"The gap between NewPay and NewPay is not only reflected in the market capitalization, but also in the recognition of users.

After entering the 21st century, more and more users have become accustomed to electronic payment, and are accustomed to binding credit cards to electronic payment accounts, and then paying through electronic payment accounts.

What's more important is that people seem to default to the electronic payment is NewPay, NewPay is electronic payment, people will not remember that there are other electronic payment software, even if NewPay is at the bottom when paying, they will still drag the web page to the bottom, find NewPay and complete the payment.

The gap in market share is likely to be smoothed out, and the real problem is that consumers' perceptions want to change.

NewPay did an incentive plan in the early stage of promotion, how high is the conversion degree of your incentive plan to users? Users do not transfer the money to their bank card immediately after receiving the incentive money, but use NewPay as a payment method and use their registered NewPay account all the time. Musk asked.

Peter Thiel pulled back more than two years from his mind and said, "I remember the conversion rate was about 50 percent.

But later, after the launch of Quora e-Pay and Quora Gold Selection, these dormant accounts were activated one after another.

At the end of last year, I looked at the data on this, and more than 80% of the NewPay accounts that received incentives that year are still in use. ”

There is no way to search for this kind of data from the outside world, or from the mouths of employees in non-core positions.

Musk's frustration is extremely strong, because the number is too low: "Our conversion rate is only 30%, and the statistics only require users to complete a payment after receiving the incentive money."

If you stretch the time dimension, this number will be even lower. ”

Peter Thiel said: "We sometimes face the same dilemma, the marginal effect of pure monetary rewards is particularly obvious, and at a certain point, the effect of using incentive money is very limited.

There are even many users who register accounts to defraud incentive funds, but fortunately, we have set a threshold and require a mobile phone number.

Later, we canceled this plan, and now we are all taking the form of issuing coupons, users can receive coupons after registration, and the coupons received will offset a certain amount after completing the payment.

Moreover, our coupons are all specified consumption scenarios, and users can choose from Riot Games, Walmart, catering, and Internet services, and choose a designated scenario.

After they complete the purchase, we will give him a coupon with a lower amount, so as to induce users to pay through NewPay step by step, and then cultivate new payment habits for users.

This set of mechanisms has shown good results in the promotion process. ”

These are not trade secrets, and as a direct competitor of NewPay, Musk knows all the details of NewPay's features well, and a successful entrepreneur knows best about the competitors of his products.

"This set of gameplay can only be used by NewPay, and square also adopts a similar approach to NewPay, which users do not recognize at all.

The reason for this is that they support too few payment scenarios.

I didn't know how important the payment scene was until now, but I guess Newman should have realized the importance of the payment scene when he was working on Angry Birds.

It was just a single electronic payment software, and we had no concept of payment scenarios until March 2000.

At that time, we were still thinking about how to provide services to users, a single service built on the Internet, users could send money by email and the Internet, and at that time we developed a function similar to Confiniti, which means that when users use PDAs, if two PDAs have infrared ports at the same time, then they can transfer money between them.

These unattractive features took a lot of effort, and we put most of our R&D efforts into them. In fact, looking back now, the most important thing we needed to do at that time was to talk about cooperation with major Internet companies.

To become one of the payment channels of Internet companies, this is really useful for users. The function of the electronic payment software itself is not important, but the scenarios it can be applied to. ”

Musk's tone was full of emotion, if Zhou Xin heard it, he would silently tell him in his heart: No, the function of electronic payment itself is also important, but it needs to be built on the basis of having enough users.

Peter Thiel is equally impressed: "This is what Newman used to tell me when I first took over NewPay, that we need to focus on solving user problems, not on the product itself.

It makes more sense to help users solve problems than to blindly add functionality to a product. ”

Peter Thiel had an extensive resume before founding Confiniti, graduating from Stanford Law School and teaching at Stanford Law School, founding an investment firm on Wall Street, and then founding an electronic payments company, Confiniti.

He has met many entrepreneurs and product managers, and everyone's potential goal is to help users solve problems, but only Zhou Xin can find the best path.

Because users themselves often don't know what they want, they only know what they don't need, what the product manager of the Internet needs to do is to concretize the abstract needs of users. The larger the number of users, the harder it is to do this.

Too many users means it's hard to reconcile, and it's hard to keep the vast majority of people happy. In later generations, Tencent's core team and the best product managers were responsible for maintenance and upgrades, updating and upgrading every year, and user groups had more and more opinions.

"It is precisely under such a top-level design that NewPay has been able to grow rapidly.

