"Hello, Mr. Olsen, I was so excited to receive your email, I didn't expect you to come in person."

The ring-bald man with a hooked nose in his thirties eagerly stretched out his right hand, shook hands with David Olsen, and introduced the brown-haired young woman next to him to David, "This is my wife and the treasurer of the company." ”

"You're welcome." The young lady also held out her hand.

"Hello, I'm here to see how your company works." In the face of the friendly welcome couple, David didn't hold it, and after shaking hands and saying hello, he followed the other party's arrangement and went into the house.

Housing prices in Seattle are a little lower than in Los Angeles, and the couple's house is already in the suburbs.

As soon as he entered the house, David, who started in real estate, saw the classic decoration style of the fifties and sixties.

The walls are whitewashed with lime, due to the increase in age, it has been slightly yellowed, and the ceiling with blue edges on a white background, like an old photo, is smeared with a layer of shell of the years, and as it continues to go deeper, the floor under his feet is also creaking, and when David followed the other party into the study, he saw the neatly arranged bookshelves, and the books on the shelves, the traces of cracked skin, proved that the owner had been reading or working in the study for a long time.

Of course, the most conspicuous thing is not the big-ass desktop computer on the desk, but the spray-painted emoji written in blue spray paint on the wall to the right hand of the door.

That's right, just two years after opening, so far only invested in Yahoo, bought IDB's Overwatch Venture Capital, and received a cooperation offer from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and David is interested in Amazon.

Following Bezos's invitation to sit down, and taking the coffee from his wife Mackenzie with a smile of thanks, David cleared his throat and went directly to the topic, "I have read the company introduction you sent me, I am very interested in your business model, and putting the process of business cooperation online is indeed a good way to save labor costs, but I want to know, why do you want to start with products like books?" Will there be other categories added in the future? ”

Wasn't Amazon an e-commerce company in the first place?

And what David is interested in is actually e-commerce itself.

As a real estate businessman, he has been doing it offline for a long time, and he is naturally very clear about those things.

What is the highest cost to do an entity in America?

Isn't it just the cost of manpower?

The clothing products under the name of the Olsen sisters are all outsourced, and David, who is engaged in real estate, has no plans to buy land and build a factory by himself, because the workers' union thing is too annoying.

Selling goods in Walmart is also due to personnel costs and space considerations.

Capitalists, they are all profit-seeking, they only want to let the machine make money for themselves, who wants to send out the money?

Oh no...... Chuan Jianguo, the guy who was born as a capitalist, is going to make money.

A thousand dollars per person! It's so old!

It was precisely because of this idea that David became interested when he saw Amazon's e-commerce model.

If his products can be sold online, wouldn't he just need to recruit a few customer service agents to deal with a large number of orders?

Roland can play Warcraft Film and Television as a shell company in Hollywood, which can only be driven by manpower, so why can't he try to move offline stores online? As long as you can save money, this model must be a big deal!

"You're right, the e-commerce model can indeed save labor costs in front of the stage." Bezos very much agrees with David's sentiment and says with a smile, "Although we are a startup, we are confident in the future. ”

"As for why you ask me why I start with books, this actually has something to do with the market, the annual sales of the book industry are 19 billion, but our largest book chain can only occupy 12% of the market, plus books are a necessity in many people's lives, they have to read in school, and they have to read after work, and the price of books in physical stores is high, we take the goods directly from the store's warehouse, and the cost and selling price can be reduced accordingly, so ...... Those students will be more interested in us. ”

"At the beginning, our main target was actually various universities, college students who need to buy professional books."

Grab a random American student and ask them, and you'll know how expensive the books really are.

Studying here, the average vocational undergraduate student spends more than $1,200 on textbooks and school supplies each academic year, and it is normal to spend six or seven hundred dollars on books.

It is precisely because the book is a rigid need that Bezos will start here.

Since he is seeking financing, the world's richest man in the future, the current 'poor' boy will not hide it, and directly share the company's operating ideas, he not only told David about his customer base, but also made the reason why the company is located in Seattle - because the sparsely staffed state of Washington can be taxed less, and not only that, it is very close to the Oregon warehouse of the large channel distributor GRA Books.

David was interested in e-commerce, so he had done his homework before he came, and he was already very happy to find out that Bezos's ideas were the same as the blueprint he had in mind.

However, before investing Roland's money, he had two questions that he wanted to understand.

First, that's naturally -

"I'm wondering, after the book category stabilizes, what are you going to open in your next category?"

"Our next category is entertainment audiovisual products."

"Reason? It's not just a need. ”

"That's right, this is indeed not just needed, but like books, entertainment audio and video products are placed on the web page, very easy to display, just look at the pictures and text introduction, the customer's mind can produce an intuitive feeling, different from other products, entertainment audio and video products, books, do not need us to publicize, want to sell their businesses will actively transmit the concept, so even if this product does not belong to the rigid needs of people's lives, but it is also easier to sell than other consumer goods."

Hearing this, David also nodded in agreement.

Although he pins his hopes on e-commerce, hoping that this emerging thing can help the company reduce personnel expenses, but before the whole industry is made, he will not rashly test the waters, otherwise, if he can't do it, and his cooperation with Wal-Mart is ruined, it will really be worth the loss, in addition, the second......

"I also want to know, why did you choose us?"

When asked this question, David suddenly changed his seat.

He was sitting precariously and suddenly leaned back, and the whole person fell on the chair, and at the same time raised Erlang's legs.

If you light another big cigar, it will really be a bit of a big man's style......

Well, in front of Bezos, he is indeed a big guy now.

It's just that Roland is used to giggling with him, so he doesn't think so.

After hearing this question, Bezos, who was negotiating with David, was stunned for a moment, then shook his head with a smile, unbuttoned the button around his neck, and said, "Mr. Olsen, it seems that you already know me......

