Viacom's sales in the first quarter of '94 exceeded $2 billion, which is equivalent to the company's total sales in the whole of 1990, and Paramount also benefited from the box office revenue of the film "Braveheart", and the company finally saw the most obvious profit on its books since the 90s. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 infoAll employees in the company have a comprehensive understanding of Lin Mu's abilities, and the talk that Lin Mu is too young to be an executive of the company has disappeared.

There was also good news from Dream, the stock prices of the two companies rose sharply after the successful listing, and according to the previous agreement, both listed companies submitted a request to Dream to buy back their shares. Based on the market value of the stocks, the company's net investment return in these two companies exceeded $600 million, while Dream's previous investment in these two companies was less than $60 million, and in a year and a half, Lin Mu achieved a nearly 10-fold return on investment. In addition to the joy, Lin Mu began to look for a new investment direction for the $600 million fund.

After Easter, Lin Mu went back to his parents' house, and his mother's mood has been unstable, but in front of Lin Mu, Lin Mu still cheered up, she didn't want Lin Mu to be too distracted. The family stayed together for a reunion dinner. The family deliberately avoided the topic of Lin Mu's feelings, and never mentioned Julia Roberts. Since the last time Lin Mu got angry with his mother on the phone, Lin Mu and his wife have become much more cautious when talking about Lin Mu's emotional problems.

At the dinner table, Lin's mother talked about her new neighbor, a single-parent family surnamed Yang, perhaps because she was also from Taiwan, Lin Mu's mother and the hostess next door quickly got to know each other, she knew that their family had two children, the eldest is 24 years old this year, and has just finished her master's degree at Stanford University. Lin's mother also told Lin Mu that when the child first arrived in the United States, the only word he knew was (shoes), but after a period of running-in, he finally integrated into this "foreign country". He was admitted to university in the same year as Lin Mu, but it took him only four years to complete his undergraduate and master's studies. You must know that even Lin Mu spent nearly 3 years in college to get an undergraduate degree.

At first, this news did not attract Lin Mu's attention, after dinner, Lin and his wife went out to spread, Lin Mu stayed at home and had nothing to do, so he planned to go to the yard for a walk. Near the fence, he unexpectedly bumped into the boy his mother had mentioned. He happened to be wandering in the yard of his house, and his jeans and T-shirt made it difficult for Lin Mu to associate the young man in front of him with a top student at Stanford University.

"You are Aunt Liu's son?" The young man greeted Lin Mu warmly. "My mom used to hear her mention you! Heard you already have your own company? ”

His long list of questions didn't annoy Lin Mu, who suddenly felt that this person was very interesting, and he felt that this was a person who wasn't very interested in movies, because everyone who lived in the neighborhood knew Lin Mu's identity. "Hello, my name is Lin Mu, you can call me."

“？” The young man felt that this name was a little familiar, but he couldn't remember where he had heard it for a while, "Actually, I am also preparing to prepare a company, oh, after introducing myself, my name is Yang Zhiyuan, you, you can call me jerry!" As soon as he finished saying this, he noticed that Lin Mu was looking at him with a very strange look.

"You said your name is Yang Zhiyuan?" Lin Mu couldn't believe his ears, this bespectacled Chinese youth was Yang Zhiyuan, the future president of Yahoo?

"My name was Yang Zhiyuan, do you know someone with the same name and surname as me?" The young Yang Zhiyuan looked at Lin Mu with a puzzled expression.

"You said you're starting a company?" Lin Mu suddenly thought of Yang Zhiyuan's words just now, in his memory, Yahoo was indeed founded in the year.

"That's exactly what I said, what's going on?" Yang Zhiyuan was a little confused by Lin Mu's brainless questions.

