"Great companies start with garages, MicroPort, Microsoft, Lotus and Actor." Roland Hansen, Microsoft's vice president, looked at Garage 9 with the Actor sign not far away, and smiled and complimented Tommy Hawke next to him.

Tommy shook his head, "Actors are nowhere near enough to be compared to the three software companies you call them. ”

"I've heard from Benjamin that the Actor seems to have moved to a new location, so what team is staying here?" Roland Hansen asked curiously as he looked at the dozen or so employees in the garage who were busy answering the phone at this time.

Tommy looked at the now cramped garage, where once upon a time there were only three people, himself, Jason, Holly, and three college students, imagining the future of the Actor.

Now, Holly has taken a leave of absence from school and flies around as Actor's VP of Outreach, dealing with all sorts of external matters, such as interviews or public relations.

Jason has also chosen to take a leave of absence, and is currently conducting training at various universities, cooperating with Holly for some appearances and visits.

If the two of them were here at the moment, they should feel as emotionally as they were, nostalgic for those years that only belonged to the three rookie entrepreneurs.

After coming back to his senses, Tommy introduced to Roland Hansen: "This is the company's customer service and technical support department, currently has 30 part-time employees, all of whom are students at Stanford University, and come here to earn some money after class, if the work location is too far away from the school, it will not be conducive to them rushing to class, and the full-time customer service, the labor cost is too high, so in the end I decided to leave the customer service department in the No. 9 garage to provide jobs for the students." ”

"You're not much like a traditional developer." Hearing Tommy's introduction, Roland Hansen bowed slightly and said: "Those entrepreneurs who are programmers themselves often improve the treatment of employees and the office environment as soon as they get the money. ”

Tommy smiled next to him and asked, "Mr. Hansen, do you mean Mr. Paul Allen, who quit management at Microsoft due to illness?" ”

Last year, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen found out that he had Hodgkin lymphoma during a medical examination, which was in the early stages, for which he handed over all power, retaining only the position of vice chairman of the board of directors of Microsoft Corporation, but no longer involved in any decision-making of the company.

This is Microsoft's external statement, in fact, early Hodgkin lymphoma does not affect work, and the cure rate is very high, and what really made Paul Allen leave Microsoft is his irreconcilable contradictions with Bill Gates.

When Paul Allen was involved in Microsoft's decision-making, Microsoft still retained some geek temperament, but with Paul Allen out of the game and Microsoft became Bill Gates' one-man company, the whole company style changed, and it was more ambitious and greedy than before.

For example, although the company's income is good, Microsoft still chooses to hire a large number of temporary employees, and then add complex and hidden non-compete agreements and non-disclosure agreement clauses to the contracts of these employees, which can save Microsoft a lot of employee benefits, such as medical insurance and other expenses, and because of the existence of non-compete agreements and confidentiality agreements, these temporary employees are dissatisfied with Microsoft and do not dare to resign easily, because once they resign to join other companies with better benefits, Microsoft's legal department will sue him as soon as possibleand give him a resignation gift package.

Countless developers in the computer software industry have criticized Microsoft for unscrupulously exploiting employees, but apparently to no avail.

Even Paul Allen, after learning about what Bill Gates had done, made a special phone call to scold him for not being worthy of being called a computer practitioner, but just a vampire who got into the computer industry.

"Yes, a lot of programmers think that if the company makes money, they should improve the company's treatment, and everyone gets the money, but Bill doesn't think so, I don't think so, so he poached me from the cosmetics industry to sell software." Roland Hansen leaned over and looked at Tommy Hawke, "I'm glad you didn't think of yourself as a developer, but guess why I asked Benjamin for your contact information and wanted to talk to you?" ”

"I guess I'm one step ahead of you?" Tommy didn't hesitate, he looked at the other person's face and asked rhetorically.

"That's right, I asked Benjamin before, is this Tommy Hawke guy from Actor Corporation, like me, also a cosmetics seller before?" Roland Hansen looked at this guy named Tommy Hawke with complicated eyes, and said in a serious tone:

"I've been designing the Microsoft Word promotion plan for so long, because you, most of it has been abandoned now, otherwise the name that appears at the top of the professional sales list of those computer magazines should be Microsoft Word, not OSS."

Tommy shrugged: "The reason why OSS is selling so much is because it's free, not because it's more professional than Microsoft Word." ”

"I always felt like you were mocking me." Roland laughed.

With Paul Allen out, Bill Gates immediately replaced the former vice president in charge of promotion and sales according to his own wishes, and then recruited Roland Hansen, who was previously the vice president in charge of marketing at the American cosmetics company Neutrogena.

One of the first things Roland Hansen did when he took office was to announce that Microsoft's own document processing software, Multi File, had been renamed Microsoft Word and that it would be compatible with WordStar, the world's best-selling document processing software.

Just like Actor's compatibility with Lotus's documentation, Microsoft is not interested in getting authorization from MicroPort, which is directly and rudely unauthorized compatibility.

When MicroPort asked Microsoft why it was unauthorized to be compatible with its own software documentation, Microsoft's response was, "That's what we did, and if we weren't happy, we would sue us in court."

However, the minimally invasive boss Seymour Rubinstein is an old Jianghu, and he has been friends with Bill Gates for many years, and the two have been in love and killed each other for many years.

Therefore, MicroPort did not initiate a lawsuit at all, but when the whole thing did not happen, it did not give Microsoft any chance to gain popularity, which made Microsoft Word, although compatible with WordStar files, did not find any opportunity to make waves, and continued to sell at the bottom.

