Originally, Yahoo's management team only planned to hold a low-key Yahoo Technology Alliance and Advertising Alliance conference to launch new web technology products and negotiate business cooperation with Yahoo Alliance partners.

After Eric came up with the plan to lead competitors astray in New York, the size of the convention was dramatically increased, and a special budget was allocated to divide the conference into two main sections: the Yahoo Network product launch for users and the Yahoo Technology and Advertising Alliance conference for collaborators.

At the same time, in order to expand its influence as much as possible according to Eric's ideas, Yahoo sent invitations to executives of many high-tech companies, including Microsoft, Cisco, AOL, etc., and countless invitations to media reporters from all over the world. After more than a month of momentum, the media have speculated that Yahoo not only wants to make this annual event an annual event in the Internet industry, but also tries to further confirm its position as a leader in Internet companies.

Although the size of its leader is still insignificant compared to giants such as Microsoft and Cisco, and it cannot be compared with old high-tech companies such as IBM, HP, and Apple, no one can ignore its strong growth potential from the fact that Yahoo has been valued at $5 billion by Wall Street more than three years after its establishment. Therefore, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Cisco's John Chambers, AOL's Steve Case, and other corporate executives have confirmed that they will attend Yahoo's annual meeting, Katzenberg, as an executive representative of Yahoo's important partners in the media business, will also take the time to attend, Nokia's Yoma Ollira will also take this opportunity to come to the United States to meet with Eric, plus Qualcomm CEO Owen Jacob and Sprint executives who were invited to come, so to speak. This will also be the first gathering of all the core figures of Eric's economic empire.

Therefore. Although the Yahoo annual meeting lasts for a total of five days. Eric's schedule was measured in hours.

After briefly checking his schedule, Eric flipped through the relevant planning plan for the Yahoo Network product launch.

This is the sixth time that Eric has seen this copy in more than a month, after Eric made the decision to hold a product launch, the first plan sent by Yahoo in Eric and the memory of those mature product launch forms after comparison, can only be described as miserable, and finally Eric had to take the time to use the information in his memory to make a simple plan, handed over to Yahoo to repeatedly revise according to the actual situation, and finally had this mature plan in his hands today.

Because it will be televised. The press conference was compressed to less than 30 minutes, so there were no celebrity guests at the press conference, let alone time for executives to talk nonsense, and Eric himself would not go on stage, but left all the time to a few key leaders of Yahoo. For more than a month, Yahoo's advertising planning department has spent most of its time on how to use those 30 minutes as much as possible to get the content Yahoo wants to promote to TV viewers and to get as much interest as possible to those potential users.

In addition to a brief review of Yahoo's existing products, as well as recommended websites such as ABC News and Amazon that focus on cooperation with Yahoo. The launch will also focus on promoting two new products: Yahoo's profile and Yahoopay, Yahoo's online payment tool.

In the current Internet 1.0 era, network information is very scarce. Therefore, just like movies and TV dramas are for the media industry, only by trying to expand Internet content can we provide enough 'soil' for the development of the Internet industry. However, this task is simply not possible with professional media sites alone. Tina Brown's Yahoo Information Division, which has expanded several times and has fewer than 1,000 employees, is unlikely to provide enough content for the current 25 million U.S. Internet users.

Therefore, launching a personal homepage similar to Boke, using tens of millions of users to do this work, will undoubtedly be half the effort. Anyone is expressive, and as long as one in five of the 25 million U.S.-based users open a personal homepage, and each person provides an average of 20 pages of new content to the web each year, the entire Internet will add 100 million content pages.

And, even if that 100 million pages of content were to bring Yahoo 10 cents a year in ad revenue, it would bring in $10 million a year, and Eric knows better that those numbers will be much more than that in the coming years. Because it is in the embryonic period of the industry, in 1995, the entire Internet revenue of more than 10 million US dollars of enterprises can be counted on one hand. But as long as it can maintain its strong position, Yahoo's advertising revenue will also grow exponentially with the explosive scale of the Internet in the next few years.

On the other hand, Internet e-commerce has just appeared, even if it is the supergiant of the e-commerce industry in the previous life Amazon, at this time it is only a budding seedling, therefore, most of the e-commerce platforms simply cannot support a perfect online payment system, this is the best time for Yahoo online payment tools to enter the game, as long as the layout is completed, when everyone is used to using Yahoopay for online payment in the future, regardless of the other profits brought by this online payment tool, just the tens of billions of floating interest stored in the user's account, can bring huge profits to Yahoo。

When Yahoo launched a $100 million angel investment program, Eric quickly found Jeff Bezos' name in a pile of project application documents, and specifically told Yahoo's angel investment department to give the project the green light.

However, Jeff Bezos was only willing to sell 10% of his stake in exchange for Yahoo's $500,000 investment as start-up capital, and it is conceivable that Yahoo's 10% stake will be gradually diluted as Jeff Bezos raises further funds unless he specifically follows up.

Eric knows that it is impossible to chew too much, so he will not let Yahoo be too bloated, and whether it is now or in the future, Yahoo's core business will be on basic Internet services such as portals, search engines, and email, and its profit model will mainly rely on advertising. Won't get too involved in e-commerce. Even Eric's planned Yahoo Music Store. It will also be operated by a separate Yahoo electronics division. But. Although Yahoo won't get too involved in this aspect of the business, there is still a lot to be done to invest in e-commerce sites, not to mention, since it has met the fledgling Amazon, Eric certainly can't let it go easily.

Marking Amazon's name in the document with a pencil, Eric looked up and was about to say something, just in time to see Caroline's panicked look averting her eyes.

