"Mr. Chambers," Liu Xun smiled slightly, and then clenched his fist vigorously, "I have full confidence in Cisco, and I also have full confidence in Mr. Chambers' ability. Microsoft became the world's largest PC software supplier by virtue of the popularity of personal computers, and now Microsoft has become a giant in the PC industry, and now the Internet industry is soaring, Cisco, as the first system company with network solutions, in my opinion, the future may not be able to become a giant of network hardware, may not be able to become another Microsoft in Silicon Valley. As he spoke, he left Chambers with a deep back.

This was what Liu Xun said to Chambers before he went to San Francisco to meet Valentine, and he obviously didn't realize how deep the impact of these words had on Chambers.

A few years later, when Cisco's market value officially surpassed Microsoft to become the world's most valuable company, a reporter interviewed Chambers to find out how he felt about Cisco's great achievements as the CEO.

After thorough investigation, the person who wrote the book "The Miracle of Cisco" finally learned that one of them was Valentine, because Valentine brought him into Cisco.

At that time, Chambers was full of arrogance, and he had worked in Wang An and IBM, and he didn't look down on Cisco's company, which had an annual turnover of tens of millions and a market value of only $600 million, but when he applied for the job, Valentine told him, "If you are really as good as you think, then why should you go to a company with a good situation, or a company that is already mature?" You should go to a company that is ready to take off. ”

It was Valentine's words that made Chambers join Cisco and really take off with Cisco.

However, Ren is how the reporter investigated, and he didn't know who the other person who had an important impact on him in Valentine's mouth was, and at that time, the people who watched "Cisco Miracle" smiled knowingly, thinking that when he first met Liu Xun many years ago, Liu Xun told him that he wanted to become another Microsoft's ambition, and now, that ambition has finally become a reality.

Chambers has always insisted that Cisco's achievements are inseparable from Liu Xun, and he wrote in his diary that during the period when Cisco took off all the way, he always took Liu Xun's words as the driving force, Microsoft as the goal, and Liu Xun's words as the goal, and finally made Cisco achieve such great achievements.

After all, it is history that influences people, or people influence history, how can it be said clearly, at least, in another time and space, Chambers is definitely not based on Liu Xun's words.

Without further ado, after the separation here, that night, Liu Xun felt San Francisco and met with Valentine at Cisco's headquarters, of course, this time Liu Xun went alone, Xue Juewu and Zhou Peiwan stayed in New York. In fact, Liu Xun feels that he is actually a busy person at the moment, and after coming to New York, if he wants to meet him, he has to schedule schedules, for example, Tex is extremely depressed at the moment, because he needs to wait for Liu Xun to come back from San Francisco before he can meet Liu Xun.

This is the first time Liu Xun has met Valentine, and he has met the future father of Silicon Valley investment, of course, Valentine at this time is still out of the picture, and Sequoia Capital's reputation is not as famous as that of later generations.

At this time, Valentine, in addition to controlling Sequoia Capital, is also the chairman of Cisco, and the 24% change in Cisco's shares must go through the hands of his chairman, and the voting rights of this part of the shares are still in his hands, and the Lena couple, for that part of the stock, in addition to setting a good price, actually does not have much authority to deal with it, in any case, Valentine is a person who can't get around.

The contact between the two seems to be very relaxed, Liu Xun admires the identity of the father of Valentine venture capital, and Valentine is surprised that Liu Xun already has a set of mature management concepts at a young age, and seems to have involved in all aspects, when the insight is extraordinary, even when it comes to venture capital, Liu Xun also hummed and exchanged a few words with him.

When talking about why Liu Xun wanted to take over Cisco's shares, Liu Xun smiled slightly and said, "Actually, just as Mr. Valentine does venture capital and likes to invest in the track rather than racers, in this regard, I have the same opinion as Mr. Valentine, in fact, I always believe that it is better to invest in a company with a huge market demand than to invest in a company that needs to create market demand." ”

"Hahaha, dear Liu, you seem to know me well, you are very familiar with my investment style, and even gave me a summary of investing in the track rather than the racer, which is a good point. I have long heard Chambers say that Mr. Liu has a mature business philosophy, and now it seems that his description of you is still a little worse, and Mr. Liu is worthy of being a young talent from China. ”

"Bet on the track, not the racer", this is Valentine's investment philosophy that he once talked about in public a few years later, maybe now he has formed such a concept, but he has not talked about it publicly, in short, Liu Xun's first sentence is abnormal to his appetite, looking up at Liu Xun.

Valentine's investment philosophy is perhaps the most famous phrase on Dune Road that is unique to the venture capital industry, and it is also the most controversial quote in the industry. On the surface, this statement seems to underestimate the value of entrepreneurship for startups, and it seems rather personal empiricism.

