Gu Biao did not have time to stay in the United States to observe the follow-up box office performance of "Terminator".

When his results came out in the first week and the box office just topped $6 million, he had to return home.

Because the reason for his suspension was that "I was too hasty when I came to report, and no one took over many career jobs", he first came to the United States for a semester and then took a year off to take over the job.

In American universities, the handover months of the three semesters are January, May and September each year, and it would be a bit unreasonable for Gu Biao to stay until June 1 and then return to China.

After conspiring with Harvey Weinstein to complete the final step of the movie's publicity and hype, and to knock the mountain and the tiger on the Mars theater line just right, Gu Biao got rid of Tiffany's entanglement.

His last two days in the United States were allocated to Mr. Schulhoff, Executive Vice President of Tiankun Media (USA), and the guests he helped to meet.

He has some final work to discuss.

Schulhoff has performed well because of the hype in the war of words and public opinion with Atari, and Gu has just clarified his position as executive vice president.

For this meeting, Gu Biao personally flew another route from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

When he arrived in San Francisco, Schulhoff personally picked him up at the airport, and then the company's car took Gu to Stanford University in Palo Alto.

What Gu Biao wants to meet is an academic bull from Stanford University, which involves the feasibility of his subsequent talent layout for Tiankun Media in the electronics industry, so it is very important.

Schulhoff himself is also a top student at Harvard, and has been a senior executive of multinational companies for more than ten years, so he still has a little network in this regard.

In addition, Gu Biao has the blessing of the aura of "studying for a doctorate with Kissinger", and recently Tiankun Media and Atari have been fighting again, and they have slightly established their status in Silicon Valley, so this time the meeting will be so smooth.

Otherwise, if you are just a dirt bun, even if you have money, you want to talk about cooperation with Stanford's department chair-level science and engineering experts, or even ask for graduate school places, it is all free to talk about - the top universities in the United States, some are sponsored, some are government projects for scientific research funding, and it is not that you have never seen money.

If Tubaozi doesn't have a signboard of a technology company, if he wants to throw $1 million into it, he won't be able to see a wave, and he won't even find the door and don't know where to smash it.

After some waiting and communication, Gu Biao visited an old man about fifty years old with gray hair in a conference room in the teaching building of the Stanford Department of Mathematics.

President Schulhoff hurriedly introduced him: "Chairman, this is Professor William Perry, who is also the deputy director of the Department of Mathematics. Mr. Professor, this is Mr. Gu Biao, the chairman of Tiankun Media, and you should have heard of his recent reputation in Silicon Valley. ”

"Sit down, don't be inhibited. I don't know what Tiankun Media wants to cooperate with our school. ”

Professor William Perry speaks very straightforwardly, and at first glance he looks like a science student. However, there are still basic etiquettes in gestures, and they belong to the kind of science comprehensive talents who often report projects and are in a high-level organization and coordination, rather than pure technical nerds.

In fact, William Perry's resume is a bit bizarre, he is a Stanford native who grew up all the way through the school, and has double-majored in mathematics and EE (electrical engineering). When he was a student in the fifties, he was even a graduate student under the leadership of President Frederick Thälmann. (In the 1950s, Frederick Thälmann had not yet become Stanford principal, and principal was a later title.)

As an aside, when William Perry was a graduate student in the EE Department of Stanford, he was a classmate of Zhang Zhongmou, the later king of chip foundry, but he was not at the same level.

After graduating, William Perry stayed at Stanford for a while, but there were a few years of service at OSRD before returning to Stanford as department chair. There is no shortage of speculation among outsiders that he was placed by Professor Thälmann in the years when he went to the OSRD. The purpose is to bury an undercover agent for the Stanford department in OSRD and increase Stanford's voice in federal scientific research planning.

OSRD, or the U.S. federal government's "Office of Scientific and Development," was established during World War II and has been preserved since the Cold War. Its role is to direct the use of research funds by the U.S. government and military, and to decide which basic research projects to spend government money on.

So don't look at this as just a unit with the title of "office", and its strength is no less than that of a ministerial-level unit.

