Mike Solomon nodded silently in his heart, now online videos have become popular, but most of these videos are scattered on different networks, when people find an interesting video, they will tell their friends through email, and then thousands of people will pounce on it, often causing the server to crash. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

If someone specializes in video websites, this kind of problem can be avoided, and it is indeed possible to become popular!

But Mike Solomon has been working in the Internet for several years and knows that creativity alone is not enough to succeed. He looked at Zhang Ran and said, "Eight years ago in Seattle, Hewlett participated in the establishment of Atomic Pictures. The main job is to help amateur filmmakers to promote their short films through the company's website. The website has tens of millions of visitors and is backed by Sequoia Capital. There are a lot of similar competitors, what do you rely on to beat them?"

Zhang Ran smiled and said, "Remember this year's Super Bowl? After Jenny Jay Kerson exposed her breasts, the entire Internet was looking for related videos everywhere. Our model is different from others, we have no threshold, and anyone can upload their own videos to the Internet. We advocate that everyone makes, everyone uploads, and everyone shares!" Next, Zhang Ran analyzed his website in detail, what are the characteristics, what are the advantages, and what are the plans to do.

After the analysis was completed, Zhang Ran added: "There is one thing I forgot to tell you. IDG invested $10 million in us and took 5% of the shares!"

Mike Solomon was shocked, venture capital companies generally don't invest so much money, IDG invested 10 million, but only accounted for 5% of the shares, either extremely optimistic about this person, or extremely optimistic about the project. Mike Solomon asked, "What do I get?"

Zhang Ran knew that Mike Solomon worked as a system engineer at PayPal, and the salary was quite good, and to let him start a business with him, it was difficult to achieve it with salary alone, and equity incentives must be implemented.

Shao Yibo, the founder of eBay, once said that when the company was founded, there was no venture capital, and a vice president had to give 2% to 5% options; after the A round of financing, the vice president became 1% to 2%; after the B round of financing, the vice president became 0.5% to 1%; and when the C round or close to the IPO, the vice president was 0.2% to 0.5%.

Zhang Ran has already obtained venture capital, naturally calculated according to the A round: "The salary is calculated according to your PayPal standard, and at the same time you are given 2% share options!"

IDG invests only 5% of the shares of 10 million, and can get 2% of it, which is quite good. Mike Solomon was a little moved: "What's the name of the company?"

Zhang Ran said: "youtube!" Zhang Ran said, picked up the pen and wrote the name of the website.

Mike Solomon laughed, American slang calls TV tube, youtube is your TV set, easy to understand, you can see what it means: "It's a good name, I'll do it with you!"

Zhang Ran also laughed and began to talk about his requirements for the website, its functions, and the requirements for the website architecture.

"Give me a few hours!" Mike Solomon excitedly turned on his computer and tapped quickly on the keyboard, a dense line of code flashing by. Not only Zhang Ran, but even Bai Yunfei was stunned.

Zhang Ran remembers Chen Shijun's description of the structure of Mike Solomon's YouTube website in the book, with his fingers flying and lines of code swiping through. Zhang Ran originally thought it was an exaggeration of art, but he didn't expect to really see this scene.

In Chen Shijun's description, Mike Solomon completed the website architecture in only three hours, and the performance of this website architecture is so superior that even Google's video website can't compare.

Three hours later, Mike Solomon slammed the keyboard, then raised his head and pushed the results of his three hours in front of Zhang Ran: "It's done, look at it!"

Zhang Ran looked at the dense code, his eyes dizzy. At the beginning, he invited someone to do pirate websites, where could he understand this, smiled and waved his hand: "I am a film professional, and I am semi-literate when it comes to code." I believe in your professionalism!"

Bai Yunfei took the computer and looked at it, and quickly gave a thumbs up: "It's a work of art!"

In the past few days, Zhang Ran has bought a domain name for YouTube and rented an office, and he originally planned to put the company's headquarters in Santa Monica. But Mike Solomon suggested that the company be located near Silicon Valley so that it would be easier to recruit good network engineers and designers. He said that if he had put his company's headquarters near Silicon Valley, he could pull a group of people from PayPal.

Zhang Ran remembers Chen Shijun saying that the members of YouTube at the beginning of its establishment were all former employees of PayPal, and the level of these people was very high, and more than twenty people supported the entire website. Mike Solomon can poach people from PayPal, and Zhang Ran naturally can't ask for it. However, he made a request, he must persuade Chen Shijun to join.

Don't forget to dig the well when drinking water, Zhang Ran took the big head of the cake, so he had to leave a copy for Chen Shijun. As for the other two founders of YouTube, if they are willing to join, Zhang Ran will definitely give them options as well. If you don't want to, it's none of his business whether the two Yankees live or die.

Three days later, YouTube had settled in San Bruno, South San Francisco, with just four members: Zhang Ran, Bai Yunfei, Mike Solomon, and Chen Shijun.

The company was formed, and the next thing to do was recruit employees, build a website, and then stress test. Once all the tests are complete, the website is uploaded to the network and is waiting for the public to review.

