During this time, Pierre was far from the only one who had concerns about Zhou Xin, including Jerrell, a vice president at Goldman Sachs, who was the sponsor of Riot Games' IPO.

He tried his best to persuade Zhou Xin to put his money in Goldman Sachs, and Goldman Sachs would manage the money on his behalf.

Of course, in addition to Jerrell, there are also various Wall Street bigwigs who contacted Zhou Xin, and the one who impressed Zhou Xin the most was Bernard Madoff.

Madoff himself has an asset management company under his own name, and in his capacity as chairman of the Nasdaq stock market, he has attracted a large number of investors to hand over their money to his asset management company.

Because Zhou Xin was very impressed by the financial crisis of '08, the famous event after the outbreak of the financial crisis, in addition to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, was the collapse of Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

In just two contacts, Zhou Xin deeply felt that Madoff belonged to a talent who was full of social attributes, and he could always tout it just right.

Wall Street financial practitioners, as long as they do well, their social skills will definitely not be bad, but Zhou Xin is the first time to see him like Madoff's social skills.

Compared to Madoff, Jerrell's eloquence is no different from that of a recent law graduate.

However, even if Zhou Xin didn't know that the other party was a liar, he wouldn't give him the money.

"Boss, I still don't quite understand why you're selling Quora, aren't we running it well?

If Riot Games can go public, Quora can also go public, and the market value of Quora is definitely higher than it is now. Jimmy Wells asked.

He and Larry Sanger have not yet made a career, and their identities and visions are quite limited.

While there is a vague sense that something is wrong with the rising valuations of Internet companies, they lack the ability to perceive the essence of the problem as Pierre did.

According to the original trajectory, the two will gradually transform into investors after the success of Wikipedia.

In other words, almost all of the successful early entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley will transform into angel investors.

Jimmy's question is also Sanger's, "Boss, I don't understand either.

Quora is already profitable, and even if we don't pursue going public anytime soon, Quora's valuation will only rise as the number of users increases. ”

Behind their doubts is dissatisfaction, and the point of dissatisfaction is that Zhou Xin's sale of Quora will affect their interests.

Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wells have a combined 10% stake, and the 10% stake is not divided equally, but is distributed according to Nupedia's share.

Zhou Xin chose to sell all the shares in his hand, which means that Silicon Valley Internet companies will only consider buying shares from Zhou Xin.

Because even if you get 10% of them, it won't do anything.

Unless Zhou Xin is willing to split the shares, either split and sell, or keep a part of it for themselves to sell a part, so that their 10% voting rights only make sense.

Now their 10% stake is still worth a lot, but it doesn't enjoy a premium.

Especially after Quora was acquired, going public was not something they could influence at all.

Now Quora only needs to convince Zhou Xin to go public, and Quora is sold to Yahoo or Microsoft, and then if it wants to go public, it needs to go through a board resolution.

If there's one thing you don't want Quora to sell the most, it's the two of them.

Zhou Xin: "The success that Quora has brought me has come to an end, it is a very successful and perfect product.

I'm also having a hard time optimizing on top of that.

I'm a product manager, and it's not a matter of course to build the perfect product and then put it on sale?

We have one last feature coming soon, and when this feature is introduced to the market, Quora will be completely complete. ”

"Congratulations on being a lucky user, Quora invites you to the Quora product launch event on June 6th. Newman”

Rex didn't pass Quora's registration exam, and he ended up buying a test-time account registration code from EBay for a full fifty dollars.

Later, the price went all the way up, and now it costs at least $130 to buy it again.

After opening the Quora page and entering the account password, Rex received a homepage pop-up.

Because the news of Quora's sale spread throughout Silicon Valley, Rex, as an Internet practitioner in Silicon Valley, naturally heard the news.

Under the media publicity, the world knew that Newman was going to sell Quora.

After the decision to sell, Quora was going to hold a press conference, and it was signed by Zhou Xin, which Rex found strange.

Because in the eyes of the outside world, Zhou Xin does not like to show his head, compared with other Internet companies that hold product launches at every turn, Zhou Xin has never held a product launch conference.

And Quora is already a very complete product, Zhou Xin is about to sell Quora, and there is still a need for a product launch at this time.

Rex felt strange.

"What do you think Newman is going to hold a Quora product launch?"

This question quickly became a hot issue in the Internet sector, and a large number of users talked about their opinions below.

"Thank you, I'm the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, and we've just received a notification from Quora that they're going to hold a press conference with Newman himself on stage.

