The king of ghost horse comedy

Chapter 342 New Investments
Xu Guanwu handed over all the production and filming work of "Moonlight Panic" to Richard and David, and he himself became the big shopkeeper.Anyway, the two of them are the top snakes in Hollywood, and they know the way well, so entrusting them to handle it will save a lot of effort.

Xu Guanwu and his wife Zhao Yazhi went straight to Silicon Valley to visit Stanley Angel Investment Fund.Since last year, Stanley Investment Fund has successively invested in many companies such as Apple and Microsoft.

Apple Computer Company was co-founded by Steve Jobs, Stephen Wozniak and Luo Wayne. In the early days, it mainly produced and assembled personal computers, and it was also a great company born in the garage.

Apple was just a small company in the early days, the initial cost was only a few thousand dollars, and the company only had three members in total.However, the APPLE [-] computer they launched still has many innovations, such as including its own display, and the boot code is installed in the ROM, which can make the computer start faster, and there is also a cassette tape that can be read and written. Load and store some programs.

After the launch of APPLE [-], it was well received, and a total of [-] computers were sold, which is already a very good sales volume for a new start-up company.

And because of the various innovations of the APPLE-type computer, Stephen Wozniak was also called a design master, and he was also reported on "Popular Electronics".

It just so happened that this report was read by Paul. As the manager of an angel investment fund, he invests in high-tech technology himself, and "Popular Electronics" happens to be a newspaper specially subscribed by the company.When he saw the name "Apple Computer," he immediately remembered what his boss had told him to do.

"If you come across a company named Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, or ADOBE, invest in it immediately." So Paul immediately arranged for someone to contact Apple Computer, and at the same time notified Hong Kong as soon as possible.

Xu Guanwu was overjoyed when he heard the news of Apple's appearance, and after listening to the company's information, Xu Guanwu confirmed that it was the internationally renowned company in later generations, and quickly instructed Paul to invest in Apple.

It just so happened that Steve Jobs, Stephen Wozniak and other three researched and designed a new generation of computers - APPLE II, but because the cost of APPLE II was relatively high, Stephen Jobs wanted to expand the company and prepared to Apply for a loan from a bank.But Ro Wayne, one of the partners, didn't want to take risks, so he launched the company.

At this time, the people sent by Paul happened to find Apple Computer, which was about to fall apart, and sent 50 US dollars like a timely gift, and thus obtained [-]% of the shares of Apple Computer.

The reason why it does not have an absolute shareholding is because Apple is just a new establishment and has no foundation or history.In other words, if Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak felt that they were working for someone else, they would choose to leave without feeling the slightest bit of reluctance.

Because the company has been established for less than half a year, they don't have any feelings at all.Unlike Redstone's National Entertainment Company, which is a family business and the result of his hard work; and unlike 20th Century Fox, where Zanyuke and his son have worked for decades, they already have a deep relationship .

So in order to prevent the two of them from resigning, Xu Guanwu had no choice but to take half of the shares first, and stabilize them first.When the company develops to a certain stage, they have feelings for the company they have worked so hard to create. At that time, Xu Guanwu will open his mouth and swallow Apple directly.At that time, even if two people want to leave, they probably won't be willing.

In fact, anyone who has worked hard to start a business will have deep feelings for his company.They treat companies like their own children and never want them to be taken away by others.For example, although Steve Jobs was expelled from the board of directors, he came back without hesitation at the most critical moment of Apple; Although many shareholders put pressure on him to give up the CEO position, he still withstood the pressure and would rather die than retreat...

A soldier who does not want to be a general is not a good soldier, and a founder who does not want to be a CEO is not a good founder.

……

Now, with the sponsorship of the Stanley Angel Investment Fund, Apple Computer has expanded its scale and moved the company out of the garage and moved to Silicon Valley, just across the wall from the Stanley Angel Investment Fund headquarters.

As for Microsoft, although Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in 75, Paul Allen has been working at MITS, while Bill Gates has been studying at a university. , and use spare time to develop BASIC software.It wasn't until this year that the owner of MITS planned to sell the company, which made Bill Gates and Paul Allen vigilant and planned to leave the nest to start another business.

And they don't want to leave empty-handed, so the popular BASIC software has become the spoils they want to win.So recently they are in a lawsuit with MITS, trying to buy back the copyright of the BASIC software.

Paul has not invested in Microsoft for a long time. Although he heard about this company as early as [-], he immediately notified his boss Xu Guanwu.But Xu Guanwu did not immediately let him invest in Microsoft.

Xu Guanwu knew that Bill Gates was actually a computer genius with a very high IQ, and also a shrewd businessman.His mother was a senior executive at IBM, and his father was the boss of a law firm.

Therefore, Bill Gates has both genius computer technology and keen business acumen, and is backed by strong American laws, so you must be careful when doing business with him, otherwise you may be caught in a legal loophole if you are not careful. Millions of investments will be reduced to ashes.