We have deployed servers in 5 major cities across the U.S. to meet the needs of users across the U.S., and expect to expand to 10 cities this year.

After the launch of Mphone, the demand for network bandwidth and low latency has increased. ”

After entering 2001, Peter Thiel felt more and more that he had chosen to join NewPay at that time, and the development of NewPay gave him hope to dominate the electronic payment market.

In fact, NewPay has now dominated the electronic payment market in the United States, but most countries around the world are still hesitant about electronic payment.

Musk said: "This is a slow step, a slow step, and the investors behind it have lost confidence in catching up with NewPay."

Their goal has become to keep the current second position, and to compete with NewPay in the blank areas of electronic payments such as Europe and Asia.

However, compared with NewPay, I found a more interesting entrepreneurial direction, which is Weibo.

Weibo is really a very interesting product, and its combination with Mphone exerts the effect that one plus one is greater than the sum of its parts.

Since I experienced Mphone, I have to post more than 10 Weibo posts every day. I've been feeling the urge lately to sell my stake to someone else, resign as CEO, and make something similar to Weibo. ”

This is normal, and in later generations, Musk would rather pay a high premium than buy Twitter after becoming famous, and the ease of buying it is like buying a toy.

And he himself doesn't like to make electronic payment software, Musk's earliest idea was online banking, where users can do some banking business after saving money.

The problem is that this is something to do after the popularization of electronic payment, and users are not even used to electronic payment, so how can they accept online banking to borrow money and handle some financial business.

It's not realistic.

As a result, the development is gradually distancing itself from what Musk wants to do, and even without NewPay, Musk will hand over the CEO position to Peter Thiel after the Confiniti and merger.

And Weibo, which is so fresh and interesting, can receive a reply at any time, immediately ignited Musk's entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

He wants to make similar products too.

Peter Thiel made it clear that he was not optimistic: "I feel that it is difficult.

A big reason for the success of Weibo is that it is an application on a mobile phone, and if it is an application on a computer, Weibo is not attractive at all. ”

Musk said: "I know that the beauty of Weibo is that I can open my phone at any time and see other people's replies, @, retweets and likes, and with Quora, I can only see the feedback brought by users when I sit in front of the computer."

This kind of timely feedback is an important point that attracts me to Weibo.

So who said I want to do microblogging on the computer? Naturally, I also want to make apps on my phone, and there are many mobile phone brands besides Mphone.

I just need to talk to a family. ”

Peter Thiel said: "It's just as hard.

I've heard Newman say that Time Warner had talked to Nokia about launching a phone with Quora pre-installed, and the engineering prototype was made, but it still didn't go on the market.

A big reason is that the mobile phone screen is too small, especially Nokia's mobile phone screen is too small, and the content of Quora is difficult to adapt to the Nokia mobile phone screen.

Unless Nokia develops a large-screen phone specifically for Quora, Nokia makes a prototype, and then internally evaluates the costs and benefits and decides that it is not worth it, and finally the cooperation in this area only stays at the research and development level.

Similarly, if you want to make a similar mobile phone application, you also need the cooperation of the mobile phone manufacturer, which is too difficult to talk about.

Even Quora, a product that has been extremely successful on the computer side, has not been able to talk about it, and your mobile phone application has not been tested by the market, so it is difficult for mobile phone manufacturers to bet with you. ”

Before the dot-com bubble burst, Nokia had a strong interest in partnering with Time Warner on Quora.

After making the engineering prototype, Nokia found that Quora's answer was too long, and even if the phone screen was the size of the palm of your hand, it would take at least three swipes to read the answer.

This kind of user experience is very bad, and Nokia cannot guarantee that users will pay for it, especially for large-screen mobile phones, which means that the cost will be high, the pricing will be expensive, and the potential risks will rise and the uncertainty will increase, both of which have led to Nokia giving up on the continuation of the cooperation.

After the launch of Mphone, the built-in application of Mphone was unanimously praised, and there began to be voices within Nokia to restart the quora mobile phone project.

Musk said: "Quora can't be promoted because this product is designed to be inconsistent with mobile phone habits."

Haven't you noticed that both Weibo and WeChat have restrictions on content?

Weibo and WeChat also have a word limit, in order to ensure the user experience, so that users can read the content at one time as much as possible.

Quora is in complete conflict with this requirement, and if the word count limit of Weibo is followed, users will not be able to get answers through Quora.

So if quora can't succeed, it doesn't mean that the mobile app I'm going to make can't be successful. "Musk looks confident.

