Chapter 1975 Conditions and Progress

In fact, Cool Game and Electronic Arts still have some connections.

For example, the "Bejeweled" game, which has more than 100 million active users every week, will be produced by Electronic Arts in the future.

There is also the recently popular "Zuma" series in Cool Game, which is also a product of Electronic Arts in the previous life.

In its previous life, Electronic Arts saw the rapid development of social platforms and mobile games, so it acquired a lot of game studios. It also started to develop in these fields, and soon became a giant.

Thinking about it now, if Bayeux Ventures uses Cool Game as a bargaining chip, then EA, which originally intended to play casual games, may really agree to merge and establish the world's largest game company.

Hoffman guessed right, Xiao Qi was thinking about the price.

For those giants in Europe and America, Xiao Qi has always planned to knock as much as he has, and the more the better.

Cool Game is absolutely not for sale in Xiao Qi's hands, but it cannot be sold at a low price.

Don't tell me that the financial crisis is coming, if you don't sell it early, the valuation will drop.

If you don’t buy it, what does it matter to you whether the valuation drops or not?

Besides, Xiao Qi knows that the gold in it can only be found by washing the sand with big waves. The closer to the financial crisis, the more valuable those good things will be.

Otherwise, giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and Alibaba will rush to go public during the financial crisis?

These are real geniuses. I've never been fooled by anyone.

Xiao Qi is not a genius, but at any rate he has practiced for so many years, how could he sell his hard work with just a few words?

Speaking of Bayeux Ventures, the largest angel investment company in Europe, it is really visionary and courageous, and the acquisition of Cool Game is not enough. It is necessary to merge Cool Game and Electronic Arts into one big company, which is a big deal that no one has done in the previous life!

Europeans are not as bad as Americans, but there are quite a few smart ones. It is said that Bayeux Ventures has at least 300 billion euros in funds, and its business involves 31 countries. It is really a giant.

It's just that they suffered a severe loss when they were here with Xiao Qi. Chose girl, who spent a lot of money to buy, lost money and depreciated, and almost lost her pants.

Of course. Now Bayeux Ventures is just like other investors, thinking that their luck is not very good. Just after buying Chose girl, they encountered such a serious subprime mortgage crisis. If it was not for the subprime mortgage crisis, Chose girl must have been killed They promoted a market value of 60 billion US dollars, successfully listed and made money.

But it's different now. Chose girl has already been repurchased by Tang Mingxiang by 80%, and there is no good move. Instead, the financial crisis is about to break out, so they want to get rid of this burden of losing hundreds of millions of dollars every month as soon as possible.

On the one hand, they can get rid of the burden, and on the other hand, they can also use waste to exchange for the excellent property they will invest in the next step. What a double win.

What matters in doing business is that both parties reach an agreement. Bayeux Investment has a good idea, but without Xiao Qi's consent, this business cannot be discussed.

"I disagree with their offer." Think for a moment. Xiao Qi said: "If they want a 40% stake in Cool Game in my hand, then in addition to the previous conditions, they must also add the 10% stake in Chose Girl in Amazon's hands, otherwise the business will not be discussed. .”

Hoffman was surprised by Xiao Qi's lion's big mouth, and he wanted to say that Xiao Qi's asking price was too high. This is at least a valuation of 18 billion US dollars. Are you a big scammer?

But in the end he still didn't speak. After all, bargaining is not his strong point, and he doesn't like to get entangled in money.

With the hundreds of millions of dollars he got from selling LinkedIn before, plus the shares from these website companies, Hoffman has long been able to live comfortably. What he is pursuing now is to constantly break through himself and build a better company.

"By the way, you have to invest a little more money in the Dream Drive website." Putting this matter aside, Hoffman talked about the new company he helped Xiao Qi establish, "Good guy, this network cloud storage The thing is to burn money. In four months, 500 million US dollars was almost burned. Now, in order to build more cloud storage server bases across the United States, the second round of the amount they gave is 500 million US dollars. I will wait Send the information report to your mailbox, and see if there is anything you want to mention."

Xiao Qi nodded.

Hoffman played the role of a director in Dream Drive, and most of the work was done by the founding team of more than 30 people.

The concept of cloud storage is not unfamiliar in Silicon Valley, and there is no special difficulty. Dropbox was created after seeing Xiao Qi’s cloud storage and cloud computing concepts. Basically, it is a mobile free network storage space. That's all.

