At the beginning, the Yahoo management team only planned to hold the Yahoo Technology Alliance and Advertising Alliance Conference in a low-key manner, to release brand-new network technology products to the partners of the Yahoo Alliance and conduct business cooperation consultations. [ㄨ]
After Eric came up with the plan to lead competitors astray in New York, the scale of the annual meeting was greatly increased, and a special budget was allocated. In the end, the annual meeting was divided into two main sections, user-oriented Yahoo network products Launch and Yahoo Technology and Advertising Alliance conference for collaborators.
At the same time, in order to expand its influence as much as possible according to Eric's thinking, Yahoo sent invitation letters to executives of many high-tech companies including Microsoft, Cisco, and America Online, and countless invitations to media reporters from all over the world . After more than a month of building momentum, the media speculated that Yahoo not only wanted to make this annual meeting an annual event in the Internet industry, but also tried to further confirm its leading position as an Internet company.
Although the scale of its leader is still insignificant compared to giants such as Microsoft and Cisco, and it cannot be compared with established high-tech companies such as IBM, HP, and Apple, Yahoo has been valued by Wall Street at $5 billion since its establishment more than three years ago. In terms of value, no one can ignore its strong growth potential. Therefore, corporate executives such as Microsoft's Bill Gates, Cisco's John Chambers, and America Online's Steve Case have confirmed that they will attend Yahoo's annual meeting. Katzenberg is an important partner of Yahoo's media business. Fang's executive representatives will also find time to attend, and Nokia's Jorma Ollila will also take this opportunity to come to the United States to meet Eric, and Qualcomm eo Owen Jacobs who was invited to come As well as SPIRIT company executives, so to speak. This will also be the first gathering of all the core figures of Eric's economic empire.
therefore. Although Yahoo's annual meeting lasted for five days. Eric's schedule is arranged to the point where it is calculated by the hour.
After simply checking his schedule, Eric opened the relevant planning plan for Yahoo's network product launch.
This is the sixth time that Eric has seen this copy in more than a month. After Eric made the decision to hold a product launch event, the first plan sent by Yahoo was shared with Eric and Memory. After comparing the mature product launch forms in the website, it can only be described as horrible. In the end, Eric had to take the time to use the information in his memory to make a simple plan, and hand it over to Yahoo to carry out the plan according to the actual situation. After repeated revisions, I finally came up with the mature plan I have today.
Because it will be televised. This press conference was compressed to less than 30 minutes. Therefore, there were no celebrity guests at the press conference, and there was no time for executives to talk nonsense. Eric himself would not go on stage, but left all the time for Several key people in charge of Yahoo. For more than a month, Yahoo's advertising planning department has spent most of its time on how to make the most of the 30 minutes to show the content that Yahoo wants to promote to the TV audience as much as possible, and at the same time be able to Interest of these potential users.
In addition to a simple review of Yahoo's existing products, as well as recommending websites such as ab news network and Amazon that cooperate with Yahoo. This product conference will also mainly promote the two new products of Yahoo's personal homepage and Yahoo's online payment tool yahoopay to users.
In the current Internet 1.0 era, network information is very scarce. Therefore, just like movies and TV dramas are to the media industry, only by finding ways to expand Internet content can we provide enough 'soil' for the development of the Internet industry. However, this task is simply impossible to complete only by professional media websites. Tina Brown's Yahoo News department has been expanded many times, and the number of employees is less than 1,000. It is absolutely impossible for these people to provide enough content for the current 25 million American Internet users.
Therefore, launching a blog-like personal homepage and using tens of millions of users to do this work will undoubtedly get twice the result with half the effort. Everyone has a desire to express themselves. As long as one-fifth of the current 25 million American users open their personal homepages, and each person provides 20 pages of new content for the Internet every year on average, the entire Internet will add 100 million content pages.