During World War II, they held the decision-making power over the use of more than a billion dollars of scientific research funding every year, and claimed that "except for the Manhattan Project, which reports directly to the president, all other federal government scientific research funds are under the control of the OSRD."

After the Cold War, except for the Apollo moon landing president, all other federal research funding still went to the OSRD, which now has tens of billions of dollars a year.

Therefore, those who have experienced in OSRD, even if they are just grassroots clerks in an office, are people who have definitely seen the world and will not be tempted by small money.

In fact, this Professor William Perry, 12 years later, will have an even more bizarre opportunity, that is, he was invited by President Clinton to serve as the director of defense BU for four years.

The reason why a scholar who is engaged in mathematical analysis is to be the secretary of defense is entirely because the work of the US secretary of defense in '93 was completely different from the previous ones - he had to face the fact that the Soviet Union had just collapsed, and all parties had to coordinate the reduction of nuclear weapons, and did not need to think about how to fight a war.

In the years when Professor William Perry was at OSRD, he happened to deal with the Cuban Missile Crisis in '62, worked as a technical adviser to the government, and had some experience in denuclearization, so he was thrown off the shelves.

When President Clinton needed to fight the Kosovo War and needed a military secretary of defense in his second term in '97, he was relieved of his ability to coordinate disarmament but not to fight a war and continued to return to Stanford to teach mathematics.

Of course, that's all for later.

(As an aside, in 1942, when President Roosevelt was in the first year of the OSRD, the communications and electronics budget was $450 million.)

At that time, the head of the staff of the OSRD was Professor Verne Bush from MIT (this professor Bush was also the mentor of President Thälmann). Stanford's later president, Thälman, was at MIT when he was a Ph.D.), so MIT received a maximum of $120 million as a special budget for electronic research.

Later, the California Institute of Technology shared 80 million, and even a liberal arts university like Harvard relied on a "Harvard Radio Laboratory" to get 30 million. And Stanford University's EE department, although strong, was looked down upon by those traditional Northeasterners, and only received $50,000.

President Thälmann was deeply ashamed, and since then he has suffered from lobbyphobia, and no longer sends the most proud protégés to engage in scientific research, but lets first-rate talents go to OSRD to brag for funding for Stanford, and second-rate protégés stay to bury themselves in scientific research. This also led to the distortion of Stanford's academic style in the direction of "reporting talents are the most important, and practical people are secondary". ）

……

It's a bit far, and for the time being, let's go back to meetings and mediation.

As long as you know: The potential collaborator in front of Gu Biao is very awesome at the moment and will be even more awesome in the future.

After a simple politeness and temptation, Gu Biao went straight to the point:

"Professor Perry, if Tiankun Media is willing to sponsor and ask your university to accept several undergraduate graduates from China's top science and engineering universities every year for graduate studies - do you think there is a possibility of cooperation? We can guarantee that these talents will be used at the forefront of the confrontation with Atari and contribute to the industrial prosperity of Silicon Valley. ”

Gu Biao's proposal, of course, is not only to get excellent talents, but also to ensure that the company's technical team can be controlled in the future——

He also has some well-known students who are very handy in China to engage in research and development, such as Yang Hao, Lu Yunda and others who did the research and development of game consoles for him, and they have been struggling in obscurity.

However, as this batch of 77 undergraduates will graduate in July this year, given China's national conditions, they will have to be assigned to various units by the state.

This is mandatory by law, and Gu Biao has no way at all.

If you want to keep the talents who are easy to use, the only way is to start a study abroad exchange program first. Once these people become international students, China's talent management laws and policies will not control how they will be employed in the future.

In 1981, there was already an opening for publicly-funded study abroad in China, and the policy was allowed. It's just that the state doesn't have enough money, and it can't find foreign sponsorship, so the scale is not large.

If Gu Biao doesn't want to show off himself, he will let Schulhoff come forward and talk to the education department and even the university. Sponsored by Tencoin Entertainment (USA), the devil in Japan knows the real doorway inside.

After going abroad, there were many international students who refused to come back in the end. It's nothing more than this group of people who are enveloped by Gu Biao, even if they don't go back, they still work for Gu Biao in Silicon Valley, and use the commission training contract and confidentiality agreement here in Silicon Valley to contain them, and they will not give them the opportunity to betray Gu Biao.

