Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 680 From 3000 million to 1.25 million

"The reason why we invite everyone to come here this time is because we need a joint battle." Tang Huan glanced at the crowd, "That is to say, bring out your favorite products for the Fangyuan computer platform, and let our entire system The value is becoming more and more prominent."

Speaking of this, Tang Huan specifically named the leading software products of subsidiaries such as PothoShop, AutoCAD, and MATLAB, "In the final analysis, we want to use the most powerful functions to defeat all competitors and finally win the battle for personal computer standards. victory."

In the warm applause, Tang Huan ended his speech, and the specific work was arranged by John Chambers, Charles Simeone and others.

……

Tang Huan returned to the office and just took a breath when Jobs pushed his assistant and rushed in muttering, "Tang, are you avoiding me? It's not easy to meet him."

"Do I need to hide from you?" Tang Huan shrugged, "Everyone can see how busy I am."

"Then you should know why I'm looking for you, right?" Jobs sat down boldly, still in the arrogant manner that the world revolves around him.

Tang Huan laughed dumbfounded, "I really don't know."

In fact, he was pretending to be confused while pretending to understand.

Jobs is currently looking for venture capital for NeXT, and he has harassed Zheru's office a lot, making everyone stay away.

In just over a year, the NeXT company founded by Jobs, who was kicked out of Apple, has burned through 700 million US dollars, and the results of his work are only on the table, and the commercialization of the market is far away. The degree is still far away.

This result is not surprising at all. Without any operating income, Jobs let his mind fly and tossed willfully in NeXT. The R&D progress has been reset countless times.

Moreover, in addition to the luxurious office environment, Jobs also took his carefully selected research and development team out from time to time for brainstorming meetings and brainstorming sessions. The most recent time he played a lap at Tang Huan's Pebble Beach Golf Course.

No matter how much money you have, you can't afford to be so extravagant!
Under such circumstances, the shrewd Jobs did not want to continue to pay out of his own pocket, but used his brains for financing—based on his wishful thinking, he valued NeXT at $3000 million.

As you can imagine, venture capitalists certainly refused to buy it, and Tang Huan's assistant in the San Francisco office was also afraid to avoid it.Until now, Jobs has not cheated a penny.

Sure enough, Jobs started talking about soliciting investment for NeXT and trumpeted NeXT's advancements.

The highlight of Jobs' previous masterpiece - MAC, is the graphical user interface; the highlight of NeXT now is the object-oriented operating system.

After patiently listening to Jobs nagging for a long time, Tang Huan then asked, "Then how much do you plan to raise from me?"

Jobs pulled out a document and handed it over, "This is the prospectus. You can buy 300 percent of NeXT's shares for only $[-] million."

Tang Huan took the prospectus, but did not read it, and put it aside, then filled out a check for 300 million US dollars, and pushed it in front of Jobs along the smooth desktop.

"It's only $300 million!" Jobs, who glanced at it, couldn't help being a little dumbfounded.

"Is there any problem?" Tang Huan asked back: "Didn't you just say that you can buy 300% of NeXT's shares for only [-] million US dollars."

"What I mean is that the subscription amount starts from 300 million US dollars. With your financial resources, isn't it easy to invest 1000 million at random!" Jobs showed dissatisfaction, "But now, aren't you sending beggars away?" ..."

"As long as I become a shareholder of NeXT, the advertising effect will be more than NeXT's entire valuation of 3000 million U.S. dollars." After Tang Huan said something lightly, he stretched out his hand as if to take back the check.

"Let's count whatever we raise." The depressed Jobs muttered, but he quickly collected the check in his hand.

"Don't forget, what I purchased was [-]% of NeXT's shares." Seeing that Jobs took the money and left, Tang Huan reminded him, "Also, don't try to break into my R&D center again. If you still If you are fooling around, be careful and I will turn you into the most ordinary minority shareholder in Zheru."

Jobs strode out of the office as if he hadn't heard of it, but he didn't go far and met Gates oncoming, and he suddenly became more and more upset.

However, although there were a lot of pimples in his heart, Jobs, who was asking for help, still resisted the attack, and asked nonchalantly: "How are you thinking about developing proprietary software for NeXT computers?"

"You'd better take out the prototype as soon as possible and then discuss other things." Gates answered casually, with a hint of teasing in his tone.

This time Jobs hit a sore point, and he immediately settled accounts in a strange way: "Don't forget, Excel, the spreadsheet software that helped Microsoft make a lot of money, relied on the big tree of MAC."

"My cooperation with Apple is now recognized by both parties. Besides, does it have anything to do with you?" Gates argued unceremoniously.

When the two were arguing, the security guard who was called by the impatient assistant politely stepped forward and said, "Gentlemen, no loud noises are allowed on this floor."

Jobs and Gates snorted at each other, turned around, and walked in opposite directions.

A short and lean man in his 50s noticed the scene not far away. After thinking for a while, he strode towards Jobs and caught up with him in the parking lot. He greeted, "Hey, Jobs."

"Do we know each other?" Jobs asked angrily.

"You don't know me, but I know you." The person introduced himself confidently: "Perhaps, you have heard of my name. My name is Ross Perot—Ross Perot, and now PeopleSoft The second largest individual shareholder after Tang Huan. He previously ran a computer service company called Electronic Data Systems Corporation—Electronic Data Systems Corporation, but it was sold to General Motors the year before last."

Although Jobs often messed up, it also depends on the person. For those who are valuable, he often shows himself very restrained.The enthusiastic Ross Perot in front of him is within this range.

