Chen Zier is experiencing some kind of psychological change, he can't say clearly, but he can really feel it. Getting a stable check that can be cashed into '$2.3 billion' after 6 years and $60 billion after 20 years is the beginning.

That means that no matter how much he 'does', he can still make a good living, he doesn't have to think about survival anymore, and he's not stupid enough to do it.

In Napa Canyon, he saw the most beautiful natural scenery in his life, the beauty shocked his soul, and he accompanied Qin Yunhan to live a somewhat 'corrupt' rich life, eating a meal for thousands of dollars.

He is not an idiot, he can see that Qin Yunhan must be a rich girl, when he first met her, he had already checked the harp instrument on the Internet.

The harp of hundreds of thousands of yuan is the most rubbish, and it takes hundreds of thousands of yuan to get by a little, and the teacher of the harp is quite difficult to find, what does this mean?

But Chen Zier almost couldn't see the mentality of being a poor person in the process of getting along with Qin Yunhan.

Lying on his hotel bed at night, he was convinced that he was changing.

Before coming to the United States, he wrote down all the information about Apple and Google that he was most familiar with in his memory, locked the door, and stared at it on the bed alone.

In the past, Chen Zier was content to make a small amount of money, and he made $3.8 million in the Southeast Asian financial crisis, and he has hundreds of thousands of yuan a month from Internet cafes and pudding convenience stores.

He bought three houses in Zhonghai, and there will be more in the future.

He also has a quarter stake in a powerful Chinese portal.

He lived in abundance and did not bother with money. Basically, if you want to buy a house, if you want to buy a car, if you want to buy a car, if you want to travel, you can travel, and if you want to go to work, you can never go to work.

After earning $3.8 million, he almost lost his purpose in life. finally found a goal for himself to take a stake in Google, and now that he has achieved it, he has lost his goal again.

There are a lot of things that you get and you don't feel it, like $3.8 million.

This night, he was asking himself, what do you want?

Early the next morning, the energetic lawyer Yang Runling gave Chen Zier a 'formal' leave.

"What do you say you're going to do?" Chen Zier didn't hear clearly.

"I want to buy a computer, Apple's imacG3, it's so beautiful, I've always enjoyed it before, and I want to buy one this time when I come to the United States. ”

In August 1998, the imacG3 was officially put on sale, and Chen Zier's mind burst out with such a message, this jelly-type computer announced the return of Jobs, announcing the official awakening of Apple's sleeping lion.

Steve Jobs, in the next fifteen years, is a genius, a madman, and a paranoid person who will revolutionize the Internet technology world.

Yang Runling saw that Chen Zier was a little silent, and asked, "What's wrong with you?"

Chen Zier shook his head and asked, "Have you heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs?"

Yang Runling shook his head blankly.

Maslow said that the first need of people is material benefits, and everyone must ensure their livelihood. ”

"Oh......" Yang Runling didn't know what he meant, but he just felt that it seemed to make some sense, so he continued, "What about the second layer?"

"The second layer is social recognition. ”

"What's wrong with you? Why did you talk about this all of a sudden?"

Chen Zier laughed meaningfully, "It's nothing, I just think he's right." ”

He thought of something, of what he needed.

Yang Runling thought he was weird, but she didn't say much, after all, she still had to rush to buy her beloved computer.

Chen Zier went to charter one of the most expensive luxury cars, and of course the driver, he didn't even have a domestic driver's license.

Highway 1 in California, he's already on his way.

On the 1,000-kilometer-long coastal road, Chen Zier looked at the endless blue ocean and the naughty waves that churned all the way.

He made an important decision.

Two days later, he returned to the hotel and called Yang Runling.

"The first thing I did was to contact a company called Fingerorks, which I had looked up before, and it was a small company that was just founded by two professors at the University of Delaware, and they had a full patent for a technology called multi-touch. Tell them we're going to buy it. ”

This may not be successful, because the two founders are not as well-known as Page and Brin, so Chen Zier does not know these two professors;

The development of this small company is difficult, but how difficult it is, he does not know.

I don't know if the two professors will sell it now, or if they want to appreciate it in their hands.

But the only thing he knows for sure is that their company has little business to do, because the technology is unlikely to be used for a decade.

The iPhone was only released in 2007, and until then people were still amazed and even incredible about multi-touch, so looking at '98, ten years is still an optimistic number.

Chen Zier entered the working state, and Yang Runling became serious.

"The second thing you found in Silicon Valley is that it's called Portal......"

At this point he paused slightly, he was going to talk about the portal-player company, but it seems that this company was only founded in '99.

There are all kinds of small companies in Silicon Valley, and there are not many of them whose names he can remember, and this one is one of the more important ones.

Yang Runling asked, "What's wrong?"

Chen Zier did not answer, he was pondering: Portal-Player is a company that designs and produces mp3 music players.

He wanted to put that in mind.

On October 23, 2001, the first generation of iPod was officially released, but the entire development process of this little thing took less than 9 months.

And before that, Apple and digital music couldn't fight.

Is the technical reserve of this company, which has been depressed for more than ten years and just taking a breath, really strong enough that even if it enters an unfamiliar field, it can develop a classic product without much effort?

Steve Jobs was a genius at concept, strategy, and possibly design, but 'etc.' never included technology.

In 2000, when many people in the industry thought that the prospects for digital players were not optimistic. Steve Jobs saw the potential for such players to revolutionize the music world, and he immediately ordered Rubinstein, his head of hardware, to develop a similar product.

But Rubinstein thought it would be difficult to develop independently, so he wittily suggested that Jobs work with a small company that had only been around for two years.

After Jobs's 'expulsion' catastrophe, his brain was no longer a tendon, and he agreed.

In fact, the company is 'small' and has been around for less than two years, but it is already a leader in the field of digital music players, as they have developed MP3 players with top-notch equipment and advanced design.

The development process was so short, but the quality of the iPod was surprisingly good, and it was with the cooperation with this small company that it was successfully developed and officially launched before Christmas 2001, completing a miracle.

That's right, the name of the company is Portal Player.

But the company hasn't been established yet...... Let's talk about it in '99, as for now.

"In Silicon Valley, there is a concept called digital music on the rise, and new technologies are emerging one after another, and I want to set up a small company to do some research on this technology," Chen said. ”

He knows that the labor cost here is very high, so he doesn't plan to throw money at it, isn't there a way to accept venture capital?

portal-player has only been around for a long time, and he doesn't have the money he has now, but it is with a lot of venture capital that they have been able to absorb hundreds of hardware and software engineers in a short period of time.

So why can't he Chen Zier do this?