ARK Corporation, a sales meeting is underway!

In addition to the eight rebels, there were also people from other departments of the ARK company who attended the meeting.

In addition to this, there was a special person who was present at the meeting, and that was the real boss of this company! Alex!

All eyes were on Noyes, who was talking, and he seemed to be in high spirits, and although there were a few more gray hairs on his head, he was in a very good spirit.

Noyce held a copy of the data in his hand and narrated it to the rest of the department. As the boss of the sales department, he built up AKR's sales channel in less than half a year. This is a reflection of his ability to work, but also the result of his hard work.

"According to the sales of PCs we have launched, the market demand for our products is very large!" Noyce cites several examples and figures to prove his claim.

After a series of boring data, Noyce summed up his statement!

"These are the return visits of individual PC users, and you can see how satisfied they are with our products!"

At the end, Noyce paused slightly, waiting for the others to ask questions.

Sure enough, someone immediately asked: "From this data, can we draw a conclusion that the market potential of this PC is still very large, and we need to speed up the production of more products?" ”

"Indeed!" Noyce nodded yes.

Others also nodded secretly, judging from the sales data of this half year, although ARK's products have not been greatly promoted. At the same time, no one has ever sold a PC before, but the demand for it from customers is really like dry wood and a fire that burns at a moment's notice.

Even though many companies are on the sidelines, and IBM is the only one to follow, people are still choosing only AKR's products. After all, the solution given by Alex at the beginning was a perfect and mature thing, and the PC produced by ARK was completely closed, which made it difficult for other companies to imitate it!

Even if AKR's PC was completely disassembled, it would not be possible to find those key techniques to crack it.

It can be said that their PCs can fully reach the level of the late 70s, and even far exceed them in terms of functional applications. It's already a very mature product. Many people get their hands on it later. I was immediately attracted by its use.

When the PC of later generations was first launched, even the Qiao gang leader didn't know what it could be used for, and only by continuous exploration could the product be perfected step by step.

With Alex's mature design, audio, video, word processing, office software and other functions are realized. It is completely perfected in terms of both software and hardware. In order to truly make users satisfied.

meeting. Everyone spoke one after another, and what they expressed was one thing, that is, to increase the production line. Let AKR's products quickly occupy this hungry market.

Often, the decision can be made internally. It's different now, Alex is in attendance, so his opinion is important.

Everyone looked at Alex to see what he decided. They weren't too worried, because the market data was very good.

In this case, as long as the brain is not burned out, a reasonable decision will be made.

But what they still didn't expect was that Alex's first sentence was not about increasing the production line, but saying, "We need to leave the software department alone!" ”

The software department? That doesn't matter!

Many people thought like this in their hearts, and some of them were already showing it on their faces, and even Moore said, "For what? ”

Yes, for what! Now the most profitable thing is to buy hardware, as for software or something, maybe it's important, but that's just a foil.

In the era of mainframe computers, computer companies sell their machines and give away some software according to the needs of customers. They have a dedicated after-sales service department, and some of them are dedicated to designing special software for customers.

Similarly, those customers have their own dedicated software engineers who are responsible for writing programs that help implement the company's needs on a daily basis.

In this respect, ARK's PCs are a bit different, and the software they use is all made in-house. This is a model with a closed vertical architecture, which means that the hardware and software of the machine are completely closed. Once there are traces of disassembly, ARK has the right to refuse to provide after-sales service for this machine.

And their users are some individual users, not companies. They are very satisfied with this kind of service, because they have little knowledge of hardware and software, and they don't know how to write programs.

From the perspective of the people at ARK, they mainly sell the machine itself, and as for the software or something, it doesn't matter. As long as there is software to make the machine run and can be used by users. This concept has not been able to change for a while.

Originally, Alex also wanted to wait for Noyce and others to propose it themselves, but after so much time, they still haven't seen them set up their own software department.

At this time, he realized that after all, Noyce and others still have their own limitations, and for hardware, no one is invincible! But for the software, if it weren't for the requirements he put forward in the first place, maybe they wouldn't have thought of it themselves.

"Yes! Software Department! After Alex finished speaking, he looked around at everyone and added, "My plan is that this department will be able to become a company on its own within a year!" ”

Wow!

Is this a choice of leaders among us?

A new department, or a new company, means more positions and power! This is equivalent to the feudal society in the feudal society, giving everyone here a new head.

While everyone was waiting for Alex to continue, he changed the subject: "However, we can decide on the issue of adding production lines first!" Neuss. I'll teach you to take charge of it......"

Everyone was stunned when they heard it, Noyes is in charge of the sales department, why is he suddenly in charge of production again?