Moreover, even if each page of this billion-page blog content brings Yahoo an advertising revenue of 10 cents a year, it will bring in 10 million US dollars a year. Eric is more aware that in the next few years, these figures will be far more than here. Because the industry was in its infancy, in 1995, companies with an entire Internet revenue exceeding US$10 million could be counted on one hand. But as long as it can maintain its strong position, Yahoo's advertising revenue will also show exponential growth due to the explosive expansion of the Internet in the next few years.
On the other hand, Internet e-commerce has just emerged. Even Amazon, the super giant in the e-commerce industry in the previous life, is just a seedling at this time. Therefore, most e-commerce platforms cannot support a complete online payment system at all. Now is the best time for Yahoo’s online payment tool to enter the game. As long as this layout is completed, when everyone gets used to using yahoopay for online payment in the future, regardless of other profits brought by this online payment tool, it is just The tens of billions of float interest stored in the account by users can bring huge profits to Yahoo.
Seeing the yahoopay payment tool, Eric couldn't help but think of Amazon. After Yahoo launched the $100 million angel investment plan, Eric quickly found Jeff Bezos' name in a pile of project application documents , and specifically told Yahoo's angel investment department to give the green light to this project. [ㄨ]
However, in the end, Jeff Bezos was only willing to sell 10% of the shares in exchange for Yahoo’s US$500,000 investment as initial capital. It is conceivable that the 10% shares held by Yahoo will also follow Jeff Jeff Bezos' further funding was gradually diluted away.
Eric is well aware of the principle of chewing too much, so he will not allow Yahoo to be too bloated. Whether it is now or in the future, Yahoo's core business will be placed on basic Internet services such as portals, search engines, and e-mail. In fact, the profit model will also mainly rely on advertising. Not too much involved in e-commerce. Even Eric's planned Yahoo Music Store. It will also be run by a separate Yahoo Electronics division. but. Although Yahoo won't be involved in this business too much, there is still a lot to be done in investing in e-commerce websites. What's more, since he has encountered the budding Amazon, Eric certainly can't let it go easily.
Marking Amazon's name in the document with a pencil, Eric looked up and was about to say something when he saw Caroline avoiding her eyes in a panic.
Looking at Caroline's little red face. Eric realized that this girl was peeking at him just now. As a normal man, he did not lack the vanity of being noticed by the opposite sex, but he just smiled, knowing that Caroline was thin-skinned and did not make fun of him, and said: "Caroline, help me prepare a copy of Amazon's materials, and also give me a copy of their original planning book, oh. Amazon, you know?"
Caroline saw that Eric didn't tease herself. And talking about the business, the shy mood calmed down, and he nodded: "Is it the online book sales website founded by Jeff Bezos?"
"Well, by the way, make an appointment and I'll talk to him in person."
As Eric said, he lowered his head and flipped through the schedule for the next few days. His schedule during the day must have been fully booked, leaving only the night. On the night of the 10th, there was a reception for executives of technology companies who came to attend the annual meeting. On the evening of the 11th, it was a gathering of executives in the Firefly system. Continue to scroll down. After 8:00 pm on the 12th, there was nothing else to do, so I looked up. Caroline said: "On the night of the 12th, from 8:00 to 9:00, just choose the location in the hotel where I'm staying."
"Okay, Eric," Caroline nodded, took out a memo and wrote it down. Her memory is very good, but she still prepared a plan very carefully according to most people's work habits. This little memo.
After finishing writing, Caroline raised her head and asked, "Eric, then, is there any problem with these materials?"
"No more," Eric shook his head, closed the folder and put it aside, and said, "Also, how about the materials I asked you to prepare about electronic players and e-books?"
"It's almost there. However, regarding the research and development cooperation of micro-hard drives..." Caroline hesitated, and said, "I have called every day this week, but there has been no reply from IBM. They just said that their senior management is still early. discuss."
