Purely in terms of ability, Jimmy Wells and Larry Sanger are the most satisfying to Zhou Xin.

Regarding the setting of the user threshold, Zhou Xin just put forward an idea, and they were able to give a specific implementation plan, and the plan did not allow him to find too many faults in terms of feasibility and completeness.

When a user registers for an exam, he or she only has the ability to answer questions under that topic after passing the exam.

For example, if Rex passes the exam, he can only answer computer-related questions, and the right to ask questions is completely open.

At the same time, for other fields, such as history, politics, and economics, Rex has the opportunity to answer once a day, and he can choose any section.

If you get the number one number one in a row for that section more than three times in a row, you will be permanently unlocked for that section.

In other words, the user registration exam is only the first threshold, and there are some subsequent thresholds if you want to have more permissions.

At that time, Quora's internal operations team had a fierce dispute over whether to set such a strict threshold, because this was something that had never happened before, and no Internet company had done this.

"Why can't we give all users permission to ask questions?"

"Because there aren't enough respondents, if everyone can ask a question, the question will distract the user, and with 50,000 questions a day and only 5,000 respondents, the user experience will plummet."

"Why can't users be qualified to answer all sections after one exam?"

"The user only proves his ability in this field, and he does not prove his ability in other fields, so we give him the opportunity to answer once a day, which is not only to allow him to prove himself, but also to motivate the user to answer the question.

This is a set of mechanisms to stimulate user activity. ”

"Is it unfair to the users who were invited in the early stage to have no such restrictions at all, but the users who passed the high-threshold exams face various restrictions?"

"Therefore, we will introduce a series of supporting mechanisms to reward users who pass the high-threshold exam.

Through these supporting reward mechanisms, it is even in turn to encourage previous beta users to take the exam. ”

In the end, Zhou Xin made a decision to do this, and if the threshold was set high, it could be slowly lowered in the future, but the threshold was set too low, and it was almost impossible to become higher in the future.

Back to Yahoo, Yang Zhiyuan also agrees with Kevin's opinion that Zhou Xin has lost himself in a series of successes, and this threshold setting method belongs to directly standing on the opposite side of users.

After the acquisition of GeoCities, Yahoo took a series of measures against GeoCities, which, in Yang's view, were far less excessive than Quora's user registration exams.

They just increase the number of ads and limit the page size, and users are boycotting GeoCities on a large scale, and Quora is directly emasculating most of the features used by users, which is not a level at all.

Yang Zhiyuan also believes that as long as Yahoo's knowledge quiz community is launched, it can attract all the users who have cultivated a good market for Quora.

Quora's biggest opponent is Yahoo, which has a lot of traffic and cash flow and personnel, while NewPay's biggest opponent is PayPal's predecessor, Confiniti.

Due to NewPay's overvaluation, a billion dollar valuation, 10 percent of the shares is 100 million dollars, and the voting rights have been castrated.

The price was acceptable only to Wall Street, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan each subscribing to five percent.

This also led Deutsche Bank and Nokia Investment Fund to realize the value of the field of electronic payments, NewPay was valued at $1 billion in this angel round, so it is not unacceptable for Confiniti to invest $3 million.

Therefore, Deutsche Bank and Nokia Investment Fund finally decided to invest in Confiniti, and the two investment institutions originally valued Confiniti at $9 million, and they jointly invested $3.5 million.

After they restarted negotiations, Peter Thiel quickly realized that the other party's investment in NewPay was definitely not going well, and then used his connections to learn that NewPay was valued at $1 billion.

"NewPay is valued at $1 billion, and there are only users between Confiniti and NewPay, and NewPay pays only $20 million for a million users.

Our valuation is $20 million. ”

"Peter! Are you crazy! Confiniti currently only has PDAs, which is a niche field, with far fewer PDAs than computers.

We can't tell if your technology is comparable to NewPay as you say, and this is something that cannot be falsified or verified.

I admit that we are willing to reinvest in PayPal because NewPay's valuation is too high and we think PayPal has equal potential.

But that doesn't mean we're okay with your starting price. ”

Since Peter Thiel was also in a hurry, they needed money to expand to recruit people, and then speed up the development of desktop payment software.

So after two rounds of negotiations, Nokia Investment Funds and Deutsche Bank invested $5 million in Confiniti at a valuation of $15 million.

Confiniti held a press conference in Silicon Valley for the transfer, and also invited Zhou Xin to attend.

At this time, the management framework of most of Zhouxin's enterprises had already been set up, so he had the energy to spend more time at Berkeley, and spent three to four days a week in Corey Hall, Laboratory 307 in Corey Hall, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Berkeley.

This morning, Zhou Xin checked his email in the 307 laboratory, and most of his work items would be sent to him by email.

"Invitation?" Zhou Xin thought to himself, "An electronic payment company called Confinidi invited me to their press conference.

Peter Thiel, this name I have a little impression, is he not the founder of PayPal, is it because I came to this time and space, they did not start PayPal, but started Confiniti? ”

Peter Thiel is better known as an investor in Facebook for the Chinese, investing $500,000 in Facebook in an angel round and acquiring a 10.2% stake.

It was also Facebook's first outside investment.

Zhou Xin had an impression of this name when he looked at the history of Silicon Valley, and electronic payment is the most concerned enterprise in his current industry, and Confiniti is his strongest competitor whether it is PayPal or not.

Therefore, Zhou Xin still plans to go to see their press conference, which is very close to the location of Berkeley, Palo Alto, about 60 kilometers by car.

"Newman, I'm Peter Thiel, and I'd like to welcome you to the press conference at Confiniti.

We are also an electronic payment company, and after NewPay's success in the field of electronic payment, this field has received a lot of attention from investment institutions.

It is precisely because of this that Confiniti has been able to obtain external investment. ”