Whether it is an individual or a large company, there is no interest in using this document processing software that requires an additional hundreds of dollars to buy a new auxiliary device called a mouse, and then memorize the operation instructions as thick as a book to get a perfect user experience.

Failing to capture the popularity of minimally invasive, Roland Hansen is ready to promote Microsoft Word like a branded cosmetics.

Since you can't beat WordStar from professionalism, let's attack from the usage rate, don't do high-end luxury goods for the time being, but promote Microsoft Word as a civilian cosmetics, such as cooperating with various computer magazines or software dealers, magazine subscribers and software stores can get a personal trial version of Microsoft Word for free.

As a result, as soon as the entire promotion plan was negotiated with those magazines and software distributors, Roland Hansen found that the software sales lists of major computer magazines had changed their names, and WordStar, which had dominated the top of the document processing software sales list for four consecutive years, was actually replaced by a software called OSS, and at the same time, Lotus1-2-3's position as the first place in spreadsheet software was also replaced by OSS.

Roland Hansen got all the information about the software for the first time, and experienced the effect of using the software for himself, and then found that Microsoft Word is not comparable to OSS in terms of ease of use.

OSS does not have as many functions as other software to show power and professionalism, that is, simple and practical document processing functions and spreadsheet processing functions, clear positioning, to meet the basic business office requirements, and most importantly, it is very user-friendly, easy to use, and the entire instruction manual is compressed to only ten pages.

What's even more terrifying is that it's now completely free, just call the Actor company and leave an address and phone number, and if you're willing to pay the postage, you can receive a copy of the OSS software.

Roland looked at Tommy: "Free market to cultivate user habits and brand impression, the computer software industry does not seem to have such a company, only the cosmetics industry often does this kind of thing, so when I saw your news, the first reaction was that you had also sold cosmetics before." ”

"I'll sell everything, Mr. Hansen." Tommy winked at the forty-nine-year-old marketing guru and said.

"How many users of OSS are there?"

"There were 100,000 units sold, 100,000 units were given away through the training classroom program, and then about 200,000 people applied through a free giveaway advertisement in the newspaper immediately after I was interviewed." Tommy proudly told Roland about the sales of his software.

Free sales are also sales, so Tommy is right.

However, Roland immediately punctured Tommy's balloon: "This data is a bit watery, and the approximate data I know is that OSS has a maximum of 300,000 users." ”

"300,000 people, that is, 300,000 people are now sitting in front of computers hungry to learn the freely available OSS software." Tommy was poked by Roland and injected with water, his face did not change, but continued.

300,000 users,It's really scary,Microsoft's own document processing software was renamed Microsoft Word after the relaunch,Now the sales in the United States have not even reached 30,000 sets,I wanted to sell consumer goods,Rely on free to increase the number of users,As a result, Actor company took the lead。

Thinking of this, Roland continued: "And Actor develops another software for sale, and these 300,000 people will be potential buyers. ”

"You can remove the word potential, Mr. Hansen, I don't know if you noticed, Mr. Benjamin Rosen of Compaq has sold 20,000 PCs in a month using Actor's customer profile." Tommy looked at Roland:

"Because we SSD will always launch the training classroom program, which is designed for the students to design a reward mechanism, allowing students who get A and do not have a personal computer to buy a computer in installments with a credit card, if the training is over, he does not get a computer job, SSD will help him repay the loan in installments, many students who do not get A can not control the desire to consume, take the money out to buy the Compaq computer we recommend, but at present, we only support Compaq computer for the time being."

"So how does that Benjamin guy repay you, you will push up Compaq's market value a lot." Roland was stunned for a moment, then asked.

Tommy looked at the head of his customer service team, Gary Good, who was going to 'dock' with Jason for the first time, and said with a smile:

"He invited IBM to join EFF, so when the students buy computers in installments, in addition to Compaq, IBM is about to appear, and at the same time, our training courses are only OSS from the beginning, and we are considering adding other software, such as Intuit, which is also founded by Stanford University alumni, and the financial software they developed will liberate accounting from the mountains of paper documents, and Park, which is also a Stanford college student entrepreneur, they designed and developed a simulation analysis software, It can be used by scientists or university labs to ......"

"How can Microsoft join this EFF and then have training on the Microsoft mouse in your training classrooms?" Roland Hansen didn't wait for Tommy to finish speaking, and asked decisively.

EFF is clearly using a training program to cultivate user habits, and Roland feels that it is necessary to have a Microsoft mouse operation training inside, which is obviously a faster and epoch-making computer-aided hardware, but people who are used to keyboard operation feel that the existence of the mouse is unnecessary.

Since people who have developed habits think that the mouse is dispensable, let these people who have no computer foundation first get used to the computer having an auxiliary hardware called the mouse.

Tommy told Rosen: "We welcome all companies that are enthusiastic about helping their peers, who have a sense of industry responsibility, who are willing to help each other, such as a company that happens to need help at this time, called Actor, who is having some trouble. ”

I haven't slept since last night.,I'm not lazy.,It's just stuck.,It's not good to write it.,It seems like I suddenly can't code words.,I even designed the mentally handicapped plot of two people meeting in a nightclub last night......

But there is no other way for this kind of thing, just keep writing to break it~~ I will continue to write~ Don't stay with me tonight, I'll just boil it alone~

(End of chapter)