San Francisco Bay Area.

Headquarters of Egret, near Stanford University in Palo Alto.

Simon arrived in San Francisco on April 23, and a conference room in the company's office building was occupied, and people were in and out to attend the meeting every day.

In addition to the senior management of Igrit, Steve Case, CEO of AOL headquartered on the East Coast, and others flew here. Occasionally, executives from companies such as Cisco, Oracle, SUN and Microsoft were invited to participate in the discussion, and in the end, even the Bay Area media noticed this.

Simon did not disappoint the media. On the second day of his trip to San Francisco, it released a valuable news that Westeros will invest an additional $50 million in exchange for another 50% of the shares of American Online.

After the transaction was concluded, Westeros' shareholding in AOL increased from 25% to 75%, achieving absolute control.

Speaking of which, this matter has been promoted since Simon came to San Francisco.

In the next few years, Simon's layout in the Internet field may lose his original initiative if he takes a wrong step. Therefore, he must ensure absolute control over the most important part of his layout.

In order to achieve this goal, James Rebled made a strong statement when the offer was initiated. If other shareholders of AOL do not agree to this capital injection, Westeros will withdraw from AOL and instead support other similar companies.

Steve Case and other American Online executives and shareholders did not agree with Westeros's request to suddenly forcefully expand their shareholding ratio.

However, because Simon did not require wholly-owned holdings, he also retained 25% of the shares for the original shareholders. In addition, Westeros Company's firm attitude and weighed the pros and cons, American Online still accepted Westeros Company's conditions.

After completing this capital injection, the US Online headquarters will also move to San Francisco from the East Coast.

In a villa in the Woodside Mountains in the western suburbs of Palo Alto, after a week of meetings and discussions, Simon still did not return to Los Angeles on Saturday, April 28.

As noon approached, James Rebeld took a car to this mountain mansion, and Jennifer welcomed his father into the villa in the courtyard.

The father and daughter went upstairs, in a study room on the second floor that seemed somewhat empty. Simon was standing in front of a large writing board with his arms in his arms, thinking about something. The white writing board was densely written with black water pens.

James Rebled roughly scanned it on the whiteboard.

Portal websites, instant messaging, emails, personal homepages, online news, e-commerce, online forums, online games, cloud computing, big data, search engines, firewalls, online payments...

Some words James can see clearly at a glance, while others make him confused.

It was not until many years later, when many of the ideas on this whiteboard were realized one by one, that James Rebeld truly understood how valuable the various ideas on the whiteboard were.

Seeing that his daughter did not disturb Simon's thinking at all, she looked at the young man in front of her with some admiration. James Rebel sighed in his heart that the girl was extroverted and had to cough lightly in person.

Simon heard the movement behind him, turned around, smiled and reached out: "Good noon, Jim."

After shook hands with Simon, James signaled to the whiteboard and said, "This is the result of your discussion with everyone recently."

"Some are, some are not," Simon said. "For the time being, only a small part of it can be implemented."

Simon said, giving in to his body, James took another step forward and looked at the blackboard in front of him closer.

James Rebled has fully proved his personal ability in recent years. Simon did not hide most of the matter from him. He took the initiative to point to some keywords he had bet on, saying: "In the next few years, Egret will focus on portals, emails, personal homepages, online news, online forums and online games with the cooperation of American Online. Some of the functions Egret started to develop last year, and you must know."

James nodded.

The portal website is basically the graphical interface browser homepage setting that IGRENT has named IE (Internet Explorer), acting as the portal guide for Internet surfing.

However, James also knows that the Internet content is very scarce now, and the portal website that Simon envisions still needs to independently produce a lot of content.

In comparison, email is a very practical feature developed by Egret.

Hollywood has a very large demand for email delivery. Major studios and talent agency companies have their own special email mailrooms. The first step for employees of talent agency companies to join is to intern in the email mailroom.

If the email system can be promoted to these companies, the office convenience of these companies can be greatly enhanced.

The Malibu Daenerys Cinema, which will be officially launched next month, has specially customized the Egret company's email system. James found that if this business can be promoted, it will definitely become the revenue focus of Egret company in the next few years.

Any company that wants to grow and grow requires solid revenue and profit as support.

Thinking of this, James said: "In addition to Egret's basic software services, e-mail, online news and online games can all adopt a paid model. Portals, personal homepages and online forums rely on advertising revenue, but this requires the Internet users to reach a sufficient size, and there is probably no hope in recent years. Moreover, Simon, if you plan to licensing the World Wide Web technology, these applications developed by Egret are easily imitated."

"It's better to have competition. If a company lacks competitors, it is destined to fall into a state of being unprofitable and will not benefit its own development." Simon said in a relaxed tone: "Also, we have already taken the lead. If we lose to our competitors with so many advantages, we can only blame ourselves."

As a professional manager, James Rebled has advised Simon to limit the authorization of World Wide Web technology for the benefit of employers more than once, or to adopt a fee model, just like some other commercial networks that have begun to operate now.

However, Simon understood that in the original time and space, the World Wide Web was officially opened for free in 1993, which promoted the explosion of the Internet industry. Whether it was Cisco, American Online or Yahoo, they all rose rapidly under this background.

If the authorization of the World Wide Web is restricted or the charging model is adopted, then this technology is likely to be gradually eliminated like other charging networks.

The two chatted for a while, and they went downstairs together until Jennifer reminded that lunch was ready.

Sitting in the restaurant, James saw the two tall girls who came in to deliver lunch, and couldn't help but look at his daughter who was sitting quietly next to Simon in awe.

You have to fight, silly girl.

