Chapter 139 Windfall
After taking a shower, Tommy walked out of the bathroom without wrapping the towel. Anyway, Jason had already gone to the SSD General Assembly, and there was no one else in the dormitory.
He opened the refrigerator in the dormitory, only to find that the food inside had gone bad. At this time, he was reminding him and Jason with a black and rotten appearance that they hadn't opened the refrigerator for a long time.
Tommy took out the last can of beer from inside, and as soon as he opened the tab, Charles pushed open the door and walked in. He just took a sip of the beer in Tommy's hand and said, "Thank you, Mr. Exhibitionist."
"You're welcome, because you snatched it, and I didn't intend to give it to you. It was the last can of beer in the refrigerator." Tommy sighed: "What happened?"
When Charles heard the last can, he didn't bother to explain to Tommy, so he chose to drink it all up, and then said: "It's nothing, our SSD Stanford branch just received a donation from an alumni, 100,000 yuan, so you'd better **** it Put on your clothes and come with me to thank the other party at the door."
"Master Chairman, I don't have any position in SSD right now. I'm a rookie, okay?" Tommy heaved a sigh of relief when he heard that it was a donation from an alumni, and he fell on the bed and closed his eyes: "Just let me sleep for half an hour, I'm going to call Florida in half an hour, please go easy on your feet when you go out."
Organizations such as fraternities can hire lawyers and have funds to organize various large-scale activities, mainly relying on donations from members after graduation. The annual membership fees paid by members of the school are only enough to pay the rent of Stanford University and hire cooks and Just cleaners.
If the alumni who are too far away send a check to donate, SSD can only call to thank them, but if the alumni donate near Silicon Valley, SSD will organize a group of members to come to thank them, and everyone will sit down and have a meal or drink some wine and chat. Talk about the difference between SSD today and when the other party was studying, and what interesting things happened.
In short, it is just a routine communication. This kind of communication is usually controlled by a few SSD veterans. It is difficult for a rookie to get a chance. Chance.
"The other party calls for you to pass, just me and you." Charles looked at Tommy, picked up the soda can in his hand, threw it towards Tommy, and hit Tommy's club precisely, and said with satisfaction : "Effective score!"
The cold beer can taken out of the refrigerator suddenly stimulated the cue, causing Tommy to quickly open his eyes and sit up, covering his vitals with his hands. He didn't care about asking why he wanted to see him, but first sent a series of swear words to the current chairman of SSD charles.
"Benjamin Rosen, a Stanford student in 1955, a member of the SSD fraternity, it seems that you are not satisfied with me, I decided to change Ted to accompany me, just say you..."
"I was wrong, Charles, the reason I was dissatisfied just now was not your behavior, but how could you choose beer cans, you should change to darts, and take the opportunity to open my cue!" Tommy stood up : "As long as you are finished having fun, you can take me to see each other."
Benjamin Rosen, the chairman and CEO of Compaq Computer Corporation, a tycoon in the computer hardware industry, of course Tommy has heard of the other party's name, but he didn't expect that the other party would want to meet him. He thought those SSDs were keen on investing in the software industry Alumni will probably be the first.
While putting on clothes on his body, he thought about the general development history of Compaq, and suddenly froze, looking at Charles: "Why did he ask us to see him after he donated 100,000 to SSD, I mean... he clearly You can call us directly to see him."
"It's an attitude." Charles said to Tommy, folding his arms.
Tommy also nodded, and said a sentence: "Compaq, established in 1982, is essentially an Actor company in the computer hardware industry."
"SSD is really full of talents, and you all chose to copy this path, but your Actor is software, and his Compaq is hardware." Charles said with a smirk: "I think he might want to communicate with you, how to Plagiarizing the other party’s experience and shamelessly extorting it, making it bigger and stronger, has completely made Stanford University notorious.”
"No, he plagiarized to make money, and I did it for equal rights." Tommy corrected Charles' grammatical errors.
Charles rolled his eyes: "Speed up and lift your pants, Benjamin's limousine is waiting for us, Tommy Hawk, your affirmative plagiarism method is much more harmful to the American computer industry than the generous plagiarism of Benjamin."
…
Fifty-year-old Benjamin Rosen received Charles and Tommy in his 430-square-meter penthouse duplex in Silicon Valley, which is almost considered the most upscale community in Silicon Valley today.
"I work at Compaq headquarters in Harris, Texas most of the year, and I only live here when I occasionally fly to Silicon Valley for some business activities, so if you need any party venue, just choose here, I Although I don’t live here, the nannies, housekeepers, gardeners and other servants will clean up every day.” Wearing loose sportswear, Benjamin took the two of them directly to the hanging garden of his home and sat down, speaking casually to them said:
"I know that if SSD wants to hold some exciting parties, it often needs to pay temporarily to rent an additional venue. You can consider this place. It's a good place. There is an outdoor swimming pool over the garden. Girls should not hate the environment here. "
Although they looked like a middle school physical education teacher who was about to retire, Charles and Tommy didn't have the slightest intention of belittling each other. They sat up straight and looked directly at each other.
