg had just started his business and was full of ideals.

Later they created WhatsApp and took advantage of the wave of mobile smartphones. God always favors the pure people.

"Jim didn't know what red meant, but I knew it represented an insurmountable wall of bad things. Our merger and acquisition deal was doomed to fail, and we would never be able to enter a market of 1.4 billion people."

After a long silence, Kum gave a dry explanation, saying that his father had experienced greatness, and he had only seen extremely turbulent times that were too turbulent to look back on.

He paused for a moment and continued, "I know that Jim wants me to strike the same pose as NBA star LeBron, sitting in Mountain View like a king and publicly declaring that we are waiting for all the nobles to come and bid for us, and it would be best if we could announce through a live media broadcast that we are going to bring our talents to so-and-so..."

"This is more in the interests of Sequoia. He will become the most influential investor in Silicon Valley. People will praise him for his vision, and countless entrepreneurs will submit business plans to him."

"But that's not what we want, we just want control!"

It is God's blessing for him to ride the wave of mobile smartphones. Will the goddess of luck always favor him?
Not long ago, when WhatsApp's daily number of new customers exceeded 500,000, Koum couldn't help but feel a deep sense of crisis. He didn't know where he could go, or whether he could steer WhatsApp to reap the greatest benefits under the greedy gaze of various nobles.

"Jim is always telling us how to be a great entrepreneur, and to be honest, I really want to punch him in the nose," Brian snorted.

Kum raised his eyebrows and looked at his friend. It was okay that everyone was fighting for their own interests. Jim was essentially a good person.

Brian shrugged: "We are not entrepreneurs at all, we are the best product managers in the world, we are geeks!"

Koum smiled knowingly, and the two of them looked up at the starry sky in tacit understanding. He finally said, "Yes, we are geeks, so let's keep things simple and make a choice as soon as possible."

…………

Two days later, Wednesday, July 10th.

A middle-aged Asian man with a slightly bald head walked out of the WhatsApp office, put away his work badge and drove to a golf course in San Francisco.

Mountain View is too small, his personal life after get off work is very boring, and he runs into acquaintances no matter what he does. He wants to relax and enjoy his own time.

Unfortunately, his idea was not realized in the end. He met Facebook's head of business development, Amin Zoffernon, on the golf course. However, this did not annoy him. He and Amin had a very deep personal friendship.

"Jamie, how are you doing recently?" Ai Ming smiled brightly and gave him a big hug.

Jamie smiled and said, "Thanks to you, everything in my life has been sunny lately. My wife said she wants to invite your whole family to come over."

"Thanks to you, I like this saying. Eastern proverbs always contain wisdom worth pondering."

Ai Ming sighed and said, "You should thank our congressman. I wrote him an email briefly explaining your family situation. He was the one who decided that San Francisco had to use nationality to keep talents like you. Your child deserves a letter of recommendation from an Ivy League school."

"Have you ever thought about what to do after retirement?" he asked again.

Jamie grabbed the golf club and swung it to show off his well-defined biceps. "Maybe I should move to the Midwest and start a farm. I look like a farmer. Of course, it's too early to think about it now. I have to work hard to earn enough money."

"I think your wish will come true soon. You know, many big companies are drooling over WhatsApp." Ai Ming lowered his voice and joked mysteriously.

Jamie looked around, admiring the deserted wide lawn, and nodded in agreement: "Yes, I heard yesterday that Koum and Google's Larry Page had an appointment to meet next Monday." "Really? That's really good news. I remember you said at the beginning of last month that Google Browser's deputy director Sundar Pichai ran into Koum and Brian on the street, and they had a great chat. It's only been a month since he's going to meet the emperor of Google. That's great progress." Ai Ming congratulated in surprise.

Jamie hesitated for a few seconds and said, "This time, Koum ran into Sandor on the street because he met a company from China last Friday."

"Chinese companies?" Ai Ming frowned for a moment.

Jamie laughed and patted his shoulder: "Don't be like that, Ai Ming, I came here to play ball and exercise today. After all, running a farm after retirement is a physical job."

