A few years later, when the Internet industry began to explode, watching countless companies burn hundreds of millions of dollars every year, but still unable to shake the Internet empire that the young man who was not yet twenty-five years old had built out of his light words, Tina Brown realized how far-sighted Eric's decision was.

But now, in a fancy Manhattan café, Tina Brown hears about Eric's crazy plan for the first time, and hesitation.

Tina Brown's status and fame in the media industry has reached her peak, and if she accepts Condé Nast's offer to take the helm of The New Yorker, she is 90 percent sure that she will revive the declining magazine, with nearly two decades of experience in magazine operations. But if she moves to a completely unfamiliar field, even if it is only for a year, but if she fails to make dazzling achievements in this field, then it will not be so easy to return after a year and want to reintegrate into the original circle again, she is only forty years old now, and she does not want to ruin her original personal career because of an adventure.

Hearing Eric mention Columbus and the Great Voyage, Tina Brown didn't have too much enthusiasm, but just smiled faintly, which was kind of echoing. People only remember the glory of the Age of Discovery, but no one has explored how many adventurers died at sea over the centuries because of storms, pirates and disease.

Tina Brown had expected Eric to continue to persuade her to join Yahoo or offer her a lucrative offer that would be hard for her to refuse, but she thought he would, with more than two decades of experience in the media industry. A truly successful superior. will often spare no effort to gather talents for their own use. But Eric said the last word. Instead, she quieted down, picked up the coffee in front of her and leaned comfortably back in her chair, patiently waiting for her to make a decision.

Eric's unexpected reaction calmed down Tina Brown, who was already suffering from gains and losses.

The two watched quietly for a while at the traffic coming and going outside the glass window, and Tina Brown finally made up her mind and asked, "Eric, what do I get if I join Yahoo?"

Eric replied, "I'm not going to pay you too much a year. Your personal salary will probably be the same as it was during Vanity Fair. However, at the beginning of Yahoo's existence, the company drew up an equity award contract, and before going public, Yahoo would distribute up to about 20% of the equity as a reward to management and some employees who have made important contributions according to their contributions, and if you join Yahoo and can meet my requirements after one year, then you will also be listed in this incentive plan. ”

Tina Brown shook her head suspiciously: "Eric, what you said is too general, I don't know if you will honor these things in the future, if Yahoo can really grow and grow." A 20% stake is not a small amount. Moreover, you also did not give any criteria. I don't know how to meet what you're talking about?"

Eric laughs: "You don't need to worry about that, the contract for the pre-IPO equity award plan was drawn up by a good friend and partner of mine, dozens of pages long, and it was approved by everyone, and you can sign this contract after you join Yahoo." ”

For Firefly, a media giant that has already established its position in the industry, the group's operating system is quite perfect, and although excellent management can bring more benefits to the company, it cannot play a role in determining the life and death of the company. As a result, shareholders do not need to make too many equity incentives to management, and in the past few years, although Firefly has been very profitable, Eric has used less than 1% of the total share capital to reward management.

However, for the rapidly emerging Internet industry, senior technical and management talents who have accumulated a lot of industry experience are crucial to the company's development. In the case of the company's rapid development, it is necessary to ensure that the management does not leave the company alone or be poached by competitors. Because once these talents who are crucial to the development of Internet technology companies leave, it may be like a train that is moving at high speed and suddenly finds that the tracks in front of it have been torn down, and the disastrous consequences can be imagined. The reason why so many young billionaires were able to produce in the early stage of the development of the Internet industry is because most investors understand this truth, rather than naively pinning their hopes on their enthusiasm and loyalty. However, more than ten years later, the oligarchic pattern of the Internet industry will take shape, and the door to this kind of wealth that makes people rich overnight will also be closed.

After explaining Tina Brown's first concern, Eric pointed to the IBM notebook that still displayed the Yahoo Portal homepage, and said: " In addition, about your personal work results, in fact, there are no no judging criteria, for example, Yahoo server background has a detailed record of the user's access data, which has a very important PV value, which means the user's page visits (Page-View), this data is the best embodiment of the user's recognition of Yahoo content, the ratio of PV value to the number of users is the average page visit of each user, this ratio will represent your personal work results to a certain extent, the higher the ratio, the better your work。 ”

After listening to Eric's patient explanation, Tina Brown suddenly smiled: "I suddenly realized that I couldn't find a reason to turn down this job." At the very least, you're going to be a lot more honest than my old boss. ”

Eric knew that Tina Brown said this, which was actually equivalent to agreeing, and laughed: "In this case, I still need to be honest with you one more thing, compared to being the editor-in-chief of "Vanity Fair", your workload at Yahoo will increase exponentially, because "Vanity Fair" only needs to be done once a month, but Yahoo's information needs to be updated in real time every day or even every hour, and you need to coordinate various content sections and a larger number of sub-sections. ”

Tina Brown was stunned for a moment before asking, "How many people can I have?"

