Chapter 353 Director Li, You Are Not Kidding, Are You?

In the lobby of the hotel, Li Xiaofan took Tang Xinyi and Wang Danrong to talk with the two founders of Hotmail, Sabir Badia and Jack Smith, and settled the two founders after half an hour.

Earlier, Li Xiaofan spent ten minutes listening to the introduction of the hotmail project by the two of them, and then asked: "How much money has Tim Draper from DFJ Company invested in your project so far?"

Sabir Badia replied: "A few months ago, Mr. Tim Draper gave us a post-money valuation of $2 million for this project, and gave us an angel investment of $300,000. US dollars, accounting for 15% of the shares of our new company..."

"Then I will give you the latest post-money valuation of this project at US$5 million. I will invest US$1 million and ask for 20% of the shares. Is that okay?"

I heard that the latest valuation was US$5 million. In just a few months, the valuation suddenly increased 2.5 times!

You know, just a few months ago, Tim Draper of DFJ gave their project a post-money valuation of only $1 million. Later, with the insistence of Sabir Badia and Jack Smith, the post-money valuation was increased to US$2 million.

Sabir Badia and Jack Smith said excitedly: "Mr. Li, are you sure you want to tell us that the new post-money is US$5 million and you want to invest us US$1 million in cash?"

Li Xiaofan smiled and nodded: "Yes, if you two are willing to sell some old shares to me, you can do it at a valuation of US$5 million..."

At this time, Sabir Badia and Jack Smith cherished the equity in their hands.

Sabir Badia replied: "Our old shares will not be sold for the time being. Mr. Li, I am very happy that you can invest in our hotmail project. We also welcome you as an investor in Yahoo to join. But your For this new investment, we still need to discuss it with the original investor, Mr. Tim Draper of DFJ Company..."

Li Xiaofan smiled and said: "No problem. I have made an appointment to see Mr. Tim Draper of DFJ Company tomorrow afternoon. As long as you two founders agree to my investment plan, Tim Draper of DFJ Company will Mr. Draper, I will convince him!"

"Oh, that would be great!"

…

The next morning, Li Xiaofan took the inspection team to inspect the graphics chip project of Nvidia Group in Santa Clara.

At the end of November last year, Li Xiaofan signed a capital increase and share agreement with founder Huang Renxun and several other NVIDIA shareholders. Li Xiaofan invested a new US$1 million to acquire 10% of NVIDIA's equity and became one of NVIDIA's directors.

Leather-clad swordsman Huang Renxun introduced to the inspection team led by Li Xiaofan that in March this year they had formulated the main rules of Direct 3D with the Game Developers Alliance. This Direct3D is mainly used on the Windows platform, and Microsoft is the developer of this Direct3D technology.

Later, many large-scale 3D games were developed using this Direct 3D, such as Call of Duty, Need for Speed, Dust, etc.

Huang Renxun is very smart and far-sighted. After the launch of the WIN95 window system, he embraced the thick leg of Microsoft with mission. It has laid a very good foundation for NVIDIA's future success.

"Currently, we have stopped selling the first-generation NV1 products and terminated the research and development of NV2. We have also given up the research and development of multimedia acceleration chips to reduce research and development costs. We are currently concentrating on the development of the third-generation display chip NV3 project for desktop computers... ..." Huang Renxun introduced.

Li Xiaofan knew that the NVIDIA NV3 chip Huang Renxun was talking about was NVIDIA's first truly successful display core product in the future: the RIVA 128 graphics card.

In the previous life, this RIVA 128 graphics card product will be officially released in early 1997 next year.

This RIVA128 graphics card has a 128-bit memory bus and a pixel fill rate of 100M pixels per second. Its performance far exceeds that of the famous 3Dfx company Voodoo graphics card at the time, making it a well-deserved king-level graphics card.

In the previous life, this stunning RIVA 128 graphics card product shocked the global computer industry as soon as it was launched!

Subsequently, well-known computer manufacturers such as Dell, Gateway, and Micron immediately started using RIVA 128 graphics cards. In the retail market, RIVA 128 has also received strong support from well-known manufacturers including Diamond, ASUS, Elsa, STB and Canopus.

In the previous life, it was this RIVA 128 graphics card product that established Nvidia’s status in the world! Subsequently, it was successfully listed on the NASDAQ market in January 1999.

After listening to Huang Renxun's introduction, Li Xiaofan asked: "Jason, I just heard you say that you gave up the research and development of multimedia acceleration chips in order to reduce research and development costs. Isn't it a pity?"

Huang Renxun took a deep breath and said: "Director Li, there is nothing we can do. The chip industry is too expensive. The US$1 million you invested in us last year has been almost burned. I am stretched now, so I can only focus on In the display chip NV3 project!”

Li Xiaofan smiled and said: "If we invest another 10 million US dollars in your project, can we speed up the NV3 chip project and continue the research and development of multimedia acceleration chips?"

After hearing this, Huang Renxun was shocked: "10 million US dollars? Director Li, are you kidding me?"

You must know that when Li Xiaofan invested in Nvidia at the end of last year, the valuation of this project was only US$10 million.

"Jason, it's really 10 million US dollars! You see, I have brought all the partners of the venture capital fund we are preparing this time. What I said is serious. I am currently very invested in your project. The valuation is US$30 million. After we invest US$10 million, we hope to get 30% of the shares. Jason, please discuss it with the other shareholders and give me a reply..."

Li Xiaofan finally said seriously: "Regardless of whether our partners ultimately agree to our venture capital fund investing in your project, I personally am willing to spend the money I earned from the Yahoo project to support your project!"

"That's great, Director Li, thank you so much! Then I will discuss it with the other two founders, Chris and Pream, as soon as possible, and then give you an answer."

Huang's other two partners, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, were his colleagues at Sun Microsystems after graduating from Stanford University.

…

Farewell to Jen-Hsun Huang, on the way back to the hotel, the inspection team seemed to have some controversy over the NVIDIA project, because judging from the previous first-generation NV1 and second-generation NV2 products, it seemed that they were not that successful.

In the car, only Li Xiaofan was confident about the success of this project.

Li Xiaofan finally said: "Everyone, when our venture capital fund is established, our fund will set up a professional investment decision-making committee. At that time, the voting committee will decide every project we plan to invest in. Moreover, in every project Before the project meeting, our investment management company will do sufficient DD due diligence work..."

After inspecting the NVIDIA project, Tang Jiaming, Chairman of Star Cruises Lim Cathay, Vice President of Singapore Hong Leong Group Huang and other six local entrepreneurs in Singapore ended this short but fulfilling inspection trip and took United Airlines' international flight in the afternoon. Take the flight back to Singapore first.

Li Xiaofan, who continued to stay in San Francisco, took two beauties, Tang Xinyi and Wang Danrong, to the headquarters of Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Menlo Park, Bay Area in the afternoon. This Draper Fisher Jurvetson company is abbreviated as DFJ in English and DFJ Company in Chinese.