The United States has a large local area, and most people cannot even recite the names of fifty states, let alone all of them.

For example, New Hampshire, Virginia, Arizona, etc. have almost no sense of existence. California is different. The GDP created by this state can even be squeezed into the list of the top ten economies in the world. If New York is the richest city in the United States, California is the richest state in the United States, and its influence is self-evident.

Ye Dongqing has never been to Silicon Valley, but he has been to San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the past, he often traveled around due to business needs and personally received customers. His arrest occurred in Los Angeles and then stayed in high-end prisons for several months.

As a man, he would have some good impression of Los Angeles. The famous Hollywood is there. The girls are quite popular and open. If they weren't too far from their base camp, he even had the idea of ​​settling in Beverly Hills for a period of time.

Come to San Francisco with Mr. Alfred, not far from San Francisco to the Silicon Valley area, there is no airport there, and it is most convenient to get there from here.

The idea of ​​online calls may attract more users from Facebook. It is worth flying so far. They took a taxi and were not ready to stop in San Francisco. Follow the road near San Francisco Bay and headed directly to the pre-booked Hilton Hotel.

I don’t know who to look for or whether I can help. Ye Dongqing is still in a state of confusion, but he is ready to withdraw funds from the Tamsui Fund. He still has money in his pocket and can’t be at a loss.

After I came to the hotel to check in, it was already dark. I didn’t have the chance to ask anyone today. He contacted a headhunting company and planned to spend money to hire several software engineers with experience in this area.

Don't underestimate the strength of these headhunting companies. As long as they have money to make money, they can find any talent they want. Mr. Alfred will be responsible for specific communication, while Ye Dongqing is more like staying in New York, running to the West Coast to relax and take a break before going back.

People often say that paparazzi is good, but in the business field, when it comes to investigating and collecting data, major consulting companies and headhunting companies are good. As long as you are willing to pay, you can find anything.

I don’t understand the specific technical principles, nor do I know which kind of person is the best for me. These are not a problem, and someone can understand it. He only needs to provide sufficient financial support and do a good job in promotion, management and other aspects...

There is a generation gap with Mr. Alfred, and the age difference is the same.

I wanted to invite the other party to have a drink together, but I learned that I would conduct an investigation first and try to use the connections I had accumulated before to ask if there was a ready-made development team.

This is a good thing, so Ye Dongqing took a car to the vicinity of Stanford University and visited the streets. Along the way, he saw many familiar company signs. Amazon's headquarters is in Seattle, and Silicon Valley has its data service R&D center. Silicon Valley and Netflix are headquartered nearby. As a shareholder, Ye Dongqing needs to go over and take a look in person.

If you invest so much money in, you should at least know where the company is. Unconsciously, the shares in his hands, plus the shares of the warrants, have accounted for 4% of all Apple's shares. According to the current market value, it is almost equivalent to more than 200 million US dollars. Apple's current total market value is only more than 5 billion US dollars.

Considering that before Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company had only a market value of more than $2 billion and almost went bankrupt due to lack of funds, it was quite good to reach the current figure in a few years.

Whether he could talk to Jobs in person successfully is still uncertain. Ye Dongqing walked around Stanford University and then entered a tavern.

I have been thinking too much in recent days and it is always difficult to fall asleep. In addition, the jet lag today is a mess, so if I don’t drink some alcohol, I will definitely suffer from insomnia again.

In the small bar near the university, customers are naturally mainly students. The name of this university is not within his consideration. It is better to apply directly to Harvard than to choose Stanford. That school is near Boston and is closer to New York.

I often hear that Silicon Valley is so powerful. I have seen it with my own eyes that it is actually just that. There are no tall buildings or lively. The advantage is that the planning is relatively reasonable and small cities have been developed around each region. If you don’t look at the company’s signs, you will feel that it has a strong rural style.

...

I had no intention of finding a romantic encounter. I sat alone at the bar drinking wine. My black formal outfit had not been replaced yet, and I looked out of place in the crowd.

The atmosphere around was very lively. Stanford students sat in groups of three or five, talking about internships and studies, and more about feelings, life, etc., which was also interesting in Ye Dongqing's eyes.

The female bartender who looks incredibly will occasionally talk to him. Maybe because she saw that she was different from ordinary guests, she had the opportunity to hook up, but she was not interested. After drinking a few glasses of wine, she took a taxi back to the Hilton Hotel.

