Debuted right after graduating from high school

Before Fan Wumian acquired Marvel, "Iron Man 1," starring Robert Downey Jr., had already been filmed.

After the director and his team completed the fine-cutting work, they sent some sample footage to several special effects studios. Industrial Light & Magic, the studio under the renowned director George Lucas, took the lead in completing the post-production special effects.

After a period of busy work.

Some special effects, such as the head-up display inside the armor helmet, as well as content related to the original "Mark I" armor, explosion and smoke effects, etc., have been completed ahead of schedule.

To save costs, the director used a combination of physical props and special effects during filming. A full-scale physical model of the Iron Man armor was specially created for shooting scenes that required a realistic texture. Some miniature scenes were also used, and then rendered with digital special effects to make them look incredibly realistic on the screen. This allowed the special effects production of "Iron Man 1" to balance effect and cost.

As the company's boss, Fan Wumian holds the real books of Marvel.

Looking at the accounts, it becomes clear that a large portion of the interest on the $5.25 million loan from Merrill Lynch was also factored into the production costs of "Iron Man 1," meaning that even without considering the marketing and distribution budget, the filming costs were estimated to be as high as $1.4 million.

Hollywood film companies have a unique way of keeping accounts. For example, the copyright fees for "Iron Man" and the expensive studios built can all be used to avoid taxes later. In order to pay less tax, each company is busy frantically making up accounts. Some films are clearly box office hits, earning hundreds of millions of dollars in global box office, but the investors always complain that they have lost everything.

After watching several clips of Iron Man 1, totaling about 50 minutes in length, Fan Wumian sat down, clapped his hands, and said to director Jon Favreau:
"It's unexpectedly brilliant. I think it will be as successful as Spider-Man, or even more successful than Spider-Man."

Jon Favreau, beaming, replied:

“The company gave me a lot of support, and everyone on the team put in a lot of effort. Because we lacked experience before, we could only learn to film little by little. Not only did the male lead, Tony Stark, grow, but we also grew. I believe that if we continue to film the second movie, it will be much smoother than this time.”

The atmosphere of "social etiquette" is also very strong in the United States. Director Jon Favreau did a lot of research beforehand and just made Fan Wumian a cup of green tea.

Rumors about Robert Downey Jr. potentially landing a multi-million dollar contract have already spread throughout Hollywood.

When director Jon Favreau learned that he had renewed Robert Downey Jr.'s contract, he immediately guessed that as long as the box office performance wasn't too bad, the Iron Man series should continue. So he couldn't wait to organize this internal screening and took the initiative to invite Fan Wumian over to get closer to him, so as not to let other directors steal the spotlight.

Fan Wumian could roughly guess director Jon Favreau's little scheme, and upon hearing this, he smiled and said:
"We can start planning the script for the second part now."

“I just saw the male lead’s house in the movie. The sea view villa built on the edge of a cliff is really impressive. Maybe we can actually build one and reuse it like a movie studio.”

"I happen to come to Los Angeles occasionally and need a place to rest. The land prices in Malibu Beach are expected to plummet next year, so if I can buy it at a reasonable price, this Iron Man house could potentially make a lot of money in the future."

Director Jon Favreau, being astute as he is, naturally realized that Fan Wumian wanted to build himself a luxury mansion in the company's name. After some thought, he said:

“That’s right. It would be a waste to build a studio and then tear it down. We do need a real house, but it will take a long time to build, and we might not have enough time.”

Fan Wumian laughed:
"No rush. At the end of the movie, Tony Stark's house was blown up by the villain, right? We can design a reconstruction scene in the second movie. I'll tell you once I've chosen the location. We might also just buy a ready-made mansion."

The entire plot of Iron Man 1 was almost exactly the same as he remembered, so there was nothing to worry about.

Today, Fan Wumian came to Marvel Studios headquarters in Burbank, a suburb of Los Angeles, mainly for the $4 million in idle funds on the company's books. The $5.25 million obtained by mortgaging the copyrights of superhero characters two years ago has not yet been used up.