Don't think that Ross Perot took the initiative to come over, so you underestimated others. He is a veritable big man, full of legends.

Ross Perot was born in Texarkana, Texas, USA. His father was a commodity broker specializing in cotton contracts. He participated in the Scouts as a boy, joined the army as a youth and entered Annapolis. His performance at the Sri Lanka Naval Academy was outstanding, and it was even more so when he worked as a salesperson at IBM. He once completed the entire year's sales tasks in just two weeks.

To some extent, Ross Perot has a distinctive personality, which is a bit similar to Jobs at this stage, or it is more appropriate to describe it as a Texas cowboy.

For this reason, in the bureaucratic IBM, Ross Perot's future is only to be a top employee.

By 1962, Ross Perot decided to go solo, creating Electronic Data Systems, Inc., which served IBM mainframe customers.

Daring to compete with Big Blue for business, Ross Perot certainly had no good fruit to eat. He was in a difficult situation at first. After being rejected 77 times, Electronic Data Systems got his first contract.

Fortunately, things have gotten better since then, and Ross Perot has won a large number of contracts from the government and made huge profits.

When Electronic Data Systems went public in 1968, the stock price soared from $16 to $160 in one day, and Ross Perot was put on the cover of Fortune magazine as "the fastest and richest man".

It is undeniable that the rise of Electronic Data Systems and Ross Perot's sudden wealth are closely related to the success of IBM's System/360 and the rise of mainframe computers at that time.

Take General Motors as an example. By the 1980s, it already had hundreds of IBM mainframes, and the annual expenditure on internal data processing and office automation alone was as high as 20 billion US dollars.If it cooperates with Electronic Data Systems, the contract value is about 30 billion to 50 billion US dollars.

The management of General Motors thought that instead of doing this, it might as well just buy Electronic Data Systems.

In this way, in 1984, Ross Perot sold Electronic Data Systems to General Motors for $24 billion. In this transaction, in addition to a large amount of cash, he also got a lot Less shares of General Motors, into the other side's board of directors. .

There is no doubt that this deal was done very shrewdly - General Motors saved costs and gained another financial source, while the development situation of IBM mainframes was in decline. Seeing this, Ross Perot felt that it was time for him to The battlefield has been moved.

During the IPO process of PeopleSoft this year, the billionaire actively subscribed and became the second largest individual shareholder. This was regarded as a step from the mainframe field to the microcomputer field.

However, this is not enough to make up for the regret hidden in Ross Perot's heart.

It turned out that as early as 1979, Gates had visited Ross Perot in Texas, but he didn't take it seriously at the time.After Microsoft was listed on Nasdaq this year, its market value quickly swelled to $10 billion.

Ross Perot, who saw this scene, let alone the regret in his heart - if he had known today, he would have acquired Microsoft at the beginning, and he missed an opportunity to deliver it to his door.

As for the IPOs of several companies owned by Tang Huan, Ross Perot only caught up with the PeopleSoft train by mistake.

Regrets are regrets. Because of this, Ross Perot realized the bright prospects of the great development of microcomputers led by personal computers, so he rushed to catch up in this investment direction.Now, Jobs walked into his field of vision.

To be honest, this IT star who was kicked out by the company he created doesn't have a good impression on Wall Street, and venture capital doesn't like him.

But Ross Perot was different. He admired Jobs, felt that he had hit it off with him, and was willing to become his angel investor, thus showing great goodwill.

On this side, Jobs, who had already realized what kind of powerful local tyrant the guy suddenly appeared in front of his eyes, also began to show his most attractive attributes, and started to deal with him.

However, when Ross Perot said bluntly: "I heard that your NeXT company is looking for investment. If you need it, just ask. I will help you and your team to complete the idea."

Jobs was not as eager as Tang Huan showed, but put up his airs calmly and answered, "Thank you. I just got an investment for NeXT from Tang Huan."

Obviously, Jobs really needs money now, very much, otherwise he would not complain that Tang Huan only gave 300 million US dollars like a beggar, but at this time his reservedness to Ross Perot is a reflection of his cunning and cleverness place.

Sure enough, Ross Perot was fooled by Jobs who was pulling Tang Huan's flag. Seeing that the other party was very cautious, he said generously: "It turns out that Tang is also optimistic about your company. Anyway, if you need it, you can Call me anytime."

In this way, after Jobs ignored Ross Perot for a week, he took the initiative to contact the Texas billionaire, "Hey Ross, are you interested in coming to Redwood City and visiting my NeXT?"

Ross Perot, who thought he might lose another opportunity, immediately accepted the invitation and took his analysts to NeXT's headquarters for evaluation.

Compared with the $3000 million worth of NeXT that he had previously advertised to those uninterested venture capital firms, this time Jobs was darker and directly tripled the conditions.

The final result was that Jobs dug into his own pocket and injected another US$500 million into NeXT, while Ross Perot used US$2000 million to obtain shares in NeXT.

In other words, after a week of work, Jobs blew NeXT, which had no revenue, from $3000 million to $1.25 million.

To this end, Jobs went to Las Vegas and lied to Tang Huan, who was busy fighting with IBM at COMDEX: "Hey, Tang, my NeXT company is now worth US$1.25 million. Your US$300 million , can no longer hold 1000% of the shares. If you still want to maintain this position, you need to spend another [-] million US dollars."

Tang Huan, who was so busy, immediately stretched out his hand impatiently, "Since you have succeeded in financing, then return the 300 million US dollars to me."

Jobs was choked for a moment, and after a long time, he said resentfully: "If you are cruel, ten percent is ten percent."

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(End of this chapter)