In the face of Schulhoff's practical and practical index difficulties, Gu Biao thought about it and inspired:

"So, what if we do something differentiated? For example, we don't compare ourselves to VCRs, we make CD players smaller. ”

Gu Biao said, erasing the CDP-101 player in front of him.

"If we made a CD player that was not much bigger than the Walkman, or a CD version of the Walkman, it would allow the traveler to carry it in a school bag, run on battery power, and plug in headphones to listen to it. In this way, it should be possible for American families who have video recorders to still pay for them, right?

After all, the video recorder can't be carried around on your back, you can't take it outside to play cool pickles, and you can't put it on the car to show off. Users will feel that these are completely different things, and they will not feel that they are paying twice. As for the price, we are tentatively targeting below $300 for now. ”

Schulhoff's eyes lit up: "Under $300, portable, if you can do it, it will definitely open up a new blue ocean market, and users will definitely think that our Tiankun things are too cool."

It's just that in terms of technology and cost, can it be done? Miniaturization means raising costs, and 15 months ago, Sony's home machine was priced at $700, but we have to achieve $300 in miniaturization?"

Gu Biao: "If you can't do it, you have to do it, no matter what the mass production cost of the R&D department is, we must sell it below 300 US dollars." The cost, we can count on mass shipments and the process to slowly decrease after maturity - when Edison first invented the light bulb, wasn't it also a light bulb that could be sold for at least $2 without losing money?

But when GE was founded, it didn't sell just 40 cents a piece. Within a few years, the cost of production had come down, to 25 cents, and it was still profitable to sell for 40 cents. Even Edison had such courage to do what we do, don't you still believe in Moore's Law? I have hundreds of millions of dollars of my own funds to help you go through the stage of opening up the market. ”

Schulhoff said worriedly: "But CD players are not game consoles and computers! Its main hardware cost is not CPU and memory, which are discounted by 7 or 8 percent every year! Of course, you are the boss, if you insist on investing resources." ”

Gu Biao: "I believe in the strength of the R&D department, if you should ask Sony, you will go to investigate, and if you should dismantle CDP-101 for reverse analysis, you will do a good reverse analysis."

Of course, I know that creative work requires a little inspiration and cannot be managed by brutality. Therefore, I will split a subsidiary of Tiankun Media alongside Tiankun Entertainment, and inject enough funds into this subsidiary to make early loss-making shipments, which will be called Tiankun Music.

After completing this project and achieving the goal of reducing costs and shipping, I took out 5%~15% of the low-priced internal stock subscription rights from Tiankun Music and distributed them to the technical staff of the R&D department, depending on the contribution. Of course, there will be incentives for the product and operations teams, but much less than the technical teams, so I hope you understand. ”

Schulhoff, Professor Erickson, and others were all in high spirits.

When Gu Biao was engaged in the game console project last year, he didn't mention equity incentives much, and he relied on project bonuses to support the morale of the team. There are also presidents like Schulhoff, who take 2~3 percentage points of equity and more dividends.

Now, Gu Biao has generously raised his equity.

"Could it be that the boss thinks that the vitality of the music production line is not as good as the game industry, so he thinks that he can only engage in medium and long-term holding, and is not suitable for ultra-long-term holding?

Schulhoff was the first to react, but did not say it.

In fact, he guessed quite right.

Because Gu Biao also knows that the music industry is not profitable, the 80s may still be a golden period, and the 90s can still make the first half of the money, and after 95, the Chinese market will definitely be over, and other markets will last until 2000.

In the future, although the records are still sold, users are not paying for the music itself - they can find free music for listening to it, and they are only willing to find free music. The reason why I still pay money is only because of fan stars, that is, they are paying for people rather than their works.

In this case, music player companies may still have the value of holding equity in their hands to eat dividends and profits. But the equity of record companies and online music platforms, there is absolutely no need to pinch in hand.

Even in 2020, Wangyun Migu Tengyun is still losing money. The value of these companies is to create traffic and popularity for the entertainment industry, not to make money themselves.

There is a black industry chain of interest transfer, and all the bosses who engage in music platforms actually have other entertainment film and television companies. Just as Gu Biao's later generations mixed with the Ahri family in those years, he fully knows that inside the so-called "big entertainment", in fact, the music itself is an abandoned child who deceives stockholders, and the key is that after the music is lost, the film and television economy endorses these to earn back.

In this case, it is better to show the indicators of market share and sales to global stockholders, and let Shabi's stockholders pay money to play music, which can be regarded as robbing the rich and helping the poor.

In fact, indulging in piracy, but by allowing victims to go public to draw cakes and make money, from the perspective of industrial development, is a kind of "robbing the rich and helping the poor" - robbing middle-class retail leeks who can afford to buy stocks, so that practitioners can make a little profit, so that they will not starve to death, and maintain the service. Then let the abject white, who constitutes the "false fire report data", watch and listen to the white.