Looking at Caroline's red little face. Eric realized that this Nizi was just peeking at himself, and as a normal man, he did not lack the vanity of being noticed by the opposite sex, but he just smiled, knowing that Caroline was thin-skinned, and did not ridicule, and said: "Caroline, help me prepare a copy of Amazon's materials, and give me another copy of their original plan, oh." Amazon, you know that, right?"

Caroline saw that Eric didn't tease herself. And when he got down to business, his shy mood calmed down, and he nodded, "Is it the online book selling site that Jeff Bezos created?"

"Well, in addition, make an appointment and I'll talk to him personally. ”

Eric said, looking down and flipping through the schedule for the next few days, his daytime schedule must have been filled, and only night was left. The night of the 10th was a drinking party, a banquet for the executives of technology companies who came to attend the annual meeting, and the night of the 11th was a gathering of executives in the Firefly system, and they continued to scroll down, and there was nothing else to do after eight o'clock in the evening of the 12th, so he looked up and said to Caroline: "It's the night of the 12th, from eight to nine o'clock, and the location is in the hotel where I stay." ”

"Okay, Eric," Caroline nodded, and took out a memo to write it down, which she remembered very well, but still very carefully prepared a small memo according to the work habits of most people.

After writing, Caroline looked up and asked, "Eric, then, is there anything wrong with this information?"

"No," Eric shook his head, closing the folder and setting it aside, "Also, how about the materials I asked you to prepare about the electronic player and e-book?"

"It's almost, but about the cooperation in the development of micro-hard drives, ......" Caroline hesitated and said, "I called every day this week, but there has been no reply from IBM, just that their senior management has discussed it early." ”

Although it was tentatively decided to use the small hard disk developed by Toshiba as a storage medium for research and development, Eric still planned to entrust IBM to immediately develop the microhard disk, which was the first manufacturer to come up with the microhard disk technology in the original time and space.

Eric frowned and said, "It's been a week, even if you don't plan to cooperate, you should have a response, right?"

Caroline looked at Eric's frowning look, thought for a moment, and said, "Eric, I don't think IBM is a good partner to work with. ”

"Huh?" said Eric, looking up and motioning for Caroline to continue.

Caroline said: "IBM has always been a very provocative enterprise, their company even has as many as 38 decision-making committees, although three years ago the IBM board of directors appointed Louis Gerstner to carry out a series of reforms to the company, and achieved good results, but this kind of big business disease is impossible to change in a short period of time." Even IBM's attitude towards the same level of cooperation has been very sluggish, and I think that even if they finally discuss the results, with IBM's arrogance, it is impossible to agree to our cooperation plan. ”

The development of electronic players and e-book batteries, LCD screens and other technologies have been relatively mature, only the difficulty of storage media remains, and the current capacity of flash memory is too small, so only micro-hard disks are left.

At present, several major hard disk manufacturers have not yet developed micro hard disks, but with the strong technical accumulation of these manufacturers, it is not too difficult to miniaturize hard disk technology. Eric had planned to pay a research and development fee to commission IBM's hard drive division to develop the micro hard drive, and then obtain the exclusive rights to the micro hard drive for a few years after the successful development of the micro hard drive, so that it could delay the possible competitor by two to three years. Hearing Caroline say this, Eric also remembered some IBM materials.

It is said that IBM's internal hierarchy is extremely strict, and each executive has a seat equivalent to his or her own level when holding a meeting, and even the company's internal work clothes have a corresponding level. The strict hierarchy has also inevitably led to the rigidity and sluggishness of corporate management, and it is no wonder that there has been no response to the cooperation proposal sent here for a whole week.

At this time, Eric also realized that IBM was not a good partner to work with, and the exclusive rights he wanted for micro hard disks, simply put, IBM completed the development of micro hard disks, and Firefly would monopolize this product in the next few years, and IBM was not allowed to sell micro hard disks to other manufacturers. This kind of agreement to commission R&D and acquire ownership rights is very common in cooperation between technology companies, but for a giant like IBM, the chances of Firefly getting exclusive rights are very slim.

"I didn't think about it," Eric said, "Then which manufacturer do you think we are more suitable to work with?"

"Seagate or Western Digital, these two hard disk companies are in California, it's very easy to work together, and their technology accumulation is enough," Caroline replied: "In addition, Japanese hard disk manufacturers are more technologically advanced, but companies like Toshiba and Hitachi are involved in the manufacture of electronic products, and if we cooperate with them, it will be easy to compete with us in the same type of electronic products in the future." ”

Eric knows that after 2000, Japanese electronics companies fell into decline due to slow transformation and gradually became upstream component suppliers. However, at a time when Japanese electronics are in a very strong position around the world, Caroline is unlikely to see what will happen in a few years, and she is not wrong to say so.

Eric himself didn't like to work with the Japanese, so he said: "Then contact Seagate and Western Digital, you can follow up on this matter yourself, and try to get the results by the end of July." ”

"Well, okay," Caroline nodded, jot things down in a serious manner, and looked up to see Eric looking at herself, blushing slightly, "Eric, what's wrong?"

"No, I was just thinking, do you need to write these things down?"

"It's important to write it down, so it's safer. ”

Eric said: "I think you can talk to Warren Buffett when you have time, and he will definitely like you very much." Warren Buffett is the kind of person who can put everything into his brain, in the 80s, the Met acquired ABC, ABC invited a whole investment banking team, but the Met side is the only Buffett, with all the acquisition information in his head, and others use the computer to calculate several hours of data, he can say it casually. ”

"Ah, how can I compare to Mr. Buffett," Caroline said, shaking her head, embarrassed. (To be continued.) )