Chapter 2187 SKYPE Starts

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Liu Datou received a huge investment of 5 billion U.S. dollars from Xiao Qi in July last year. After the first start-up capital was credited, he started intensive preparations in August.

According to the plan he sent to Xiao Qi, after the Spring Festival here, he will bring 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 Liu Datou's hand and cultivate several real estate talents of his own.

The heads of the Wenzhou trio are very clever, but they simply lack experience in large-scale real estate construction and operation. Compared with Hong Kong businessmen, their methods of real estate speculation are extremely weak.

If the hype was changed to another place, I am afraid they would not have such a reputation.

Xiao Qi knew that in his previous life, Liu Datou gradually shifted the focus of his career to the UK after he tasted the sweetness in the UK. He gradually gave up the territory of Hong Kong, and only existed as his hometown and the meaning of his hometown.

Therefore, his development is definitely not just two or three years.

But Xiao Qi is also very aware of Liu Datou. After he has gained a firm foothold in the UK, he will definitely want to kick Xiao Qi away when he sees how easy it is to make money, and his assets are doubled and doubled. , earning money by himself - Liu Datou definitely did not do this kind of thing less.

So Xiao Qi directly found Richardson, the richest man in Britain, to take a stake, which is also regarded as one aspect of supervision.

Although according to Xiao Qi's calculations, Richardson will definitely be thrown away by Liu Datou in the end like Xiao Qi, but this time can be greatly set back. At least five years later, Liu Datou will have such courage and confidence .

At that time, Xiao Qi has already earned what he should have earned, so he doesn't have to accompany Liu Datou to attract hatred in England. It doesn't matter if you quit.

Anyway, this matter is regarded as an investment, earning at least several times the profit. Xiao Qi would not fail to figure it out.

Besides, if it wasn't for the experience he knew from his previous life, if Xiao Qi didn't go for a ride, Liu Datou would still be able to thrive in England.

Some money can be earned for a lifetime, and some money can only be earned once and left. Not all businesses and investments can be held in your hands all the time. That would be too whimsical and tiring.

For example, the basic livelihood industries such as water, electricity and electricity in the UK that Li Chaoren plans to invest in, Xiao Qi will never touch.

Ok. Leaving aside this topic, Xiao Qi's other acquisition target has also reached the point where it is a matter of course.

That is SKYPE, which 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 joint consortium of investment companies in September this year.

One reason is that EBAY suffered heavy losses during the financial crisis, and the other reason is that over the years, SKYPE's operating profitability has not been good, and it has fallen into losses every year, which is not very consistent with their main business.

Xiao Qi started in April last year. So I entrusted Blackstone Group to talk about SKYPE with EBAY.

Blackstone Group is the most patient in investment negotiations. It generally takes a long time, but the success rate is very high. This time is the same.

When EBAY first invested in SKYPE, it had already expected losses. The problem is that they didn't anticipate that they would encounter a financial crisis.

Seeing that 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 show any sign of a sharp rebound, and Blackstone Group continued to negotiate price increases without giving up, so EBAY's attitude finally changed greatly. change.

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

Obviously, the Blackstone Group has already raised the price to their purchase price of 2.6 billion US dollars, but EBAY knew that Xiao Qi was not short of money, and directly quoted a high price of 3 billion US dollars before New Year's Day.

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

Although SKYPE cannot be regarded as a serious loss. However, the shareholders of EBAY feel more and more that it has nothing to do with their main business. If they abandon it as soon as possible, they can return to the correct and wholehearted operation of the C2C online business platform as soon as possible.

But the price of 3 billion is a bit embarrassing for the Blackstone Group, because after spending several months with you, it can't be a little bit of a price, right?

So after a period of arduous communication and negotiation, EBAY finally lowered the price to 2.8 billion US dollars, and refused to lower it any more.

When Blackstone Company mentioned it, Xiao Qi also understood a little bit of the reason.

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

It was a few years later, after everyone saw the popularity of WhatsApp, that this product was copied, and companies such as Michat and WeChat were established.

Now seeing that WeChat, which has similar functions to WhatsApp, can show off its power in the world, although they haven't found the profit point of SKYPE, they still refuse to sell it at a low price.

For Xiao Qi, he is not afraid that the money will be a little more expensive, but that he will have long nights and dreams. After he wakes up from the financial crisis, it will be bad if he competes with him for business. Buying a company in European and American countries is not a small thing for him. of disadvantages.

Therefore, Xiao Qi immediately made a decision and asked Blackstone Company to help complete the entire transaction.

Adding commissions, taxes and other procedures, Xiao Qi will spend a total of about 3.2 billion US dollars. This business can be regarded as a medium-sized acquisition in the United States today.

But compared to Microsoft's acquisition of SKYPE for US$8.5 billion in 2011 two years later, Xiao Qi's deal is a bargain.

Of course, Xiao Qi’s business is not just for making money. If WhatsApp can grab enough share in the instant messaging market and cover places that WeChat cannot cover, then Xiao Qi can hold it in his hands.

If WhatsApp and WeChat overlap each other, then Xiao Qi will have to sell it to make a profit.

In fact, compared to previous achievements, WhatsApp is not developing smoothly. Its global users are only 150 million people. The reason is that it cannot make ends meet, and EBAY is unwilling to invest on a large scale.

From Xiao Qi’s point of view, WhatsApp’s future registration fees and annual fees are not a good practice, because free is always the mainstream in 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 online shopping mall system of the merchant, such as the 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, and whoever has hundreds of millions of loyal customers will have an absolute advantage in the market.

Think about it, an Internet company spanning developed countries in Europe and America, which has the consumption habits and information of more than 500 to 600 million users, how many merchants and advertisers will go crazy?

Compared with the mall cooperation fee and advertising revenue fee, the annual fee of $0.99 per year is simply weak!

In fact, WeChat has already started to do a good job in this respect, but Xiao Qi is very surprised that WhatsApp has not learned from WeChat at all, but still insists on following their way, which makes Xiao Qi I have to sigh, the managers in Europe and the United States are really inflexible.

But it's also good.

If they had learned the WeChat company early on, where would it be Xiao Qi's turn to pick up the bargain?

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

Speaking of which, this is the best advantage of a private company 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 the loss to about 30 million, and compared to the 280 million users it had at that time, and the 23 billion pieces of information it processed every day, this loss is completely acceptable can be ignored.

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

Among other things, as long as Xiao Qi announces that he will use WhatsApp users to form an online shopping mall, then this is another huge B2B2C platform.

It's just that at that time, Amazon will not be able to sit still first.

Compared with the online consumer market of mobile phones and tablet computers with unlimited potential, the online consumer market of computer terminals is much inferior in terms of timeliness and convenience.

Once the WhatsApp mall is established, Amazon will be hit by itself. I don’t know if Bezos will hate it.

Of course, now is not the time for WhatsApp Mall to be launched.

Xiao Qi's first step is to work hard to expand the number of WhatsApp users, let them come in regardless of the cost, use WhatsApp, and become a loyal user who cannot do without WhatsApp.

Once they have a strong user stickiness, these users will be the most likely potential user group no matter Xiao Qi is engaged in an online B2B2C mall or other industries in the future.

Think about it, a super big company with as many as 600 million loyal users, the world is so big, where can't it go? (It’s a great event to drop pie in the sky, cool mobile phones are waiting for you! Follow up~click/official account (add friends on WeChat-add official account-enter qdread), and participate immediately! Everyone has a prize, now follow qdread immediately WeChat public account!) (to be continued~^~)