Age of Dreams

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Liu Datou received a huge investment of US$5 billion from Xiao Qi in July last year. After the first start-up capital was accounted for, he began intensive preparations in August.

According to the plan he sent to Xiao Qi, here after the Spring Festival, he will bring the elite soldiers to the UK to officially start another big challenge in his life.

At this time, Xiao Qi will not only send financial personnel to supervise, but more importantly, Xiao Qi also wants to follow the hands of Liu Datou to cultivate several real estate talents of his own.

The Wenzhou trio’s brains are very clever, but they simply lack large-scale real estate construction and operation experience. Their methods of real estate speculation are extremely weak compared to Hong Kong businessmen.

If the hype is changed to another place, I am afraid they will not have that prestige.

Xiao Qi knows that after the previous life Liu Datou tasted the sweetness in the UK, he gradually shifted the focus of his career to the UK. The Hong Kong site was gradually abandoned and only existed in the meaning of his hometown and hometown.

Therefore, his development is definitely more than two or three years.

But Xiao Qi is also very aware of Liu Datou. After he got a firm foothold in the UK and saw that he was so profitable and his assets were almost doubled and doubled, he would definitely want to kick Xiao Qi away. , Making money by himself-Liu Datou has never done this kind of thing less.

Therefore, Xiao Qi directly approached Richardson, the richest man in the UK, to invest in shares, which is also regarded as a supervision.

Although according to Xiao Qi's consideration, Richardson will definitely be thrown away by Liu Dato in the end just like Xiao Qi, but this time can be greatly retreated. It will take at least five years for Liu Datou to have such courage and confidence.

At that time, what Xiao Qi should earn has already been earned, so he doesn't have to accompany Big Head Liu to attract hatred in the UK, and it doesn't matter if he quit.

Anyway, this matter is treated as an investment, earning at least several times the profit. Xiao Qi wouldn't be puzzled either.

Moreover, if it were not for the experience that Xiao Qi had known in his previous life, if Xiao Qi didn't take a ride, Liu Datou would be able to get along well in the UK.

Some money can be earned for a lifetime, and some money can only be made for a sum of money. Not all investments in all businesses can be kept in your hands. That would be too whimsical and tiring.

For example, the basic civilian industries such as water and electricity in the United Kingdom that Li Chaoren plans to invest in, Xiao Qi will definitely not go into it.

Okay, let's not talk about this topic a little, Xiao Qi's another acquisition target. At this time, it came to the point where things came naturally.

That is the skype company that has been negotiating for almost half a year.

Skype was acquired by eBay for US$2.6 billion in 2005. In the previous life, they would sell 65% of their shares to a consortium of investment companies in September this year.

One reason is that eBay suffered heavy losses during the financial crisis. The other reason is that for so many years, Skype's operating profitability is not good, and it suffers losses every year, which is not in line with their main business.

Since April last year, Xiao Qi has entrusted the Blackstone Group to talk about Skype with eBay.

The Blackstone Group is the most patient in investment negotiations. The time spent is generally not short, but the success rate is very high. It's the same this time.

When eBay first invested in Skype, it had already predicted a loss, but the problem was that they did not anticipate that they would encounter a financial crisis.

Looking at eBay’s financial report in the fourth quarter of last year was very ugly, and in the first and second quarters of this year, eBay’s performance did not rebound significantly, and the Blackstone Group did not give up on continuing to negotiate a price increase. So eBay finally changed its attitude.

But the price they asked for at the beginning was a bit high.

Obviously, the Blackstone Group has raised the price to their purchase price of 2.6 billion US dollars, but eBay knows that Xiao Qi is not bad, and directly quoted a high price of 3 billion US dollars before New Year's Day.

When a foreigner sells a company, it does not mean that after I buy a company, I must make money when I sell it. Sometimes if the loss is serious, they are willing to get rid of the burden cheaply.

Although skype cannot be regarded as a serious loss, eBay shareholders increasingly feel that it has nothing to do with their main business, and abandon it early, or return to the correct and single-minded online business platform.

But the price of 3 billion is a shame for the Blackstone Group, because it has been spent with you for several months at any rate, so the price can't be a lot, right?

So after a period of arduous communication and negotiation, eBay finally reduced the price to US$2.8 billion and refused to lower it.

When Black Stone Company started speaking, Xiao Qi also understood the reason.

