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As an important part of Americans' daily lives, Los Angeles has never had a shortage of parties of all kinds, nor is there a shortage of 'party creatures' who attend one or two hundred parties a year.

Simon Westeros' 23rd birthday party, among all these parties, was both special and not so special.

In the mansion halfway up the hill in Palisad, the well-prepared birthday party on the evening of February 22 was a pleasure for both guests and hosts to expand their network, others to brag about, and Simon himself to receive gifts that could be opened for the rest of the weekend.

After the birthday party, the PR of Hollywood awards season is also in the final sprint.

Because of the Gulf War, this year's 61st Academy Awards was scheduled for March 25.

Daenerys Entertainment's award-winning work "Dances with Wolves" this year, since its release on November 2 last year, has been a breakthrough throughout the awards season, and after winning a major award at the Golden Globes in January, various recent union awards and film critics association awards have also been killed.

Among the list of Oscar nominees that have already been announced, "Dances with Wolves" also became the most nominated film at the 61st Oscars with a total of 12 nominations.

However, the most eye-catching point is the box office of this film.

From November 2 to February 21 before Simon's birthday, 16 weeks after its release, "Dances with Wolves", which had no potential box office dark horse at the beginning, relied on the film's word-of-mouth and the continuous stimulation of the popularity of the awards season, unknowingly accumulated $113 million at the North American box office, becoming the third North American box office work produced by Daenerys Entertainment at the end of last year to break 100 million at the North American box office.

Looking back on the entire 1990 year, among the films produced by Daenerys Entertainment, there are seven films with a box office of more than 100 million in North America: "Pretty Woman", "Ghost Love", "Sleeping with the Enemy", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", "Dances with Wolves", "Pink Alliance" and "Home Alone".

Seven films, all of which squeezed into the top ten of the North American box office list in 1990. Among them, Daenerys Entertainment's "Home Alone", "Ghost Love", "Pretty Woman" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" released separately also firmly occupied the top four positions in the annual box office list.

With the box office momentum of "Dances with Wolves", the total box office of this film in North America is almost destined to squeeze out the temporary fifth place Paramount's film "Hunt for Red October", making Daenerys Entertainment's films completely dominate the top five positions in the 1990 box office list.

In addition, as of December 31, 1990, the cumulative domestic box office of these seven North American films alone exceeded 100 million US dollars. That's 17% of the $5.26 billion total North American box office for the whole of 1991.

More than a dozen other films related to Daenerys Entertainment, such as "Kids in the Cornfield 2", "Ghost 3", "Shaking the Hand of the Rocking Basket", and "Ten Days of Danger", also reached a total box office of $350 million in North America, accounting for 6% of the North American box office share in 1991.

Combined, Daenerys Entertainment produced 23% of the total box office share in North America last year.

Moreover, this does not count the box office part of films such as "Home Alone" in 1991 for the time being, so it is not rigorous.

According to this calculation, the 1990 box office portion of films such as "Flying Over Innocence", "Batman: Time to Go to War" and "Drive for Miss Daisy" at the end of the previous year should actually be counted.

Once this happens, the proportion of box office controlled by Daenerys Entertainment will easily exceed 30%.

With the official completion of the equity transfer between Daenerys Entertainment and MCA shareholders at the end of February, in 1991, as long as Daenerys Entertainment's films can continue to maintain the box office momentum of the previous two years, the company can definitely divide and control more than 40% of the North American box office share.

This is actually very likely.

Because, while other film studios are still 'warming up' for the 1991 box office release, Daenerys Entertainment's first box office dark horse of the year has already appeared.

"Fighting Wisdom and Multi-Star", which opened on February 8, as of February 28, the North American box office quickly reached $49.69 million in three weeks after its release. Moreover, the box office of this film in the third week fell by only 16% compared with the second week, and the long-term trend is very obvious.

The cumulative box office in three weeks is close to $50 million, coupled with such an obvious long-term trend, it is almost certain that the North American box office of "Fighting Wisdom and Multi-Star" will exceed 100 million.

Also on 28 February, the 42-day Gulf War officially ended with the Multinational Force officially ceasing its offensive against Iraqi forces.

This war has made many countries see the major trend of the transformation of modern warfare from mechanization to informationization, and in future wars, the tactics of crowds are destined to be difficult to play a role. The almost negligible role played by the Soviet Union in this important regional war was a further indication that the Red Empire was getting closer to collapse.