Benjamin Rosen, after graduating from Stanford University, went to Columbia University Business School for further study, and then went to work on Wall Street. After fifteen years, he sat as a senior vice president of Morgan Stanley, and then chose to retire, and Leon Sai Wen established the venture capital company Severn Rosen Foundation in 1981. In the year of its establishment, he invested in Compaq Computer Corporation and served as the chairman and chief executive officer.
In 1982, Compaq sold 53,000 personal computers with a sales volume of 111 million US dollars, becoming the fastest start-up company in the US computer hardware industry to achieve 100 million sales. Coincidentally, in the same year of 1982, Lotus The company became the fastest start-up company in the US computer software industry to reach 100 million sales.
The performance of these two companies in 1982 seemed to tell all investors that the US computer industry had officially entered a new era.
Coincidentally, the investors of Compaq Corporation and Lotus Corporation are Benjamin Rosen and Leon Seven, old friends who jointly established an investment company.
None of them was wrong, but the end was different. Benjamin was in charge of Compaq, a fast-rising hardware company, and made Compaq, a copycat company, the third in the market share of personal computers.
Leon, with his insight, invested in Lotus, which is a leader in the software industry, but in the end, because of irreconcilable conflicts with the two founders, he finally chose to divest, and the return was far less than expected.
"Tommy is our next party manager in SSD, but I guess he's not in the mood to help us design a party recently because his small company is in some trouble." After listening to Benjamin's greetings, Charles smiled and brought the topic to Tang rice body.
Tommy glanced at Charles, the chairman of the fraternity is still his favorite, the best candidate for the CEO of Actor Company, the character of Shuangshang Online, this guy must go to work in those think tanks.
Benjamin did not continue to exchange pleasantries hypocritically, but continued following the topic Charles raised: "I saw the article in the magazine, Lotus Company, and Leon told me after the divestment that that company would be wiped out sooner or later." Erase, I just didn't expect it to die under the siege of other big companies, but under the knife of our SSD members, one hundred and seventy-six friends of the court, Tommy, you shouldn't be doing computer software, You should go work for one of those lobbying firms on K Street in Washington pimping businessmen and politicians, it's a beautiful job."
"Yeah, Charles and they helped me a lot. Without SSD, I couldn't do all of this. Charles is the leader of our pimps." Tommy said to Benjamin.
"It's best to finish all this before the trial?" Tommy was silent for a moment, and asked Benjamin.
Benjamin nodded slightly, picked up a cigar from the side and looked at it: "The lawsuit between IBM and eleven of our computer companies has made both of us a little... tired."
"If you can convince IBM to invest in or acquire Actor's shares, then I personally can consider transferring 15% of the shares to you. The SSD friendship price is 10 million." Tommy thought for a while, and quoted a price to Benjamin .
This means Tommy's own valuation of Actor is 66 million.
Benjamin didn't think the price was too much. After all, Actor's OSS sales data of tens of thousands of sets was there. He handed the cigar in his hand to Tommy and laughed: "IBM, you want me to convince them to invest in you? No Are you kidding? They want to send me to the gallows now, and let their competitors in their eyes persuade them to invest in your Actor?"
Although he was joking, Tommy's words convinced Benjamin that this young man was indeed the robber in a suit as described in the magazine.
Ten million is a friendly price for himself, but it will definitely not be this price if he sells it to IBM. The most important thing is that now he believes that the whole thing was designed by Tommy Hawke, because this young man's mind reacts very quickly , Not long after sitting down, I already understood why I want to invest or acquire Actor, and why IBM may also be willing to acquire Actor.
Compaq and IBM are a bit like Actor and Lotus at this time, because 11 computer companies including Compaq used PC cloning to copy personal computers that are fully compatible with IBM-PC, and they reverse engineered IBM's BIOS firmware , using the same 16-bit AT bus as IBM, etc., except for the brand difference, the whole computer is no different from IBM-PC, all hardware can be perfectly replaced, all software can be perfectly compatible, and it can be sold cheaper than IBM, IBM lost its price advantage.
IBM originally hoped that its strategic partner, Microsoft, would help itself limit the unscrupulous competition of other computer companies, and let Microsoft's MS-DOS system choose to cooperate exclusively with IBM, so that those computer companies could only look for other systems.
But Microsoft turned around and sold IBM completely. As long as they pay Microsoft a licensing fee, the computer company will not refuse. In short, after paying the money, you can use the MS-DOS system as you like.
