In San Francisco, Scoop's headquarters is not located around the popular Stanford University, but in the city of Milpitas on the other side of the bay, bordering the north of San Jose and already considered a suburb of Silicon Valley.
The geographical location seems to hint at the embarrassing situation of this semiconductor company.
Scoop was established in 1988. It positions itself as a semiconductor company. To be more precise, it should be a semiconductor design company. It is obviously impossible for such a start-up to have independent new chip production capabilities. It can only be supported by its early investor Texas Instruments. Carry out product OEM.
In the early days of its founding, Scobo's development direction was picture decoding chips. It was not until 1991 that the first video decoding chip was launched.
However, although the technology is very novel, Scobo has never been able to find an accurate application direction for its products. Over the years, Scobo has tried to apply its chips to televisions, game consoles, printers and other fields, but has failed. success.
Even the VCD launched by Wanyan two years ago did not make Scoop see a bright future. The sales volume of VCD in China in the past year was less than 20,000 units, which also proves this. In Silicon Valley, which has a broad vision, Si Gaobao Goldberg's management can see that VCD is really not competitive with DVD.
Last year's IPO was considered a last ditch effort for Scoop. In addition, several investors such as Sequoia Capital had spent so many years trying to cash in on the new technology wave. Otherwise, the past few years would have been impossible. The major shareholders of the company would not secretly cash out more than 10% of the company's stocks, and continued to sell when the stock suddenly rose recently. Eventually, Chen Qing's team absorbed as much as 21% of the company's stocks in a short period of time.
According to the thinking of Scobo's board of directors and management, after the funds raised from the IPO are spent, if the company has not found its accurate positioning, then there will basically be no future.
There are countless such failures in Silicon Valley, but they are not too disappointing.
All this until a sudden showdown with a certain Oriental girl.
Just the capital background of the Westeros system has already made Sequoia Capital and other major shareholders more than half determined to cooperate. Chen Qing's team's plan to create the VCD industry in China, and the plan to hold it in their hands if rejected The threat of funding and programs to cooperate with other manufacturers made them completely compromise.
After all, even though the rapid growth of China's VCD shipments in the first quarter is exciting, after all, DVD is the big mountain ahead. No one can guarantee that once Sony and other manufacturers officially launch DVD players, VCD will not be in the blink of an eye. was eliminated in time.
Moreover, when making the final decision, Sequoia Capital and Texas Instruments, two major shareholders of Scoop, have their own considerations.
Sequoia Capital is a venture capital company. Although it does not mind holding a company's stocks for a long time, according to the operating rules of venture capital, their top priority is to cash out in a timely manner to achieve stable returns for investors and develop the next batch of businesses. This is also the reason why Sequoia Capital was an early investor in many technology giants such as Apple and Oracle, but later was not among the major shareholders of these companies.
As a venture capital company, the most important thing is to control risks, because their investment targets are not only successful cases such as Apple and Oracle, but also a large number of failed investments that ultimately went to waste. The reason why Sequoia Capital has always been popular , the key is that it has successfully cashed out and exited before many investment companies went bankrupt.
Doing so may cause them to miss out on some super dark horses that will eventually return hundreds or thousands of times, but it actually avoids losing more money.
As for Texas Instruments, affected by the rapid development of the mobile communications industry and the wave of new technologies, Texas Instruments' revenue exceeded US$13 billion in the past fiscal year, and its current market value is as high as more than US$20 billion. Therefore, this truly world-class semiconductor giant will not care too much about a small company like Scoop, whose annual revenue has just exceeded 20 million US dollars.
Moreover, Chen Qing's team also used other connections in the Westeros system to lobby Texas Instruments executives, which was actually just a phone call away. You know, Texas Instruments is the main supplier of Nokia mobile phone baseband chips. As Nokia becomes the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, the importance of this customer to Texas Instruments is self-evident.
The matter was finally settled.
By transferring only half of the remaining 33% of its shares, Sequoia Capital recovered all its previous investment in Scoop and achieved considerable profits. The remaining half of the shares is enough for Sequoia Capital to enjoy Chen Qing's team's plan once it succeeds. Generous dividends at the end.
While Texas Instruments cashed in its profits, it also made its own demands.
All future chip orders from Scobo must be exclusively manufactured by Texas Instruments semiconductor factories.
