After dinner, I chatted with Janet's parents about recent events. At around nine o'clock, Simon and his wife did not go back to their villa nearby, but stayed overnight in the mansion.
In the bedroom upstairs, Simon came out of the bathroom after taking a shower and saw Janet, who had changed into pajamas, holding a pillow in her arms, standing by the bed and looking at him intently, saying: "I will sleep with my aunt tonight. "
Simon paused for a moment, then quickly continued wiping his wet hair with a towel, nodded with a smile, "Okay, I've been squeezed by you for so long, so I just need a night's rest."
Janet did not move, but still looked at Simon steadily.
Simon calmly pulled the towel on his head forward slightly, held it in front of his eyes and continued wiping it.
Janet wrinkled her nose. When she saw the man coming in front of her and hugging her body, she subconsciously catered to her. Because there was a pillow between them, she leaned her face forward and was kissed by him in response.
"Good night."
"OK, good night."
Although he agreed like this, he felt even more distressed in his heart.
little bastard.
You really asked me to accompany my aunt.
Even if you lie to me, that's fine.
Or, I might as well just mess around with them and pin them down on the bed, and I'll pretend I don't know anything.
After saying good night, Simon let go of Janet and hung up the towel. Seeing that she hadn't moved yet, he said nothing. He just reached out to take the pillow from the woman's arms and threw it on the big bed. He casually put his arm around Janet's waist and continued to The woman also threw it on the big bed, and then jumped on it.
However, more than an hour later, Janet still left the arms of the man who had fallen asleep and quietly left their bedroom.
The next day is Sunday, February 3rd.
The couple has been taking a two-week break since leaving Los Angeles on January 20.
In the cabin of the Boeing 767, after the plane took off, Simon had been sitting in the front cabin study looking through the documents accumulated during this period. Janet was sitting opposite with her chin propped up and looking at her husband, with various little emotions floating around in her bright eyes. .
Simon actually knew about Janet's quiet departure last night.
I just don’t know what Veronica and Janet said.
Now the woman doesn't speak, and Simon doesn't take the initiative to raise a topic.
I really don’t know how to deal with it.
Across the desk, Janet looked at her man for a long time, and finally sighed softly. She didn't understand what happened.
My aunt was obviously bullied, but she still turned against him.
It turned out to be the same as myself.
Is it just because of last time
Janet couldn't help but touch her wrist.
Little bastard.
You are such a devil.
She silently made up her mind to come to Melbourne as little as possible in the future, at least, not letting him come alone.
With a helpless sigh of relief, Janet picked up a folder on the table and looked down at it.
This is the incremental statistical report of AOL free trial users in January.
Janet also knew about the free trial plan launched by AOL. However, looking at the 2.3 million user reservations in the folder and the actual number of official installations of only 810,000, Janet couldn't help but be a little surprised and raised her head to Simon opposite. folder and asked: "Why is there such a big difference?"
Simon raised his head and glanced at it. He had just read the document and said, "It's mainly a matter of manpower. For this trial, AOL has prepared a total of 5,000 formal and temporary installation personnel on the east and west coasts in the early stage. According to initial expectations, It can roughly complete 1 million user installations per month. However, in fact, things are more difficult than imagined, and there are many problems encountered. You can look at more specific figures. Among the 810,000 installed users, 390,000 are from In the areas where Bell Atlantic operates, Bell Atlantic has actively cooperated with us to solve problems such as line equipment, and also seconded some employees for this purpose."
Simon said, feeling emotional in his heart.
The move to acquire Bell Atlantic in advance has now proven to be completely correct.
AOL just signed a 10-year exclusivity agreement with three major regional operators last year, so Bell Atlantic is unable to get involved in Internet access services.
A few months later, seeing the sudden explosion of Internet access users, with the number of reservation users in one month exceeding 2.3 million, the three major operators obviously began to regret signing the original agreement.
You know, all major telecom operators have actually been involved in free trial activities for users, but no one has experienced such a crazy amount of user reservations. The number of reservations for just one month, if all transferred to official users, would be equivalent to one-tenth of the total number of users of the three major operators.
