"Bonnie, give me a summary of the last two months' Southeast Asian stock market data. John Doerr gave his assistant a task.

After a long time, John Doerr took off his glasses, "The situation is indeed not right, the trend of the Thai index is obviously a market maker to open a position, the recent US dollar interest rate hike, if someone sells a large amount of Thai baht at this time, and at the same time sniped in the spot and stock market, the Bank of Thailand currently has less than 30 billion US dollars in foreign exchange reserves, which is really unable to cope." ”

Morgan Stanley also played a role in the Southeast Asian financial crisis, but Morgan Stanley is too big and has many departments, and they don't necessarily know each other better than their clients know about them.

And this kind of thing can't be known to a mid-level like Howard Hellberg, who is still a little skeptical.

Howard questioned: "Are we too sensitive? If we bring forward Amazon's IPO to March, we will have to pass the NYSE registration review by the end of February, which is too tight." Even if there is real turmoil in the foreign exchange market in Southeast Asia, the impact on the US stock market will only be temporary. ”

John Doerr shook his head and said: "Howard, any financial turmoil will have a profound impact, and it will not be able to subside in a short period of time, maybe its impact on the US stock market is only temporary, but if we just catch up with this time, it will take another one to two years to restart the IPO." ”

"Amazon is engaged in a capital-intensive industry, if we can't transmit the financial pressure to the secondary market as soon as possible, by the second half of this year, we need to carry out Series C and D financing for Amazon, and we don't want to take this risk. ”

Howard still argued: "But... ”

John Doerr stood up: "It's nothing, Howard, you have to understand that Morgan is only our underwriter, and not the only underwriter, if you don't want to do this business, there will be a lot of people who are willing to do it." ”

John Doll understood that Howard was arguing about these obvious issues for one simple reason – it was troublesome.

This is the so-called disease of big business and the disadvantages of the professional manager system.

The nineties were the period when the professional manager system was extremely superstitious in the business world, not only in China, but also in the United States.

Jack Welch, Gerstner, George David, and even Huaxia's Zhang Ruimi and Liu Chuanzhi all represent the limits of what a professional manager can achieve.

Thus, throughout the nineties and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the system of professional managers almost represented absolute political correctness.

Many experts believe that this is the most perfect management system, and the reason why China's private enterprises cannot do foreign enterprises is because it is difficult to realize the transformation from family enterprises to professional managers.

But in reality, professional managers are also particularly disadvantageous, and even this disadvantage can lead to the slow death of a company.

No matter what title a professional manager is given, even if it is CEO or president, it cannot change the essence of professional managers who pay more attention to immediate interests than long-term interests, personal interests over corporate interests, and quantitative indicators over strategic layout.

There are very few professional managers who can balance immediate and long-term interests, and these people are the names mentioned above.

And more, it is Tang Jun, Chen Xiao, Kazuo Hirai, and Elop.

Howard was reluctant to delay Amazon's IPO because it had an impact on his KPIs and his performance at Morgan Stanley.

And he doesn't want to advance, it's just because he is too troublesome, and if he advances, it doesn't promote his KPI, so why bother himself? Two months in advance, do you know how much more we have to do?

That's what Howard really thought.

John Doerr, as a partner at KPCB, saw through Howard's careful thinking at a glance.

Howard was a little unwilling, "Okay, we're just making our proposal, but in this matter, Amazon is the real subject, and if they ask to change the IPO time and recalculate the issue price, we will respond accordingly." ”

Zhang Chen immediately said: "I will ask Bezos to personally confirm in writing to the three of you, gentlemen, what we need now is your action! Immediately, immediately make me a new action plan, I hope that at the meeting in three days, you can come up with a plan that satisfies us." ”

The representatives of the three parties glanced at each other and nodded helplessly.

For Bezos, an IPO two months early is not a bad thing. Amazon, which has obtained the investment of Tinder Source and KPCB, has entered the money-burning mode and cannot stop, so it is possible to alleviate the financial pressure one day earlier by raising funds through listing one day earlier.

His only concerns are the issue price and the transaction price on the day of the IPO.

This determines whether he can raise $50 million in the stock market as he planned.

In the face of Bezos's concerns, Zhang Chen only asked him on the phone: "Even if the IPO is according to the original plan, can you come up with a business plan that will make shareholders crazy?"

Bezos was speechless.

This is a very practical problem, Amazon's goal now is to become the largest bookstore in the world, but when it comes to profit models, it is not actually clear.

Zhang Chen softened his tone: "Jeff, Amazon's current profit model is still a traditional bookstore, but you moved this bookstore online. What investors see is nothing more than that you have reduced your costs through network operations. The upper limit of all the imagination of investors in Amazon is Barnes & Noble. ”

Barnes and Noble is now the largest bookstore in the world and is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization of about $1.5 billion.

"We need to tell investors a more attractive story, not a story of 'I don't know if I can grow from $400 million to $1.5 billion', I need this story to have bigger ambitions, bigger plans, you know?" Zhang Chen said in a breath.

Bezos was a little dazed by Zhang Chen's spray, "What do you mean?"

Zhang Chen said word by word: "I hope Amazon's benchmark company is not Barnes & Noble, but Walmart." ”

Bezos felt dizzy, and now no Internet company dares to say that its future target company is Wal-Mart.

Walmart is a retail empire with a market capitalization of over $150 billion!

Bezos was very human after all, and quickly reacted: "You mean to let us do full-category operation? This is impossible, our current plan is to gradually expand from the book category to audio-visual products, and the full-category operation is not qualified at present, at least it will take more than five years." ”

Zhang Chen smiled and said: "It doesn't matter if we do all categories or not, what matters is what kind of story we want to tell to shareholders." Amazon's immediate priority is to raise $50 million from the stock market with its current IPO proposal, while maintaining investors' confidence in us. You know, if we can't catch up with this bus, once the Asian financial crisis breaks out, maybe our IPO will be postponed for half a year to a year, and we can't afford to wait. Now Amazon's funds should only be enough to last for half a year, and if it can't be listed within half a year, we will be forced to carry out the next round of financing, which is too variable. ”

"The side effect of an early IPO is that the issue price may not meet our expectations, and in this case, we must tell the story well and give shareholders greater expectations. We are an Internet company, what is the biggest advantage of the Internet, isn't it 'hope'?"

The low issuance price is of course what Zhang Chen wants to see, but if it is too low, Amazon will lose the opportunity for development, which is even more unacceptable to Zhang Chen.

(End of chapter)