At this time in the previous life, there was no WeChat, and it was impossible to have such a popular instant voice communication tool.

It was only after a few years that everyone watched whatsapp became popular before they copied this product and established Michao, WeChat and other companies.

Now, looking at WeChat, whose functions are similar to whatsapp, can make a big splash in the world. Although they haven't found a profit point for skype, they still refuse to sell it cheaply.

For Xiao Qi, he is not afraid that the money will be slightly more expensive, but that the night will have many dreams. After others wake up from the financial crisis, he will grab business with him. Of disadvantages.

Therefore, Xiao Qi made the decision directly and asked the Black Stone Company to help settle the entire transaction.

With the addition of commissions, taxes and other procedures, Xiao Qi will spend a total of about 3.2 billion US dollars. This business is considered a mid-range acquisition in the United States today.

But compared to 2011, two years later, when Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion, Xiao Qi's sale was too cost-effective.

Of course, this business Xiao Qi is not just for making money. If whatsapp can grab enough share in the instant messaging market to cover places that WeChat cannot cover, then Xiao Qi can hold it in his hand.

If whatsapp and WeChat overlapped with each other, then Xiao Qi would have to sell it to make a profit.

In fact, compared to the achievements of the previous life, whatsapp is not developing smoothly now. It has only 150 million users worldwide. The reason is that it is unable to make ends meet and eBay is unwilling to invest on a large scale.

It seems to Xiao Qi that the subsequent registration fee and annual fee for whatsapp are not a good practice, because free is always the mainstream of the online world.

Even if you want to make money, you have to make money where users can’t see it.

For example, access to the merchant's online mall system, such as binding bank card system, such as advertising push, such as value-added services, etc. ——Just like WeChat.

This is not a very difficult thing, because the Internet age is coming soon, whoever has hundreds of millions of loyal customers, then who can have an absolute advantage in the market.

Think about it. An online company that spans developed countries in Europe and the United States has the consumption habits and information of more than 500 million or 600 million users. How many merchants and advertisers will be crazy about this?

Compared to shopping mall cooperation costs and advertising revenue costs, those annual fees of $0.99 per year are simply weak!

In fact, WeChat has started to do a good job in this regard, but Xiao Qi is very strange that WhatsApp did not learn from WeChat at all, but insisted on following their own set. This made Xiao Qi I have to sigh that these managers in Europe and the United States are really inflexible in their heads.

But it's good.

If they learned the WeChat company early, who would get Xiao Qi to pick up the bargain?

Skype’s loss last year reached 210 million U.S. dollars. Compared to eBay’s net profit of more than 5 billion U.S. dollars, it’s nothing. However, they have lost 1 billion U.S. dollars in the past three years. A listed company like eBay has long been Very impatient.

Speaking of it, this is the cheapest for private companies like Xiao Qi. He doesn't need to consider other people's ideas, as long as he wants to buy it.

And Xiao Qi also knows that by 2010, Skype will control its loss to about 30 million. Compared with the 280 million users it had at that time and the 23 billion messages it processes every day, this loss is almost entirely possible. can be ignored.

In Xiao Qi's hands, even if the registration fee of $0.99 is removed, the day of turning losses into profits will be much earlier.

Not to mention, as long as Xiao Qi announces that he will use whatsapp users to form an online shopping mall, then this is another huge giant online platform.

Only at that time, Amazon will be unable to sit still first~www.readwn.com~ Compared with the online consumer market of mobile phones and tablet computers with unlimited potential, the online consumer market of computer terminals is both timeliness and convenience. Much worse.

Once the whatsapp mall is established, then Amazon will be hit on its own, I don't know if Bezos will hate it.

Of course, this is not the time when the whatsapp mall was established.

Xiao Qi's first step is to try to expand the number of users of whatsapp, let them come in regardless of cost, use whatsapp, and become loyal users who can't do without whatsapp.

Once they have a strong user stickiness, no matter if Xiao Qi does an online shopping mall or other industries, these users are the most likely potential user groups.

Think about it, a super large company with as many as 600 million loyal users, the world is so big, where can't it go? (A good event for pie in the sky, cool mobile phone waiting for you! Follow ~/Official account (WeChat add friend-add official account-enter dd), participate now! Everyone has a prize, now follow dd WeChat immediately Official account!) (To be continued..) u