Although it is temporarily determined to use the small hard drive developed by Toshiba as the storage medium for research and development, Eric still intends to entrust IBM to develop the micro hard drive immediately. In the original time and space, IBM was the first manufacturer to come up with the micro hard drive technology.
Eric frowned and said: "It's been a week, even if you don't plan to cooperate, you should respond?"
Caroline looked at Eric's frowning expression, thought for a while, and said, "Eric, I don't think IBM is a good partner."
"Huh?" Eric looked up, motioning for Caroline to continue.
Caroline said: "IBM has always been a company with a very serious official atmosphere. Their company's decision-making committee even has as many as 38 people. A series of reforms have achieved good results, but this kind of big enterprise disease is impossible to get rid of in a short period of time. Even for partners of the same level, ibm has always been very negligent. I think that even if they finally discuss After the results came out, with IBM's arrogance, it is impossible to agree to our cooperation plan."
Technologies such as batteries and LCD screens for research and development of electronic players and e-books are relatively mature, leaving only the difficulty of storage media. The current capacity of flash memory is too small, leaving only the way of micro-hard drives.
At present, several major hard disk manufacturers have not yet developed micro-hard disks, but with the solid technical accumulation of these manufacturers, it is not too difficult to miniaturize hard disk technology. Eric originally planned to pay a research and development fee, entrust IBM's hard disk department to develop micro-hard drives, and then obtain exclusive rights for several years after the successful development of micro-hard drives, so that possible competitors can be delayed for two to three years . Hearing what Caroline said, Eric also remembered some information about IBM.
It is said that IBM's internal hierarchy is extremely strict, and every executive has a seat corresponding to his own level when holding a meeting, and even the company's internal work clothes have a corresponding level. The strict hierarchical system inevitably leads to the rigidity and slowness of enterprise management. It is no wonder that there has been no response to the cooperation plan sent here for a whole week.
At this time, Eric also realized that IBM is not a good partner. The exclusive rights of the micro hard drive he wanted, in simple terms, means that after IBM completes the research and development of the micro hard drive, Firefly will monopolize the micro hard drive in the next few years. Such a product, ibm is not allowed to sell micro hard drives to other manufacturers. This kind of agreement of entrusting research and development and obtaining possession rights is very common in the cooperation between technology companies, but for a giant like IBM, the chances of Firefly wanting to obtain exclusive rights are very slim.
"I didn't think carefully about this matter," Eric said thinking of this, "Then, which manufacturer do you think we are more suitable to cooperate with?"
"Seagate or Western Digital, these two hard disk companies are located in California, it is very convenient to cooperate, and their technology accumulation is sufficient," Caroline replied: "In addition, Japanese hard disk manufacturers have more advanced technology, but like Toshiba, Hitachi These companies are all involved in the manufacture of electronic products, and if we cooperate with them, it will be easy to compete with us on the same type of electronic products in the future.”
Eric knows that Japanese electronics companies have fallen into decline due to slow transformation after 2000, and have gradually become upstream component suppliers. However, at present, Japanese electronic products maintain a very strong position in the world. It is impossible for Caroline to see what will happen in a few years. She is not wrong to say so.
Eric himself didn't like working with the Japanese, so he said, "Then contact Seagate and Western Digital, follow up on this matter yourself, and try to get the results before the end of July."
"Well, okay," Caroline nodded, and wrote down the matter solemnly. She looked up and saw Eric looking at her, with a slightly red face, and said, "Eric, what's wrong?"
"No, I was just wondering, do you need to write these things down?"
"It's more important to write it down, it's safer."
Eric said: "I think you can chat with Buffett when you have time, he will definitely like you very much. Buffett is the kind of person who can put everything in his head. In the 1980s, Metropolis acquired ab , AB invited an entire investment banking team, but Buffett is the only one at the Metropolis, with all the acquisition information in his head, and he can say it casually if others use a computer to calculate the data for several hours."
"Ah, how can I compare with Mr. Buffett," Caroline said shyly, shaking her head. (To be continued.)