***************

I slept comfortably, just like the American style of life, and I took a shower the next morning and wore the clothes I had yesterday.

After packing up, I went to the next room. When I was about to knock on the door, I accidentally heard a woman's voice coming from inside. I looked at the door number and found that it was correct. Okay, I originally thought that Mr. Alfred was quite upright, but I could only say that he pretended too well and leaked the filling as soon as he went out.

He didn't mean to disturb him. He went downstairs alone to have a buffet breakfast. There were not many customers. It seemed that the market in Silicon Valley was really bad, and there was no business in the hotel. He felt that the time was almost over, so he called Alfred and asked him how he planned to arrange it today.

Yesterday on the road, Mr. Alfred told Ye Dongqing that he had heard some of the wind.

About half an hour later, the two talents met with the headhunter company and discussed the matter of poaching talents to develop new procedures. Then they went out to find a well-known expert. The other party only said that it was feasible in theory and did not give an accurate reply.

His personality is a bit treacherous. If Mr. Alfred hadn't known that the other party was capable, Ye Dongqing even thought he was a liar. In general, he didn't help much. He also visited a small company. They were developing voice input methods, which was not the technology he needed.

It was not as smooth as expected. Except for some guys who are good at judging and low-key in theory, almost no one in Silicon Valley has developed instant voice communication programs. This is both a good and a bad thing, which means that no one is competing with him for the time being. However, it is not easy to organize a team to develop on his own, and the technical requirements are high.

...

A day wasted, and no news came from the headhunter company, and Mr. Alfred had no good idea.

So Ye Dongqing entrusted his old friend Paul Kutch to help him find out if there is any information on this, and he did not intend to devote all his energy to this matter. On the morning of the third day after he arrived in Silicon Valley, Ye Dongqing rented a Ferrari sports car and drove it himself, and went to the companies invested by Tamsui Fund to visit.

Netflix was a little far away, and chose Apple for the first stop. After revealing his identity to the front desk, a middle-aged white man who served as deputy director of products personally received him. With Ye Dongqing's shares, he was already qualified to receive management of this level.

Didn't choose the right time, Jobs went to Seattle for a meeting. Ye Dongqing missed another chance to see him with his own eyes. In my memory, this technology tycoon had long passed away and was in good health now, and Michael Jackson, Hawking and others were there.

At this moment.

Ye Dongqing, accompanied by the Apple executive named Brad Walton, entered the product research and development department for a visit. This was his own request, trying to give some good suggestions to get Apple on track in advance.

Considering the product development cycle, he has enough time to acquire more stocks during this period. Once Apple spends less money on R&D and creates a few more popular products, it will directly affect the future income of Tamsui Fund.

In this era, various Apple products have already appeared, and the operating system is full of the familiar shadow of Ye Dongqing.

As early as 2001, an Apple laptop called "PowerBook-G4" was launched. The product adopts a metal body and widescreen design and is equipped with a Mac-OS-X operating system. It can be said that PowerBook-G4 is the predecessor of MacBook-Pro, which laid the foundation for the future product design style of the Apple laptop series, but at present, it is still just an immature product.

In addition to it, the iMac-G4 is undoubtedly a milestone in the history of Mac design. It uses an ultra-thin LCD screen, which is undoubtedly extremely eye-catching among many CRT monitors and computers. After it was released last year, major computer manufacturing companies also followed suit and produced ultra-thin LCD monitors.

According to Brad Walton, a more powerful console will be launched this year, which will be available to the public soon. Some people say that Jobs is paranoid, which is not a lie. It is the serious personality that has led to the continuous innovation of the company's products.

However, it has to be admitted that the sales of these two products can only be considered average. Apple missed the development opportunity, and coupled with its own reasons, users have become accustomed to the Windows operating system. The key to the problem is that they do not have many highlights, which can attract users to buy their highlights.

The iPod, a portable music player, was launched and became Apple's current main product. Because it was too troublesome to download songs, the sales volume last year was unsatisfactory and could not be compatible with the Windows system. The annual sales volume was only about 100,000 units.

Originally, Ye Dongqing could not see the problem. After listening to various introductions by Brad Walton, he found a key problem that restricted Apple's development - he did not want to open up the system ecosystem, nor could he do this closed system well, and lacked a holistic and long-term development goal.

It's more like a hammer and a stick. It's already made an attempt, but it's not enough...
Chapter completed!