In fact, Bill Gates used this method to take the BASIC language from MITS.Edward Roberts, the owner of MITS, naturally would not have imagined that the young Bill Gates would intentionally leave a loophole when signing the contract so that he could get back the copyright of the BASIC language at any time.

As a result, this negligence led to his failure and lost the BASIC software in vain.And Bill Gates earned his first pot of gold by selling BASIC software.And in the following decades, the BASIC language has been the trump card in the hands of Microsoft, and has become the most widely used high-level computer language for computer beginners.

Paul really started to get in touch with Microsoft, but it actually happened by chance.As a well-known angel investment fund in Silicon Valley, most of the time it is not necessary to find projects by itself, but many projects automatically find investment.There are many universities near Silicon Valley, and geniuses come forth in large numbers. Young students often come up with some inventions, but they cannot be put into production due to lack of investment.

Finding a bank is often not approved because there is no guarantee, so investment funds are generally one of their first choices.The Stanley Angel Investment Fund has frequently invested in high-tech companies such as Intel, IBM, AMD, and Hewlett-Packard in recent years, so its reputation has become one of their investment goals.

Although Paul doesn't know much about high technology, the angel investment fund has recruited a large number of experts to give professional advice on their inventions.Including the promotion value of this invention, the difficulty of making it, the amount of investment and so on.Paul then decides whether to invest based on his years of investment experience.Of course, if he really couldn't make up his mind, he would occasionally ask Xu Guanwu for advice.

At present, angel investment funds have successively invested in more than 30 projects, such as document processing, data processing, video games, computer hardware, etc., with a total investment amount of more than 500 million US dollars, and some results have already come out.

And Microsoft just wants to start a new business from MITS. In addition to taking away the BASIC language, it also wants to acquire a spreadsheet office software called VISICALC from Stanley Angel Investment Fund.

This VISICALC spreadsheet office software was developed by the Stanley Angel Investment Fund, and the designer is Dan Bricklin, who is studying for a master's degree in business administration at Harvard University.At that time, there was no similar spreadsheet processing software in the world, so Dan Bricklin, who was busy processing tables and data, had a sudden idea and wanted to design a spreadsheet software that could run on a computer, which would save a lot of calculations time.

But at that time, a computer was relatively expensive. Apple’s APPLE-660 was priced at US$370, and MITS’s Altair computer was priced at US$[-]. For a poor student, this was actually a huge sum of money. burden.And if you want to run larger programs, both computers are already outdated.

What Dan Bricklin wants to buy is actually the newly launched APPLE II computer by Apple Computer. It has more advanced configuration and 48KB of memory, which can run some large-scale software smoothly (囧first).But its price is more expensive, the price of the 4KB memory version is 1000 US dollars, and the price of the 48KB memory version is more than 600 US dollars.

This is definitely not something Dan Bricklin can afford, but he really wants a computer.So with the idea of ​​giving it a try, I sent letters to several investment funds.Sure enough, it is worthy of the practice of a technical nerd, and the mind is really quite simple.

After those investment funds received the letter, they naturally didn't take this kind of thing to heart, and threw the letter into the trash can.There are so many people who want to buy computers in this world, do we have to pay a sum of money for every letter from everyone? !What a show!
However, after this letter was received by Stanley Investment Fund Company, Paul still aroused a lot of interest in Dan Bricklin's thoughts.As the manager of an investment fund company, he also needs to fiddle with a lot of forms every day, which will also involve too much energy on him.So he also really wants to have such a software that can save him a lot of daily work.

So after discussing with other experts in the company, Paul decided to help Dan Bricklin an Apple II computer for free, and it was a 48KB memory version.At the same time, another one hundred thousand dollars was subsidized for him, so that he could design the software with peace of mind, and agreed with him that if the software development is successful, then the Stanley Angel Investment Fund will enjoy its distribution rights, and the profits will be divided into [-]-[-]%, and the Stanley Angel Investment Fund will take [-]%. . Bricklin split [-]%.

Dan Bricklin is just an ordinary tech geek, not sensitive to the concept of money.In his opinion, he is very satisfied with the latest Apple II computer with high configuration (the first batch of Apple fans?!), and he has never thought about making money from software. Now he only needs to design software , To be able to enjoy [-]% of the profit is really great for him.

And Dan Bricklin is indeed worthy of being a technical nerd. It only took one month to design the prototype of the spreadsheet office software, and named it VISICALC (chalk gray).Although it was only a prototype and a beta version, Paul had already realized the business opportunities. In addition to immediately registering a patent for the BISICALC software, he also spent a large amount of advertising expenses to promote this software.

Although VISICALC is only a prototype now, and its functions are still not perfect, but as the first spreadsheet office software running on a computer, it still attracts the attention of many people, and letters for purchase are flooded in at once. The first hundred free trial copies quickly sold out.Encouraged by this, Dan Bricklin worked harder to design the software.

(End of this chapter)