So Microsoft became a giant in the software industry, but the price was that the previous partner IBM's share in the personal computer market was directly cut in half.
Whether IBM wants to kill Compaq is not sure, but everyone is sure that IBM must want to kill Microsoft, which stabbed itself in the back.
It was obviously betrayed, but IBM was helpless, because everyone knew that IBM did not dare to be too arrogant. After all, the US government had sued IBM for monopoly for 20 years. Multiple industries form monopolistic behemoths.
If it weren't for the excellent vision and means of IBM's executives, ten IBMs would have been torn apart by those politicians using the excuse of monopoly.
Members of Congress are still drooling and looking for opportunities with table knives, so IBM doesn't dare to deal with these other computer companies that are robbing business with great fanfare. sue.
Whether it is Microsoft, Compaq, or even the former Oracle, it is certain that even if IBM stands in the plaintiff's seat, if IBM makes a big fuss, it will lose in the end, so it dares to be so unscrupulous.
Generally speaking, the lawsuits of eleven computer companies, including IBM and Compaq, are small-scale squabbles. Although IBM is not going to go to the Congress and the Supreme Court, it also hopes to use the uninterrupted lawsuits to make everyone Everyone remembers that at this moment, it is an illegal business practice for computer manufacturers such as Compaq to make money. As long as the law is perfected one day, IBM will have a reasonable excuse to get rid of them sooner or later.
The frustrating thing about these plagiarists from Compaq is that they have no reason to countersuit, because they don’t have the **** charitable excuse of Actor. They just copy IBM and make money. After all, OSS also has some practical shortcut functions designed by Tommy. , but there is no innovation in their computer hardware, that is, they produce whatever IBM produces, and then sell it to users at a 20% discount on the price of IBM computers.
"Using one case to promote the rules of two industries, to be honest, this is a windfall I didn't expect. It was only when Charles said that you wanted to see me that I realized that Compaq has Now it ranks third in the computer market, and is qualified to weld the car door." Tommy was silent for a moment, and said to Benjamin:
"IBM, Apple, and Compaq, you three, each choose a few pleasing computer companies to be their followers, get together, introduce several industry standard architectures, bus development standards and other solutions, and then share the market together , In this way, IBM can avoid being held in the name of monopoly, and you don’t have to worry about other small companies like Compaq coming out to grab this market, because if they dare to do that, you can work together to solve it, so go back to the beginning The question is, is IBM willing to see Compaq go from its rival to its partner?"
"IBM has been chased and bitten by the US government for 20 years and has not fallen. Guess why, it is not the Lotus company that almost killed Leon." Benjamin said.
Dididididi...Tommy's pager rang. He made an embarrassed gesture to Benjamin, picked it up and looked at it. It was an unfamiliar number: "Excuse me, can I call you back?"
"Of course, the phone is over there." Benjamin signaled the housekeeper in the distance to accompany Tommy to answer the phone, and chatted with Charles about the recent situation of SSD.
Tommy went to the phone and dialed the number: "Hello?"
"Tommy? Is that you? This is Otilia." Otilia's voice sounded on the phone.
"Miss Otilia Farrell? It's me, that's right, I'm Tommy Hawke." Tommy froze for a few seconds before smiling into the receiver and said, "So, you are going to find Is this man married? The timing was perfect, my girlfriend just broke up with me and I was just about to make my first ten million, I mean, not as much as your father, Mr. Farrell, from selling yachts. Much more, but shouldn't be too bad."
Otilia chuckled slightly on the phone: "If you always talk to ladies like this, I think the next girlfriend will leave you quickly."
"I was very surprised by this call. Why do you have my pager number?" Tommy smiled, and the image of this beautiful teacher and his group of high school students in the summer camp appeared in his mind.
Otilia said: "I called to your home and got it from your father."
"So, if you are not planning to find a man to marry, why are you looking for me?" Tommy asked curiously.
"Wait a minute, someone wants to talk to you..." After Otilia finished speaking, a voice with a bit of vicissitudes changed on the phone: "Tommy Hawk, I'm Robert Miller, SSD Cornell University Chapter Member, I saw the magazine, I don't know if I'm the first one to contact you, but I wish I were, what are you doing?"
"I'm talking about business to make some money, sir." Tommy had never heard of this name, but since the other party was a member of SSD, he obediently respected him and said truthfully.
SSD's code, you don't need to respect anyone other than your family in this world, but you must always respect SSD's brothers, because they are your family members with different surnames.
"Go to the DFS duty-free store at San Francisco International Airport, there will be a first-class ticket for you." Robert Miller said lightly:
"This is what I want to tell you, from now on, don't talk about it, you are not short of money."
Second update~
(end of this chapter)