"Do you need to invest?" Lin Muqiang held back the excitement in his heart and asked, "I mean venture capital!" ”

"Do you know such an investment channel?" As soon as Yang Zhiyuan heard about the investment, he immediately became interested, "In fact, we have indeed encountered the problem of financial difficulties. "At Stanford University. Those who are familiar with Yang Zhiyuan think that he is not diligent in his studies, and even a little lazy, but he is active and sociable, and he is the leader of the university community, which undoubtedly trained his organizational skills as a business leader in the future. When he graduated from his bachelor's degree, he felt that he was still immature, so he stayed on to engage in research. It just so happened that David Ferro also stayed on to do research. The encounter and friendship between the two was undoubtedly a key factor in Yahoo's later success.

In April of that year, Yang Zhiyuan and Philo, who were still studying at Stanford University, became obsessed with the Internet in order to complete their dissertation, all day long! We're the kind of high-tech company you want to invest in! Yang Zhiyuan said without hesitation.

"But I don't know exactly what your company does. What are its development prospects? Lin Mu is not an impulsive investor, and even in the face of the future of Yahoo, he feels the need to have a detailed understanding of the company first.

"We do the web search and navigation business, and now Webcrawler, S, Worm, K and other companies are doing the business of web search, but these websites all rely on software to start with automatic search, although the scope is wide, but not accurate. What we have now developed is purely handmade, searchable and much more practical. Yang Zhiyuan pulled Lin Mu and talked endlessly about how good the software they developed was, and in his eyes, Lin Mu seemed to have become a potential investor in the company.

"And where do your business profits come from?" Although Lin Mu knew that Yahoo relied on a large number of online advertisements to make profits, he still wanted to hear Yang Zhiyuan's current thoughts.

"Sponsorship and advertising from merchants, of course! After a large number of clicks on our website, we can attract a large number of sponsors and advertisers, and the operating cost of the whole company is actually very low, I believe that even if this technology can be promoted globally in the future, our core employees will not exceed 1000 people, which is the characteristic of high-tech enterprises! Yang Zhiyuan obviously thought about this problem as well, but he immediately thought of a question, "We only accept cooperation, not sell the company!" We're going to run the company ourselves, it's not exactly a matter of making money, it's a business that we've nurtured, it's a pleasure to create and maintain it, and we're our own masters. ”

Lin Mu did not refuse Yang's request, and in fact, as an investor, he did not intend to be a long-term shareholder of Yahoo. All Lin Mu needs to do is lend a helping hand to a company in their most difficult times, so that they can sell it later in their most glorious moments. Lin Mu remembered that an entrepreneur in China/China once said such a sentence in later generations, and he thought it was true, "Doing business is like raising a son, and selling a business is like selling a pig!" ”

After the representative of Dream Company came back, he described Yang Zhiyuan's office to Lin Mu, and still said with relish: "It can really be said that it is a mess there. Yang Zhiyuan and his partner sat in a small room, the server was constantly dissipating heat, the telephone answering machine rang every minute, the pizza box was thrown all over the floor, the golf club was casually resting in the corner, the telephone was thrown on the floor, and the whole room was not even a chair, and the room was dark and full of dirty clothes. I think Yang Zhiyuan and Fei Luo probably can't even tell the difference between day and night. ”

However, the representative of Dream was not scared away, and Yang Zhiyuan and Fei Luo finally convinced him, "These boys do have the eyesight to occupy a favorable position on the Internet first, and if the development goes well, their strategic advantage is very obvious." There is a huge business opportunity in this new thing! His words made Lin Mu finally make up his mind to invest in Yahoo.

