A few years later, when the Internet industry began to explode, watching countless companies burn hundreds of millions and billions of dollars each year, but still unable to shake the Internet empire built by the young man who was less than twenty-five years old, Tiny It wasn't until Na Brown realized how farsighted Eric's original decision was.
But now, in an exquisite coffee shop in Manhattan, when Tina Brown heard Eric's crazy plan for the first time, she felt more hesitation in her heart.
Tina Brown's status and reputation in the media industry has reached its peak. If she accepts Condé Nast Group's invitation to take charge of The New Yorker, with nearly twenty years of experience in magazine operations, she has a 9% chance Ten sure to revive the fallen magazine. But if she transfers to a completely unfamiliar field, even if it is only for a year, if she fails to make outstanding achievements in this field, then it will not be so easy to come back after a year and reintegrate into the original circle again. Something happened, she was only forty years old now, and she didn't want to ruin her prosperous personal career just because of a single adventure.
Hearing Eric mention Columbus and the great voyages, Tina Brown didn't have too many passionate emotions, but just smiled lightly, which was considered to be in agreement. People only remember the glory of the age of great voyages, but no one has explored how many adventurers died in the sea due to storms, pirates and diseases in the past few hundred years.
Tina Brown originally thought that Eric would continue to persuade her to join Yahoo, or offer her a favorable offer that she could not refuse. She felt that with his brilliant qualifications accumulated in the media industry for more than 20 years, he would definitely do so. A truly successful superior. He often spares no effort to win over talents for his own use. But Eric finished the last sentence. Instead, she became quiet, picked up the coffee in front of her and leaned comfortably on the back of the chair, patiently waiting for her to make a decision.
Eric's unexpected reaction calmed down Tina Brown, who was worried about gains and losses.
The two quietly watched the passing traffic outside the glass window for a while. Tina Brown finally made up her mind and asked, "Eric, what can I get if I join Yahoo?"
Eric replied: "I won't give you a high annual salary. Your personal salary will probably be the same as that of "Vanity Fair". However, at the beginning of Yahoo's establishment, the company drew up an equity award contract , before going public, Yahoo will distribute up to about 20% of the equity as a reward to the management and some employees who have made important contributions according to each person's contribution. If you join Yahoo and can meet my requirements after one year, then you will also will be included in this award plan."
Tina Brown shook her head in doubt: "Eric, what you said is too general, I don't know if you will honor these in the future, if Yahoo can really grow and develop. 20% equity is not a small amount .Also, you didn't give any criteria. I don't know how to achieve what you said?"
Eric said with a smile: "You don't need to worry about this. The contract on the equity incentive plan before listing was personally drawn up by a good friend and partner of mine. It has dozens of pages and has been approved by everyone. , after you join Yahoo, you can sign this contract."
For a media giant like Firefly, which has established its status in the industry, the group's operating system is already quite complete. Although an excellent management can bring more benefits to the company, it can't decide the company's survival. Therefore, shareholders do not need to make too many equity incentives for the management. In the past few years, although Firefly has made great profits, the equity used by Eric to reward the management is less than 1% of the total share capital.
But for the rapidly rising Internet industry, senior technical and management talents who have accumulated a lot of industry experience are crucial to the company's development. In the case of the company's rapid development momentum, in order to prevent the management from leaving the company to work alone or being poached by competitors, such incentives to win people's hearts are very necessary. Because once these talents who are crucial to the development of Internet technology companies leave, it may be like a high-speed train suddenly discovering that a section of the track in front of it has been dismantled, and the disastrous consequences can be imagined. The reason why the Internet industry was able to produce so many young billionaires in the early stages of development is because most investors understand this truth, instead of naively pinning their hopes on their passion and loyalty. However, after more than ten years, the oligarchy of the Internet industry will take shape, and this kind of wealth door that makes people rich overnight will also be closed. Except for a few lucky ones, most Internet companies that can toss out some new ideas. They can only obediently accept the offer of the oligarchs.
After explaining Tina Brown's first concern, Eric pointed to the ibm notebook that still displayed the home page of the Yahoo portal, and said, "In addition, there are actually no criteria for judging your personal work results. For example, Yahoo! The backend of the server has detailed records of the user's access data, among which there is a very important pv value, which means the user's page views (page-vie), this data is the best reflection of the user's recognition of Yahoo's content, The ratio of pv value to the number of users is the average page visits of each user, this ratio will represent your personal work results to a certain extent, the higher the ratio, the better your work.”
After listening to Eric's patient explanation, Tina Brown suddenly smiled and said, "I suddenly realized that I can't seem to find a reason to refuse this job. At least, you are much more honest than my original boss."
Knowing that Tina Brown said this, Eric actually agreed, and he also smiled and said: "In this case, I need to confess one more thing to you. Compared with being the editor-in-chief of "Vanity Fair", you are Yahoo's workload will increase exponentially, because "Vanity Fair" only needs to do one issue per month, but Yahoo's information needs to be updated in real time every day or even every hour, and each content section and a larger number of sub-sections You need to coordinate it all.”
Tina Brown was stunned for a moment before asking: "Then how many people can I have?"
"Yahoo spent most of its energy on website technology research and development in the first two years. At present, there is only a simple editorial team of 50 people. The original editor-in-chief used to be the editor-in-chief of an ordinary newspaper in Boston. I am very dissatisfied with his work. So I just invited you," Eric said, looking at IBM's Yahoo homepage, counting, and said: "You will be responsible for a total of eight content sections in the future, and you can also follow the popularity of these content sections after you join the job. As far as I am concerned, there are an average of five sub-columns per section. If you have five editors in each column, you can expand the editorial team to 200 people. Yahoo will definitely have its own news content, which is A team of journalists is needed. At the same time, there are also departments such as logistics support. This is also a group of people. Of course, these are things that you need to consider after you join the job. If you think it is necessary to expand the editorial team to 500 people, as long as you can Convince me with reasons, and I can approve your plan."
