Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1537 The Ship Has Already Sailed Away
It's not just the Internet that's magical, it's also Netscape as a company.

Ronald saw that when the official version of the Navigator browser was released, almost every USENET user downloaded a copy.

Although they claim to charge commercial users $99 per copy, employees of commercial users can also download it as personal users. I think no one would spend this money except for some listed companies that need to comply with regulations.

What’s even more amazing is that the company’s chief programmer is Marc Anderson, but the largest shareholder is Ronald’s old acquaintance, Jim Clark, the founder of SGI server company, which used to produce computers designed specifically for movie special effects.

The founder of SGI left the company he founded for an unclear reason, and then soon founded Netscape, hiring some programmers led by Marc Anderson to start the browser business.

What’s even more amazing is that when Ronald approached Jim Clark and expressed his willingness to invest in his company, he was rejected.

"Ronald, this is not a company a movie director should get involved in. I already have a solid plan for this and will list it quickly, so I will not bring in more investors before the IPO. If you are optimistic, you can buy shares after the company goes public. Soon, you will be able to find a trading code on NASDAQ probably next year..."

"I don't understand, why do you refuse investment?" Ronald didn't understand. In Hollywood, the more investment, the better, right? You have raised 50 million yuan for the filming of the movie with the star lineup, and suddenly a rich man wants to invest another 10 million yuan in you. Your reaction must be, great!
"This is not the way the new round of games in Silicon Valley is played, Ronald. I would say this is a disruptive innovation. Our business model is unprecedented and you can't understand it unless you see it. In short, we don't need more investment before we go public. If you want to come, come and have a look, but I have to tell you in advance that everyone, including Mark, is preparing for the next version of the update, and you won't find anyone to talk to you."

"It doesn't matter. I'm just going to study. Will you wait for me there?"

"Me? I can give you ten minutes. As you know, my yacht is in the design stage and can be built after the IPO..."

Ronald's curiosity as a film director had not yet been extinguished. Jim Clark's almost contemptuous remarks had aroused his ambition to learn more about his unknown areas.

After making an appointment, Ronald took a bus to the location of Netscape in Silicon Valley.

"Come and see my ideas for the new yacht." Jim Clark has swept away the nervous and dissatisfied look he had when he was at SGI. Now he is in high spirits, as if he has already obtained the huge wealth brought by the IPO.

Before Ronald came, he learned from some people that the majority of Netscape's shares were still in the hands of Jim Clark, a small portion was owned by Marc Anderson, and their team of programmers were given options.

This is a phenomenon rarely seen in other industries. How can all employees have stock options?
But Ronald did not say anything. Instead, he showed Jim Clark some respect. After talking about yachts, Jim Clark finally invited Mark Anderson to come out. Then he said to Ronald, "You have five minutes to ask him three questions. The team is racing against time. If it weren't for your reputation as an old customer of SGI, I would not let Mark be distracted."

"Huh?" Ronald didn't know how to answer. He looked at Mark Anderson, a tall man with a baby face.

"Jim told me that Netscape doesn't need financing for the lawsuit, but I see that your download servers are often down due to the overwhelming demand. Isn't now a good time to introduce investment?"

"Hey, hey, hey, this is not a question you should ask him, Ronald." Jim Clark was upset when he heard Ronald sabotage him, and he interrupted him immediately. Then he took over the conversation, "We already have the only financing we need, KPCG (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), they are veterans in Silicon Valley, and they know what Netscape needs most now...Okay, you have two more questions."

"OK, I see your browser is free to download and use, but of course I bought the floppy disk version for $40. I mean, obviously not many people would buy a paid license when it's free, so how do you make money?"

"Well, Jim, we do need some additional servers." Mark Anderson finally got a chance to speak. The first thing he did was to ask Jim for more resources, which was a disguised denial of his first answer.

"This is a completely new business model, and you'll have to say that in the future, Mark. As for your question, Ronald, I think it's hard to understand for someone as lacking in imagination as you. But you'll understand it next year."

"Okay, I have a third question." Ronald understood that Jim Clark didn't want Mark Anderson to talk. What if the young man leaked his secret? It seemed that Jim Clark arranged for Mark Anderson to appear on Wired magazine. He wanted to promote the young man to become the company's idol spokesperson, while he hid from the public's attention and operated behind the scenes.

This may be the "experience" he learned after being suspected of being kicked out of SGI.

"Ask a nice question, otherwise..."

"Jim, the third question is, what kind of yacht do you want to buy?" Ronald asked half-jokingly.

"Ah, hahaha. People in Hollywood are really interesting. I can only say that this is a yacht that combines classicism and modernity, tradition and innovation... I tell you, you want to invest, that's great, but this ship has already sailed away. You can still get on the next one, just wait for the company's IPO..."

Jim Clark bragged about the boat he wanted and how Netscape was breaking the rules, and then he was about to leave with Ronald. Ronald said he wanted to go to the bathroom, and when he came out, he saw Marc Andreessen and asked him if there was a chance to go out for a cup of coffee.

But before Jim could stop him, Mark Anderson himself refused, saying that his team had been working overtime a lot, and now was a critical moment, and they had to run faster than all their competitors...

Ronald was still not giving up, and when he saw another employee coming out of the restroom, he asked him how long he would work overtime and when he would go home, hoping to have a chat with him halfway.

As a result, the other party immediately expressed his loyalty to Jim Clark. He said that he was originally a programmer who came to California from the Midwest and only earned six dollars an hour. It was Jim who gave him stock options (although he didn't know what they were) and a high salary that he had never thought of.

