Rebirth of the Tech Madman

In fact, from the perspective of his experience in Silicon Valley, William Millard, who is nearly fifty this year, is definitely a veteran in the field of personal computing. Seymour Rubinstein, who made his fortune with word processing software, was one of his men at the beginning. Managers. ◎,

William Millard was born as a salesman, originally working for ibm, and later as the head of the data processing business in the San Francisco area, so that he has the opportunity to deal with various mainframe and minicomputer companies and accumulate industry experience necessary for self-reliance.

After the first company he founded went bankrupt, William Millard established imsaates in 1973 to provide consulting services.

As a result, he caught up with a wave of good market conditions. Edward Roberts' company introduced a microcomputer at an acceptable market price, which opened the real prelude to the development of personal computers.

William Millard seized this opportunity and imitated the famous personal computer.

In order to build a loyal team, William Millard encourages his ministry to participate in the training of Erhard Seminar. The essence of the training is to teach students to "self-help" and to strengthen their hearts. It should be regarded as a kind of successful learning. .

At that time, many Hollywood stars and business celebrities were brainwashed by this Erhard seminar, so its name was quite resounding.

Many employees, including the rebellious Seymour Rubinstein, naturally joined in without any psychological burden.

And these graduates basically have a characteristic, that is, they are unwilling to easily admit that something cannot be accomplished or a goal cannot be achieved. In other words. Advocating surpassing oneself and creating miracles.

Ever since. With William Millard as the center, an extraordinary operating team was formed, with only one will from top to bottom. Even if William Millard is not in the company, it will not be affected.

Edward Roberts’ company is product-oriented. Engineers pay attention all day to the exciting features that personal computers can provide; while William Millard’s company is market-oriented. Marketers care about sales reports. digital.

Obviously, these salesmen in suits and ties are more professional. Soon they came from behind, and the limelight of copycats overshadowed the genuine ones.

No matter how the personal computer is regarded as a **** by enthusiasts, its hardware production, like other products, follows the traditional parts procurement, factory manufacturing and other links.

This is very different from Tang Huanlao’s first bucket of gold to compile spreadsheet software. He finds a personal computer, sleeps less to work on progress, drinks more water to cushion his stomach, and can inhumanely reduce costs and survive the difficult period. . The initial operation is inseparable from the actual support of real money.

Seeing that the cash flow is in a hurry, and the market prospects are so optimistic. William Millard borrowed a sum of money from the Marina Company, but the other party attached a condition that the bond could be converted into a company, or William Millard’s holding company, and whatever William Millard might set up 20% of the company’s shares.

Taking advantage of the trend, He became the duo of the first stage of personal computer development.

But too much emphasis on marketing and ignorance of hardware, gradually ruined word of mouth, and found spurn by users and sellers; although the emphasis on technology investment, the threshold for personal computer technology at this time was very low, and it was soon overwhelmed by imitators.

In the end, both and both became short-lived. The former went bankrupt and the latter sold off. The development of personal computers entered the second stage led by Apple, Dondi, and Kang Maoda.

Compared with the founder Edward Roberts, who took the $2 million from the sale of the company to become a carefree farmer, William Millard shifted his energies to the personal computer established in 1976 before things went wrong. The sales chain store computer field, and ushered in the second peak of personal career.

Tang Huan bought it with a larger network, but its business scope is not limited to personal computers, and its style is relatively stable.

The Computer Park continued to uphold William Millard’s aggressive marketing strategy and expanded extremely rapidly through franchising stores.

Tang Huan launched the second-generation Fangyuan computer, bringing the development of personal computers to the third stage of using 16-bit CPUs.

Ibm-, which followed up quickly, has a total of three franchised dealers, and the computer field is one of them.

According to the historical development, the sales of the computer field will reach 400 million U.S. dollars in 1982, that is, next year, and it will reach 1 billion U.S. dollars in 1984.

But such a well-known veteran in the personal computer industry, when the good day came, was targeted by people who intended to take in the shares of the computer field.

It is said that this time the Silicon Valley grievance was provoked by a former employee of the Computer Park named Martin Musume after being fired by the company.

This ruthless man got acquainted with a wealthy businessman named Andrigueto in California. Not only did he sell one percent of his shares in the computer field to the other party, he also mentioned the relationship between William Millard and Marina Company in the early years. The secret of debt.

I have to say that these two speculative minds are so powerful that they formed a company named Mike Rowe West. They quietly bought William Miller from the Marina Company for a price of 300,000 U.S. dollars. Ludd's IOU.

The hold-up company was calculating the time of the debt. Seeing that the time was right, it recently notified William Millard of its intention to exchange the IOU for 20% of the shares in Computer Park.

Now the Computer Park has obtained the franchise rights of several personal computers, and the store has expanded to hundreds. It can be said that the business is booming and the development is booming. No one would be willing to make the $250,000 bond that year. Change the current 20% of the family business.

William Millard refused to agree. Believing that this IOU could not be transferred from Marina Company, and arguing that the 20% ownership that year did not constitute a corresponding proportion of the shares of Computer Park Company.

In Tang Huan's view, the IOU signed by William Millard that year was a veritable convertible bond. The Mike Rowe-West Company was established specifically for this purpose, and it was obvious that he wanted to exploit this loophole. Make a fortune severely.

This kind of opponent is the most difficult thing to deal with. After all, Computer Park is a company with a formal business, and the business is the business, and it can't be exhausted by such a well-prepared rogue.