On March 1, the day after the end of the Gulf War, North American stock markets soared across the board, with the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 both rising by more than 5% on the day.

The United States, which had collected a large amount of military spending from various countries in Europe and the Middle East before the war, undoubtedly became the biggest winner of the war, as many people thought it would be a protracted war.

It is not only the devastation of the war that has caused the US stock market to rebound in the past month or so, but the direct war proceeds from military spending by various countries alone have reached $19 billion, which has to a large extent alleviated the growing fiscal deficit in the United States.

The Bush administration has reaped sufficient political achievements and benefits through this war, and its domestic approval rating has been rising steadily.

Simon knew that the recovery of the North American stock market did not mean the recovery of the US economy, and that the federal economic downturn would continue throughout 1991, which also laid the groundwork for the Bush administration's defeat in the new presidential election in 1992.

The expansion of the Westeros system was not affected by the economic downturn in the United States.

In the case of AOL, as of the end of February, the free trial period for Internet access users in January has ended.

Of the 810,000 free trial users who joined in January, more than 430,000 eventually turned into regular users, a 53% positive rate, far exceeding AOL's initial expectations of 20 to 30 percent.

In February, the number of online free trial reservation users in the United States dropped sharply to 1.6 million compared with 2.3 million in January, but the number of trial users who successfully completed the access increased to 970,000, basically achieving the goal of accessing one million users per month.

The number of users waiting in line for a free trial has exceeded 2 million.

The major telecom operators in the United States, except for AT-T, which is still huge after being split, such as Seven Little Bell and other companies, the number of users is basically within 10 million.

With such an obvious outbreak trend in the Internet industry, major operators dare not take it lightly.

In addition to the three regional telecom operators such as Bell Atlantic, which has signed an exclusive agreement with AOL, other telecom giants, including AT-T, have begun to rapidly lay out the Internet industry in the past two months, or simply acquire the World Wide Internet access service company authorized by Igrete in their own operating areas, or obtain authorization from Igrete to set up their own Internet access service department.

Because of the industry trend brought about by the outbreak of the Internet industry, Simon's advantage of buying Bell Atlantic in advance is becoming more and more obvious.

If it weren't for the fact that the Westeros system had already mastered Bell Atlantic, the strongest of the three regional operators, driven by the huge interests of the Internet industry, even if it was bound by exclusive contracts, if the three regional operator giants put pressure on AOL at the same time, AOL would definitely have to make a big compromise.

Now, Bell Atlantic is firmly on AOL's side, and the other two companies, which happen to be located on the east and west coasts of the United States, are difficult to unite, allowing AOL to maintain its advantage in the exclusive agreement.

In contrast, most of the Internet service providers in other regions have to accept the 'recruitment' of the operator giants, and basically they quickly fall into the fate of being acquired. Otherwise, they will be crushed by the operator giants who want to dominate the ISP business and cut off the line network resources.

With the outbreak of the Internet industry, Egret's high monopoly on World Wide Web technology has gradually attracted the attention of major manufacturers.

Of course, for the time being, it's just a matter of paying attention.

Because Igrete maintains a very open licensing stance, coupled with the fact that Igrete lost more than $50 million in January alone, and its business prospects are far inferior to the ISP business, Igret's monopoly on the graphical interface browser and the services of the Egrett portal have not aroused the covetousness of other telecommunications companies.

Yes, in the first month of 1991, the company exceeded $15 million in revenue, but the overall loss exceeded $50 million.

In order to raise the profile of the portal business in the minds of the general public as quickly as possible, Egrete has invested $20 million in marketing expenses alone in the past month.

Each information section of the portal has tapped a large number of news talents and columnists from traditional print media platforms to build Igrete's content team, and the investment is also huge. Combined with email services, social networking services, online games, and Igret's own increasing spending on technology research and development and infrastructure, the result was a $50 million loss in just one month.

Of course, this kind of money-burning speed is actually just a small scene in Simon's view, and it is not uncommon for Internet companies to burn billions of dollars a year. The money that Igrete is burning now is definitely much greater than the return on burning money in the red ocean market of the Internet industry in Simon's memory.

With the entire new technology field began to pay attention to the Internet industry, the company has accumulated a large number of technical patents and software products in the early stage, with the rapid increase in the demand for Internet Explorer software, World Wide Web tool software and portal advertising by various operators, the growth of Igreit's revenue data in 1991 will also accelerate.

As long as the current growth rate can be maintained, Igret's annual loss in 1991 is very likely to be controlled within $500 million, which is far from exceeding Simon's tolerance limit.