In general, he is very confident, except for things like NewPay that are beyond the reach of human beings.

After Peter Thiel finished chatting with Musk, he went to Zhou Xin the next day: "Newman, I heard that Musk is willing to sell his shares, can we consider buying his shares?" ”

Zhou Xin asked, "Peter, what do you think?" ”

Peter Thiel said: "Neither from an antitrust point of view nor from a market point of view, we cannot monopolize the entire electronic payment market.

Internet companies and retailers cannot accept only one electronic payment company, and the only option in the market is NewPay in the field of electronic payment.

So it is necessary to have a competitor who, for now, will play that role. If we think about it from above, then we can buy a small number of shares as a venture capital purpose.

In addition, it is also a trend that we can keep abreast of.

The Wall Street pair is now valued at $500 million, and as the electronic payment market grows in the future, and after gaining a foothold in the second market share, the valuation of $500 million is clearly a serious undervalue.

Therefore, the purchase of some shares can be a large investment income for us. ”

It's like in the early years IBM asked Intel to do some PC CPU business that they didn't want to do, and then bought some shares of Intel.

In Peter Thiel's vision, they could also hand over some of the fringe business to avoid monopoly charges.

After being accused of monopoly, the price to pay is far more painful than support.

Zhou Xin said: "I think it's okay, you can talk about it." ”

After going around the company according to the management, Zhou Xin went to Silio Semiconductor to talk to Hu Zhengming.

Unlike the later generations when StrategySemiconductor was acquired by Cadence, and Hu Zhengming went to TSMC as the chief technology officer after the acquisition, Zhou Xin participated in the financing of StrategySemiconductor, and investing $100 million in StrategySemiconductor was the same as playing.

Just to avoid the monopoly of EDA design software by Cadence is worth the money.

In addition, more importantly, Hu Zhengming did not go to TSMC, which can effectively slow down TSMC's technological progress.

Zhou Xin is now trying to find a way to dig Hu Zhengming into Xinxin Semiconductor.

Hu Zhengming is gone, and the semiconductor industry of Xinxin Semiconductor and even the entire Zhangjiang Science and Technology Park can be regarded as having a helmsman at the helm.

Hu Zhengming has this ability and qualifications, and compared with Guan Jianying, if Hu Zhengming returns to China, he can bring back more engineers.

"Professor, you're looking for me?" Zhou Xin asked.

Hu Zhengming thought to himself, as a student, he didn't save his worries, and the uneasiness here does not mean that he is not worried about academics, but that he always does some big things, which shocks him at the same time, but is vaguely dazed.

"Newman, come and sit down, Mphone works great, congratulations on your success again.

My friends who have used Mphone think that this is a good enough product, the only drawback is that it is a bit expensive.

Especially for students, your brothers and sisters in our lab have expressed the same meaning, that is, the pricing of Mphone is too expensive, so that they want to support you, but they can't afford it.

Maybe they just wanted me to use the lab money to buy a few Mphones for them to use. ”

Hu Zhengming joked and then went straight to the point: "I'm curious about how the Mphone chip is designed.

I have known Lao Guan for so many years, and he definitely does not have the strength to be able to run at 500MHz from 130nm process.

If Lao Guan had this level, he would not be swept away, and any chip design company would treat him as a guest.

Especially this is a mobile chip, ARM's 1020E core, which is also a 130nm process, only runs at 325Mhz.

How did the Mphone chip, named A1E, achieve a speed of 1Ghz using only 130nm process? ”

Hu Zhengming is most concerned about Mphone's technology, and other technologies belong to the category that he can understand, but on the chip, 130nm has achieved a running speed of 1GHz, which is somewhat of a zenith technology.

Zhou Xin said: "Professor, do you know why it is named A1E?

Because there are four products in front of him, such as A1A, A1B, and A1C, the operating speed of the first four products has gradually increased from ARM's 268MHz to the current 500MHz.

This is the process of technological evolution.

Uncle Guan does not have this level, which does not mean that Huaguo does not have talents who can design this chip. It's just that considering that this is a trade secret, it is inconvenient to disclose it to you.

If you are willing to join Xinxin Technology, then you can see the complete IC design diagram, as well as the evolution path of the entire design idea. ”

Around the ARM1020E of this core, Samsung has developed a series of chips, including in 2002 based on Alpha CPU technology, Samsung redesigned the ARM1020E into the Halla chip, a laboratory product that achieves a 130nm process and runs at a peak speed of up to 1.2GHz.