Users of the three major operators have only been able to achieve this after decades of accumulation.
In the past month, the three major operators have even discovered that some users have deliberately transferred accounts from other small telecom operators in the region to their own companies in order to get free trial opportunities, which is even more surprising.
The U.S. telecommunications industry has a very open competitive environment, and there may be several telecommunications operators in one city.
Of course, the main thing is to rent the line networks of giants like AT-T and then develop their own telephone services. Regional telecom giants such as Bell Atlantic, Bell Pacific and NYNEX have always wanted to squeeze these small operators out of the market, but because the other parties often have lower charging costs than themselves, it is usually difficult to achieve this goal.
Now, it turned out that America Online, which was also attached to them, unexpectedly promoted this matter.
The top executives of the three major operators probably understand that trying to cooperate with AOL's expansion will also be very beneficial to increasing the number of their own users.
However, the truth is to understand, but it is not so easy to actually promote it.
No one wants an outsider to build a villa that is more beautiful than their own house in their own yard. Even if they cannot stop it, even if the other party pays, and even if such a villa appears in their own yard, many tourists may pay to visit it. The owner of the household may It is also difficult to convince myself to cooperate without any grudges.
Of course, after the takeover of Bell Atlantic was officially completed in January, the company has become a member of the Westeros system, but management such as Raymond Smith can do this.
The other two companies, Bell Pacific and NYNEX, are not so willing.
It was clearly stated in the original agreement that in addition to developing line networks, AOL would need to pay more if it wanted other additional support.
Because of the huge capital investment, AOL's management even implemented this free trial plan with a do-or-die mentality. Naturally, it was impossible to invest more budget in these operators.
Ultimately, this resulted in a situation where 390,000 of the 810,000 installed users in the first month came from Bell Atlantic's operating areas, which actively cooperated.
After listening to Simon's explanation, Janet continued to flip through the information in her hand, and quickly asked: "The budget of 100 US dollars per household is too low. Can it be achieved?"
Simon said: "100 US dollars, 20 US dollars are labor costs, 30 US dollars are network costs, and the last 50 US dollars are equipment and software costs. However, this is based on the expectations of eventually converting to official users."
For this free trial plan, AOL hired and trained 3,000 part-time temporary installation employees mainly from some university campuses. According to the piece rate standard, the installation fee per household is US$20.
The household phone penetration rate in the United States exceeds 90%. This trial plan is also selective. It must be a user of the three major operators. There is no need to set up additional lines. It only needs to install the equipment on the phone terminal at the user's home and connect it to the computer. .
In terms of equipment and software, it mainly includes modems, interface network cards plugged into the motherboard, network card drivers and browser software.
This set of equipment and software is actually very expensive, with the total cost roughly close to $200. Once the trial users do not become regular users, AOL will take back the devices. Even users who cancel after being regularized will do the same in the future.
Because the recovered equipment can be reused, AOL gave an average budget of $50 based on a conversion rate of 25%.
Speaking carefully, this actually sounds like a book game.
In the final analysis, AOL faces too much financial pressure.
It is also because of this that despite having 2.3 million terrifying reservation users, AOL management has no intention of increasing the number of workers. On the one hand, it is not easy to achieve, even those temporary employees have been trained. On the other hand, it is naturally due to cost.
Moreover, we must also consider whether this popularity is just temporary.
If you rush to add a team of workers, it will be troublesome once users' enthusiasm for free trials cools down.
Next, AOL plans to achieve the expected monthly installation volume of 1 million households through more reasonable screening and allocation of reserved users. Then, after the IPO in three months, the market will give AOL a very good valuation.
On the other hand, feeling the difficulty of queuing up to get a trial opportunity can also promote trial users to become regular users to a large extent.
After all, people don’t appreciate things that are too easy to obtain.
If you wait in line for more than a month and finally become a trial user, after one month expires, you may look around and see that some people are still waiting, and you will definitely feel less tempted to give up.
