Wall Street Legend

  Chapter 130 Silicon Valley

  The land area of ​​the United States is not small, and most people can't even memorize the names of the fifty states, let alone have been to them all.

For example, New Hampshire, Virginia, Arizona, etc., have almost no sense of existence. California is different. The GDP created by this state can even be squeezed into the list of the top ten economies in the world. Here, if New York is the richest city in the United States, California is the richest state in the United States, and its influence is self-evident.

  Ye Dongqing has never been to Silicon Valley, but he has been to San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the past, because of business needs, he often traveled around and received guests in person. He was arrested in Los Angeles and spent several months in a high-end prison.

  As for Los Angeles, as a man, he will have some good impressions as a man. The famous Hollywood is there, and the girls are quite hot and open. If it is not too far away from his base camp, he even had the idea of ​​​​settling in Beverly Hills for a period of time.

  I came to San Francisco with Mr. Alfred. It is not far from San Francisco to the Silicon Valley area. There is no airport there, so it is most convenient to go there.

The idea of ​​online calling, which might attract more users to Facebook, was worth the flight, they took a taxi, didn't plan to stop in San Francisco, and went directly to the pre-booked site along the highway near San Francisco Bay Good Hilton.

I don't know who to turn to, and I don't know if I can help. Ye Dongqing is still in a state of confusion, but he is ready to transfer a sum of money from the Freshwater Fund, and he still has money in his pocket. Money, not to mention at a loss.

   After arriving at the hotel to check in, it was already dark, and he had no chance to ask anyone today. He contacted a headhunting company and planned to spend money to hire several software engineers with experience in this field.

Don't underestimate the strength of these headhunting companies. As long as they make money, they can find any talent they want. Mr. Alfred will be responsible for the specific communication, and Ye Dongqing is more like staying in New York and running to I came to the west coast to relax and travel, and I am going to play around before going back.

  People often say that paparazzi are powerful, but in the business field, when it comes to surveys and data collection, major consulting companies and headhunting companies are powerful. As long as they are willing to pay, they can find anything.

   I don’t know the specific technical essentials, and I don’t know which kind of person is most suitable for me. These are not in the way, as long as someone understands it, he only needs to provide sufficient financial support, and do a good job in promotion, management and other aspects...

  There is a generation gap with Mr. Alfred, and the age difference is also huge.

  I wanted to ask the other party to have a drink together, but I learned that I need to conduct an investigation first, trying to use the accumulated contacts before asking to see if there is a ready-made development team.

This is a good thing, so Ye Dongqing drove around Stanford University alone, and saw many familiar company signs along the way. Amazon’s headquarters is in Seattle, and Silicon Valley has its data service research and development center, Silicon Valley and Netflix. The headquarters of these two companies are nearby. As a shareholder, Ye Dongqing needs to go and have a look in person.

If you invest so much money, you should at least know where the company is. Unknowingly, the shares in his hands, plus the shares subject to warrants, have accounted for 4% of Apple's total shares, calculated according to the current market value , which is almost equivalent to a little over 200 million U.S. dollars, and the current total market value of Apple is only more than 5 billion U.S. dollars.

  Considering that before Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company only had a market value of more than two billion US dollars, and it was almost bankrupt due to lack of funds. It is not bad to reach the current figure a few years later.

   It is not sure whether he can have a smooth interview with Jobs in person. Ye Dongqing walked around the vicinity of Stanford University, and then entered a tavern.

  I have thought too much in the past few days, and it is always difficult to fall asleep. In addition, today’s jet lag is messed up. If I don’t drink some wine, I will definitely suffer from insomnia again.

  In the small bar near the university, the customers are naturally mainly students. The name of this university is not within his consideration. Choosing Stanford might as well apply directly to Harvard. The school is near Boston and not far from New York.

I often hear how powerful Silicon Valley is, but I have seen it with my own eyes. There are no high-rise buildings, and it is not crowded. The advantage is that the planning is relatively reasonable, and small cities have been developed around each area. If you don’t look at those company signs, you will It has a strong country style.

  …

   No plan to find an affair, sitting alone at the bar drinking wine, the black formal suit on his body has not been changed, sitting in the crowd looks out of place.

  The surrounding atmosphere was very lively. Stanford students were sitting in groups of three or four, chatting about internships, studies, and more about relationships and life. In Ye Dongqing's eyes, it was interesting.

  The unattractive-looking female bartender occasionally took the initiative to strike up a conversation with him, probably because she saw that she was different from ordinary guests. She had the opportunity to hook up with him, but she was not interested. After a few drinks, she paid and left, and took a taxi back to the Hilton Hotel.

