Chapter 702: New Development Plan
Wang An's name, the Wang family wants to continue to use it, but it's okay.
After all, this is a real person's name, not a pure trademark, and you can still play a side game.
As long as the LoGo and ui design are different from the registered "Wang An" display, there will be no confusion, and you want to use those two words, which are still allowed according to US law.
However, the name wPs, Wang An's new software company is unusable in both reasonable terms, and it is infringement. Most of the equity of your company was sold to Gu Biao, how can you eat two melons?
This requires a talk about money, or a few points of stakes.
In the final game between the two sides, Wang An put forward a relatively simple condition: "I am willing to take out 5% of the current 21% equity of the head office and transfer it to you, in exchange for the establishment of a new pure software company in the future, in the subdivision of office software, continue to use the brand of Wang An and wPs."
Of course, I can guarantee that in the future, this new software company that still bears Wang An's name will never cross the line to operate any hardware products. If after my death, my descendants are going to run the hardware business, then I won't let them use my name, they can start a new company, and of course I don't believe they will want to run the hardware business anymore. ”
5% of the current company's shares seem to be a lot of money, after all, Gu Biao previously won more than 60% of the shares, and a total of 1.2 billion US dollars was spent openly and secretly.
Then this 5% is equivalent to 100 million US dollars. Present value, regardless of future appreciation.
But considering that Wang An's company does not have the latest competitive products, and its scientific research strength has been hollowed out by Gu Biao, its greatest value is the brand, so it is not too much to take out 100 million US dollars.
Gu Biao thought for a while: "6%, now that everything is stable, I will also make up a 70% shareholding by the way and control it absolutely." You keep 15%. With the extra 1% you spend, I allow you to poach the backbone of the software technology that once developed wPs from the current company, and you can authorize all the software rights of the previous wPs to you to share and use.
As for the other small shareholders who hold 15% of the accumulated shares, I will give them a little cash compensation, and the shares will not be distributed to them. ”
Wang An withdrew some brand assets from the current company, theoretically dividing the interests of the whole company, so the theoretical beneficiaries of this part of the interests are not only Gu Wei, but also other small shareholders of the company.
It's just that all the other small shareholders combined, the right to speak is less than a quarter of Gu Biao's. Therefore, Gu Biao helped them make a decision and compensated others in cash.
The equity worth 100 million US dollars transferred by Wang An was fully accepted by Gu Biao, and then this part should have been divided into about five equal parts, with Gu Biao accounting for four shares and other small shareholders accounting for one.
In practice, it is equivalent to a one-time cash dividend of $20 million from Gu Biao to all other minority shareholders. [Dividends based on the transfer of the right to use the company's intangible assets]
The entanglement with the Wang family was completely resolved, and the Wang family withdrew from then on.
……
The day after Wang An went back to recuperate, Gu Biao was finally able to take the time to lead a project meeting for all the technical and project executives of Wang An Computer.
From a global perspective, plan the research and development progress of the new generation of personal computers.
In fact, some of the preparatory work for the project initiation phase had already been carried out since before the privatization process was completed.
Even earlier, Tiankun Company relied on the technical backbone that was poached from Wang An in the past year, cooperated with the experience of the Tiankun R&D team itself in making game console systems, and the rich accumulation of using Motorola 68000 series cPu, and also launched a lot of argumentative attempts. Suspicious: Ancient Decoded
The company hung up the slogan "Fight for 300 days, win the new generation" in a very Chinese style, and all R&D engineers were additionally required to work overtime, of course, the salary was very high.
The backbone engineer does not want to work overtime, or wants to cause labor disputes. As long as it is not a very difficult job that must be used by Americans, it will be moved to China and outsourced to Tiankun's R&D headquarters in Qiantang. The Chinese in 1987 were very happy to work overtime on the premise of getting extra high salaries.
Everyone has a bottom in their hearts: within 300 days, combined with Wang An's legacy and Tiankun's application experience of Motorola cPu, we will come up with a personal computer that can dominate the needs of a new generation of users.
The current goal is to surpass Apple's Mac-II, which is also scheduled to be launched next year, in 1988.
If Wang An was in his heyday, Wang An himself was also energetic and keen-eyed, which could naturally be done.
However, because of Wang An's old age and the incompetence of the handover managers in the past two years, he has fallen behind a lot of homework, resulting in Gu Biao's computer research and development strength before Gu Biao took over, Wang An's computer research and development strength has obviously lagged behind Apple, so this task seems to be slightly difficult, and it takes great hard work to achieve it.
After all, according to the original historical trajectory, Wang An's company has not successfully launched any next-generation computers since then. In 1987, although the total market value of Wang An's stock price was higher than that of Apple, it was provided by the brand, not by technology.
Before the project meeting, Gu first summoned Schulhoff, who he had transferred from Tiankun to coordinate, and John Chambers, who had temporarily assumed the title of acting president at Wang An Computer.