Simon waited for the maid to leave the restaurant, picked up the cutlery and asked James, "How is the conversation going on in Cisco?"

According to the original development trajectory, Cisco should have been launched in February this year.

However, due to Westeros' intervention, Cisco's IPO has been delayed to the present.

After completing its absolute holdings in AOL, James's focus immediately turned to Cisco.

Cisco's equity composition is also very simple now. Founders Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lener hold 30% of the shares, Sequoia Capital holds 30% of the shares, Westeros Holds 15% of the shares, and the other two Silicon Valley Ventures hold 15% and 10% of the shares respectively.

Therefore, this is an equity structure that is very easy to privatize.

In addition to Westeros and its founder Bosack and his wife, venture capital institutions such as Sequoia Capital prefer to cash out as soon as possible because of their operating nature rather than holding shares in a company for a long time. Therefore, when companies such as Apple, Cisco, Oracle, etc. that Sequoia Capital, which have been invested in before and after, rose, Sequoia Capital has long been no longer among the major shareholders of these companies.

The operating nature of venture capital such as Sequoia Capital also gives Westeros the opportunity to directly buy more equity in Cisco.

In fact, the reason why various shareholders agreed to Westeros’ request to delay the IPO was largely due to this consideration.

According to the provisions of the federal Securities Law, after a company goes public, there are many restrictions on the reduction of holdings of major shareholders.

Although the equity can still be sold through private transfers, no one can determine the specific trend of a company after the IPO. Maybe for some reasons, the market value after the company goes public will be lower than that under the privatization state.

After ending negotiations with American Online shareholders, James began to contact the acquisition with a group of Cisco shareholders.

Hearing Simon's question, James let go of his worries about his daughter and said, "The three Sequoia Capital companies all agreed to sell half of their equity to us. If we complete this transaction, our holdings in Cisco will increase to 42.5%. However, there is a better opportunity now."

Simon nodded, waiting for James to continue, and did not rush to ask about the price.

Regardless of whether it is listed or not, with Simon's current strength, it will be fine even if he completely buys Cisco. The company's current revenue is only about 50 million US dollars. According to some previous estimates, even if it is listed, its market value will be about 300 million US dollars.

$300 million, whether it is to mobilize some funds from overseas or continue to adopt a bank loan model, it is easy for Westeros.

Therefore, Simon is not very concerned about how much money he spends. He believes that James will not let himself suffer. Moreover, considering Cisco's development prospects, it is definitely worth it now even if it pays a 100% or even more premium.

James continued: "That's right, Cisco founder Leonard Bosack, has recently become increasingly bad with Cisco CEO John Merridge. Several venture capitalists are also very dissatisfied with Bosack. He is likely to be kicked out of the company by the board of directors in the near future."

When Simon heard James say this, he immediately remembered something.

In memory, because of the conceptual conflict between founders Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lener and Cisco shareholders and management, the two left Cisco one after another in 1990, and then the two sold most of their shares.

James's subsequent words proved this: "I have been in contact with the Bosacks, and they probably expected that leaving the company would be inevitable, so they are considering selling their shares."

Simon stopped eating and said, "Are you all?"

James shook his head and said, "It would be only half of it. If we weren't interested in this company and other private equity took action, Sequoia Capital would definitely be happy to cash out early and leave the market. Now, because Westeros intervenes, other shareholders have more expectations for Cisco. So, they will not let go completely. Of course, on the other hand, there is no big obstacle for us to get control of this company."

Simon immediately understood.

Westeros has become a golden sign because of Simon's rapid rise in wealth in just a few years. Now, most of the companies involved in Westeros have gained a lot of benefits from this halo.

Therefore, neither Cisco nor AOL shareholders will insist on controlling the two companies for the sake of interests, because they believe that giving control to Simon should be able to obtain more profits. Similarly, in order to obtain more profits in the future, they will naturally not completely let go of their holdings of the company's equity.

This phenomenon actually began in the process of Simon's acquisition of Gucci.

After all, there are not many people in this world who are fools.

Even Bill Gates and Paul Allen agreed to transfer 10% of Westeros, as well as Intel and other companies that continued to increase their holdings in Westeros, have not rebounded much, which is basically the reason.

Simon actually never thought of holding these companies completely.

For companies such as Microsoft and Intel, Simon's holdings are mainly for investment purposes. He is very clear about the future development potential of these companies, but he knows that he does not have the experience and ability to manage these companies and does not intend to compete for control of these companies at all. In order to express this attitude, after completing the increase in Microsoft, Simon directly authorized the voting rights of the shares he held to Bill Gates.

However, Simon intends to be fully in control of Cisco, AOL and Igrit.

Three companies, Cisco is a network equipment provider, USA Online is a network service provider, and Igrit is a network content provider, which actually represents a complete Internet industry chain.

If Simon wanted to do this ten years later, he would definitely face strong antitrust pressure. The federal government would not allow him to master these three industrial giants that could influence the Internet industry structure. At that time, he probably did not have enough capital to control these three companies.

Now, similar resistance does not exist.

The Internet industry is in full swing, and some people can see the development prospects of this new technology field, but no one can be sure of how large it can develop.

Simon is now starting to make plans. When the Internet industry develops to a peak at the end of the century, his control over the three companies will become an established fact.

Moreover, although absolute holding is needed now, Simon does not intend to firmly control most of the equity of these three companies like Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and all three companies are going to conduct IPOs.

At that time, even if there is an antitrust investigation again, as long as you make a plan in advance and win over enough allies, the three companies should be under much less pressure than Microsoft.
Chapter completed!