"If you ask this question as soon as we meet, how can I introduce you to the company's operating ideas?"

"We're all our own people, what's the point of talking about these useless introductions?"

That's right! This Amazon, who is remembered by Roland, or rather, is the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, is actually a guy in the trenches with him!

Bezos's mother, who was pregnant at the age of sixteen, was rebellious and ignorant when he was two years old, his parents divorced, and when Bezos was four years old, his mother married his current stepfather, so Bezos is actually his stepfather's surname.

Not only that, because his maternal grandfather was a rocket research management expert of the former Federal Atomic Energy Commission, he was exposed to engineering experiments that others could not reach since he was a child, so that when he was in school, he ran in the direction of a scientist.

It's just that when he first entered university, he happened to encounter a period of earth-shaking change in the computer industry, so he wanted to inherit his grandfather's profession and become a physicist, so he started computers.

After graduating from Princeton, he worked for a technology company in New York, and within two years, he moved to a trust company, managing a computer system worth $250 billion in assets, becoming the youngest vice president in the bank's trust company's history at the age of 25, and then, at the age of 26, joining Deshaw, a financial services company, where he co-founded the world's most advanced and successful hedge fund trading management company.

Of course, Bezos's personal experience is not the point, the point is that he is a young man who jumped out of Deshaw to start a business.

Where is Deshaw located?

Wall Street's.

Who are the founders of Deshaw?

David Shaw

As a doctor of computer science at Stanford, David Shaw became a professor at Columbia University before the age of 30, but within a few years, he felt that his teaching career was boring, and he entered Morgan Stanley, doing computer automatic stock trading, bonds, and foreign exchange work, but unfortunately, due to his good grades, he was squeezed out by his peers in less than two years, so he started his own hedge fund company Deshaw, using high-speed computer networks and market instant effectiveness defects to carry out high-frequency statistical arbitrage.

Bezos, on the other hand, is his deputy.

In just a few years, David Shaw became the leader of the quantitative analysis boom on Wall Street, and in '94 he was recruited by the current president to serve as a technology consultant, alongside Ronald Perelman.

In the same year, Bezos chose to quit his job and start his own business and founded Amazon.

So......

The intersection is here.

Although Bezos quit his job to start his own business, he still maintains a good relationship with David Shaw, and has repeatedly asked the other party if he is interested in his e-commerce company, and he is willing to accept the other party's investment.

But David Shaw, who played with a M&A boss like Ronald Perelman, was not interested in these things, but he still helped the other party ask in the circle, and this question, isn't it a coincidence?

As an emerging industry, the Internet is still uncertain in its future, even if there is a netscape ahead.

As bigwigs in the financial sector, they can cash out of the financial markets casually, so no one wants to gamble on the Internet.

But the problem is that Roland Allen, who has also just entered the circle, is playing the Internet!

Not only that, but Shouwang Ventures, which is under his name, also invested in Yahoo!

How did Amazon get up?

Isn't it because Yahoo includes Amazon's URL?

So......

The bigwigs who had just accepted Roland's help unceremoniously matched, allowing Bezos to go directly to David Olsen.

In their opinion, since Roland is interested in Yahoo, Amazon's e-commerce is probably willing to take a look.

This is not to repay Roland at all, but to share the time when they have a lot of resources in their hands, just make a phone call to help match, it is better to make money, if not, it doesn't matter......

Anyway, it's a business of tens of millions of dollars, if Roland loses money, the next time he engages in hedging, won't it be over if he takes one more to earn back?

Because of this, Bezos, who is far away in Seattle, Washington, will send a cooperation email to Overwatch Venture Capital in San Francisco, California, because for both parties, it is just an exchange of news for the bigwigs behind the scenes.

"If you explain your information clearly in the cooperation intention from the beginning, then I won't be able to come." After listening to Bezos's explanation, it has also been found out that it was Ronald Perelman who made the match, and David laughed happily.

If it weren't for the other party, no matter how much he loved e-commerce, he wouldn't have come to visit it himself.

"What if I identify myself in the first place, what do you think I'm a liar?" Bezos also put away his official dead fish face, stood up with a smile, and shook David's hand again.

And when you say that, things are much simpler.

They negotiated with their own people, and they didn't talk about anything vain, 815 percent, and the contract stipulated that when the company proceeded to the next round of financing, they had the right to continue to invest and obtain new shares at least equal to the current equity ratio.

As for the day-to-day operations of the company?

Since Bezos is the king of quantitative analysis backed by Wall Street, what else does David need to care?

There are those who play finance with their hearts, and the company can be saved from dying a hundred times!

Roland, who was far away in Berlin with Kate Winslet and was frozen, never thought that what he was thinking about was not so troublesome at all in many cases, when he really knocked on the door that everyone wanted to enter-

There is no such thing as a difficult business in the world.

What is the same as Son Masayoshi 1.30 billion to get 30 percent?

With these bigwigs, he who only plays the Internet in the circle can eat all the dividends!

What ability is too small to be afraid of being squeezed out?

With these guys watching, the cakes of the angel wheel can be automatically fed to Roland's mouth, okay!

Engaging in finance doesn't play the Internet?

Right!

They don't play the internet!

But since there is a guy in their camp who plays the Internet, when they get the resources, they will naturally not flow into the fields of outsiders!

For them, it's just a little oil left in the cracks of their fingertips, so that Roland, who has helped them a lot and is also interested in the Internet, can play slowly......

It's just that this lump of oil seems to be a bit big for Roland!

He hasn't found anyone to take the blame yet!

Remembering his own people, he has already sent Amazon to his door!

"Ah...... Open your mouth ......"

"Hiccup~~~"

。