Under the trend of rapid user growth for two consecutive months, in the face of the continuous IPO rumors released by AOL, the valuations of Wall Street investment banks for this new technology company have all reached more than $1 billion, and Morgan Stanley analysts even gave a valuation of $2 billion.

It is conceivable that after the completion of the 3-month free trial plan, AOL's IPO valuation will definitely increase again.

In addition to the general direction, Westeros also continues to deploy in some seemingly small new technology industries.

After showing Simon her business plan, Claire, a C-girl, soon founded the Card Camera Company with the senior engineer who had left Kodak.

At the same time, Claire also contacted a graphics processing software company that had just been established for more than a year.

The developer of the software is named Thomas Knoll, Knoll first used Apple computers in 1987 to develop a graphics editing software for processing black and white images, named Display, after two years of continuous research and development, the name of this software was also changed to Photoshop, and began to be used in the field of scanners and digital typesetting.

When Simon got the news, he directly instructed James Raybould to buy out the software.

However, the Knoll brothers did not agree to sell the software, but also wanted to work with Westeros.

After several negotiations between the two parties, Westeros invested $800,000 to acquire a 50% stake in the company established by Knoll Brothers. At the same time, the Knoll brothers will continue to master the research and development of Photoshop software.

Simon didn't want the professional-grade image processing software in his memory to become the Meitu App, so he instructed the Knoll brothers to develop two software at the same time, one to continue to deepen the professional-grade features of Photoshop, which will be sold through the Igrett online software store in the future, and the other is a simplified free version of Photoshop, which is specially provided to Claire's card camera company as a companion software.

San Francisco.

Inside Woodside's mountain mansion.

It was March 5th, and Simon came to Silicon Valley again yesterday to attend the monthly meetings of several companies in Eaglet.

The female assistant didn't squeeze herself last night, and Simon got up early to go for a morning jog in the Woodside Mountains as usual.

At eight o'clock, back at the villa, Jennifer had already prepared breakfast.

The two sat down in the restaurant, Jennifer ate breakfast, and casually talked about work: "I think that if Igrett continues to develop like this, sooner or later it will encounter antitrust obstacles." Now you want to build a hardware ecological chain, which directly touches the interests of traditional technology giants such as Intel and IBM. ”

Simon glanced at the newspaper in his hand, picked up the cutlery and said with a smile: "You think carefully about my personnel layout for Igret. ”

Jennifer tilted her head slightly and thought for a moment, and quickly caught something, and said, "Butz is in charge of the software business, and Bezos is in charge of the network business. And, next, Ferguson could take the helm of e-commerce. Well, you've made up your mind to split up Igrete from the beginning?"

"If you can not split it, of course it is better not to split it," Simon nodded and said, "However, this possibility is very low." Major operators in North America have now begun to enter the ISP business, which means that the expansion of the Internet industry will accelerate further. It's just that Igrete is still losing money on a large scale, and many people can't see the business potential contained in it, and the company is involved in a completely emerging technology industry and will not encroach on the interests of traditional giants, so it has not encountered much hindrance. However, when the industry expands to a sufficient scale of output, we cannot expect this state of affairs to continue. ”

Splitting up Igrett was indeed Simon's idea from the beginning, because the industrial value of Igret's involvement in the field was too great.

Moreover, Simon did this mainly out of Igret's own development considerations, and he didn't want Igrett to suffer from a serious big company disease early on because he had too many resources. The Internet era has just begun, and there are still too many challenges to face, if you don't want to forge ahead, even if you have more resources, you will only encounter the fate of being eliminated in the future.

The two were chatting when Simon's personal phone rang.

answered casually, and before he could speak, a series of small screams came from the opposite side: "Ahhh......h

This is Janet's voice.

Simon looked helpless and came again.

Just as she was about to say a few words of reassurance, Janet excitedly continued on the other side of the phone: "Honey, there is, there is, I'm pregnant, come back soon." ”

Simon was stunned for a moment, confirmed that he had heard correctly, and subconsciously stood up.

Jennifer looked over suspiciously.

Simon stood across the table and chatted softly with Janet for a while, promising that he would be back to Los Angeles right away, before hanging up.

Jennifer listened to Simon and Janet's conversation and understood.

Knowing that Simon was a little miserable because of the child's affairs during this time, and now Janet finally got her wish before her 31st birthday, although she was inevitably a little appetized, the female assistant still put down the dishes and said: "In this case, let's go back now." ”