So they all have a mentality of "a man will die for his friend". Let alone working overtime, in fact, he bought a sleeping bag and slept in the office. He didn't even buy a mattress for the new house he rented. It would be boring to go back, so he might as well sleep here.

When Ronald heard about the overtime, he wanted to empathize with him and said that he often had to work overtime as a director. But after hearing this scary story of living in the company 24 hours a day, he opened his mouth but said nothing. He only thought to himself, "Working overtime like this is immoral... No entertainment, only work, it will only make Jack stupid."

However, Marc Anderson's words still inspired him. Ronald suddenly thought that the reason why these programmers worked so hard was that they all had options. In order to increase the value of the listed stocks, they also had to update the version quickly and use superhuman work intensity to defeat all competitors in the bud.

Moreover, the browser does not seem to be difficult to develop, and Netscape only has a very small team. It seems that Jim Clark also saw this, so he wanted to quickly occupy the market with free means and then quickly go to market...

This can prevent multiple rounds of financing from diluting his equity, and avoid SGI having to raise funds in multiple rounds due to too much heavy asset investment, and eventually losing his position as a founder.

But is it really impossible to find software engineers who can replace them in this market? Ronald thought, there must be someone who wants to catch up with them, and investing in them is also a way? You give me financing, and then I will find your competitors to invest.

"There really aren't any software engineers who can write browsers. I never thought I'd be discussing this with a movie director one day."

Ronald called the largest headhunting company in the California IT industry. After paying a consulting fee, the other party also gave Ronald the bottom line. This browser is a new thing. Netscape Navigator originally had a prototype software called Mosaic Browser. It was developed by Marc Andreessen and his friends at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

However, because he left NCSA and accepted investment from Jim Clark, he could not use the source code of the Mosaic browser, so he and his team rewrote it according to the functions of the Mosaic browser.

In other words, all the software engineers in the world who could develop browsers were recruited by Netscape.

Moreover, they are eager to work overtime in the office 24 hours a day, so you can't find any opportunities to poach them. And no other startup can promise those options.

Ronald had to give up the idea of ​​investing in Jim Clark's competitor. He felt that the old man seemed to have considered everything. His biggest reliance was to update quickly, quickly expand the market base, and then go public before everyone reacted. After the protection period, he could take advantage of it and leave. At that time, his yacht designer could also be free to start designing and building his beloved yacht.

"Well, it's not like there's no one in this world who can compete with him..."

Ronald thought about it for a long time and finally thought of someone.

……

"Bill, this is what I call a navigator. Look at this IMDb page. Remember the CD commercial you shot yourself? You were at a high altitude, comparing the size of a stack of documents to a CD that could store the same content.

I think browsers and the like will be more convenient than CDs in the future. With IMDb, I can find all the movies and TV series an actor has starred in, as well as information about other actors who have worked with him, by just clicking on it...."

Ronald called to make an appointment to meet with Bill Gates of Microsoft. He demonstrated the browser to Bill and opened Jackie Chan's page in IMDb to show him the convenience of hyperlinks, because other actors' pages were not as rich as his.

"I didn't expect it to have come to this point. Was he the one who wrote and uploaded all this information?"

Bill Gates certainly knew what the WWW and hyperlinked text (HTML) were. He was surprised that so much information could be available for people to browse so quickly.

He immediately made a note of the matter and asked his secretary to prepare and issue a meeting notice. He would talk to everyone about this matter at the meeting. The development of online content seemed to be faster than expected. Microsoft needed to follow up on the browser issue to see if it was possible to cooperate with the other party, acquire it, or if these two options failed, make a browser to compete.

"Hey, Ronald, when can we play bridge together? I've played it with Warren Buffett several times before. It's a very interesting sport. It involves both competition and cooperation. You also have to make decisions and accept challenges with incomplete information. It's very similar to running a business."

"Of course, I'll ask someone if there are any professional players who can partner with our clients..."

What Ronald was talking about is a way for professional bridge players to make extra money, by partnering with amateurs, whom the professionals call clients, and they have to pay to participate in the competition.

"Oh, that's boring. I think if we want to participate in a competitive game like this, we should just play as partners..."

"Sure, no problem." Ronald's mind turned. He knew that some people in China, due to some historical reasons, were good at playing bridge. It would not be difficult for him to find a partner, and it would also enhance the friendship between China and the United States.

"But you can't call it sport. Sport is at least... uh, at least something like table tennis, right?" Ronald looked at Bill Gates's lack of exercise and thought for several seconds before coming up with a suitable example.

"I'm good at table tennis, we can have a competition."

"You? I don't believe it..."

Ronald and Bill were both very competitive people, so they immediately went to Microsoft's table tennis room. It turned out that Bill Gates was quite good among ordinary people, and his hand-eye coordination was better than Ronald had imagined.

But he was quickly defeated by Ronald's spinning skill.

"Well, I play table tennis mainly for relaxation. It's a very interesting sport."

"If you want to learn, I can teach you." Ronald smiled and taught Bill two moves of serve spin and serve receiving attack, which made Gates very happy.

"If you really care so much about the browser, I think you could also buy some Microsoft stock." Bill Gates often recommended his company's stock to Warren Buffett, but no matter how their relationship was, Buffett always declined on the grounds that he didn't understand the software business and refused to buy a single share.

Now he also wanted to try it on Ronald, his friend who worked in a different industry.

"Really? Okay, I'll ask my broker to increase my holdings when I get back. I actually have some Microsoft stock. It's a pity that I didn't buy more before. Microsoft was very generous in its several splits..."

Among the stocks Ronald bought, Microsoft had the most splits. In less than four years into the 1990s, it split four times, twice splitting one for two and twice splitting two for three.

"Hahaha, that ship has already sailed away. Now you can get on this one."