No matter how much Gu Biao hates piracy, at least until he unifies the world media, this problem cannot be solved, and he must face it squarely.

……

The meeting with the executives of Tiankun lasted for most of the day, and then Gu Biao invited everyone to eat and drink.

At the buffet, Schulhoff took a plate and sat next to Gu Biao, only then did he remind him privately:

"Boss, since you have divided all the shares, can I draw a pie for those people at the right time and convey your meaning - for example, whether you will allow Tiankun Music to be listed in the future.

You know, if a company has a bad dividend prospect, just giving equity but not letting everyone see the exit mechanism still can't motivate everyone well. ”

Gu Biao immediately woke up, feeling that Schulhoff was thinking long-term, and immediately got to the point of encouragement at the meeting he had just held.

"Yes, your idea is very good, but don't worry, in a year or two, they won't be able to see the long-term business model and profitability of this business. I'm not as optimistic about the profitability of this business as you might think—

Let's put it this way, the music company will lose money for two years first, and then maintain a good profit margin and make a profit for seven or eight years. No further away, I can't see through it. However, I have seen the game industry very thoroughly, and I dare to say that even after ten or twenty years, there will still be profits. ”

Schulhoff was secretly frightened, he thought he had figured out the right boss, but he didn't expect that there was still a gap.

There is still a big misunderstanding and disagreement between what he thinks is that "the boss thinks that there is no future for long-term profitability in this industry" and what the boss really thinks in his heart is that "there is no future for long-term profits".

The boss was several times longer than he thought.

"I knew what to do, so I put the structure in place. Schulhoff hurriedly revised his expectations and made a decisive statement.

In the next few days, Gu Biao stayed in Silicon Valley, personally supervised the battle, and urged Erikson and others to break down and implement the project establishment work and avoid some detours.

Although Gu Biao can't know everything, he has at least used Sony's round DISK-MAN Walkman in later generations to know what kind of products are popular.

For example, just in terms of exterior design, Gu Biao can provide a lot of historically tested ideas, because these are the most intuitive and easy to remember-

Erikson and Lu Yunda, these engineering men, originally just wanted to shrink Sony's CDP-101 and make it into a boxy box, which is nothing more than a square WALKMAN.

And Gu Biao insisted that they must make one side of the machine semi-circular, and the CD case lid should also be made into at least semi-circle, or even more than 180 degrees of large half of the arc, only close to the hinge can be flat.

At first, those industrial design designers still felt that there was a problem with the boss's aesthetics, but Gu Biao reminded them to pay attention: if the portable CD player is made square, then in the future, how can consumers take it out at a glance, how can people recognize this thing at a glance from afar, not a tape? How to see the difference at a glance?

Because the traditional WALKMAN is already square.

It cost $300, but you can't pretend to be "I'm different from those $100 things", who is going to pay for it.

Therefore, in order to be able to see the difference at a glance, for the sake of cool and trendy pretense, it must be round, which is not negotiable. Even for the sake of this round shape, it is necessary to make the overall volume of the machine larger and heavier.

This design concept of "must be recognizable in order to pretend to be forced" is still not very deep in the minds of industrial designers in the 80s, otherwise, Sony's first CD Walkman in history D50 will not be square.

So Gu Biao can be regarded as a lesson for them.

In addition to the appearance, Gu Biao also put forward several product experience optimization designs according to the historical inspection standards he roughly knew, so I won't repeat them one by one.

……

Gu Biao stayed in Silicon Valley for five days in a row, and also rectified the five-day project team and R&D department, and it was less than a week before the Spring Festival, and he had to prepare to return to China.

In the last two days of Silicon Valley, Gu decided to deal with a grand strategic adjustment.

He asked his assistant to make an appointment with the boss of Sega (USA), David Rosen, to give him a chance to make peace.

David Rosen didn't know the exact arrangement, but he came.

After all, from the fierce battle in July last year to January this year, half a year later, Sega's SG-1000 home game console has been completely killed by Tiankun's PLAY-BOX.

And two months after Nintendo's FC joined the war group, he fought a fierce battle with Gu Biao.

Although Nintendo is still far from being able to compete with the Tiankun, at least in the comparison with Sega, it quickly catches up.

According to the drama of "Jia Duo Bao vs. Wang Laoji, and wash it to no trace", Sega is also completely hopeless.

Since this is the case, Gu Biao feels sure to exchange some benefits.

After David came, he got straight to the point and had a showdown:

"The SG-1000 can continue to be sold, but I think Sega should give up its plan to enter the home game console industry in the future. Relevant R&D accumulation, project information, etc., can be given to us Tiankun.

I also want all the rights to home console games and the right to adapt arcade machines to home consoles. In addition, if some of your company's talents are about to be eliminated after you don't make home machines, then we can also choose the best to leave some of them. ”