In the two days since Li Mu went to Los Angeles, several venture capital firms headed by Sequoia had become a little unable to hold back.
He had been marveling at the rising data of Makino Technology, but then he turned around and ran to Hollywood again. He casually attended a well-known director's charity dinner and immediately became the focus of attention in the entire United States.
As Li Mu becomes the focus of society, the number of users of YY and "Paradise Town" will continue to surge. The increase in the number of users will inevitably increase the turnover of the entire platform.
For Makino Technology now, the number of users and revenue are the key factors that affect valuation.
If Makino Technology is allowed to cleanse all the netizens around the world and make them all YY users, then Makino Technology may even become the most valuable Internet company in the world.
The most important reason why the industry has given such high estimates to Makino Technology and YY is that YY's user stickiness is too high, and the user payment ratio is also terrifyingly high.
Such a product is almost invincible in this era. Even if other products can achieve the user scale of YY, they will never be able to achieve the payment revenue of YY. MSN and ICQ have never touched on value-added services. To put it bluntly, when the user base of such a product is at its peak, the overall revenue cannot reach 1% of YY’s current overall revenue. There are simply too many ways for Li Mu to make money, and he wins because YY users are willing to add value to his complicated payment. Pay for services.
The spread of YY around the world is now staggering. Many Internet companies and analysts believe that YY is most likely to become the first super software to cover global Internet users. In this way, it is very likely that Standing at the position of the world's number one Internet company, for such a company, venture capital has completely lost its previous arrogance, and all they can think about is getting investment in Makino Technology as soon as possible.
The C round is definitely the last round of financing for Makino Technology. Li Mu will definitely send it to Nasdaq in the next step, so now is the last chance for venture capital to get on board.
Sequoia's top executives have been hesitant about the final offer. The valuation of US$22 billion has long been a thing of the past. When Li Mu conquered the national audience at Harvard, Makino Technology's valuation has been lowered several times in a row. A daily limit, this kind of extremely important good news, some companies will never encounter it once in their lifetime.
Just before Sequoia executives were about to come up with a $30 billion offer, it happened to be the time when Li Mugang left Hollywood and returned to Silicon Valley. Anne Hathaway, who was in Hollywood, accepted an interview with the authoritative Hollywood magazine "The Hollywood Reporter" and the Hollywood Reporter A joint interview with a television station.
In this exclusive interview, most of the questions asked by the media about Anne Hathaway were related to Li Mu.
There is no way. The American people are now particularly concerned about the emotional problems of this little American princess. Everyone is looking forward to the moment when she and Li Mu confirm their relationship. Although Li Mu's Makino Technology represents a victory for the Chinese Internet industry in the United States, it is For the American people, if Li Mu can fall in love with an American girl, it will be a victory for the American people to a certain extent.
Media reporters asked Anne Hathaway many questions related to Li Mu, such as how she met Li Mu, her impression of Li Mu, their relationship, and how they will develop in the future.
Anne Hathaway did not dare to talk nonsense to the media, so she answered every question very carefully. For example, she had just met Li Mu and was not familiar with her. As for her impression of Li Mu, she used the word "admiration" more This word completely describes Li Mu as his biggest idol.
Seeing Anne Hathaway clarifying her relationship with Li Mu, a reporter from "The Hollywood Reporter" couldn't help but ask her: "Don't you have any plans to develop further with Li Mu?"
Anne Hathaway didn't know how to answer this pointed question for a while. After much deliberation, she finally could only say: "I have no plans in this regard. Besides, we are just ordinary friends who have met twice. As for whether we will meet in the future Anyway, I prefer to let nature take its course.”
The reporter asked her: "We have only met twice, so have you exchanged contact information?"
"Of course." Anne Hathaway said: "We added each other as YY friends."
Anne Hathaway inexplicably made a media broadcast for YY, which greatly increased YY's popularity again.
After part of Anne Hathaway's interview was broadcast on television, it was like the straw that broke the camel's back. Sequoia's board of directors could no longer sit still.
The exposure of YY in the entire Western society is simply continuous and ubiquitous. Under this situation, it is impossible to wait for the topic of YY in the Western world to cool down. Under this situation, the longer we wait, the estimate of Makino Technology will be The value will be higher.
The day after Li Mu returned to Silicon Valley, Ding Zhenglin told him that Sequoia had adjusted its offer again. This time, Sequoia Capital gave Makino Technology a valuation of US$30 billion.
$30 billion!
As long as Li Mu nods, three billion US dollars in cash will be credited immediately. This money will be of great significance to Li Mu's future world Internet strategic map.
Li Mu was almost ready to agree, but suddenly he thought of something he had ignored.
A Yahoo reporter criticized himself at Harvard's media conference. His promise to build an English portal and vigorously develop YY mailboxes has not yet been fulfilled.
