Top of the Great Era

Chapter 1867 The industry atmosphere of the spark

In the final analysis, the development of New York's technology industry still depends on people.Ziwei Xing wants to come here to pre-empt the deployment, the most important thing is to deploy talents.

This is not Zhou Buqi's personal invention, but the entire American technology culture is like this.

Large companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle may acquire dozens or even dozens of small companies every year.In many cases, it is not that the products of small companies are good, but that the team behind the development and operation of this product is amazing.

After the acquisition, many times they just gave up their products and incorporated this team into their own business.

Rather than buying a company, it is better to say it is buying talent.

Ziweixing International entered Silicon Valley too late, and it is difficult to compete with those deep-rooted Silicon Valley giants.In addition to being highly attractive to the Chinese community, it does not have much competitiveness in front of other ethnic groups.

The East Coast is different.

Silicon Valley giants have not yet paid attention to this market. Big companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have only arranged offices here to provide some sales services.

This is the opportunity of "Ziwei Galaxy"!

Ziweixing International, Changyou and Spotify, which are the first to enter this market, can take the lead in attracting high-level talents in this area.

Then, extend its tentacles into the university campus to make arrangements, to carry out more practical projects with the students of the computer department, and even imitate the Xiaonei network to build a "university campus incubation base".

This is not enough.

Still have to buy, buy, buy.

Lu Qi said: "Next, when we choose investment projects, we must focus on the New York market. It is best to grasp all the excellent IT start-up projects in New York."

Zhou Buqi strongly supports this view, "If you can buy it, buy it, if you can't buy it, buy a share, first delimit this sphere of influence!"

With the support of the big boss, Lu Qi and Jones are very happy.

Then, Jones took out a material, "Here are 20 outstanding entrepreneurial projects that happened in New York that I have screened."

Zhou Buqi rarely reads such materials.

The domestic ones are okay, he can pick them out with foresight.He really doesn't know much about excellent entrepreneurial projects abroad.However, if he knows about a certain project, it is tantamount to picking up a treasure. At least it will be a technology giant with a market value of tens of billions of dollars in the future, such as LinkedIn, Spotify, Pinterest, and Netflix.

After receiving the materials, Zhou Buqi quickly looked them over.

You don't need to go into too much detail.

It is enough to look at the name and the main business, Etsy, Kickstarter, Foursquare, SecondMarket, Stickybits...

Zhou Buqi had never heard of any of these names.

But looking at the main business, it's really shocking.

Laomei's technological innovation is really great. Of course, Jones, the chief investment officer, has a good vision. The projects selected have great potential and are in line with the next industry development trend.

Etsy is a marketplace for crafts and artwork;

Kickstarter is a platform to help artists or art financing;
Foursquare is a social platform for sharing real-time locations developed based on the most popular LBS function (mobile location) of smartphones;

SecondMarket is even more powerful. It is a trading platform for non-cash assets, such as secured debt obligations and bankruptcy claims, as well as stocks of unlisted companies. The ambition is really big.

The function of Stickybits is very familiar. Based on the barcode of a smartphone, for example, by scanning the barcode on a product, you can find the detailed information of this product on the Internet.

There are many more to come, AppNexus, Hunch, Boxee, Fluidinfo, Square...

Huh?
and many more!

Zhou Buqi immediately noticed something was wrong, "Square? Which Square is this?"

Jones coughed lightly, "It's the new company that Jack Dorsey started."

"It really is this!"

Zhou Buqi was quite helpless.

Jack Dorsey is one of the founders of Twitter and the current CEO of Twitter.He and Musk are best friends and have a very strong relationship.Seeing that Musk can start several startups at the same time, he is not too convinced. While managing Twitter, he also went outside to start a business. The project he made is this Square about mobile payment.

In fact, from a weekly perspective, Square is a terrible product.But even so, the company will gain market recognition in the future, and its market value once exceeded $1000 billion.

Zhou Buqi had wanted to finance this product for a long time, but he was unwilling.

In the matter of Twitter, the two sides are not very happy.

"Yes, this product has entered the markets of Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia last year." Jones is obviously interested in this. "The momentum is booming, and all parties are optimistic."

Zhou Buqi was very helpless, "Isn't this a Silicon Valley company? Why is it listed in New York?"

Jones said: "Because Jack Dorsey has to manage Twitter and Square at the same time, he can only work in Silicon Valley. In fact, this is a financial company with its core business in New York, and it has to rely on Wall Street."

