In the dot-com bubble of recent years, almost everyone has joined in the feast, and they have made all kinds of unbelievable moves.

It should be known that the survival of Internet companies depends on seizing traffic as soon as possible and expanding the customer base as much as possible, even if this will generate huge losses, it is not hesitating.

Expansion or survival, only one outcome can be chosen.

Therefore, all Internet companies are waving the money from financing, just to occupy more and more traffic.

There is no doubt that in this crazy gambling game, it is inevitable that Li Yuansuo's situation will appear - traffic for the sake of traffic, and he has long forgotten how to monetize traffic!

Due to the large amount of hot money on Wall Street, it has poured into Silicon Valley. In the case of a highly prosperous market, a large number of start-up Internet companies have carried out stock IPOs, and it is easy to make a lot of money in the stock market. Even if you've never made a profit, or in some cases, don't even have any income at all. The door is still wide open. The name is beautiful - gambling is the future!

In that case, the longevity of the company is measured by the rate at which it burns money. Meaning, a company that is neither profitable nor lacks a viable business model squandered all its time in financing.

Of course, in order to compete for traffic, it is definitely necessary to keep increasing the exposure. In the case of this involution, it slowly turns into advertising bombardment.

In order to seek to expand the customer base, including TV commercials, print ads, and targeting professional and easy events. Many dot-com companies have resorted to a variety of tactics, even with a meaningless but impressive name.

For example: Yahoo! Parallel! Ahem.

Especially in the field of media advertising, like the 34th Super Bowl held this year, which attracted sponsorship from 17 Internet companies at once, each paying more than $2 million for 30-second ads?

Lie down! More than $2 million in 30 seconds, without blinking your eyelids, just burned out?

There's even a CBS-backed website, Ion., which gave $10 million to a lucky contestant in a prime-time show that aired on CBS for a half.

This is simply a crazy world, have Internet companies now burned banknotes as straw paper?

Of course, such an easy circle of money has also attracted a large number of speculators. All of a sudden, the mud and rocks fell.

There are traditional companies that apply for one. domain name, open a website, you are an Internet company, and then you close your eyes and blow it up, and start raising money.

Many young entrepreneurs drove to Silicon Valley and opened a random website to do business, and all kinds of Internet companies seemed to spring up like mushrooms after a rain:

Yes

And everyone doesn't worry about running out of money at all, because they have Wall Street behind them for blood transfusions. As long as you wait for the IPO to be successful, you will immediately become a multimillionaire, a billionaire. And then together they will flee in victory......

Found out? In this era, the concept of fresh food delivery emerged. It's not that these Internet models are wrong, but it's too far ahead of its time. Half a step ahead is talent, one step ahead is crazy!

But as long as the "concept" can be proposed, it can still be used in Silicon Valley and NASDAQ.

In addition, Wall Street began a financial flood, and a large amount of hot money poured into the stock surplus to a certain extent, which also contributed to the atmosphere of speculation.

Thinking about it from the perspective of the American people at that time, these Internet companies rose so well on the NASDAQ, and they had money in their own hands, although they didn't know much about what the Internet was, but others voted for it, why didn't I try it?

With this mentality, investors gradually lose their minds, thinking that as long as it is an Internet company, it will be enough to invest directly, and it will definitely rise anyway.

Entrepreneurs are even crazier when they see this situation, anyway, as long as they hang up the name of an Internet company, they will definitely succeed, and they will be done.

Investors stare at the entrepreneurs, as if they were in: Entrepreneurship? What kind of knock on the NASDAQ? Just give the money.

This drama has been pushed to outer space by investors and entrepreneurs.

It should be that this kind of crazy speculation has objectively also promoted the development of the Internet.

In just a decade, the percentage of American households owning a computer has grown from 15 percent to about 50 percent. Computers have gone from a luxury item to a household necessity, similar to major appliances such as washing machines and televisions.