Prior to founding Sequoia by Valentine, he held senior sales positions at Fairchild Semiconductor and National Semiconductor, and was recognized as adept at reading market changes and knowing how to respond to them. And his personal venture capital education also comes from the experience of the national semiconductor period, because at that time, its scale was still small, and its resources were so limited that it could not even provide products for all customers, and someone had to judge which customers had a bright future and were worthy of long-term cooperation, and which customers needed to be decisively refused. Valentine, who is responsible for this decision, has to constantly make predictions based on the market prospects of the other company and the commercial value of the short-term product.

Investing in the track, fundamentally, is a differentiated effort.

While all venture capitalists will acknowledge the importance of markets, even in the United States, where data on market conditions is always scarce, most are more willing to look at companies differently and answer the seemingly important question: Is the technology unique? Is the management team good enough? Can a product be patented? These questions are not unimportant, but they can only provide one-sided support for a single judgment, and it is easy for investors to lose focus when trying to answer multiple questions at once.

In another time and space, a few years later, Valentin publicly stated that he had only met two entrepreneurs with superhuman insights in his life, Intel's Robert? Noyce and Apple's Steve? Jobs.

But in this time and space, a few years later, there is one more person in Valentine's narrative, and that is the Chinese Liu.

In the first meeting, just as Liu Xun was impressed by Chambers, he also left a deep impression on Valentine, so much so that in the following years, at the board meeting of Sequoia Capital, Valentine often took out the sentence "bet on the track rather than the racer" to warn everyone, but unfortunately, in this time and space, the original became Liu Xun, and Valentine, the actual original, became the quote.

"Mr. Valentine has won the award, and the reason why I bet on Cisco is because I am optimistic about the future of the Internet industry, and Cisco still has some skills in the supply of network hardware, in fact, Cisco is the first industry I invested in abroad, and it is also the first technology industry." Liu Xun smiled modestly.

"I have long heard that Mr. Liu has leveraged the two industries with a high rate of return on the American land certificate and Country Garden with only the assets of the teenager, which is really good, Mr. Liu is too modest, we Americans are very willing to show their talents."

Liu Xun smiled noncommittally, and then mentioned his purpose for today, "Mr. Valentine, I don't know if Mr. Chambers mentioned it to you before, in addition to being interested in the shares in the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Lena, I am also very interested in the shares in the hands of Mr. Valentine. ”

"What? Dear Liu, do you want to get an absolute controlling stake in Cisco? Nonono, in my opinion, this is not what a newly established investment company should do, as far as our venture capital is concerned, we generally only need to get about 30% of the shares, we do not pursue absolute control, with the level of Mr. Liu's performance, it should not be unclear the truth of this. Valentine seemed to feel very unbelievable about Liu Xun's thoughts.

Liu Xun smiled slightly, "Mr. Valentine, it's not that I don't understand the truth of this, it's just that unlike Mr. Valentine's venture capital, I invested in Cisco because I was prepared to operate Cisco as a business, not just as simple as cashing out." ”

Valentine nodded thoughtfully, "Dear Liu, it seems that you have a high estimate of the potential of the Internet industry, and you can also put it, Sequoia Capital has gained enough benefits from Cisco, Cisco has been listed last year, in fact, last year was the time for me to withdraw, and now it has been more than ten months, and now it is time to exit." ”

Liu Xun was overjoyed in his heart, as he expected, Valentine was actually hesitating in dealing with Cisco, not knowing whether to continue to hold shares or exit at a profit, if he withdrew now, Sequoia Capital's investment that year had already gained a hundredfold profit, and if he didn't quit, he might get more profits, or he might fail. And now, with the olive branch thrown by Liu Xun, Valentine's hesitation has changed, and he is more inclined to let Liu Xun take over this part of the stock.

Of course, the two have only roughly determined their intentions now, Liu Xun means that he wants to get all the shares in Valentine's hands, Valentin means that he wants to transfer 20% to 25% of the shares, he wants to keep a part of it, and see how far Cisco will develop, of course, the specific transaction share and price are to be negotiated, which requires a professional negotiation team.

The so-called Vista investment is still an empty shelf, and when the time comes, the people can only let the XP fund transfer people, as for the investment company, when the time comes, it will also let the XP fund build a skeleton first, and then re-recruit people to enrich it.

Years later, Valentine wrote in his autobiography that as a venture capitalist, he shouldn't have said the word "regret", but he did use the word in his autobiography, Valentine wrote that there were two things in his life that he regarded as the most important thing, one was something he still regretted abnormally, and the other was something he still celebrated about, both of which actually said that he met Liu Xun in early 1992.

