$300 million!

Here's how investors value Facebook.

Zach Jr. founded Facebook in '04, and by the end of that month, more than half of Harvard's undergraduates had become registered users. Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes joined to help promote the site, expanding Facebook to MIT, Boston University, and Boston College. The expansion lasted until April 004 and included all the Ivy League colleges and a few other schools. By January, Facebook had more than 1 million users.

The development direction of Facebook at the beginning is undoubtedly the college student group, because the college student group is the most receptive group to new things, they have vitality, spending power, and they represent the future of the Internet, and Xiao Zach's positioning is indeed quite good. It accurately grasped the mainstream market and established his supremacy in the social field in one fell swoop. But in this life, it has nothing to do with little Zach. Zhou Fangyuan established Facebook last year, and he gave An Lin specific operation methods, asking An Lin to find someone to establish the company by herself, while he controlled its Al investment and directly controlled the company. Or to put it another way, this company was originally established by AL, and An Lin only enjoys 5% of the shares in it.

The follow-up operation has nothing to do with An Lin, she is only responsible for financial supervision, and all other things are done by professionals. Zhou Fangyuan was responsible for grasping the general direction, and conveyed some of his instructions through An Lin's mouth.

Los Angeles is one of the important cities in the United States, and Facebook's headquarters is located here, and Cao Yan's first film is naturally to promote the website to college campuses. There are many universities in Los Angeles, including public universities such as the University of California, Los Angeles, Northridge California State University, and Los Angeles California State University, as well as private universities such as the University of Southern California, Pepperdine University, California Institute of Technology, Antioch University, Loyola Marymount University, Loyola Law School, Mount Saint Mary's College, Occidental College, and East Los Angeles College.

Among them, there are many Ivy League schools.

Of course, this Ivy League is not another Ivy League, and the name "Ivy League" is most commonly used to describe some of the most prestigious and top-tier universities in the United States. Most associate the term with awe-inspiring universities that are prohibitive, but deeply rooted in history, and they are also the alma maters of some of the most brilliant minds in academia.

There are actually only 8 Ivy League schools in the United States.

They are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University.

Although these Ivy League schools are known for their high academic standards and rigorous acceptance rates, they actually refer to a league of athletic events made up of eight universities in the northeastern region of the United States. You read that right, this was originally a sports league. Each of these top universities has a rich academic history, with Harvard University dating back to 1636. However, the actual Ivy League itself did not become a sports event until 1954. Today, however, the term is used more broadly, and it seems to have nothing to do with sports.

Despite the elitist nature of the Ivy League, they are not necessarily the "best colleges." While all eight universities are ranked among the top 0 best universities in the United States, Stanford University and MIT are both ranked higher than the Ivy League school Harvard University, and Rice University, Bowdoin University, Caltech, and others are also ranked higher than some Ivy League universities. So, just because they're an Ivy League school doesn't mean they're the best. Therefore, in addition to the Ivy League, the "New Ivy", "Little Ivy", "Public Ivy" and so on were also derived.

Among these prestigious schools in Los Angeles, such as UCLA and Caltech, they belong to the category of "new ivy", and USC is also a prestigious existence. Having said all this, I mainly want to say that there are really many schools in Los Angeles, and good universities are one after another, although it is still not comparable with some cities in the east, but this is already good.

What's more, Mike, one of the founders of Blizzard, was once a student at UCLA. Therefore, at the beginning of the establishment of Facebook, An Lin was introduced by Mike and met with the leaders of UCLA.

She proposed that she wanted to promote her own website within the school, and promised to set up a special verified account for UCLA online, so that if there is any need from UCLA in the future, she can express her voice through this account, and Facebook will also assist UCLA, and once there is unfavorable news on the Internet, Facebook will also deal with it as quickly as possible. Of course, these are not the most important things, the most important thing is that An Lin agreed to a donation of 10 million. Although UCLA is a well-known university in the United States, UCLA, like other universities in the United States, relies on donations from former graduates and people from all walks of life.

Therefore, UCLA, as well as other universities in the United States, are often very lenient and caring for those students who are capable, capable, and promising, because only in this way will they donate money in the future. So from here, a saying is derived, that is, who said that the university in the United States is good? Ordinary universities, or universities that do not enter the stream, are naturally good, but really good universities, either you are really super top students, otherwise, you have to pray that your parents are celebrities, politicians, wealthy businessmen, important alumni of a certain university, and so on.

After all, if we don't open the back door for the second generation, how will the second generation go to school in the future? If there is no second generation in the school, who will donate money? Although the second generation is not a nice word, the problem is that there is a generation above the second generation, a successful generation, with a large number of contacts and funds, and you say that the president's daughter does design and does all kinds of ordinary people's work, let me ask, if there is no Mr. President standing behind, will her success be so easy? At least during the years of Mr. President's reign, there are people below who are willing to stammer. In the same way, because the generation has a lot of hidden wealth, even if they don't directly support their children, the children's start is still many times better than ordinary people.

With better starting conditions, the possibility of success is greater, and after success, do you want to give some feedback to your alma mater? Whether it is for the sake of fame or if you really have this idea, your alma mater will benefit after all. Therefore, in addition to a very small number of real scholars, there are many places that are allocated to these students with special identity backgrounds. This is the university in the United States, which attaches more importance to practical significance while teaching.