  **************

  I had a good night's sleep, just like the American style of life. I took a shower the next morning and put on yesterday's suit.

After tidying up, I went to the next room. When I was about to knock on the door, I heard a woman’s voice coming from inside. I checked the house number and found that it was correct. Well, I thought Mr. Alfred was upright, but I can only say that he usually pretends too well. When you go out, you miss the stuffing.

I didn't mean to disturb him. I went downstairs to eat the buffet breakfast alone. There were not many customers. It seemed that the market in Silicon Valley was really bad, and there was no business in the hotel. I thought it was almost time, so I called Alfred. Ask him what he plans to do today.

  On the road yesterday, Mr. Alfred told Ye Dongqing that he heard some wind.

About half an hour later, the two met with people from the headhunting company. They discussed the matter of recruiting talents to develop new programs. Then they went out to find a well-known expert. The other party only said that it was theoretically possible, but did not give an accurate answer. .

His personality is a bit nagging. If Mr. Alfred didn't know the other party's ability, Ye Dongqing would even think he was a liar. Generally speaking, it didn't help much. By the way, he visited a small company. They are developing voice input methods, and Not the technology he needs.

It didn't go as expected. Except for some guys who are high-sighted and low-handed and theoretical, almost no one in Silicon Valley develops instant voice communication programs. This is both a good thing and a bad thing, which means that no one is competing with him for the time being, but it is not easy to organize a research and development team. , The technical requirements are relatively high.

  …

  It’s a waste of a day, the headhunting company has not heard the news, and Mr. Alfred has no good solution.

So Ye Dongqing entrusted his old friend Paul Kutcher to help him find out if there is any information on this matter. He did not intend to devote all his energy to this matter. On the morning of the third day in Silicon Valley, Ye Dongqing rented a car The Ferrari sports car was driven by himself, and by the way, he went to the companies invested by the Danshui Fund.

Netflix was a bit far away, and the first stop was Apple. After identifying himself to the front desk, a middle-aged white man who was the deputy product director received him in person. With Ye Dongqing's shares, he was already qualified to let this level of Management reception.

I didn’t choose the right time. Jobs went to Seattle for a meeting. Ye Dongqing perfectly missed another chance to see him in person. In my memory, this tech tycoon has passed away long ago. Now he is still in good health. Michael Jackson, Stephen Hawking Others are also there.

   Right now.

Accompanied by the Apple executive named Brad Wharton, Ye Dongqing entered the product development department for a visit. This was his own request, trying to give some good suggestions to get Apple on the right track early .

Considering the product development cycle, he has enough time to acquire more stocks during this period. Once Apple is allowed to spend less money on research and development and produce a few more popular products, it will directly affect the future of Tamsui Fund. income.

  In this era, the prototypes of Apple's various products have already appeared, and the operating system is full of shadows that Ye Dongqing is familiar with.

   As early as 2001, an Apple notebook computer named "PowerBook-G4" was launched. The product was designed with a metal body and a wide screen, and it was equipped with the Mac-OS-X operating system. It can be said that PowerBook-G4 is the predecessor of MacBook-Pro, which established the product design style of Apple's notebook series in the future, but at present, it is still only an immature product.

In addition to it, iMac-G4 is undoubtedly another milestone in the history of Mac design. It adopts an ultra-thin LCD screen, which is undoubtedly very eye-catching among many CRT monitor computers. After it came out last year, major computer manufacturing companies have followed suit. Production of ultra-thin LCD monitors.

According to Brad Wharton, a host with stronger performance will be launched this year, and it will be released to the public soon. Some people say that Jobs was paranoid. The company's products are constantly innovating.

However, it has to be admitted that the sales of these two products can only be regarded as mediocre. Apple missed the development opportunity, coupled with its own reasons, causing users to get used to the Windows operating system. The key to the problem is that they do not have many bright spots and can attract Highlights where users buy them.

  The portable music player iPod was launched in this way and has become Apple's current main product. Due to the trouble of downloading songs, last year's sales were not satisfactory, and it was not compatible with Windows systems. The annual sales volume was only about 100,000 units.

Originally, Ye Dongqing couldn’t see the problem, but after listening to Brad Wharton’s various introductions, he found a key problem that restricted Apple’s development—he didn’t want to open up the system ecology, and he couldn’t make this closed system a reality. Well, and it lacks an overall and long-term development goal.

   It's more like a hammer and a stick. Tries have been made, but it's not enough...

  (end of this chapter)