Everyone found that using a computer can do a lot of things that could not be done before, such as online shopping, chatting, sending emails, etc., which is particularly convenient. The number of Internet users is also growing rapidly with the growth of computer users, and it took only four years for the Internet to gain 50 million users, while it took 13 years for TV sets and 38 years for radios to reach the same number of users!

Obviously, the popularity of the Internet also depends on the surplus of stocks, and this popularization has made computer IT from a very professional luxury to a cheap daily necessities.

And such a growth rate also brings a lot of traffic, which in turn blows up the Internet bubble even more? Pushing the stock price higher?

It is clear that among this group of madmen, as long as someone maintains a trace of sobriety and sanity, they can judge that the bubble is getting bigger and bigger, and a financial storm is imminent.

In this context, Li Yuan hurried to Los Angeles. Other Internet companies can't manage their affairs at all, but at least they need to cool down the parallel lines.

……

"Martin, Elna. This is my secretary, Sister Ying. On the way out of the airport, Li Yuan took the initiative to introduce several of them to each other.

Martin smiled, "Head, you're just in time, there's a yacht party this weekend." Our company has chartered a luxury cruise ship. It can accommodate 6 to 700 people. ”

"Oh? What theme? ”

"Is it the Carnival of Savage Rao? Only leaves are allowed on the body. Hey. Martin smiled meaninglessly, men should understand anyway, "Also, to celebrate the successful launch of "Wild". We have invited a lot of distinguished guests and ...... Actress it! No way, this is Hollywood! Hahaha! ”

Li Yuan is a little inexplicable, does this kind of still need to be celebrated? And it's a big lease of a luxury cruise ship?

After asking, he learned that it was not Martin and Erna who were extravagant, this was already the trend in the Internet circle.

In the past few months, Internet companies have gone crazy to the extreme.

Some companies just add an e- to the front of their name, or one to the end. Then a business plan was issued, and investors thought that it was an Internet company with investment value and threw money wildly, and a random newly listed Internet company could raise tens of millions of dollars.

Communications and Internet companies that provide services to Internet companies are also popular with investors, with Qualcomm rising 26 times in 1999 alone, and 12 other stocks rising more than 10 times.

The first share price of Akamai, a network service company, has risen fourfold, in short, the bosses eat meat, the younger brothers drink soup, and everyone makes a fortune together.

By this time, the overall P/E ratio of the NASDAQ index company has reached 200, which is more than twice as high as the overall P/E ratio of the Nikkei 225 index company at the time of the real estate bubble in 1991

With such an easy fundraising success, there is a carnival of investors at the top, and a festival of entrepreneurs at the bottom, and the money from the upstream is like a waterfall smashing into these companies. The bosses of these companies also smashed their heads, began to forget that the money would have to be returned to the investors sooner or later, and began to set fire to the money without restraint.

First of all, of course, there are high-tech industry talents, who are crazy about throwing money at those programming apes.

Since the Internet has only been developed for less than a decade, the number of program apes on the market is too small, and these companies have to hire program apes with high salaries, casually offering annual salaries of $80,000 or $100,000. And there are also a lot of equity incentives.

You know, this was 20 years ago, and when Li Yuan was reborn, the starting salary of programmers in the Bay Area was $100,000. And there are even 35-year-old graduates in China.

However, it is still not enough to have a high salary, and it is still facing all kinds of poaching. Program apes are always in short supply.

Like what flexible working hours, t-shirts to work, playroom lounges, kindergarten five-star buffets, ......, these are already meaningful. In order to buy people's hearts, they often hold all kinds of extravagant parties for program apes, and money is not a problem, as long as everyone is happy.

Anyway, just find a reason: the company is established to open a party, the company changes its name to open a party, the project starts a party, and the product is launched to open a party......