Speaking carefully, this is actually a kind of alternative hunger marketing.
After a 17-hour flight, when we arrived in Los Angeles, due to the time difference, it was still the morning of Sunday, February 3rd.
Continuing to rest until the next day, Simon flew to San Francisco again early Monday morning.
This time it was for work.
After the housekeeper Alice Ferguson continued to squeeze Simon in various ways during this period, she finally came up with two business plans, two business plans that attracted great attention from Ygritte, AOL and even Bell Atlantic.
Two business plans, one for an online payment system and one for an online software store.
The former is actually similar to the later PayPal, and the latter is equivalent to the APP Store of Apple mobile phones in Simon's memory.
Moreover, the two business plans are actually complementary to each other.
Igret has been exploring a reliable business profit model. World Wide Web software is one aspect. It has begun to bear fruit under the management of Carol Bartz in the past year.
In terms of portal websites, in addition to advertising business, Jeff Bezos has also been considering other ways to make money.
Although the software department and the network department cooperated very smoothly under Simon's forced reconciliation and suppression, it was simply unrealistic in the short term to rely on the software department to feed back the network department. If dependence does form, the portal is doomed to not last.
The housekeeper's continuously improved online payment system and online software store, inspired by Simon, gave Jeff Bezos hope, and even Raymond Smith of AOL and Bell Atlantic saw what it contained. Huge business potential.
Igret headquarters near Stanford University.
In the conference room, several company executives, including Simon, Jeff Bezos, Carol Bartz, Steve Case, John Chambers and Raymond Smith, sat on both sides of the conference table and listened. The housekeeper personally introduced her business plan in front of the projector and answered everyone's questions.
"... If we want to build an online payment system, it is impossible without corresponding products. Therefore, we must build a complete online consumption ecosystem. The online software store is the most important part of it. The market potential of computer application software , it can be seen just from the development of Microsoft and Oracle in the past few years... "
"...Moreover, there has never been a shortage of excellent business software on the market, especially some small application software with strong professional nature. The main restriction on their development is sales channels. The same is true for PC games with an increasingly large market size. Many professional software Privately, only one or two software designers can produce a product whose quality is no less than that of a professional game company, but because commercialization is too difficult, they are also unable to distribute and sell the game... "
"...Yigeret has an unparalleled channel advantage. Using the World Wide Web platform, we can transcend mainstream operating systems such as Apple's Macintosh system, Microsoft's Windows system, and traditional DOS systems. With this online advantage , we can easily distribute and sell application software, PC games and other products to these platform users at a very low cost, and the company can take a share of it... "
"... In addition, after the online payment system is completed, we can use this system to further promote online payment, online retail and other businesses... "
The housekeeper kept switching PPTs and talked for twenty minutes, and finally stopped.
Everyone waited patiently for the short-haired girl with an exquisite face to pick up the water glass on the table and take a few sips of water. Raymond Smith was the first to ask: "Alice, you just said that users of the online payment system The account takes the form of being bound to a physical credit card. Have you ever thought about how difficult it is to achieve this? Over the years, commercial banks have racked their brains to enter the American Express card payment system, but have failed. Similarly, how do you ensure that Will commercial banks open payment interfaces to us?”
Alice Ferguson heard this question, scanned the conference room, and finally landed on Simon for a moment, and said: "The entire Westeros system, including the newly completed acquisitions of Bell Atlantic and MCA, the annual cash flow Reaching tens of billions of dollars, the demand for commercial loans is also very considerable. I believe that this is a customer that any commercial bank needs to strive for. If such a customer asks them to open an online payment interface, I don’t think there will be too much Great difficulty."
Everyone was stunned when they heard this answer, and then smiled.
I didn’t expect the answer to be so simple and straightforward.
Even a little rough.
Indeed, if a small company with no foundation wants to build such an online payment system, the banking aspect is enough to kill the business plan of these small companies.
Ygritte is different.
Relying on the entire Westeros system as the backing, it is indeed very easy to get the bank to let go.