Zhang Ran has always believed in leaving professional matters to professionals, and the construction of the website will naturally be handed over to Bai Yunfei. Of course, Zhang Ran was not idle, and he found Peter Thiel, the president of Clarim Capital Management, through Mike Solomon.

Peter Thiel is a co-founder of PayPal and started venture capital after PayPal went public, four months ago he invested $500,000 in a website called Facebook for a 7% stake.

Through Peter Thiel, Zhang Ran got Mark Zuckerberg's phone.

Zhang Ran knew that Mark was a weird-tempered guy, and he was only willing to cooperate with people he was compatible with. Although Zhang Ran has not read Mark's autobiography, he has watched the movie "Social Network" and knows how to deal with him.

After meeting with Mark, Zhang Ran talked about his opinion, which he believes is too closed and that although it now has nearly 1 million registered users, these are students. Once they graduate, they quickly move on to other social networking sites. If Facebook is to be long-lasting, it must be open, everyone can participate, and it must become a global social network.

In the end, Zhang Ran used $30 million to successfully exchange 15% of the shares from Mark.

Zhang Ran injected money into Facebook for two purposes, first, Facebook has nearly 1 million users, which is a very large user base. If he can cooperate with them, he can make YouTube gain great popularity in the short term, and second, leave a way back for himself, what he wants to do is very risky, in case of unfortunate failure, relying on this part of the shares, he still has a chance to turn around.

Of course, after Facebook experiences rapid development, there will be more venture capital companies and consortiums to invest in shares, which will definitely dilute some of Zhang Ran's shares, and when it goes public, Zhang Ran will only have four or five shares. But even then, it's at least billions of dollars.

Just as Zhang Ran and Mark were completing their negotiations, a piece of news shook the whole of Hollywood, and Disney President Michael Eisner stepped down.

Eisner did not resign voluntarily, but was ousted. Eisner has been in the business at Disney for two decades, and his roots are so ingrained that he can say nothing about it.

This time, however, he faced a strong rival, with Roy Disney, the nephew of the Disney founder, who rallied 43% of the shareholders along with former director Stanley Gold, questioned the company's recent poor financial problems, the loss of two blockbuster films "Time Soldier" and "Fahrenheit 911", and the loss of the $110 million "Around the World in Eighty Days" and the company's heavy losses, and they demanded that Eisner be removed from office.

In the board battle, Roy Disney won and removed Eisner from the title of chairman of the board of directors, and immediately after, Eisner announced his resignation as Disney CEO, and Disney's "Eisner era" ended.

Eisner's resignation made Zhang Ran breathe a sigh of relief, and Disney should not target him everywhere in the future. Of course, suppression and repression are inevitable, but at least they will not be stumbling.

Three days after Eisner's resignation, another piece of news shocked Hollywood, when the Harvey brothers announced their separation from Disney, officially ending their 12-year guest-host relationship. Under the deal, Disney paid the Harvey brothers $130 million, while Disney received access to Miramax and inventory of more than 800 titles.

The media has a lot of discussion about this, believing that the reason for the breakup of the two parties is that Disney has always built up a healthy image for many years, suitable for all ages, but the Weinstein brothers don't care about this, and have made a lot of movies full of religious, gay, bloody, and violent elements, and Disney is very unhappy. In addition, "Fahrenheit 911" intensified the conflict, so the two sides are inevitable.

In fact, this is not the case, the real reason is that the Harvey brothers made a lot of money through the loophole in Disney's contract to buy Miramax, but Miramax did not make any money.

At the beginning, Disney signed a contract with the Harvey brothers on the condition that every fiscal year, 30%~35% of the profits generated by Miramax's film release that year would be given to the Harvey brothers. There is a loophole in this contract, Disney only counts the revenue of films released in the current year as Miramax's profits, and does not count films that are not released.

Harvey took advantage of this by dividing the film into those that could and those that could not. Films that make money are concentrated in one year, and Miramax makes a lot of money on the bill in that year, and the Harvey brothers get a big share of the prize money, and then postpone the release of films that might lose money into one year, and some even postpone the release for several years.

The Harvey brothers made a lot of money through this means, but Miramax didn't actually make any money. However, because the Harvey brothers have an equity in Miramax's subsidiary, and Disney insists that Dimen belongs to Disney, Disney has no way to fire the Harvey brothers directly, so it has to negotiate with them, and finally opens a breakup plan.

Harvey cheated Disney hard, and Disney had to pay a large breakup fee, and the clever means were simply eye-catching.

Zhang Ran remembered that Eisner's resignation and the separation of Harvey and Disney were all in 2005, but he didn't expect that he flapped the wings of his butterfly, and even made both things a full year in advance.

Shortly after the news of the separation of Disney and the Harvey brothers was announced, Zhang Ran received a call from Lionsgate owner Gusta. Gusta's voice was excited: "The Harvey brothers will definitely be busy preparing for the new company after leaving Miramax, and they don't have the time and energy to snipe us, but this is a good opportunity for us!" (To be continued.) )