So Li Mu immediately made two decisions.
First, immediately spend a lot of money to dig up the content teams of English portals such as Yahoo. This is really a lot of money. Directly give them more than five times the salary to ensure that a strong English content operation team is quickly acquired. As long as the content team arrives, directly open one on YY.com. The English version can meet the needs of the English portal, and the launch is just around the corner;
Second, immediately shut down YY Mail’s support for sending and receiving to Yahoo Mail;
The first one still takes time to implement step by step, but the second one comes so easily.
Li Mu wants to use tough tactics to force email users to take sides.
YY's mailbox function is indeed very powerful, and its role for business people is simply irreplaceable. YY's email reminder function alone is extremely convenient, not to mention that it is embedded with a complete set of sending and receiving functions similar to Foxmail, as well as YY's exclusive online Preview function, in this case, even if YY users do not register YY mailbox, they will definitely use YY mailbox to send and receive other mailboxes. YY users who use Yahoo mailbox can directly add their own Yahoo mailbox to YY mailbox, so that Use Yahoo Mail on YY and use the full set of functions of YY Mail.
However, when YY stopped supporting the sending and receiving of Yahoo mailboxes, YY users of Yahoo mailboxes could no longer use YY's own mailbox-related functions to support their own Yahoo mailboxes.
This move is Li Mu's way of taking a hit from Yahoo. If YY users who use Yahoo Mail want to continue to use YY's powerful support for mailbox functions, they must change Yahoo Mail and choose any other mailbox besides Yahoo.
Therefore, Makino Technology announced: "Due to technical problems with the internal interface of YY Mailbox, it is currently unable to support sending and receiving on behalf of Yahoo Mailbox. Please inform all users!"
Makino Technology did not say that it deliberately blocked the support for Yahoo mailboxes, but used the all-purpose rhetoric of "technical problems", mainly to gain an understanding. I did not intentionally stop supporting Yahoo mailboxes. It just had to stop due to technical issues, and I have absolutely no idea when it will resume, maybe tomorrow, maybe not next year.
This kind of rhetoric is basically impeccable, because if you say this, even if the whole world knows that Makino Technology is intentional, no one can accuse Makino Technology of doing anything wrong.
The mailbox sending and receiving function is a free additional function of YY Mailbox. Makino Technology itself is not obliged to provide 100% support for the sending and receiving function. If some mailboxes cannot be supported due to technical reasons and the service for certain mailboxes is suspended, It's completely reasonable and legal.
As soon as the Makino Technology announcement was launched, Yahoo immediately realized the huge influence of Makino Technology.
Currently, about 40% of Yahoo mailbox users use the sending and receiving function of YY mailbox to facilitate all their operational needs for Yahoo mailbox within YY’s software environment. Now that YY has stopped supporting Yahoo mailbox, these 40% The user was immediately stunned.
Yahoo's stock price fell by 7% in one fell swoop because of this incident, which shows the importance of email services in the entire Yahoo system.
YY is Li Mu's closed ecological product. He allows YY Mailbox to support sending and receiving for other mailboxes, which is equivalent to opening up a small gap in YY's closed ecosystem. However, for Yahoo Mail users, they want the superior experience of YY Mailbox. , I had to immediately give up Yahoo mailbox, register for other mailboxes, and gradually transfer to other mailboxes.
Faced with an ultra-high viscosity product like YY, those users who had to choose one of the two almost all chose YY. As a result, Yahoo Mail users lost a huge amount!
A large number of Yahoo mailbox users began to migrate their mailboxes to other platforms, and this was just the beginning of Li Mu's fight against Yahoo. Not only the mailbox, everyone was still waiting for Li Mu to fulfill all his promises, which is Yahoo's bigger treasure. Sub-portal.
Makino Technology subsequently issued an open recruitment letter to recruit high-paying website content personnel across the United States. Although Makino Technology did not clearly state the purpose of recruiting website content personnel, everyone knew that Li Mu was really going to build the English version of YY.com. Once YY The English version is online, and with YY’s pop-up window, Li Mu can almost monopolize the traffic resources.
Li Mu's approach made the entire American Internet applaud, because everyone had seen the scene when the Yahoo reporter criticized Li Mu, and they all felt that the Yahoo reporter was a little too arrogant. Now Li Mu suddenly fought back in anger, which is particularly in line with the United States. People's values, they are just looking forward to YY to bring some greater impact to Yahoo, so that Yahoo will know the price of arrogance and arrogance.
As a result, online public opinion criticized Yahoo, saying that Yahoo brought it upon itself this time, and indeed echoed what Li Mu said at the press conference: "It is impossible for Yahoo to affect Makino Technology now. On the contrary, Makino There are many aspects of technology that can impact Yahoo!”
(End of chapter)