However, Gu Biao's big game of chess is not attractive in the eyes of outsiders.

So William Perry didn't want to let go of his mouth at all for the time being.

He said businessmanly: "Of course, Stanford has a precedent for this model. But we need to make sure that the quality of the students is not suitable for the two sides to discuss, it should be a tripartite cooperation – which are the Chinese universities that you mentioned, and why didn't they send people?"

Gu Biao: "Then let me be more direct, I will unconditionally donate 2 million US dollars to Stanford University, and I hope you will cooperate with Zhejiang University to accept two undergraduate graduates of the Department of Electronic Engineering and Mathematics every year for graduate school." We will calculate the cost per person per year separately.

If their supervisor is willing to conduct some less basic research that can be converted into commercial and technical results when they are in school, Tiankun Entertainment can also sponsor scientific research funds. ”

William Perry pondered for a moment and retorted sharply: "Zhejiang University...... I don't know, maybe I can ask Qiu, this issue is put on hold for the time being.

However, the 'sponsorship of scientific research funds' you mentioned should be that your company ultimately wants to own the scientific research results, what kind of sponsorship is this? If you want to sponsor, you must also sponsor at least 1-to-1 additional basic research, otherwise you don't need to talk about it. ”

The "Qiu" mentioned by William Perry is, of course, his colleague Professor Qiu Chengtong.

Professor Qiu, who is still teaching in the Department of Mathematics at Stanford, is one of the hottest young mathematicians at the moment, and will win the Fields Medal, the highest award in human mathematics every four years, next year. In another time and space, later in the 90s, Zhejiang University also got some Stanford exchange places, relying on the relationship mediation of Professor Qiu Chengtong, plus the first few batches of pilot international students to compete for popularity, and later formed a convention.

However, in the period before and after Professor Qiu won the award, it also involved his own job-hopping - Professor Qiu seems to have finally chosen to be poached to Princeton to win the Fields Medal. It can be seen that the atmosphere of European and American studies is still very strong, and sometimes if you don't go to Princeton or Paris, you don't seem to be qualified to be considered the top mathematicians of mankind.

At the same time, William Perry's sensitivity in talking about conditions is not ambiguous at all, and there is no possibility of being fooled by the "big capitalists".

The so-called "sponsorship" promised by Gu Biao was exposed by him in one sentence.

At first glance, it is the old spicy cultivated in those years of OSRD.

It's just that he has a lot of say in this regard, and it is impossible for Gu Biao to talk to someone and bypass him.

"Well, I promise that if you sponsor it, you will have to mix and match it on a 1-to-1 basis for targeted and non-targeted funding – that is, half of the money you can use for any basic research, even if the results cannot be commercialized. ”

After the tone was set, the two sides were finally able to start bargaining a little more happily.

Professor Perry would not have personally agreed to give the graduate student a place, apparently to pull a few accomplices to share the risk and share the spoils.

At the same time, Gu Biao also knows how to talk to people and talk nonsense when he sees people - for example, when he is in front of Professor Perry's colleagues, the general conditions put forward must be a little different from when he talks to William Perry alone.

In any country, is it necessary to set a rebate differential between various decision-makers?

The specific process is too insidious, easy to cause discomfort, and to tarnish the sacred scholarship, so it is skipped.

Perry's final harsh conditions are roughly as follows:

"With a one-time donation of $3 million, we have made this academic exchange a semi-fixed system and convention. In the future, he will give $600,000 to the Stanford School of Mathematics and $600,000 to the School of Electrical Engineering. The Department of Mathematics and the Department of Electronic Engineering will each admit two outstanding undergraduate graduates from Zhejiang University.

However, we have to organize our own entrance exams. If they don't qualify, we'll send out invitations to other top Chinese universities for math and electrical majors to fill the vacancies. ”

Gu Biao calculated, this is that for every person sent to graduate school, the company needs to give $300,000 in sponsorship. This money is counted as the student's expenses for three years, the benefits to the school, and the research funds for the basic project with the supervisor during the three years.