Because he met Liu Xun, he traded a large part of Cisco's shares to Liu Xun, so that when Cisco's market value soared to $500 billion, Valentine, who had always been calm, also regretted it slightly, because the 130% shares, if put in a few years, it would be a huge wealth worth 150 billion US dollars. Therefore, he believes that this is the decision he regrets the most in his life.

At the same time, he thinks that the luckiest thing is also this year, he met Liu Xun, like Chambers, a few years later, he also put a large part of Cisco's success on Liu Xun, Cisco's future success, so that he only has five percent of the remaining shares, worth more than 25 billion US dollars, this huge return, he regards Liu Xun's credit. At the same time, it is also because of knowing Liu Xun that he has added more opportunities to make a fortune in the future, and following Liu Xun's footsteps, Sequoia Capital has developed to an incredible point.

Liu Xun naturally didn't know that Valentine would write about the meeting between the two in his autobiography in the future, but a few years later, anyone who has a deep understanding of Cisco will always regard the meeting between Liu Xun and Valentine, Chambers and Morgridge in early 92 as one of the events that had the greatest impact on Cisco in the 90s.

The smooth contact with Valentine made Liu Xun very excited, even if he could not fully obtain the shares in Valentine's hands, this was also an extremely huge gain for Liu Xun, and he had learned that Valentin wanted to keep only a small part of the shares.

After meeting with Valentine, a meeting between Liu Xun and Mogge was quickly arranged.

A few years later, Mogrid, who officially took over the position of chairman of Cisco, once admitted frankly that he was actually a little nervous five minutes after signing the first meeting with Liu Xun, because before that, he had learned of Valentine's decision from Valentine's mouth, knowing that Valentin was about to hand over most of the shares in his hand to Liu Xun, if there was no accident, the part of the shares that Lena and his wife wanted to trade would eventually fall into Liu Xun's pocket, in this way, Liu Xun would become the largest shareholder of Cisco, but in this case, He, Mogrich, is in danger.

As the current CEO of Cisco, Morgridge is the management team found by Valentine, generally speaking, a company, in the current situation, after the change of the invested company, as the chief executive officer, is generally the fastest person to be kicked out and replaced, the so-called once a son of heaven and a courtier, this old Chinese saying, is especially applicable here.

During Moggerich's several years at Cisco, he personally developed Cisco to be able to go public, to be honest, he has a deep affection for Cisco, so before meeting Liu Xun, he has been a little apprehensive, for fear that a few days later, after the change of Cisco's shares, he will become the first person to be swept away.

However, Moggerich was obviously overly concerned, and the meeting with Liu Xun was unusually pleasant, and Liu Xun showed great appreciation for the team structure and thrifty culture that he has been trying to shape.

In fact, in Liu Xun's view, among the most important people in the development of Cisco, Morgeridge must be on the top list, and the third CEO of Cisco is the one who laid the foundation of Cisco.

When Morgeridge joined Cisco in 1988, there were only 35 employees at that time, and Mogridg, a manager with both management experience and high-tech knowledge, was the one who allowed Cisco to successfully go public and cash out to obtain development funds in less than two years. While building Cisco's infrastructure, Morgridge had been working to strengthen Cisco's team, and venture capitalists at the time were generally opposed to giving stock options to employees other than the founders and engineers, but Morgridge worked hard to convince Valentine to accept the idea, making Cisco the first company in Silicon Valley to give a large number of stock options to sub-managers and non-technical employees. In fact, his measure is also one of the reasons why Cisco can be successful in the future, although those stocks allocated to non-managers and non-technical personnel are not very large, just the very few shares, greatly enhance the sense of belonging of employees to the company, so the vast majority of Cisco employees can work hard, because they know that part of the income from their work will eventually be reflected in the income of the shares in their hands.

Liu Xun also admires this outstanding professional manager, who is second only to Chambers in the future in Cisco, and after a conversation between the two, Liu Xun felt Moggerich's feelings for Cisco, and also understood from Moggerich's mouth his plan for Cisco in the next two or three years, and Liu Xun's memory, Cisco's trend in the past two years is mostly the same, so Liu Xun naturally has no intention of replacing Mogrich.

In fact, Liu Xun may not have the courage to drastically change the existing pattern of Cisco, although he has enough confidence in his own ability, but in Cisco, a behemoth that will increase to 500 billion US dollars in the future, any huge changes may make this future behemoth die before he can get out of school, so Morgerich's worries are completely unnecessary. Of course, at this time, Mogerich obviously didn't dare to be so relaxed, even after having a pleasant conversation with Liu Xun, he was still a little worried, and this worry even lasted for a long time.

I don't know if this kid will be very proud after his thoughts at the moment are known by Liu Xun, after all, anyone will be very happy to make a person who is destined to be brilliant in the future faintly afraid in his heart.