Once the offer of 30 million holding 51% of the shares was made, it was unanimously approved by the Qidian Chinese team. For the founding team of Qidian, this offer was no different than pie in the sky.
At a time when the capital market has not yet matured, and when the business model has not been fully recognized by the market, the Qidian team has been looking for money in the capital market for a long time, but all failed. But now, not only has the money come to their doorstep, but also Much more than what you want.
Therefore, before the person in charge of Qidian could return to Shanghai, he immediately signed a contract with Makino Technology on behalf of the entire team.
There is no need for team due diligence before investment, and there is no need for financial audit before investment. It is done after the investment is completed. Li Mu’s simplicity is simply beyond imagination. The offer was made yesterday, signed today, paid on the same day after signing, and started immediately. Preparing to launch a reading channel on YY.com.
The reason for being so casual is that on the one hand, Li Mu is very confident in the ability of this team, and on the other hand, he really doesn’t have much money, only tens of millions. Simply investing quickly and deciding quickly can also leave a legacy for other entrepreneurial teams in Makino Technology. Give a good impression of being generous with money and quick to pay.
However, giving money casually does not mean that Li Mu does things without careful consideration. At the current stage, it is meaningless to expect online novels to make money. The net profit rate of this industry is so low that it is simply beyond imagination. Let’s take a look at the current business model. Subscriptions are split 5:5 with authors. That is to say, the gross profit margin is 50% of revenue. However, this 50% must bear all the company's operating costs, including personnel salaries, office space, office supplies, financial losses, and corporate taxes. , In the end, there may not be a few percentage points left. In addition, the total volume itself is small, and there is even less hope for profit margins.
However, what Li Mu values is the future of this industry. Behind online novels, it represents an excellent content library, strong user stickiness and broad space for derivative development. Excellent content can have a natural centripetal force on users and promote the platform. It brings huge advantages, and excellent content can greatly enhance users’ loyalty to the platform. At present, although these excellent online literature are only digital texts, in the near future, they will be transformed into a series of books. Powerful and high-quality IP can be exported to film, television, animation, games and other derivative directions, becoming a hot commodity in this field.
In the future, if YY wants to enhance user stickiness, it will be difficult to maintain it solely by relying on short-length, fragmented information and blogs. However, high-quality novels are different. Serialized high-quality novels can create strong stickiness for users, allowing users to read them every day. The advantage of logging into the platform to read is very powerful. In the near future, the reading channel of YY.com will be opened. Only a second-level domain name of Read.yy.com or Book.yy.com is needed to read all the contents of the Qidian Chinese website. Installing it and providing it for all YY users to read will not only increase the content volume of YY network, but also enhance the stickiness of YY users, and promote the rapid development of the entire Internet literature.
Moreover, Makino Imaging’s demand for high-quality IP will continue to increase in the future. Obtaining the high-quality copyright ammunition of Qidian Chinese website in advance will be a great supplement to Makino Imaging’s strength. At the same time, Wanying Real Estate has another upcoming project. For the film and television base project launched, these high-quality IPs can also be quickly digested through the film and television base, a super platform in the film and television industry, forming a whole industry chain.
…
Just when Li Mu was acquiring Qidian Chinese Network at the speed of light, and just when the world media was continuously reporting on his two big plans, Li Mu, who was at the center of public opinion, received the news that Lin Qingya came from the United States.
Li Mu asked Li Ziwei to convey his request to her last time, asking her to investigate two recent key trends of Microsoft according to her own direction, and she has already received a reply.
First of all, it is about the issue of whether to retain employees of Microsoft's original MSN project team.
Lin Qingya conducted a very rigorous investigation of Microsoft through regular investigations and hiring high-end private detectives. After many days of investigation and analysis by the private detective, she came to the following conclusions.
First, when MSN originally announced that it would stop maintenance, all MSN staff were not fired, but were transferred internally within Microsoft;
This is a bit abnormal. According to Microsoft's past routine, it has almost never happened that a business unit is abolished and so many employees are idle without layoffs. Moreover, the internal transfer of so many employees will put pressure on various other departments. It's huge. Microsoft must have put a lot of effort into digesting and absorbing such a large team.
To give the simplest example, KPI assessment indicators alone will have a great negative impact. There are 150 people in Team A, shouldering the labor cost of 100 million US dollars and the performance KPI of 1 billion US dollars. It was no problem to complete it, but suddenly It is required to accept at least 30 employees diverted from other departments, and all of them are highly paid. It will increase the labor cost by at least 20 million US dollars a year, which will have a great impact on the department, and the addition of 30 new employees, especially those who were originally responsible for other areas. Employees will add additional pressure to the department, but will actually slow down the pace of the entire team.
