America 1982

"Great companies all start in garages, MicroPort, Microsoft, Lotus and Actor." Microsoft Vice President Roland Hansen looked at the No. 9 garage with the Actor sign not far away, and looked at Tommy Hawke next to him. He praised with a smile.

Tommy shook his head: "Actor is far from qualified to be compared with the three software companies you mentioned."

"I heard from Benjamin that Actor seems to have moved to a new office, so what team is staying here?" Roland Hansen looked at the dozen employees in the garage who were busy answering the phone at this time, and asked curiously road.

Tommy looked at the now crowded garage. Once upon a time, there were only three people here, himself, Jason, and Holly. Three college students were just here thinking about the future of the Actor.

Now, Holly has taken a leave of absence and is flying around as Actor's vice president in charge of external relations, dealing with various external affairs, such as interviews or public relations.

Jason also chose to take a break from school and is currently providing training guidance at various universities and cooperating with Holly on some appearances and interviews.

If the two of them were here right now, they would probably be feeling the same as themselves, missing those years that only belonged to three rookie entrepreneurs.

After coming back to his senses, Tommy introduced Roland Hansen: "This is the company's customer service and technical support department. It currently has thirty part-time employees, all of whom are students at Stanford University. They come here to make some money after school. If the workplace is too far from the school, it will be difficult for them to rush to class, and the labor cost of full-time customer service is too high, so in the end I decided to keep the customer service department in Garage No. 9 to provide jobs for current students."

"You don't look like a traditional developer." After hearing Tommy's introduction, Roland Hansen nodded slightly and said, "Those entrepreneurs who are programmers often improve the treatment and treatment of their employees as soon as they get money. Office environment."

Tommy smiled next to him and asked: "Mr. Hansen, the traditional developer you are talking about is Mr. Paul Allen who quit Microsoft management due to illness?"

Last year, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen discovered during a medical examination that he had Hodgkin's lymphoma, which was in the early stages. For this reason, he handed over all power and only retained the position of vice chairman of Microsoft's board of directors, but he is no longer involved. any decisions of the company.

This is Microsoft's external statement. In fact, early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma will not affect work, and the cure rate is very high. The real reason that made Paul Allen leave Microsoft was the irreconcilable differences between him and Bill Gates. contradiction.

When Paul Allen participated in Microsoft's decision-making, Microsoft still retained some geek temperament. However, with Paul Allen out and Microsoft becoming a company owned by Bill Gates alone, the style of the entire company changed and became more geeky than before. Ambitious and greedy.

For example, although the company's revenue is good, Microsoft still chooses to hire a large number of temporary employees, and then adds complex and secretive non-compete agreements and confidentiality agreement clauses into the contracts of these employees. This allows Microsoft to save a lot of employee benefits, such as medical insurance. Such expenses, and because of the existence of non-compete agreements and confidentiality agreements, these temporary employees are dissatisfied with Microsoft and dare not resign easily, because once they resign and join other peer companies with better benefits, Microsoft's legal department will be the first to do so. Time to sue him and give him a resignation package.

Numerous developers in the computer software industry have criticized Microsoft for unscrupulously squeezing employees, but apparently to no avail.

Even after Paul Allen learned about what Bill Gates had done, he called and scolded him for not being worthy of being called a computer practitioner, and for being just a vampire who got into the computer industry.

"Yes, many programmers think that when the company makes money, the company's treatment should be improved and everyone gets money, but Bill doesn't think so, and I don't think so, so he poached me from the cosmetics industry to sell software." Roland -Hansen turned sideways and looked at Tommy Hawke: "I'm glad you don't think of yourself as a developer. Speaking of which, guess why I asked Benjamin for your contact information and wanted to chat with you? "

"I guess I'm one step ahead of you?" Tommy didn't hesitate, he cast his gaze on the other person's face and asked.

"Yes, I asked Benjamin before, is this guy named Tommy Hawke from Actor Company, like me, a former cosmetics salesman?" Roland Hansen looked at this guy named Tommy Hawke with complicated eyes. The guy said in a serious tone:

"I have designed the Microsoft Word promotion plan for so long, but now I have abandoned most of it because of you. Otherwise, the name that appears on the top of the professional sales lists of computer magazines now would be Microsoft Word, not OSS."

Tommy shrugged: "The reason why the sales of OSS are so exaggerated is because it is free, not because it is more professional than Microsoft Word."

"I always feel that your words are mocking me." Roland laughed.

With Paul Allen out, Bill Gates immediately followed his own wishes and replaced the previous vice president in charge of promotion and sales, and then recruited Roland Hansen, the former vice president of marketing at the American cosmetics company Neutrogena.

The first thing Roland Hansen did when he took office was to announce that Microsoft's own document processing software Multi File was renamed Microsoft Word and that it would be compatible with documents from WordStar, the world's number one selling document processing software.

Just like Actor's compatibility with Lotus's documents, Microsoft has no interest in obtaining MicroPort's authorization, and it is just a direct and crude unauthorized compatibility.

When MicroPort asked Microsoft in confusion why it wanted to make it compatible with its own software documents without authorization, Microsoft's response was that we just did it, and if you don't like it, go to court and sue us.

However, MicroPort's boss, Seymour Rubinstein, is a veteran of the industry, and has been friends with Bill Gates for many years. The two have been in love with each other for many years, and they already know everything about what Microsoft wants to do.

Therefore, MicroPort did not initiate a lawsuit at all, but pretended that the whole thing had never happened, and did not give Microsoft any chance to gain popularity. This made Microsoft Word compatible with WordStar files, but did not find any opportunity to make waves, and continued to be at the bottom of the sales volume. .