Later, Samsung successively developed commercial chips around this laboratory product, such as the S3C2410 with a 0.18 micron process and a running speed of 268MHz, and the S3C2443 with a 130 nanometer process and a running speed of 533MHz.

2443 is an upgraded version of 2410, mainly used in the field of handheld computers, and later Samsung designed the CPU for the first generation of iphone, the main frequency running speed is only 422MHz, and the running speed of the 90nm process is not as good as the running speed of 130nm, using a relatively backward architecture.

In other words, the chip used in Mphone is from Samsung's technology seven years later, and the commercial version of the chip 2443 designed in 2007.

The chips used by Samsung for its own mobile phones run about 30 percent faster than the chips provided for iPhones under the same manufacturing process.

This is also one of the important reasons why the follow-up iPhone should insist on self-developed chips, in order not to be kidnapped by chip design manufacturers.

Zhou Xin continued: "Our laboratory chip has been able to achieve 130nm, 1.2GHz running speed.

If it weren't for the cost, Mphone wouldn't have used such a good chip, and we could have directly used the latest chip.

The chip named A2 is intended to be launched in the next generation of Mphone. ”

Hu Zhengming's eyes lit up when he heard this, and for scientists, what attracted him the most was the technology itself, not the treatment.

To put it bluntly, scientists at this level are treated similarly by any company, Texas Instruments, TSMC, Intel, AMD, and so on. As long as Hu Zhengming wants to go to the industrial world, the prices offered by these semiconductor companies are very different.

Zhou Xin has not been able to convince Hu Zhengming, the key is that Huaguo does not have much to attract Hu Zhengming at the technical level.

It's okay to go to China to give academic lectures, and it's okay to recruit PhDs from China, but it's okay to work in China.

Moreover, Zhou Xin also hopes that Hu Zhengming will go to Zhangjiang to live in Zhangjiang, which is even more difficult for Hu Zhengming to accept.

Hu Zhengming pointed at Zhou Xin and said helplessly: "Now you are still talking to me about business secrets."

I know you want me to go to Zhangjiang and help you get Zhangjiang that mess right, Lao Guan is alone over there, he may be able to manage two companies well, he can manage three well, but he can't do the cluster development of semiconductor companies.

Actually, I haven't done this before, so why are you sure I can do it?

To put it bluntly, I have been in academia for most of my life, and my own business is very mediocre. ”

Hu Zhengming knows very well what Zhou Xin wants, because everyone has talked about it too many times.

Going to China is a complete adventure for Hu Zhengming.

Because what Zhou Xin wants him to do is to find out the potential companies from a technical point of view, and then invest in these companies.

After the investment, it is also necessary to support these companies from a technical point of view, such as photoresist companies, so we must help them find people in this field, and then give them a list and contact information, so that enterprises can contact, and if necessary, Hu Zhengming may have to go out in person to see if he can recruit talents.

Although what Zhou Xin and Hu Zhengming said is that he only needs to check the overall situation, and what he needs to do can be done by someone he thinks can do it, and he does not need to do it himself.

Only technical research and development needs to be done by Hu Zhengming himself.

Including enterprise management, you can find a professional manager to manage it, and Hu Zhengming only needs to be responsible for decision-making.

But this is all a matter after the reclamation, now going to Zhangjiang is to open up the wasteland, when the wasteland is opened, one person is not enough to use two people, one person has to be used as three people.

Hu Zhengming has never thought about it, he is at this age, and there is no need to go back to China to work hard.

TSMC's Zhang Zhongmou is also persuading him to go to TSMC to become the chief technology officer.

Compared with Xinxin Technology, TSMC is too mature, and the division of labor is already very detailed, he only needs to do a good job of overall technical checks, and then use TSMC's resources to do some research that interests him.

Hu Zhengming has been wavering.

Zhou Xin said: "Isn't this really no way?

People around me who have a little experience in semiconductors, I have tried to find a way to go back to Zhangjiang.

Judging from the results, Uncle Lin did a good job in the Xinxin lithography machine, and Uncle Guan also managed the development of Xinxin Technology well.

Including my previous entrepreneurial experience in the Internet field, it also proves that I have a set of people.

So I'm sure I'm not wrong about teaching you either. ”

Thinking about the $599 pricing, the 1Ghz chip is still unreasonable.

Although the 130nm process can be technically achieved, the cost will be very high, if it is a 1Ghz chip with 1GB of memory, the price of $599 cannot guarantee 40% of the revenue at all.

So I changed the running speed of the chip to 500MHz.

(End of chapter)