"Yes, I think so too. Speaking of the farm, I think Oklahoma is a good choice. There is your favorite Thunder team there, and you can play side by side with Kevin and Russell every night."

The two of them happily chatted about basketball while swinging their clubs.

…………

On this night, the Indian engineer in charge of the development of WhatsApp voice call technology returned home drunk and slammed the door loudly.

“Welcome home… Anil, have you been drinking?”

The fair-skinned blonde frowned, put down the plate in her hands and went to help him.

"Don't touch me, I can do it myself."

Anil swung his arms in protest, "Rachel, you skipped two days of classes this week. You should be on campus."

"You're an idiot who mixes your socks and underwear together. If I go back to school, you'll only be able to eat curry stewed with lawn." The blonde beauty said with a restrained smile.

Anil's already flushed face turned even redder. "You weren't like this. I thought you would at least care about why I was in a bad mood today instead of blaming me for drinking."

"Do you want me to comfort you like a child? Do you think my staying at your house has caused you trouble? It's okay, I'll leave then."

Rachel turned around and went back to her room to pack her luggage without hesitation.

Anil sat on the ground in a daze. This was Silicon Valley, a programmer's paradise where the exaggerated male-female ratio meant that Indians and Asians had to cheat their way into marriage in the East Coast of the United States with seemingly glamorous jobs...

A white-skinned beauty in her 18s or 19s with excellent looks and high IQ who was studying at Stanford stayed at his house. I don't know how many colleagues and neighbors were envious and crazy about her.

But none of this matters. The most important thing is that he fell deeply in love with this young, independent and considerate girl. He fell in love with her from the first time they had a car accident.

"FXXK!"

Anil grabbed his messy hair and rushed into the room, demanding, “Can’t you just comfort me?”

Rachel ignored him and packed her suitcase, changed her shoes and put on her clothes and coat.

Anil closed the door and blocked her way, raising his voice fiercely: "Don't think I don't know what you want to do, you are not sincere to me!"

"You want to steal trade secrets, right? Who sent you here? I'll tell you after you have sex with me!"

His eyes were bloodshot, and he pushed Rachel backwards hysterically and threw her onto the bed: "Yes, I know a lot of news. Koum is going to meet with an investor. Guess who it is? Well, I plan to tell you when I get up tomorrow morning. What do you think..."

"Snapped!"

A loud slap sounded, and everything happened suddenly. Anil opened his mouth in shock.

Rachel lay on the bed, calmly withdrew her hand and said lightly: "What will our future life be like?"

"Let me imagine that you wear a work ID like a dog tag, sit in front of a computer with your hair hunched over, typing code every day, exchanging your health and time for money."

"I lived a boring and comfortable life as a housewife at home until one day I no longer felt passionate about the marriage and began to get tired of not seeing any bright spots in you. Then I cheated on you with a young, interesting and strong black fitness trainer. You were as helpless and furious as you are today, giving me an excuse for domestic violence and filing for divorce."

"You left with nothing. The house, car, money, and even the children you bought with your health and time have all become someone else's."

Rachel sat up and spoke as sharp as a knife: "I know that many ordinary programmers in Silicon Valley are like this. Many homeless people on the streets are like this. So you want to be like this too? Can I see a future in you?"

She stared into the other person's eyes, peeling off all the emotions bit by bit, and it was full of temptation.

"Kum will meet with Larry Page of Google next Monday." The young Indian engineer turned his back dejectedly and avoided his gaze.

Rachel laughed and said affectionately, "Anil, this is what you should do. You are not an ordinary person."

"I know exactly what I am doing. Those who steal fire will be punished by God," Anil stated with his head down.

"No, you don't know what a great feat the Fire Thief was for humanity. We are fighting for our own interests."

Rachel sat up and straightened her clothes: "You can go out to eat first, don't wait for me, I have to go back to school to get something."

"…It's too late. I'll take you there."

"No, you should go to bed early. I won't be back tonight." Rachel said considerately as she sat down on the table with various cosmetics.

Anil opened his mouth, but in the end, nothing came out.

(End of this chapter)