"Yahoo spent most of its first two years on the development of website technology, and currently has a simple editorial team of 50 people. The original editor-in-chief used to be the editor-in-chief of a general newspaper in Boston. I wasn't happy with his work. That's why I'm inviting you," Eric said, looking at IBM's Yahoo homepage, counting, and saying, "You'll be responsible for a total of eight content sections in the future, and you can adjust them to your own popularity when you join the company, and personally, an average of five sub-sections per section." With five editors per section, you can expand your editorial team to 200 people. Yahoo definitely wants to make its own news content, which requires a team of journalists, and at the same time, there are departments such as logistics support, which is also a group of people. Of course, these are all things you need to think about once you join the company, and if you feel the need to expand your editorial team to 500 people, I can approve your plan by giving me a convincing reason. ”

Tina Brown subconsciously felt that five editors per subsection was too little. However, she has not officially joined the company, and she does not know the specific situation. So I didn't ask for anything right away.

"One last question," said Tina Brown, "the Firefly Group is now the largest media group in North America, with a wealth of information, and I wonder how much support Yahoo can get from Firefly?"

Eric smiled: "I can give you any support you can think of, the highest priority film and television information, celebrity interviews, ESPN sports news, the latest Hollywood trends, etc., but only if you want to make the Firefly's department feel that you have the qualifications to work with them." When they hear that they've partnered with Yahoo, their first reaction is 'Oh, Yahoo, that's a great site,' rather than asking, 'What is Yahoo?'"

"There's an endless loop in your logic," laughs Tina Brown, "and if Yahoo doesn't get enough support first, how can I get others to treat the site differently?"

Eric said: "Although you have a bit of a sneaky concept, but well, I just have a good opportunity here, and just like the time you caught the Reagan Foxtrot incident to bring Vanity Fair back to life, this will be another big event that could cause a sensation, and if it can be done properly, Yahoo Information's popularity will be greatly increased again." ”

Tina Brown remembered last year's global box office blockbuster Jurassic Park and wondered, "Is this your new movie?"

"No," Eric shook his head, "but it's another show I directed myself, a big fashion show." ”

Tina Brown was about to ask, but Eric just smiled and shook his head: "This will be the end of the year, and many things are not convenient to disclose in advance." Trust me, though, the show brought enough news for Yahoo to run for a few months, and I'll try to give you all the first-hand information. ”

"Then I'll have to wait and see," Tina Brown smiled and held out her hand to Eric across the coffee table.

Eric shook hands with the other party and said, "I'll be on the plane the morning after tomorrow, let's go to your Boston to see where you will work in the future, right?"

"Absolutely. Tina Brown said, "Even if you don't invite you, I'll go there myself before I join the company." ”

……

In Eric's plan, this trip to Boston is very important to his layout in the Internet industry, he originally hoped that Chris could go to Boston together, but Chris needs to fly to Finland to attend Nokia's board meeting. As a director of many companies such as Cisco and AOL, Eric's personal work schedule was quite tight, and the plan of his colleagues had to be abandoned, and in the end, Eric only brought two entourages and Tina Brown to board the plane to Boston.

Before leaving, Eric personally called and invited two other people, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Group, and Steve Case, CEO of AOL, and the other party readily agreed.

As the small Gulfstream business jet of the Firefly Group slowly lands at Boston's General Edward International Airport, Eric and Tina Brown get off the plane and walk out of the airport to see three men of various ages walking towards them: Ian Gnier, the head of the browser company, Jeff Locke, the head of Yahoo, and Steve Mitnick, the head of the online email company who occasionally chats with Eric on the Internet.

Ian Gnier, a former manager of the product development department of database software giant Oracle, is in his early forties, tall, but somewhat balding, and wears a neat gray suit.

Jeff Locke, who was recommended by Tim Berners Lee to head the Yahoo Portal, is about 30 years old, has a master's degree in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and spent two years at Sun Software.

The last Steve Mitnick who was in charge of the online email service was Chris's classmate at the University of Pennsylvania, although he was arranged by his parents to study finance like Chris, but he was very obsessed with computer technology, and finally he did not get a degree in finance, but his study of computer and information technology reached a point where the professors of the Department of Computer Science at Penn University were amazed, and the professor at Penn University also wanted Steve Mitnick to be his student, but he rejected this suggestion on the grounds that the other party had nothing to teach him. According to Chris, Steve Mitnick had been working in his father's small company in his hometown of Dallas, and when he heard that Chris was willing to spend a lot of money on computer technology that interested him, he immediately left everything behind and came to Boston.

The group introduced each other, and as they left, Steve Mitnick familiarly introduced Erech into his humble black Buick sedan. Tina Brown also seemed to want to talk to the head of Yahoo immediately, so she got into Jeff Locke's car, and Carter Moen and Eric's other bodyguard got into Ian Gnier's Mercedes.

"Eric, I've had another great idea lately, and you're going to be very interested," Steve Mitnick said as soon as the Buick pulled into the airport highway. Linux and Apple and other companies have to develop several different versions of the operating system at the same time, I think, why don't we develop our own IE-based network operating system, with the advantages of our browser software, maybe in the future to surpass Microsoft, and I have recently written a simple system kernel, as long as you agree to this plan, I promise two years, oh no, a year and a half to come up with a brand new system. ”

Eric withdrew his gaze from the red building of the Hilton Hotel near the Airport Expressway, looked at Steve Mitnick's obviously ill-fitting suit, and smiled, "You should have discussed this plan with Ian, right?" )

PS: [From today, the daily update time is fixed at 8:30]