Since TSMC established the wafer foundry model and became more and more successful, many established semiconductor manufacturers have discovered business opportunities and opened up related businesses. With the rapid expansion of the wafer foundry market, they have paid more and more attention to it.
Scooper's current order is dispensable to Texas Instruments.
However, if Chen Qing's team's plan really succeeds, Scobo's chip foundry orders alone will be a very considerable income.
With the agreement of the two major shareholders, coupled with the 21% shares already held by Chen Qing's team, there is no room for resistance from other shareholders and Scoop's management.
The final plan was approved by Simon. At nine o'clock in the morning, Chen Qing's team and various shareholder representatives formally signed the equity transfer agreement and new personnel appointments at the Scoop headquarters in Milpitas.
Chen Qing was very smart not to take over the company personally. Instead, she asked Emmanuel Brandt, a team member who had just been recruited some time ago, to succeed Don Valentine as the chairman of Scoob and take control overtly. Overall, Scoop CEO Bill O'Meara, who is responsible for the specific operations of the company, has not been replaced.
After finalizing the contract, all parties held a small press conference together in an inconspicuous two-story office building in Scobo. Then, the relevant press release appeared on the Yigrit portal for the first time.
The recent surge in Scoop's stock price has attracted the attention of many people.
With the announcement of the news, the capital market quickly reacted and another 'Westeros concept stock' was born.
The capital market never lacks blindness.
Although the public release only revealed very little information about Scoob's subsequent business plan, the core of the main rendering was also just a gimmick of 'Westeros concept stocks'. Moreover, as Scoob closed at the close of last Friday The market value of the company has exceeded US$200 million, and the company's price-to-earnings ratio is close to the bubble level of 80 times, but many investors still can't help but start buying subconsciously.
Today is Monday, April 24th.
The press release from the Yigrit Portal was released at about 10 a.m. on the West Coast, and it was 1 p.m. on the East Coast, three hours before the close.
However, in just these three hours, as a new technology company that had attracted market attention and was disclosed as a new "Westeros concept stock", Scoop's originally relatively flat stock price went straight out of a rather steep turn. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the North American stock market closed. Scoop's stock price rose by 43% in a single day. Compared with the market value of US$206 million at the opening in the morning, the closing market value was as high as US$293 million.
It can be said that in basically just three hours before the market closed, Scoop shareholders' book profits from holding stocks were as high as US$97 million.
Both Scobo's original shareholders and management were completely speechless in the face of the market's crazy reaction.
Not counting the US$20 million five-year loan obtained from Citibank through the Westeros system, Chen Qing's team invested a total of approximately US$94 million and obtained 53% of Scoop's shares. When the East Coast stock market closed on Monday, the total book value of these shares had reached $156 million.
After three weeks of busy work, the book profit was US$62 million.
This shows why the financial industry has become a pillar industry in the United States and why so many elites around the world are flocking to Wall Street.
After completing a series of handovers, Chen Qing was not immersed in the success he had just achieved.
The girl understands that everything has just begun.
After the representatives of several other shareholders left, Chen Qing immediately summoned Scoop's management and started a day-long meeting. Members of Chen Qing's team who did not attend the meeting were not idle either and began to review the company's financial files, technology Information and employee resumes will be reviewed in further detail.
In fact, a recruitment information involving various technical positions that had been prepared in advance was directly posted on the 58list platform owned by Yigrit this morning.
Because the detailed plan has already been finalized.
Next, Scobo will immediately stop all other non-core businesses and will not renew the contract after the original order is completed. While continuing to increase the research and development of video decoding chips for VCD, Scobo will also start the development of a full set of VCD technology solutions. In fact, it is repeating what Wan Yan did originally, but it has also been formed in Wan Yan. further upgrades based on the technology.
The key is that Chen Qing's team insisted on acquiring Scoop instead of cooperating with other manufacturers to develop another VCD video decoding chip at a lower cost.
After all, we are still buying time.
If the product developed by Wanyan can be regarded as VCD-1.0, Chen Qing's team plans to use one year to develop a new set of VCD-2.0 standards based on VCD-1.0 technology.
This is also the plan that Simon gave to Chen Qing’s team based on the idea of super VCD in his memory.
The capacity of VCD discs has been stuck, and it is destined to be impossible to surpass DVDs.