Other projects are still in the planning stages, so there's no need to spend a large sum of money all at once in the short term.

It would be a waste to let the $4 million sit in the bank earning interest. Fan Wumian planned to invest and manage his finances in the name of Marvel Studios, keeping only some liquid funds for emergencies, and transferring the rest to WM-Rogers hedge fund company to further short Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG, Washington Mutual Bank, Bear Stearns and other companies.

With some leverage and a bit of luck, simply by managing the company's idle funds, there's a chance to recoup the costs of acquiring Marvel Entertainment, plus Marvel's debts, through short selling.

Fan Wumian had already thought of this.

However, since central banks around the world had previously invested huge sums of money to stabilize the market, the stock prices of US listed companies had fluctuated quite a bit, so he had refrained from making any moves for the first two months.

The situation is different now. As the situation deteriorates further, investors' confidence in the market has plummeted again, and the odds of winning are getting bigger and bigger, giving him an opportunity to make a move.

Around noon, during a meeting with several Marvel Studios executives, Fan Wumian informed them that they should invest the money. After discussing the preparations for the "Thor," "Captain America," and "Hulk" projects, he continued his journey to the vicinity of Beverly Hills and had coffee with Ms. Sheryl Sandberg, one of the project leaders of the international version of Tencent Weibo, Microblog.

Sheryl Sandberg previously worked at Google before being headhunted by a recruitment firm to become the Chief Operating Officer of Microblog, where she was responsible for sales, marketing, acquisitions, partnerships, human resources, public policy, and communications.

As the former Chief of Staff to the Treasury Secretary, the former head of the Washington administration, Shirley Sandberg's abilities were beyond question. Sitting opposite Fan Wumian, she spoke crisply and decisively:
"Facebook is currently facing a growth bottleneck, with user growth slowing down. Their user base has surpassed 5000 million. However, valuation agencies are beginning to doubt the total market size and whether it has the potential to exceed 1 million. This result directly affects the market's valuation of Facebook."

"The same goes for Microblog. Although our users find it easier to make new friends than Facebook users, there are still many people who are not popular online, which naturally reduces their enthusiasm for using the product."

“Mark Zuckerberg is busy building an open social platform that allows any developer to build applications within the Facebook ecosystem, hoping to make it like Google, where I used to work, with multiple business lines such as search, YouTube, Gmail, and music, which can fully cover users’ online behavior.”

"In this respect, Mr. Van, your Tencent Group has done a very good job. Through games, social networking, music, email, news, online shopping and other businesses, it has improved user retention and activity, and it is also easier to attract advertisers in a targeted manner." English is not Fan Wumian's native language, and Sheryl Sandberg's speech was mixed with a lot of industry jargon, which made it a little difficult for him to understand.

Fortunately, after understanding the general meaning, Fan Wumian said to her:
"What you mean by covering user behavior is called the 'Internet ecosystem' in China. This means that users can solve most of their online needs within a company's software ecosystem, and then many subsidiaries can cooperate with each other to achieve common development."

"Doing this in Silicon Valley could lead to antitrust lawsuits. Otherwise, the Silicon Valley giants like Microsoft, IBM, and HP, which grew up early, would have already joined forces to divide up the market, making it difficult for other companies to develop."

"Our company should have some advantages, such as the chat group function. After its launch in Asia, we found that it was quite helpful in increasing user activity. Information shared by strangers can help users pass the time, and the dating function is also very attractive."

"As for building an internet ecosystem like Google, we don't have the strength yet. In the short term, we can only try starting with games, and we will also develop video websites later."

Ms. Sheryl Sandberg nodded and said:
"The chat groups and self-destructing messages are indeed very good features, which is why our key metrics such as monthly active user ratio and new user growth rate are significantly higher than Facebook's. We are currently considering adding a permanent link to Monster Mall, porting popular mini-games from Asia, investing $1 million in advertising, and trying to work closely with Google to make it easier for Google search users to find information on the Microblog platform."