At that time, Silicon Valley held more than 20 parties a week, drinking as many drinks as you wanted, and even inviting celebrities to come and sing, and even passers-by who had nothing to do with these companies could come and join in the fun. A party can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So, Martin and Erna really can't help it. If it weren't for all sorts of new tricks that were hollowed out, those sullen program apes would have run out.

Hearing this, Li Yuan couldn't laugh or cry a little. Sure enough, no matter how the years change and the rebirth passes, this group of program apes is really ...... It's very sullen!

In that case, let's not spoil the fun just yet.

Li Yuan asked with a smile: "Elna, after the launch of "Savage", how is your sales here?" ”

Erna was quick to give a brief overview of the sales. Almost...... Not satisfactory! It can increase revenue by millions of dollars every year. Although on the surface, it is not bad, but compared with the current total market value of Parallel Line Technology, it can only be slightly subsidized. At least the money for luxury cruises has been earned, right?

However, Erna is still very happy: "Head, you have made the Parallel Lines community game fully public, which has been very well received by the studio. ”

"Oh?"

"Those games from famous studios, we shouldn't be able to get them. But many studios, they have finally been able to get rid of the oppression of Ren Tang and Sony. Many have expressed a strong intention to cooperate. ”

In Parallel Line Technology, Li Yuan has adopted another model - simply make all the parallel line community public, any game can be launched here, and Parallel Line only charges a certain share.

In other words, Parallel Line Technology has disclosed its own sales channels. Game studios are free to sell their games. If it is a big success, it is divided into parallel lines; If it fails, there is nothing to lose.

This is equivalent to giving game studios around the world a chance!

Here, Li Yuan is equal to leaving a profit point for Parallel Line Technology. After gradually withdrawing from himself, he can also make a smooth transition to parallel line technology.

"Hehe, what's the news in Silicon Valley lately?" After finishing the business, Li Yuan entered the small talk mode.

"Oh! The biggest news is that the merger of AOL and Time Warner has been approved......"

In Li Yuan's previous life, this incident was also quite famous. AOL and Time Warner merged, creating the largest merger in history, with a combined company market capitalization of $360 billion. And it's AOL to Time Warner's snake swallowing elephant. This kind of situation of Internet companies has also caused a sensation around the world.

And after the merger of the two companies, they have become giants in the online content media industry, and it seems to be a very cost-effective deal from content production, distribution to full consumption.

However, in the end, it became a piece of chicken feathers. The management of the company caused great chaos, and the two heads were kicked out of the company one after another. Even in the end, AOL's name was eliminated by the new company?

It turned into a rather failed M&A case.

Crazy, everything is crazy anyway!

Li Yuan laughed and shook his head, speechless about such a crazy move.

Come on! It's understandable to burn money, but at least like Amazon, eBay or Google, you have to invest money in the construction of technology or the product itself, right?

If you only stay in the money-burning mode of advertising and traffic promotion, occupying the market depends on expensive advertising and mergers and acquisitions. With the rapid burning of funds, the speed of market growth is far from keeping up with the expansion speed of Internet companies, that is, Internet companies are growing very fast, but the number of Internet users has not increased enough, the number of Internet users is not enough, these companies are not enough, the story can not be told, and the bubble is on the verge of bursting.

As Warren Buffett said, when the tide goes out, you know who is swimming naked.

The current Internet industry is like a powder keg, and only one spark is left to detonate.

"Head, next week is the shareholders' meeting. Do we need to prepare again? Martin asked with a smile.

Li Yuan was a little confused: "Huh? What should I prepare? ”

This time I came to the United States, mainly to participate in the shareholders' meeting of Parallel Line Technology. This may be the last time he attends.

However, there is a standard process for shareholders' meetings, so why do they need to prepare for them?

Unexpectedly, Martin and Erna glanced at each other, and the two of them smiled: "Head! It's the new party! Do you like Snow White? Or conquer the alien chicks? Hahaha! ”

"it!"

Li Yuan was completely shocked. Martin, Elna, they ...... I don't think I changed careers, right?