Just as Noyce was about to say something, he suddenly remembered what Alex had said before. When he took over the responsibility of the sales department, Alex clearly told him that if he could do a good job, he would have better room for development!

Sure enough, Alex announced in public: "Noyes's performance during this period is good, I believe everyone has seen it." I'm going to set up a subsidiary under ARK that specializes in the design and production of PCs! ”

This sentence is even more shocking than the software company just now. Everyone froze. Even Noyce himself was stunned.

This is amazing, now ARK has a product in hand for the PC, and this time it is directly picked up by Noyce. So what did everyone else do? Do you want to drink the northwest wind?

The most important thing is that if you don't have a PC. What else can ARK do?

Soon. Alex made the question clear: "You may be thinking. ARK: Without a PC, there's nothing to do! This is not right! ”

"When we started ARK, we didn't just want to build a small PC, we wanted to involve all the semiconductor-related components! This is the real goal and direction of ARK! ”

Alex didn't wait for anyone else to ask. He continued: "ARK is the equivalent of a headquarters, it is the core of all hardware and software companies! And what is the core of technology? That's the R&D of technology! In other words, ARK should focus on R&D! ”

These words made those who came from R&D nod their heads and said yes, and they naturally did not forget the purpose of joining ARK in the first place. They really want to change this world through their own efforts!

Next, Alex made a series of dazzling appointments, respectively for integrated circuit boards, picture tubes, electronic components and other aspects of the formation of their own departments for research. All in all, these eight young people have their own good places.

"It's going to take a lot of money!" Someone asked.

"Don't worry, now we have enough funds, and we can continue to inject the insufficient part!" Alex replied that now that the Carpenter family had come out of the crisis, the capital chain continued to flow smoothly. In the absence of external worries, now is the best time to take advantage of the opportunity to develop.

In fact, Alex wanted to make ARK a similar institution to Bell Labs, but by mistake, he had to push out the PC first, and in a hurry to make this structure. However, it is better to do this, at least relatively speaking, the connection between R&D, production and sales is relatively close, and it is more in line with commercialization.

After the hardware is arranged, Alex will also arrange for someone to start a software company. In fact, he is quite optimistic about one person, that is the Chinese genius Wang An!

The process of Wang An's rise is like a second-rate novel about genius. But when he touched the interests of giants like IBM, a series of bad luck swooped over, first Wang An was terminally ill, and then when the company's profits fell by half, the stock price plummeted, leading to a series of reactions that pushed the company to the brink of bankruptcy.

At this time, Wang An's company, which has 3 billion annual sales, has no investment from banks and other companies. In this way, without the emergency of foreign funds, Wang An's company, which was cut off by others, went bankrupt.

A discerning person can see that there is a big cat. It stands to reason that even if Wang An's company is bad, it will not go bankrupt because of the decline in profits, in fact, Wang An's company at that time could still be saved, it was just thirsty to death because it lacked a mouthful of water!

Now that Alex thinks about it, presumably Wang An must have hit an invisible ceiling, violated the interests of others, and then was besieged. Otherwise, they will not be unable to borrow money, borrow money, or even invest and go bankrupt.

As early as when CPT launched the "first generation" computer, Alex had approached Wang An. He wanted Wang Anlai to be in charge of a research and development department, which was also related to computer-related research.

Although he did not go out in person, he sent someone to contact him. He thinks that Wang An will most likely not come.

At that time, Wang An had just sold the "magnetic core memory" patent in his hand to IBM, and it was said that Wang An had to sell it as a last resort under the condition of being half-forced and half-persuaded. He got $500,000 and sold the patent all at once.

After Wang An got the money, he did not enjoy himself, but put all the $500,000 into research work, and he had his own Wang An laboratory.

When CPT extended an olive branch, Wang An refused, saying that he did not like to go to large companies, especially for large companies like IBM.

By that time, Alex had already found Seymour? Clay, he thinks that if Wang An cooperates with Seymour, there may be many problems.

Wang An is quite a dictator! This is in a startup, when the dictator has vision and ambition, and it is a thing that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

This is also the reason why Alex wants to invite Wang An over, he needs Wang An's momentum and talent! So far, Alex has not found a suitable candidate, after all, real software companies only emerged in the early 80s. The software talents of that era were still small children, and they were not even born at all.

Of course, there are some people who have the ability to do this, such as Seymour? Clay's programming is quite powerful, and the programs he writes are basically bug-free! But he was only interested in developing the fastest computers, and he didn't think much about software.

Alex also considered promoting within ARK, but after observation, he found that Wang An's entrepreneurial spirit was still lacking among these people.

So he decided to look for Wang An first, and if it really didn't work, then look for a candidate among ARK's software engineers. (To be continued......)