The venue is at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. ”

The Moscone Convention Center is located in downtown San Francisco's heart at the intersection of Fourth and Howard Streets, a short distance from San Francisco International Airport.

In the exciting 90s, there were many big tech giants holding press conferences here, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, etc.

"Nearly every tech media in Silicon Valley has received invitations, including Information World Magazine, Red Herring Magazine, the San Jose Mercury Journal, and many more. We don't know exactly what the feature is.

At the same time, the latest news I heard from Yahoo executives is that Newman has not given up on selling Quora. So now everyone is curious about what kind of product Newman is going to release at the product launch.

You must know that even in the epoch-making form of Internet products such as paid Q&A, Newman has never held a product launch conference.

This product launch is Newman's first product launch, and I am just as curious as Q friends about what Newman has to say. ”

A week before the launch event, everyone except for the Quora staff didn't know what Zhou Xin was going to say.

At the same time, all Internet companies are nervous, and everyone is afraid of what Quora will do.

You must know that Quora didn't have such a big battle when it launched paid Q&A before, and as soon as the paid Q&A came out, the Q&A community that Yahoo spent a lot of effort to develop and promote suddenly became an outdated Internet celebrity.

Only the entire San Francisco Bay Area has not removed billboards telling passing vehicles that the Yahoo Q&A community has only been launched, and we have more than a dozen Nobel laureates as strong shields.

There is also an interesting fact about the 13 Nobel laureates, that is, Joseph Taylor, the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics, complained in an email with a friend:

"I've regretted taking Yahoo's $100,000 invitation to settle in, and I've signed an exclusivity agreement to not register an account on any similar community. I'd rather give the $100,000 back to Yahoo than use Quora normally. ”

A screenshot of this passage in the email was posted on Quora about "What do you think of the Yahoo Q&A community?" In the answer.

Later, the screenshot was used by Yahoo's opponents to mock it repeatedly.

Zhou Xin stood in the background and took a deep breath, to be honest, he had never experienced a similar occasion, and he had only heard about a dozen people at most when he had pulled investment before.

When the plenipotentiary of ZTE attended the inquiry meeting in Washington, there were only hundreds of people.

And now in the entire venue, he feels that there are nearly 20,000 people, and the entire north hall of the Moscone Center is almost seated.

The Moscone Center consists of three main halls, and now there are only the North and West Rooms, with the North Hall having a capacity of up to 20,000 people.

As a result, Quora sent a total of 15,000 invitations to official Quora users and 2,000 invitations to media outlets.

The sense of oppression brought by 20,000 people is completely incomparable to hundreds of people, even if hundreds of people were all his enemies before, and now the 20,000 people in the audience are all his friends.

Rex also came to the scene, he didn't come by plane, but by car, Silicon Valley is very close to San Francisco.

When checking the ticket on the spot, he complained in his heart, and it was a verification code, which was really Newman's style.

Yes, entry is verified through a verification code and Quora account.

Zhou Xin took a deep breath in the audience, and Aimo gave Zhou Xin a hug before he took the stage.

Zhou Xin calmed down after seeing a smell similar to sandalwood.

This little scene, no matter how bad it is, is not as bad as saying that you are OK at the press conference, and then it was repeatedly made into a ghost animal video.

The lights on the stage turned on, and Zhou Xin strode onto the stage and waved his hand around:

"Hello everyone, this is Quora, and this is my first press conference."

Six-digit verification codes began to appear one after another on the big screen behind them, covering the entire screen.

Then the captcha lights up one after another, that is, there will be a brightness gap between the captchas.

"Very good, the next is this press conference, through Quora to distribute tickets to all users, I know that everyone will definitely complain in their hearts, Newman will use captcha no matter what the occasion.

Yes, the verification code that lights up on the back means that it has been checked at the entrance, and we have issued a total of 15,000 verification codes.

Now I estimate that it is 80 percent up, let me look at the specific data on the teleprompter, 11,402 are up, which is about 12,000 I estimated. ”

Bill Gates and Yang Zhiyuan were also invited to attend the product launch, and they sat in the first row.

Potential purchasers of Quora were invited.

Bill Gates and Yang Zhiyuan were extremely shocked that so many users came to the scene, which fully proves Quora's user stickiness.

Keep in mind that not all users live near San Francisco, they are coming to the conference, and some even need to fly in.

Bill Gates thought to himself, "This is a miracle." ”

Yesterday, a reader said that he was shocked back and forth.,The main thing is that I wrote dry.,If you don't write this, it's even more dry.。。。 And the shock is actually quite small

(End of chapter)