However, compared with Wanyan's first-generation product, the VCD player itself still has many areas for improvement.
Taking advantage of the year before the outbreak of China's VCD industry, Scobo completely put aside other possible competitors by accumulating technology and patents in advance. By then, even established electronics giants such as Sony and Philips, which have deeper technological foundations, will fall behind step by step.
The product technology difference is one generation apart, and there is no possibility of catching up in the short term.
As for the longer term.
The golden age of VCD is probably only 5 years.
Simon is also very happy that manufacturers such as Sony invest a lot of manpower and material resources to do this. The result is destined to be an empty and futile pursuit.
All in all, Scoop will use the next year to transform from a pure semiconductor design company at this stage into a comprehensive product technology supplier that provides VCD core components and complete solutions to downstream manufacturers, and it will inevitably It is a monopoly supplier with all-round advantages in technology and cost.
By then, Chinese VCD companies will only need to purchase a full set of core components and solutions from Scobo, and they will be able to easily assemble products and put them on the market.
As far as Scobo is concerned, as long as he controls product pricing and does not over-squeeze downstream manufacturers and cause other competitors to take advantage of the situation, China's VCD market will largely be dominated by the Scobo family.
This is completely different from the fierce competition in the DVD field.
Because of the great success of the videotape industry, all major electronic manufacturers in the East and West have seen the broad market prospects of DVD, so they have spared no effort in research and development over the years. Because there are too many manufacturers involved, the relevant technical standards are very confusing, and the distribution of patents is also chaotic. It is quite fragmented. No one has a full set of technical capabilities, and no one is willing to make compromises easily. If it weren't for these disputes, a mature DVD player would have been launched before 1995, instead of just barely reaching technical standards now. It would have taken at least three to five years to actually launch the product or even become popular.
In comparison, VCD and DVD are actually equivalent to open source Linux and closed source Windows.
Because Wan Yan failed to apply for a complete VCD technology patent, VCD is now equivalent to a free open source software that many manufacturers can use. Although it is not as advanced as closed-source DVD, it is much less restricted by patents. As long as it is willing to do it, relevant manufacturers can develop and promote products at the lowest cost.
Moreover, open source does not mean that monopoly cannot be achieved.
Just like Google's Android system in Simon's memory, although it is developed based on the free and open source Linux system, it is still owned by Google. If others want to use it, they must obtain Google's consent. Not only that, after Google relied on Linux to develop an increasingly mature version of Android, it became very difficult for other competitors to make similar products.
Because the technology gap is too far, and the market has been occupied by Android.
Now, this is what Scoop wants to achieve.
In Simon's view, this aspect is somewhat similar to the current 2G and 3G standards for mobile communications.
With the popularization of digital communication technology, major communication manufacturers around the world are currently fiercely competing for various patents on 2G technology. Little do they know that a company named Qualcomm has built an indestructible technology on the 3G standard. barrier.
Qualcomm's 3G is certainly not impossible to bypass.
However, when the industry upgrades, there is already such a set of extremely mature technical standards. Whether it is to save costs or gain time, relevant companies can only use Qualcomm's technology.
So, there is the Qualcomm tax.
If a company does not believe in evil and insists on developing a set of standards to bypass Qualcomm, let alone whether it will succeed in the end. Even if it does succeed, it may not be popularized yet. Other companies that have reaped the benefits in the 3G field have already Heading towards the next generation of 4G. Those who want to find another way will only be eliminated.
Qualcomm is ahead of everyone else, building its own toll stations on the road that other companies must pass, and blocking the road to collect money. Scoop, on the other hand, quietly fell behind the others, circled the veins that the others originally looked down on, and started digging. Of course, others can go back and dig, and then find that the relatively rich mineral veins have been occupied by others, and they can only get a little scraps.
Qualcomm licenses its 3G standards to everyone and then collects the Qualcomm tax.
You can also sell chips by the way.
Scobo will license its VCD solutions to VCD manufacturers in the future, and the fees collected can probably be called Scobo tax.
You can also sell core components.
Just the same thing, different paths to the same destination.
In the business field, in the final analysis, there are only a few core routines. Even if there are innovations, they will never deviate from the original principles. As long as you see it through, work hard to implement it, and maybe add some luck, there will be an excellent businessman in the world.