So, now An Lin is donating with 10 million US dollars, just to promote her website here, do you say that the university will refuse?

Not to mention anything else, it's good to have a good relationship.

The money is not much, but the mosquito legs are also meat, not to mention the school promotion website, there is no problem for the school itself, at most let them help guide the public opinion in the school, this is not a big deal, it is not easy for the school? So, with the help of the school's senior management, Facebook has successfully entered the UCLA, and there are many more logo posters and advertisements on the campus, and the website is soon known by the students. Then, through the spread of these students, students from other schools in Los Angeles began to learn about the site where they could share their stories.

Then, there's the big explosion!

In any era, students are at the forefront of the trend, they are young, they are smart, they can accept the freshest things as quickly as possible, and they have a strong sense of sharing.

This group is one of the most important users of social networking sites.

As a result, with the help of such a group, in half a year, Facebook has already exceeded one million, and even more than three million, and is now moving towards five million. The user base is no longer limited to students, their family, friends, relatives, sisters, younger siblings, etc., these connections in the social circle have begun to gradually settle on Facebook. It can be said that Facebook has formed a new social circle online where you can share your spiritual journey. While 5 million users is ridiculously small compared to the entire U.S. population, anyone with a discerning eye can see the promise and potential of this social network, which is why investors keep making offers after being rejected.

Now, after many rejections, the investor has finally come to a ruthless one.

The valuation is 300 million US dollars, the quotation is 30 million, and only 10% of the shares are needed!

As soon as this offer came out, Zhou Fangyuan immediately showed a satisfied smile.

This is like the words, such a huge Facebook empire in later generations, the first financing of the original time and space only raised a few million, which is really a bit ridiculous. The valuation of the second round of financing is only more than 80 million, what is the matter? The current valuation of Yuanfang Group far exceeds that of Facebook, and even Tengxun's stock market is now almost a value. Considering what he has to do, the gap in the funds needed is quite terrifying, in this case, how can the valuation of tens of millions of dollars be enough? So his only requirement is that the valuation must be high, financing is not impossible, but it must be worth financing.

The valuation of 300 million US dollars and the financing amount of 30 million are still a little enough, so Zhou Fangyuan thought about it and agreed to the valuation of Facebook.

The other is the valuation of Twitter.

Zhou Fangyuan initially wanted to do Facebook and YouTube, but after thinking about it, he felt that Twitter could not be let go, so in fact he made three websites.

It's just that the development of YouTube is not too good,After all,Video requirements for Internet bandwidth are still relatively high,Same as distant video,Although today's Internet technology,It is fully enough to support the operation of video websites,But because of the limitation of bandwidth,The smoothness of video playback on video websites is a problem,Picture quality and resolution are also limited,These are all problems that Zhou Fangyuan must face。

In this regard, he is also very helpless, after all, he can't rely on his own strength to advance the development level of the Internet as a whole, he can only develop under the existing conditions.

So are sites like YouTube and Yuanfang Video promising? Yes, anyone with a discerning eye can see it.

However, due to technical limitations, even such a promising website, on the investor's side, the quotation cannot be up anyway. Is there a quotation for oil pipelines now? Yes, 30 percent of the shares can only be exchanged for more than 10 million, is this a joke? Zhou Fangyuan sneered when he saw such an offer, and directly threw the quotation into the trash. Just kidding, it's still the same sentence, he is not short of money now, but what he lacks is not this little money, what he lacks is big money that can do things. Without investing, he also has funds to continue to inject, so that the website can continue to develop, waiting for a better financing opportunity. In this case, why should he wronged himself?

Therefore, in terms of YouTube, he currently does not agree to financing, there is no such possibility, and those investors have underestimated him.

On the contrary, it is Twitter, because Facebook has swept major universities in the United States, which has attracted a lot of attention, almost the same type of Twitter, and has also attracted the attention of others.

However, Twitter and Facebook are still different, Facebook is equivalent to the future generations of people's network or school intranet, only if you add each other as friends, the other party can see the status of each other's posts after verification, the group is mostly classmates, friends or relatives and the like, so generally people who play Facebook are more restrained, after all, the above are all acquaintances, and everyone knows each other, maybe there is your teacher inside! It is a relatively closed circle, but because it can form an online social circle, and sharing news or something, it can also allow everyone to understand each other, so Facebook's users in the United States are mainly concentrated in major universities, and users outside the school are basically one circle after another.

But Twitter is different, Twitter is similar to Weibo in the future, in addition to the mutual attention of friends, there are many celebrities, scientists, politicians, etc. on Twitter, there is nothing you can't think of, as long as you follow them, you can see the status of their daily posts. The fun of Twitter is that it has a wide audience, a large mass base, is very time-sensitive, has a wide range of communication, and is fast. Therefore, in the future of the original time and space, Twitter will become one of the top two social networking and microblogging service websites in the United States, one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet in the world, and it is also a typical application of microblogging. It allows users to update messages up to 140 characters long, also known as "tweets," which are the equivalent of future blog posts.

The audience is wider, and the development speed is still above Facebook, but Twitter is brought out by Facebook, which is Facebook's little brother.

Now the investor's offer for Twitter is slightly lower than Facebook's, the same 10% of the shares, the other party is willing to bid 5 million for the acquisition, and the website offers 500 million, compared with the same stage of financing in the original time and space, it has obviously exceeded a lot.