The speed of technological development has not kept up.
Netflix's shareholders can only see its potential in the rental market and sell it if the price is right, which is normal.
People often like to look at successful companies and work backwards to determine how they achieved success. This can easily lead to the erroneous perception of survivorship bias.
At least in 2001, when 40% of Silicon Valley start-up companies closed down, someone was willing to pay a high price to take over, which was a rare blessing for Netflix shareholders. More companies have neither survived the cold winter nor encountered being destroyed.
The lucky thing that the financial backer saw in his eyes didn't even make a splash, so he closed down the business or ran away to avoid debts.
It's hard to keep secrets in Silicon Valley.
As soon as the contract with Netflix was signed that day, countless hopeful entrepreneurs came to Silicon Valley to inquire about Su Yehao's whereabouts.
You will be mobbed when you go out to drink coffee, you will be mobbed when you go to the emoji group to discuss business, and even when you take Jiang Yu to dinner, you will encounter someone who will stuff a document bag into him and yell that his project will be successful.
Young entrepreneurs.
Over the past year, too many things have changed in Silicon Valley.
At the beginning, most people thought they would be the chosen one. Unfortunately, life is so ruthless and it teaches them what reality is in every minute.
Same goes for Elon Musk.
He actually feels that Paypal has a chance to succeed, but it is just a chance. Elon does not have a say in the company. With the financing, mergers and reorganizations, the decision-making power has been taken away by people from venture capital institutions.
After learning that many people were promoting projects to Su Yehao, Paypal's shareholders were worried that Su Yehao would be interested in a better option, so they closed the door of the conference room and took the time to discuss, and decided to choose between the sales plan and the financing plan as soon as possible.
With Paypal currently burning through $10 million in financing each month, it has to consider what to do next.
In fact, among the shareholders, there are two venture capital institutions that are quite powerful, but they are still essentially a company. In order to control risks, they cannot invest too much money in a project unless they see a high probability of winning.
Paypal's current performance can barely be said to be good. Whether it can beat other peers is still unknown. It can only last another three or four months after the Series B financing, but its revenue and user growth data are not optimistic.
The competition among start-up companies is more intense than that of large enterprises. Whoever gets more development funds can be ahead of competitors. The loser will only end up with no one paying attention and no capital inflow.
This is also normal.
It's like betting on a racecourse. Since you've seen a horse racing far ahead, even if the odds are slightly lower, the probability of winning the race is still high, so why put your chips on other high-risk projects.
As Su Yehao focuses on the field of online payment tools, the situation is very different from before.
Although he can't beat Microsoft for the time being, he can still influence some emerging industries. As long as there is news that Su Yehao is optimistic about this industry, even if the market is as depressed as it is now, it will probably attract others to follow suit and place bets.
For example, as long as any listed company is targeted by Buffett, it will generally experience a rise in the short term.
The super-rich people who rank at the top of the Forbes rich list have their own halo, especially Su Yehao, who has truly achieved great fame through investment. Many people still remember how he short-termed the Nasdaq index last year. In just two years, he became famous.
Making a sudden profit of two to three billion US dollars a month is like a miracle.
As CEO, Musk is in a daze. He only holds 16% of the shares in the company, and people from venture capital institutions don't care what he thinks.
If the general environment is not good, people will subconsciously think about the worst.
After more than an hour of heated discussion, the shareholders who chose to cash out and leave finally gained the upper hand, with more than 72% of the say. They immediately voted by a show of hands to pass the sale plan.
They decided to sell Paypal first, but they thought they would try again to see if they could sell it for $350 million.
Elon Musk had dealt with numerous venture capital investors, and it wasn’t until the vote was completed that he spoke:
"Okay, you can do whatever you want. I remember Su said yesterday that if anyone wants to retain the shares, they can continue to hold shares. Who wants to stay? I will stay in the company and only sell the shares.
half."
After speaking, he raised his hand first.
The other two shareholders also raised their hands, accounting for only about 21% of the total shares, and the remaining two small shareholders abstained from voting.
One of them, a middle-aged white man, told:
"I think with the channels of Yanji Group, our Paypal can develop very quickly, but even if the shares are sold, the company's account still does not have sufficient funds, which means that it is likely that there will be financing, further diluting our shares?"
Another shareholder who chose to sell his shares was very satisfied with the result of more than doubling the profit in half a year. He smiled at this moment:
"Everyone, there is no shortage of projects in Silicon Valley right now, only funds. We can start from scratch and pick some new projects. In the past, we evaluated that the best outcome for Paypal is to be acquired by an online shopping company. Unfortunately, Amazon has its own payment system.
, eBay also has a similar transaction system, and since it started charging, our user growth has slowed down significantly."
"It may have great potential, but it can only be fully realized in the hands of online shopping companies. Yanmoji Group does not have the strength to compete with the bank card alliance, and once it sells its shares, lawsuits such as anti-money laundering and transaction fraud will follow.
We don’t care anymore…”
It is precisely because of the popularity of the online shopping industry that the payment tool industry has become popular.
After the bubble burst, the online shopping giants themselves were half-dead, not to mention Internet companies such as payment tools. Due to various factors, Paypal's development prospects have dimmed a lot.
After all, payment tools are just tools. In the past, they were suppressed by VISA, MasterCard and other institutions, and later there were regulatory pressures to avoid the inflow of funds into gray areas. The future development is full of uncertainty.
I originally thought about spending so much money, but gritted my teeth and held on until the industry picked up.
Unexpectedly, Su Yehao happened to show up and offered a pretty good price. People from several venture capital institutions put it all together and decided to sell it.
Elon Musk didn't think about it that much, he simply thought that Su Yehao planned to develop into the online shopping industry.
Apart from this, he hadn't thought about what to do next, so he decided to stay and take a gamble, cashing out only half of the shares he held, which was equivalent to double insurance.
The worst result would be to lose half of his wealth, but if Su Yehao's online shopping business succeeds, he will definitely be able to earn back more.
He speculated that the reason why Su Yehao would develop into the online shopping industry was that Yanwen Group also acquired Netflix this time.
Considering the situation at Netflix, Elon
·Musk felt from the bottom of his heart that Su Yehao probably wanted to sell movies, because Amazon started out by selling books in its early years, and it made sense to switch to selling movies, which has huge market demand.
After Paypal negotiated the results, a venture capital person came forward and invited Su Yehao to come over again for negotiation.
Being willing to discuss it again shows that they are shaken.
Su Yehao insisted on a price of 300 million U.S. dollars and refused to let go. The other party pretended to discuss it for a while, and sure enough he agreed to close the deal at this price...