John Chambers was the title of CMO before he left Wang An and defected to Gu Biao, and after coming back this time, Gu Bian wanted to appoint cronies and reward Shouyi, so it was natural for Chambers to be promoted.
However, Gu Biao did not intend to let him get the title of CEO too easily, so the current title of Qian is still COO, presiding over daily work, including this new product project.
Gu Biao also made it clear that the inspection period of the agent is one year, as long as the project is completed well, and the second generation of Apple's Macintosh will be fully destroyed after the product is launched next year, then Chambers can be the CEO.
As for Schulhoff, he has always been the president of Tiankun, and of course he will not come to Wang An to take up his post.
The reason why Gu Biao asked Schulhoff to come to Wang An temporarily to do the overall coordination work was because Wang An had not cooperated enough with Motorola before, and had too little experience in the use of Motorola's cPu and other chips, and the accumulation of driver interface writing.
Since the first generation of game consoles in 83, Tiankun has been using Motorola's 68000 series cPu, so with Schulhoff's overall planning, Wang An's R&D department can fully and quickly dock.
In general, the hardware coordination, driver programming, and optimization of the new computer mainly rely on the R&D strength of Tiankun.
Wang's old R&D team was responsible for development work other than drivers and hardware and software interfaces.
The division of labor is clear, parallel and orderly.
Even Gu Biao himself sighed that he was really a master who was good at making full use of resources, optimizing and integrating resources, and joining forces.
Even if he doesn't write a single line of code himself, his vision of strategic resource allocation for projects alone is comparable to that of a contemporary tech company boss.
…… Dragon Sutra
"Boss, our preliminary preparations have been completed smoothly, and all the components required for the hardware have been selected and the initial integration of circuit design has been carried out. Motorola, Inc., as well as other vendors, have also integrated all the required data interface instruction sets into us.
Therefore, in the next eight months, we can focus on the development of operating systems and application software, in which the workload of hardware drivers will be greatly reduced, and only some optimized workload should be completely timely. ”
Schulhoff's report really made Gu Biao very worry-free. It seems that the driving and optimization that Tiankun is responsible for here is unlikely to be a problem.
In the next eight months, the main energy can be spent on the operating system kernel and the software at the application level.
Gu Wei nodded, praised Schulhoff, and then turned to John Chambers:
"After that, the main thing is to rely on your old general, John, don't let me down. I want to see that you still have a sense of honor, and that you can compete with the people I brought from Tiankun for progress and quality. ”
"Boss, we will, you can rest assured. Chambers patted his chest and packed the ticket.
Gu Biao said: "Tomorrow, we will discuss the layout requirements of the first-party application software, so as to point out some directions for the optimization and adjustment of the hardware, the hardware design they are doing now, the direction will not change, but the performance indicators are still possible to be fine-tuned and improved in the same series."
As a new generation of personal computers, the parameter selection of hardware cannot completely follow the speed of Motorola suppliers, the most important thing is to look at the software application scenarios, and we must make the new and epoch-making software run perfectly. ”
Gu Biao's words made Chambers feel a pang in his heart, and he hurriedly wrote it down.
Chambers vaguely felt that Mr. Gu's thinking was similar to that of Steve Jobs next door. Steve Jobs was also a tyrant with a regressive functional design, and every time he set hardware indicators from the perspective of "what function I want to make sure to run perfectly and smoothly".
If the engineer told Jobs that this could not be done now, or that it was not cost-effective, he would be scolded back by Jobs, or even slapped the table, saying, "Then this next-generation product will not be finalized and produced, wait, wait for the day this problem is solved, or scientific and technological progress can achieve this, and then we will come out with new products." Now this kind of spicy chicken that has no epoch-making shocks, why are you pushing it out? Squeeze toothpaste?"
This kind of thing can only be done by developers of closed system computers, and it is impossible for Microsoft's open operating system to do this, and they don't care about hardware replacement, anyway, they are making compatible machines.
Chambers understood Gu's attitude, sorted out the needs, and retired to prepare for tomorrow's meeting.
Schulhoff watched those Wang An's executives retreat, and asked Gu Biao with a little reluctance: "Boss, you spent 1.2 billion US dollars, and in the end you got such a stall, I always feel ...... Give them too much. Wang An's brand is important and valuable, but this is an empty shell ......"
Gu Biao raised his hand and stopped Shulhoff's unwillingness: "This question is not something you should consider, but since you have been with me for so many years, I will say a few more words to you."
If it was three or four years ago, only facing the competition of Apple's Macintosh, Wang An's signboard was indeed not worth so much money. But now, we're not just dealing with Macintosh II, we're also dealing with Microsoft.
You started out as a game console, you have never touched a computer, and you have never been exposed to an 'open operating system', and you don't understand how important it is to attract third-party software developers to your ecosystem.
And Wang An's signboard means not only channels and customers, but also confidence for third-party developers. ”
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