Microsoft is willing to pay such a price and keep these people, which proves that Microsoft's social heart has never died.
Second, some old employees in the MSN system chose to resign because they could not adapt to their new positions. However, as Li Mu guessed, these people have recently returned to Microsoft one after another. This further proves Li Mu's guess that if Microsoft had not If we play the social card again, it will be impossible to summon back these employees who have resigned;
Third, and the most direct proof, private detectives closely monitored and investigated employees of these old MSN divisions and found that their working hours had increased significantly recently.
Among the many private investigations conducted against Microsoft employees, the most representative one is an engineer named Angelou. In the past few days since the private investigators began investigating him, he went to work at 8:30 in the morning and got off work in the evening. It was ten o'clock, which happened to be a weekend. He also worked overtime at the company on Saturday, and also worked from morning to night.
To prove that the man's career trajectory had changed, the private investigators investigated his credit card spending records.
Americans rarely carry cash when they go out. Credit cards and cash checks are the main means of payment. The most commonly used is credit card. A person's credit card consumption record is enough to draw a behavioral portrait of his entire person.
Just a month ago, for several months, Angelou's credit card consumption records showed that he rarely worked overtime. For example, after 6 pm on weekdays, he made credit card purchases almost every day. Moreover, the consumption scenes are entertainment and leisure places such as gas stations, coffee shops, supermarkets, bars, and movie theaters. This proves that this person basically did not work overtime a month ago.
Moreover, statistics on his consumption every weekend in the past few months revealed that he often flew from Seattle to San Francisco on Friday night, and then flew back to Seattle from San Francisco on Sunday night. Private investigators continued to investigate. , and found that Angelou’s wife and children had settled in San Francisco, so he would go back to San Francisco every weekend to spend time with his wife and children.
However, from more than a month ago until now, Angelou has not flown to San Francisco again. Why? Because he works overtime at Microsoft headquarters every Saturday.
Interestingly, the private investigators also made a very unexpected discovery. In order to obtain the entire chain of clues, they reversely checked Angelou’s wife to see if she would come to Seattle to accompany Angelou every week. The result It was discovered that in more than a month, Angelou’s wife had only been to Seattle once, but her credit card had booked five rooms at a local high-end hotel in San Francisco, each time for a superior room worth hundreds of dollars a night. , and every time I went there to have a tryst with her, it was actually her fitness instructor.
All in all, the evidence chain at the personnel level is very obvious. According to Li Mu's nuclear weapons logic, each of them is Microsoft's uranium reserve. Now, they have all been mined by Microsoft. This proves that Microsoft is indeed going to do something in the nuclear field. article;
Secondly, it is an investigation into Microsoft's recent actions in data processing centers, computer rooms, and bandwidth, and the results also have very clear findings.
An offshore company actually controlled by Microsoft has invested US$200 million in Chicago to build three large data processing centers. Three more data processing centers are under construction in Texas. At the same time, this company has also cooperated with a number of providers. The data processing service company signed an agreement and locked in a large amount of computer room and bandwidth redundancy.
Microsoft is different from Makino Technology. Makino Technology's core product is to link users around the world together through text, voice, video and music and hobbies. In this case, Makino Technology has a huge demand for data processing capabilities. , in contrast, after Microsoft discontinued MSN, its products were mostly tool software. Users of these software did not need to interconnect with each other. They only needed to connect with the headquarters to ensure updates and daily information exchange, so their demand for data processing capabilities It's several levels worse than Makino Technology.
Makino Technology is like an electrolytic aluminum super factory with the world's largest output. It consumes so much electricity that it has to invest in building multiple power plants around the world to reduce costs and ensure power supply. But Microsoft is like an electrolytic aluminum factory with the world's largest output. The demand for electricity in a beef production base is far less terrible than that of electrolytic aluminum. However, for such a company whose main business is cattle raising, it has built multiple power plants. There must be some ulterior secret in this.
This is Li Mu's second basis for judging Microsoft's actions. It has been confirmed that Microsoft is mining uranium ore, and it is certain that Microsoft has invested a huge amount of electricity. Even if he has not seen thousands of centrifuges hidden in the dark, he can still be sure. What Microsoft wants to do is nuclear weapons!
After his judgment was confirmed, Li Mu immediately found Chen Tong, and the first thing he said when they met was to ask him: "How is the development of Twitter?!"
(End of chapter)