Obviously, he didn't know the relationship between Boss Zhou and Jack Dorsey. He only thought that Ziweixing International was the major shareholder of Twitter, and the two parties should cooperate sincerely.

For this reason, Jones also said with a smile: "I guess you should be Dorsey's idol. He imitated you everywhere. He managed two companies by himself and did a good job. It's really great."

Zhou Buqi sighed, "On the contrary, he is competing with me! The disagreement on Twitter made him have a business plan outside. This is looking for a way out."

Lu Qi pondered for a while, and said slowly: "If necessary, it is best to cooperate with Square. The core business of Ziweixing International is the mobile market, and mobile payment is inseparable."

"We'll talk about this later!"

Zhou Buqi waved his hand, avoiding this.

Now he has a plan to sell Twitter to Google.It can not only get rid of the burden, but also make friends with Google.

As the founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey is definitely unwilling to work for Google.Once this matter is promoted, the relationship between the two parties may continue to ossify.

It is basically impossible to cooperate on the Square project.

Then, just look down, BuzzFeed, Stackoverflow, OMGPOP, AdSafe, SpeakerText, MakerBot and so on.

Zhou Buqi took a look around and felt that everything was okay.

It may be difficult to achieve a market value of tens of billions of dollars. He has never heard of any of these projects.However, looking at the development direction of these products, it is okay to pick any one, and small successes are also valuable.

Both can form complementary business.

For example, the product BuzzFeed, which is a news aggregation platform, subscribes to and collects all the current important content on the Internet, and users can see all the most popular news here.

If Ziweixing International invests, BuzzFeed can collect more content on YikYak, thereby bringing users and attention to YikYak.

"Are there any key entrepreneurial projects that you recommend?"

"Yes, App Nexus."

"Oh." Zhou Buqi looked at the materials in his hand and found related products, "Advertising business?"

Jones said: "Yes, we are focusing on the data falsification that is very common in the current Internet industry. Including Google, there will be a large number of false clicks and false data, which will cause advertisers to pay a lot of extra for these false data. This is a crisis of trust for advertisers and platforms.”

Zhou Buqi understood immediately, "Is this a third-party advertising monitoring product?"

Jones said with a smile: "Yes, through this product, advertisers can monitor and adjust advertising campaigns at any time. It creates a new layer between advertisers and content publishers, bringing greater flexibility and Solved a certain crisis of confidence."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "There is room for application, but not too big. When the business is small, it will develop well, but the ambition should not be too big."

"is it?"

"It is impossible for a big platform to hand over its lifeline to a third party."

Zhou Buqi gave his judgment clearly and sharply.

Although he didn't know much, he also basically guessed how AppNexus works.

An advertiser who wants to advertise on Google but does not trust Google's data can submit the advertisement to AppNexus, and let AppNexus act as an agent to advertise on Google, and then AppNexus will supervise and adjust.

At first glance, this model looks nice and fair.

Not for Google.

It's not that Google wants to cheat advertising fees by falsifying data, but that it cannot control the source of advertising in the hands of a third party, which is a structural danger for Google.

Once an advertiser wants to advertise on Google, but the intermediary AppNexus thinks that Google’s advertisement is not effective and recommends the advertiser to advertise on Facebook, something will happen.

At that time, Google, Facebook, including Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and other technology giants will go to AppNexus to grab advertising orders...

is it possible?

What can a small broken company do?

At that time, the only end is that the big platforms will no longer provide interfaces for AppNexus, no longer cooperate with AppNexus, and this company will die.

This is the same as Ali's "Taobao Ke".

When Taobao’s business was small, Ali was very happy; once Taobao’s business became bigger, it would be blocked by Ali.

"But it doesn't matter, it's a good idea." Zhou Buqi waved his hand, "If the price is not too high, you can invest in all of them. Next, we will focus on New York at the strategic level. The purpose of investment is to find excellent entrepreneurial projects. But there is a higher strategic goal, to create a sparkling industry atmosphere in New York."

Lu Qi said: "That's right, bring those small and medium-sized enterprises and start-up companies to Ziwei Star's surroundings..."

Zhou Buqi said: "Especially pay attention to mobile Internet entrepreneurial projects, as well as technology and financial products like Square. To seize the opportunities of the times, we must also make good use of the advantages of geographical location."

Lu Qi knew what he was referring to, "Want to have more cooperation with Wall Street financial institutions next?"

Zhou Buqi nodded, "The combination of technology and finance will be an important industry direction in the future."

(End of this chapter)