At the beginning, of course, it relied on free to attract customers. When users feel that the free hard disk space is not enough, they can start to buy.

Especially for corporate customers, these large and small companies, it is too much energy and waste of money to build a cloud storage company by themselves. Buying the services of a good cloud storage company directly can save money and avoid maintenance costs.

This is also the bulk of the profits of cloud storage companies in the future. The hard disk space rented by those super large companies cannot be satisfied by several gigabytes or tens of thousands of megabytes. The data calculated for research and development is so much that it can scare people to death. .

When these big customers are attracted, it is time to start accumulating technology and improving service quality, and more money will be spent at that time.

Dropbox's valuation of 10 billion US dollars is actually a lot of moisture. After 2013, it has no way to lead cloud storage companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple by a large margin. They lack background and solid foundation, that is, A leader in a small and medium-sized company, the further it goes, the more it falls behind.

No way, other people have hundreds of billions of dollars in capital at every turn, and they can kill Dropbox with money anytime, anywhere, while its own capital is only 500 million U.S. dollars. It's no wonder they can succeed in this kind of unequal competition.

But Xiao Qi is different.

Because I don't know how the reaction will be, what the market is like, others are just trying to engage in this business, and investing tens of millions of dollars is considered too much.

But since Xiao Qi knows how big the market will be in the future, why is he so stingy that he missed the best opportunity to occupy the entire market from the very beginning?

So, he took out 500 million US dollars from the beginning, regardless of the cost, and assumed servers in the United States from the beginning. In four months, Dream Drive grew from scratch, and its scale and momentum directly crushed other cloud storage companies. , the market share suddenly reached 63%, and it is still growing.

However, a large amount of money naturally requires a large amount of investment, and 500 million US dollars is almost consumed in a blink of an eye, and burning money can be regarded as burning out of the realm.

So much so that the group of technical geeks were too embarrassed to tell Xiao Qi in person, but turned to Director Hoffman to see if they could apply for more funds.

After all, when Xiao Qi approached them, he said that he was afraid that they would not do well, and he was never afraid of them spending money.

The money was well spent, so the boss shouldn't be very angry, right?

Xiao Qi is really not angry, but he still has to get stuck when it’s time to get stuck. Those technical geeks are no better than CEOs. They spend as much money as they have. It’s absolutely impossible to know what cost control is. Hundreds of millions of dollars, they dare to build the server in the North Pole!

It is not an option to keep Hoffman as the CEO of this company. It seems that the headhunting company must go to the world's top 500 to find a CEO who can live.

On the one hand, burning money to gain the market, on the other hand, commercial development must be carried out at the same time!

"There is another thing, your brother-in-law's Instagram idea is very good, I think it is better than Foursquare's location sharing function, and it must have a future." Hoffman sighed: "Now I know why you Sold Foursquare! Now if you take Instagram out, Foursquare will be suppressed immediately."

"The market segments of the two are different, it's just that Instagram has a wider range of applications than Foursquare." Xiao Qi said, "You say that, as if I'm deliberately cheating others."

Hoffman shrugged, "Let's not talk about that, your brother-in-law asked me to find some technical engineers for him in Silicon Valley to join Instagram. I have already found good people, but I heard that when they go to work in Hong Kong, their salary requirements are very high. !"

"Then give them a salary increase. As long as they are talented people, money is not a problem." Xiao Qi didn't hesitate at all.

Now the United States is the center of the world, especially the Internet technology industry. Silicon Valley gathers countless elites from all over the world. If you want them to leave this treasured place of geomantic omen and go to a remote place like Hong Kong, you naturally need money to motivate them.

Speaking of Feng Kelun, Xiao Qi still had some headaches.

Although my brother-in-law's attitude is not as contradictory as before, he is still not close to Xiao Qi, his brother-in-law. Whenever he encounters something, he always sends an e-mail to ask for instructions, and never makes a phone call.

But when his wife asked about it, Xiao Qi had to cover it up for his brother-in-law, lest Feng Kexin would be in trouble.

I don't know if it's due to this guy's inferiority complex, maybe when Meitu Sharing Company becomes a hit in the world, he will be more confident and able to sway more freely! (to be continued ~^~)