Whether it is an individual or a large company, they have no interest in using this document. They need to spend hundreds of extra dollars to buy a new auxiliary device called a mouse, and then re-memorize the operating instructions as thick as a book in order to obtain a perfect user experience. processing software.

Unable to catch on to the popularity of minimally invasive, Roland-Hansen is planning to promote Microsoft Word like branded cosmetics.

Since WordStar cannot be defeated in terms of professionalism, we will launch an attack based on usage rate. Instead of making high-end luxury products for the time being, we will promote Microsoft Word as civilian cosmetics, such as cooperating with various computer magazines or software dealers, magazine subscribers and If you spend any amount of money in the software store, you can get a personal trial version of Microsoft Word for free.

As a result, the entire promotion plan had just been negotiated with those magazines and software dealers. Before the money came out, Roland Hansen discovered that the software sales lists of major computer magazines had changed their names, and he continued to be on the document processing software sales list. WordStar, which had occupied the top spot for four years, was actually replaced by a software called OSS. At the same time, Lotus 1-2-3's position as the number one spreadsheet software was also replaced by OSS.

Roland Hansen obtained all the information about this software immediately and personally experienced the use of this software. Later, he found that Microsoft Word was not comparable to OSS in terms of ease of use.

OSS does not have as many functions as other software to show its power and professionalism. It has simple and practical document processing functions and spreadsheet processing functions. It has a clear positioning and meets basic business office requirements. The most important thing is that it is very user-friendly. To make it easy to get started, the entire instruction manual is condensed to just ten pages.

What’s even more frightening is that it is now completely free. As long as you call Actor Company, leave your address and phone number, and are willing to pay the postage, you can receive a copy of the OSS software.

Roland looked at Tommy: "It seems that no company in the computer software industry has used this method of seizing the market for free to cultivate user habits and brand impressions. Only the cosmetics industry often does this kind of thing, so when I saw your message, The first reaction was that you have sold cosmetics before."

"I sell anything, Mr. Hansen," Tommy said, winking at the forty-nine-year-old marketing guru.

"How many users does OSS have currently?"

"100,000 units were sold in the early stage, and 100,000 units were given away through the training classroom plan, and then there were nearly 200,000 people who applied through the free advertisement in the newspaper immediately after my interview." Tommy looked proud. He told Roland about the sales volume of his own software.

Free sales are also sales, so Tommy is justified in what he said.

However, Roland immediately popped Tommy's balloon: "This data is a bit watery. The approximate data I know is that OSS has a maximum of 300,000 users."

"Three hundred thousand people, that is to say, there are now three hundred thousand people eagerly sitting in front of computers to learn the free OSS software." Tommy's expression did not change after Roland revealed the data and filled it with water, but continued.

The number of users of 300,000 is indeed scary. After Microsoft’s own document processing software was renamed Microsoft Word and relaunched, the sales volume in the United States has not even reached 30,000 sets. Originally, it wanted to use the method of selling consumer products to rely on free services. I came to increase the number of users, but was overtaken by Actor Company again.

Thinking of this, Roland continued: "And Actor Company develops another software for external sales, and these 300,000 people will be potential buyers."

"You can remove the word potential, Mr. Hansen. I don't know if you've noticed, but Mr. Benjamin Rosen of Compaq has used Actor's customer information to sell 20,000 personal computers in a month." Mi looked at Roland:

"Because the training classroom program initiated by our SSD Federation has designed a reward mechanism for students, allowing students who have obtained an A and do not have a personal computer to use a credit card to purchase a computer in installments. If the training is over and he does not get a computer job, SSD We will help him repay the loan in installments. Many students who did not get an A couldn't control their desire to spend, so they used the money to buy the Compaq computers we recommended. However, currently our activity only supports Compaq computers."

"So how will that guy Benjamin repay you? You will push up Compaq's market value a lot." Roland was a little surprised at first, and then asked.

Tommy looked at the head of his customer service team, Gary Goode, who was about to 'connect' with Jason for the first time when they met, and said with a smile:

"He invited IBM to join EFF, so when students buy computers in installments, in addition to Compaq, IBM will soon be the brand. At the same time, our training courses will only have OSS from the beginning, and we will consider adding other software, such as fellow Stanford University alumni. Founded by Intuit, the financial software they developed will liberate accountants from mountains of paper documents. There is also Pok Company, also a startup founded by Stanford students. They designed and developed a simulation analysis software that allows scientists to Or used in university laboratories..."

"How can Microsoft join this EFF and then have Microsoft mouse training in your training classroom?" Roland Hansen asked decisively before Tommy finished speaking.

EFF is obviously using training programs to cultivate user habits. Roland feels that the operation training of the Microsoft mouse is necessary. It is obviously a faster and epoch-making computer-assisted hardware, but people who are accustomed to keyboard operation feel that the existence of the mouse is unnecessary.

Since people who have developed a habit think that the mouse is dispensable, let these people who have no computer knowledge first get used to the fact that computers have auxiliary hardware called a mouse.

Tommy told Rosen: "We welcome all companies that are enthusiastic about providing help to fellow companies, have a sense of industry responsibility, and are willing to help each other to join. For example, there happens to be a company in need of help at this time, called Actor, which has encountered some troubles."

I haven't slept since last night. I'm not lazy, I'm just stuck. No matter how I write, I feel bad. It seems that I suddenly can't code. I even planned a meeting between the two of them in a nightclub last night. A mentally retarded plot...

But there is no other way to deal with this kind of thing, just bite the bullet and keep writing to break it~~ I will continue to write~ Please don’t stay with me tonight, I can just go through it alone~