You must know that the Stanford engineering graduate students who are normally admitted today have an average expenditure of more than $80,000 in total for three years of graduate school. (Of course, for the Chinese in 1981, it was already astronomical, and they simply could not afford to keep studying at their own expense.) ）

If Gu still wants to own the commercial research results of graduate students, he will have to sponsor up to $300,000 in research funds. The results made from that part of the money are the intellectual property rights that are completely attributed to Tiankun Media.

Of course, after the 300,000 yuan is spent, it can also occupy the talent and energy of some mentors, which is really valuable and attractive. After all, the professors at Stanford can give you a few random clicks, and they are very valuable.

If you want to do top-level scientific research in Silicon Valley, the cost is really expensive.

But with the collapse of Atari, the days when coders and circuit designers could handle it alone will soon be over. Even scientific research in the field of applied electronics will soon enter the era of huge costs.

Gu Biao had no choice for the time being.

Stanford is to Silicon Valley, what Silicon Valley is to the United States, and what the United States is to the world.

Fortunately, he has a lot of money, so he will bear with it for the time being. After he took out Atari two years later and completely proved that he was awesome, it was the turn of the Silicon Valley academic community to turn to him for cutting-edge opportunities and project direction.

Just like a small Internet company in later generations, if you want to recruit general talents, the cost must be more than that of recruiting the same person - because there are still signboards and prospects in Ahri Baba's family, and the qualifications are written into the resume. The only way to reverse this gap is to compensate others more in terms of money.

If Tiankun Entertainment didn't have the title of "Atari's only designated enemy" that was hyped up before, people with money would not bother to pay attention to you.

After Gu Biao figured it out, he accepted: "Thank you, happy cooperation." In this way, I will contribute another $100,000, hoping to invite the old principal Tälmann to show his face and attend the cooperation ceremony between the two sides at that time, what do you think?"

The old headmaster Tälmann is 81 years old this year, retired a long time ago, and has been in poor health, and has been bedridden for a long time (historically died next year)

But he was the mentor of William Perry, and his prestige at Stanford was unmatched.

$100,000 to buy him to attend an occasion and take a photo with him is also a reasonable price.

……

After roughly finalizing the intention of cooperation, Gu Biao had to hurry back to China.

Air China did not have a flight from San Francisco, so he didn't want to take a long detour to save trouble, so he took a JAL flight to Tokyo and then made a connecting flight back home. Halfway through, maybe I'll talk to Nintendo's Yamauchi about technology acquisition and transfer, and make some reserves for the full-time R&D team that will be formed soon—but Gu Biao will definitely not start with Nintendo's cutting-edge core technology, so he won't be alerted by Yamauchi.

Before leaving, he instructed his subordinates: "Schulhoff, if Professor Perry has any questions about the follow-up, please feel free to contact me." If there are some small fluctuations in the money side, it is acceptable, and it is not a big problem.

After you are done, fly to Qiantang as soon as possible, remember to make an appointment with the relevant department in charge of education, and then contact my designated university in person to talk about academic exchange invitations and sponsorships - note, don't say that you are employed by me, you have to pretend to be a research company with 100% Silicon Valley origin. It is better to disguise yourself as an internationalist fighter who yearns for a harmonious society. ”

"I know how to do it. "Schulhoff is a well-adapted executive in Asian culture, so a little bit of a finger will make sense.

Historically, he was one of the few American executives who could die well at Sony, so it wasn't difficult for him to play the tricks as necessary.

After Gu Biao explained everything, he boarded the plane and took off.

——

PS: There are already more than 5,000 words on the top, and the bottom is not counting money.

Let's do two more today, but the total number of words will not be less than everyone. It's mainly a transitional chapter that changes the map, and it's a little trivial to get through in one go. If you break out of context, the rhythm will collapse a little.

I also know that some secondary characters will have a more vivid image if they use events to expand the water and set off it. But first, I don't want water, and secondly, I believe that the vast majority of people don't care too much about the personas of American entrepreneurs and scholars, so I directly report historical events, and everyone knows what kind of person it is.