After Dream decided to invest, Yang Zhiyuan immediately gave up his soon-to-be-completed doctorate and was established! Company and brand. On the night that Lin Mu informed them, Yang Zhiyuan and Fei Luo flipped through the Merriam-Webster dictionary and began to make up names for their "products". The "ya" is taken from Yang Zhiyuan's surname, and they had imagined a series of possible names such as yauld, r, yardage, yang, yapok, yardbird, yataghan, yawn, yaxis, etc., and suddenly, they thought of this letter combination, and then quickly opened the Merriam-Webster English dictionary at hand, and found that the word came from Swift's "Gulliver's Travels", referring to a vulgar, low-level humanoid animal with all kinds of human vices. The word is obviously not very elegant, but if you think about it carefully, "use it in the opposite sense". On the Internet, which emphasizes equal rights, everyone is a hill guy. In order to add a positive color, an exclamation point was added to the end, so there is "! ”。

Lin Mu saw that the title printed on the business card sent by Yang Zhiyuan was! He knew that this now-unknown name would shine in the next decade, that Yahoo would conquer the world, and that for now, the internet giant was just a baby in a cradle. Fei Luo was in charge of technology development, and Yang Zhiyuan was in charge of external public relations, and neither of them was good at business management, so Lin Mu also found a suitable general manager for them - Tim Courg, who is also a Stanford alumnus. With Coug in charge, Fei Luo and Yang can focus on their research. At this point, the big ship of Yahoo finally set sail.

Life is sometimes like a drama, and when he returned home, he became a neighbor with Yahoo Chief Yang Zhiyuan, which surprised Lin Mu. As soon as he returned to Los Angeles, Lin Mu received a call from Shirley Lansing, and she was going to discuss with Lin Mu about the shooting plan for Paramount this year.

", I have to admit that you are really unique in terms of employing people!" Lin Muli boldly chose Mel Gibson as the director of the film "Braveheart", which was a huge success, and Shirley Lansing was quite opposed to this move at the time. Despite Mel Gibson's original statement that he would not be paid as a director, Paramount ended up paying him more than $5 million.

"In fact, in this circle, what many people lack is just an opportunity!" Lin Mu knew that this was Shirley Lansing, who was taking the initiative to show him goodwill, "Paramount must not only have the courage to cooperate with big directors and big stars, but also give some potential filmmakers the opportunity to fully show themselves." I think a mature film company should replace the individual's dominance of the company with a sound talent training mechanism. This is the same reason as not putting all your eggs in the same basket in investing, we must not only build a diversified talent pool, but also give new talents more opportunities, so that Paramount can truly become the cradle of Hollywood movies! ”

Shirley Lansing nodded, she admitted that what Lin Mu said made a lot of sense, "Talent training is a long-term job, but I am more concerned about Paramount's next investment plan now." ”

"In fact, I haven't found a suitable script yet!" Lin Mu said frankly.

"So I've got this for you!" Shirley Lansing took out the script that had been prepared a long time ago, "This is a script we found recently, and I thought it was good, so I took it directly." Screenwriter you're an authority, so I'd like to hear your opinion. ”

Shirley Lansing was an excellent producer before, and what she valued so much should be a good script, but Lin Mu frowned when he looked at it.

"Any questions?" Lin Mu's expression made Shirley Lansing very puzzled.

"The script is well written!" Lin Mu first affirmed the skills of the script author, and then changed the conversation, "But I think the positioning of this script is very problematic!" ”

"You're not optimistic about horror movies?" Shirley Lansing clearly misunderstood what Lin Mu meant.

Lin Mu shook his head, "I mean this script would be even better if it was changed to a comedy!" ”

"Are you sure you're not kidding me?" Shirley Lansing looked at Lin Mu with some incredulity, you must know that horror and comedy are completely two extreme concepts, and he actually proposed to change horror films into comedies, which made Shirley Lansing unimaginable.

"You can buy the copyright of this script first, but the original author must agree to our adaptation of this script, the general framework of the story will not change, and I need to make a new adjustment to this story!"

"However, I've given this script to director Chuck Russell, and he agreed to direct the film. And I also contacted Mr. Lucas of Industrial Light & Magic, who will be the technical consultant of the film, they have already read the script, is it a little late to revise it now? Shirley Lansing told Lin Mu apologetically.

"It's okay, I can get this script done in two days!" The forest is full of nonchalant expression. (To be continued.) )