Fan Wumian felt that Sheryl Sandberg had prepared diligently, but still reminded her:

"Many decisions may seem perfectly correct from the current perspective, but if you look at the timeline a little longer, you'll find that big problems can easily arise, and you might accidentally take a detour and spend a lot of unnecessary money."

"You should think more about what the future holds and not be limited by fixed mindsets. As for finding Google to place ads, I suggest you don't rush into it."

"In Apple's labs, an app store is being developed and will be installed on iPhones or other products. It may be released in about six months. When that happens, it will completely change the way people go online, making it easy to access the internet anytime, anywhere."

"From this perspective, instead of using this money for advertising, it's better to proactively invest in other areas, such as mobile games, mobile advertising, and digital payments, to build an internet ecosystem around Microblog. If we can seize the next wave of change, we might even have a chance to surpass Facebook."

Before Facebook could fully mature, Microblog, with the support of Penguin Group's technology, capital, and talent, rushed to the United States to seize market share.

Leveraging its dating, social, and chat features, it successfully gained prominence through its ephemeral messaging feature. After barely establishing itself, it quickly rallied allies, catching Mark Zuckerberg off guard.

Sheryl Sandberg's idea of ​​a deep collaboration with Google is clearly more conservative, involving a methodical approach of spending money to attract users and expand the company's user base.

Fan Wumian's proposal was more forward-thinking, suggesting that they attract users by incubating other products, thereby achieving mutual traffic generation between the product and Microblog.

Penguin Group's net profit is not high, and it also needs funds for development. The budget available for the Microblog project is limited. Unless Microblog raises external funds again, it cannot support both development directions in the short term.

Ms. Sheryl Sandberg hesitated for a moment, but then said:

“We are facing fierce competition from Facebook. Since we rejected their acquisition offer, we have lost several of our big advertisers.”

"Smartphones may be the future, but it may take 3 to 5 years from incubation to reaping the rewards. The priority should be how to keep the company alive."

"Without investing heavily in advertising, it's difficult to maintain the platform's rapid user growth. Mobile games, mobile advertising, and digital payments can be addressed in the future."

That makes a lot of sense.

But Fan Wumian clearly remembers that the iPhone 4 was released in 2010. At that time, there were rumors circulating in the school that a girl from another department had worked part-time as a hostess in a karaoke bar in order to buy the phone, and that a video of her was recorded and posted on the online forum.

Not long after, news broke that she had been impregnated and dropped out of school to have the baby. This infuriated the kind person who had sponsored her tuition for several years. In a media interview, he said that the reason he sponsored the impoverished student was to change her life, not to let her have a college degree and sell himself for a good price.

Going back a year, this means that the iPhone 3GS should have become popular in the international market as early as 2009, and it already supported many mobile games and third-party software.

In late November 2007, with 2009 not far off, seizing the opportunity to prepare would allow Microblog to catch the wave of mobile games, ride-hailing, and other emerging trends.

Fan Wumian then said:

"I will soon launch a video website to promote Microblog's mobile payment software. The sooner it is developed, the better to avoid missing the opportunity."

"How about this: you can use $4000 million for advertising and traffic generation, and use the remaining $6000 million budget to incubate new products. I will provide you with an additional $1000 million for company operations by placing ads on the Microblog platform through companies such as Valentino, Ferrari, Monster Mall, Land Rover, and Aston Martin."

"I will also try to contact some external advertising sponsors to alleviate your financial burden."

The $4000 million budget wasn't enough, but with the major shareholder, Fan Wumian, speaking up, Sheryl Sandberg had no choice but to follow orders.

After talking for nearly two hours, he gained a clearer understanding of the current state of Microblog development.

For example, after the addition of short video functionality to the ephemeral messaging feature, it quickly became a tool for reckless driving, leading to numerous problems and frequent lawsuits. (End of Chapter)