The original ending in time and space was the same. The lawsuit was entangled for 4 years. In the end, Mike Rowe-West Company won a complete victory and succeeded in ripping off, but William Millard failed completely. The computer field not only spent 3 million yuan Litigation fees, handed over 20% of the company's shares. It was also ordered by the court to pay more than 14.1 billion U.S. dollars in damages.

The computer field suffered heavy losses, and William Millard's business reputation plummeted.

At last. He had to withdraw from the computer field and sold the remaining shares for US$200 million, completely avoiding public view. Similar to founder Edward Roberts’s retreat back then, he went to Saipan in the Pacific Ocean far away from the mainland of the United States.

Regarding William Millard’s current resistance, Tang Huan felt a little futile. After all, all the details of this loan are traceable. Perhaps he thinks that bad luck is the most appropriate way to deal with it, but William Millard’s reaction is also understandable. , It's really an unsolvable situation

Like the attitude of most bystanders, this rip-off show was just a lively show in Tang Huan's eyes. At most, it was used as a negative teaching material to alert himself.

But what he didn't expect was that his old rival Atari had arranged an excuse accordingly, disgusting himself and ruining the layout of wooing Gemina.

Now that interest rates in the United States are so high that the cost of loans continues to increase, many small and medium-sized enterprises cannot survive bankruptcy, and some workshop-type companies in Silicon Valley are naturally facing a similar dilemma.

Tang Huan was using convertible bonds to hunt down selected targets.

Because of the use of future convertible shares to replace the now dauntingly high interest rates, the attractiveness of convertible bonds has repeatedly allowed Tang Huan to succeed.

Gemina was mainly responsible for the design and development of video display function modules for game consoles at Atari. The result is that there is only a mere 128-byte Atari 2600, and excellent game performance depends on it.

Bushnell left Atari, and after Rekasa took over, he shifted his focus to how to market existing products more effectively.

Jermain wants to develop a gaming platform based on a more powerful microprocessor, but the Atari executives who have changed their blood are more in favor of cheap ones.

When this contradiction was unresolved, just like other employees who left, Gemina also chose to leave Atari with a group of followers.

Among the talents lost by Atari,-David Crane, larrykaplan-Larry Kaplan,-Alan Miller and-Bob Whitehead, co-founded the first third-party game publisher ——Activision. .

This year, game designer and programmer Larry Kaplan developed "!", which fully proved the strength of these technical elites in the game industry.

To be fair, this game is derived from a released game of Atari. After all, it was developed by a group of people, but now the authors are flying solo.

As a result, Atari and Activision's company are fighting more fiercely. In Atari's view, Activision is simply cutting its own flesh.

In the current American video game industry, hot money is pouring in and chaos is raging, and even the minds of the practitioners themselves have been disturbed extremely impetuously.

For example, a group of investors took a fancy to Larry Kaplan's ability, found him, and encouraged him to start anew.

Larry Kaplan, who knew everything about Atari, immediately found Jermain, who had also come out solo, and planned to cooperate in the development of a new game platform. This was in the heart of Jermain’s favor. The old colleague hit it off and took the investor. The money came out to start work.

Tang Huan, who had been paying attention to collecting Silicon Valley news, heard the news shortly afterwards and immediately aroused his vigilance.

The second-generation Cassidy game console that is undergoing revision is based on the hardware platform, and Jermain, who has been working in this field for many years and has a lot of experience, also intends to develop new game consoles. Maybe it will be a competitor in the future.

In addition, Tang Huan knows the details of Gemina,

In the original time and space, his project called the prototype was produced in 1983, but it tragically caught up with the crash of the North American video game industry and had to be shelved.

However, the excellent performance has caused several companies to compete. In the end, Kang Maoda spent more than 20 million U.S. dollars to win it and find a new generation of successor for his own.

Co-processors and other technologies are used on the hardware, and the operating system supports preemptive multitasking features because it performs very well in video and audio.

Kang Maoda did not recognize the position of a multimedia computer and launched it as a commercial computer, but it still achieved market success and sold millions of machines in total.

It can be said that the current work done by Jemina is similar to some projects in the Zheru R&D Center, and Tang Huan naturally wants to control this team.

However, there are some taboos that Tang Huan has to take into consideration.

ea is now a world-wide listed company. It must pay attention to its public image, be careful in doing things, and directly recruit important employees such as Jemina who left Atari. This is bound to cause a crazy counterattack from the other party. The lawsuit between him and Activision is One is clear proof.

Therefore, Tang Huan can only take a circuitous route ~www.readwn.com~ Hot money pursues short and stable profit, and the orderly progress of the project, in the eyes of the layman, is torturing his patience, and the enthusiasm is gradually cooling down. The project team subsequently fell into financial difficulties.

Tang Wenmao immediately seized the opportunity and sent $500,000 in convertible bonds.

But Jermain were born in Atari after all, and they are inevitably disconnected from their old club.

So Atari, who got the news, jumped out of bad things and clamored, "Convertible bonds are very insidious. Do you want to be William Millard's second? The old club sponsors you $500,000 on the condition that the new platform is exclusive for a year. Right to use."

Tang Huan was very annoyed about this, and Atari was just a **** stick.

"Dare to be richer than me." After Tang Huan snorted coldly, he immediately instructed Tang Wenmao, "The same conditions as Atari, I will pay 750,000 US dollars, and you can act accordingly. Remember, the ultimate goal is to make Jie Miner’s team is isolated and cannot fall into the hands of competitors like Atari.” (To be continued...) u

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