Tina Brown subconsciously felt that five editors for each sub-column were too few. However, she has not officially entered the job yet, and she does not know the specific situation. So I didn't ask for anything right away.
"Last question," Tina Brown said, "The Firefly Group is now the largest media group in North America, with a wealth of information content. I want to know how much support Yahoo can get from Firefly?"
Eric smiled and said: "I can give you any support you can think of, such as the highest priority movie and TV information, celebrity interviews, ESPN sports news, the latest trends in Hollywood, etc., but the premise is that you need to let Firefly's department thinks you have what it takes to work with them. When they hear about the partnership with Yahoo, their first reaction is better to be 'Oh Yahoo, that's a great site' rather than a puzzled look like 'Yahoo What is it?'”
"There's an endless loop in your logic," Tina Brown laughed. "If Yahoo doesn't get enough support first, how can I get others to treat the site differently?"
Eric said: "Although you have changed the concept secretly, well, I just have a good opportunity here, and it is the same as the time you caught the Reagan couple's foxtrot incident and brought "Vanity Fair" back to life. It is another big event that may cause a sensation. If it can be operated properly, the popularity of Yahoo News will be greatly improved again."
Tina Brown recalled last year's blockbuster "Jurassic Park", which made a worldwide sensation, and asked curiously, "Is it your new movie?"
"No," Eric shook his head, and said, "But it's also another show I personally directed, a grand fashion show."
Tina Brown continued to ask, but Eric just smiled and shook his head: "This will be the end of the year, and many things are not convenient to disclose in advance. But believe me, the news brought by this fashion show is enough for Yahoo to operate several times." months, and I will try to give you all the first-hand information."
"Then I can only wait and see," Tina Brown smiled, reaching out to Eric across the coffee table.
Eric shook hands with the other party and said, "I'm on the plane the morning after tomorrow. Let's go to Boston together to see where you will work in the future?"
"Of course there is no problem." Tina Brown said, "Even if you don't invite me, I will go there in person before I join the job."
…
In Eric's plan, this trip to Boston is crucial to his layout in the Internet industry. He originally hoped that Chris could go to Boston together, but Chris needs to fly to Finland to attend the Nokia board meeting, as a Eric's investment agent, Chris is also the director of many companies including Nokia, Cisco and America Online. Eric's personal work schedule is also quite tight, and the time can't be arranged. Give it up, in the end, Eric just took two entourages and boarded the plane to Boston with Tina Brown.
Before departure, Eric also personally called to invite two other people, Cisco Group eo John Chambers and America Online eo Steve Case, and the other party readily agreed.
The small Gulfstream business jet owned by the Firefly Group slowly landed at Boston General Edward International Airport. Eric and Tina Brown got off the plane together. When they walked out of the airport, they saw three men of different ages walking towards them. The three people are Ian Grenier, the head of the browser company, Jeff Locke, the head of the Yahoo website, and Steve Mitter, the head of the online mailbox company who occasionally chats with Eric on the Internet. nick.
Ian Grenier was originally a product development department manager of the database software giant Oracle. He was in his early forties, tall, but a little bald, wearing a neat gray suit.
Jeff Locke was recommended by Tim Berners-Lee to be the person in charge of the Yahoo Portal. He is about 30 years old and has a master's degree in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also worked for Sun Software for two years.
The last Steve Mitnick, who is in charge of the online mailbox service, was a classmate of Chris’s at the University of Pennsylvania. Although arranged by his parents, he majored in finance like Chris, but he was very familiar with computer technology. I was obsessed with it, and I didn’t get a degree in finance in the end, but my study of computer and information technology reached the point where even the professor of the computer department of the University of Pennsylvania was amazed. The professor of the University of Pennsylvania even wanted to let Steve Mitnick do it. His student, but he rejected this suggestion on the grounds that the other party had nothing to teach him. According to Chris, Steve Mitnick had been dawdling in a small company run by his father in his hometown of Dallas. When he heard Chris say that someone was willing to burn a lot of money to study the computer technology he was interested in, he immediately threw everything away Arrived in Boston.
A group of people introduced each other, and when they left, Steve Mitnick pulled Eric into his inconspicuous black Buick car very familiarly. Tina Brown also seemed to want to talk to the person in charge of Yahoo immediately, so she got into Jeff Locke's car, and Carter Moen and Eric's other bodyguard got into Ian Grenier's Mercedes Benz.
"Eric, I have another good idea recently, and you will definitely be very interested in it," Steve Mitnick said impatiently as soon as the Buick drove into the airport expressway: "Now, in order to adapt to indos , uni, linu, and apple's personal computer operating systems have to develop several different versions at the same time. I think why don't we develop an ie-based network operating system by ourselves, relying on the advantages of our browser software , Maybe it will surpass Microsoft in the future, and I have recently written a simple system kernel, as long as you agree to this plan, I promise to come up with a brand new system in two years, oh no, one and a half years. "
Eric looked away from the red building of the Hilton Hotel near the airport expressway, looked at Steve Mitnick's apparently ill-fitting suit, and said with a smile: "You should have discussed this plan with Ian Right?" (To be continued.)
ps: [Starting today, the daily update time is fixed at 8:30]