"Newman, what do you think of the future development of the Internet?
So far, the Nasdaq index has fallen by more than 20%, and countless investors have faced huge losses.
More and more people think that the Internet is a scam and that it cannot bring real value. What do you think about this? "
When Zhou Xin returned to San Francisco from Shenhai, a large number of reporters were already waiting for him at San Francisco International Airport.
The decline of the Nasdaq index is far from stopping. In just five trading days, it fell another 10 points.
The index fell 10 points, and you can imagine the individual stocks in it.
More and more people believe that Internet companies are a bubble, and this has become a consensus on Wall Street.
Even the stock prices of established computer companies such as Microsoft, Cisco and Oracle have begun to lose stability, let alone other Internet companies.
After Bill Gates, Jerry Yang and others attended the Internet Conference in China, they returned to Amerikan and were chased by reporters.
Now it's Zhou Xin's turn.
As a representative figure in Silicon Valley, everyone from the industry to the financial circle wants to hear his voice.
"I think the Internet is still the future, and the 21st century will be the era of the Internet.
Things develop in an upward spiral, and it is not that the development of the Internet is hindered now, it is just that Internet companies have encountered a small setback in the financial market.
This will not affect the development of the Internet industry. "As a cheating player with a future vision, Zhou Xin has unlimited confidence in the Internet.
"Newman, when do you think the Nasdaq decline will end?
Is it true that what you said at the Internet Conference in China will continue until the end of the first quarter? "
“What I said at the China Internet Conference was just my personal guess.
In my opinion, as the annual reports of major Internet companies are released one after another, Internet companies with good performance will stop their decline. After the first quarter financial reports are released, the market value of Internet companies that can still maintain high growth will return to On track.
As before, companies related to the Internet concept can obtain billions or even tens of billions of valuations. Such a Nasdaq market will never appear again.
Companies in the Internet field will still enjoy higher valuations than traditional industries, and enjoying higher valuations is based on the premise of maintaining high growth.
For Internet companies that are unable to maintain high growth, their valuations will gradually become consistent with those of companies in traditional industries. This is also a valuation regression. "
After briefly answering some reporters' questions at the airport, Zhou Xin returned to his mansion in San Francisco.
His trip to China can be said to have been fruitful.
It has received unanimous support from the national to local government levels in China.
Before leaving China, Zhou Xin met with Zhang Rujing in Shenhai and briefly talked about the cooperation between Xinxin lithography machine and SMIC.
He vaguely mentioned that Zhang Rujing should be careful not to be caught by TSMC.
Because if SMIC wants to develop, it will inevitably have to compete with TSMC for orders.
The current global chip foundry market is not enough to support two TSMCs.
Coupled with chip foundry, each production line requires a huge investment, so competition in the chip foundry field can be said to be a zero-sum game.
The company's orders are limited. If it gives the order to SMIC, TSMC will have fewer orders.
Coupled with mainland China's labor cost advantages, water and electricity taxation and other advantages, SMIC can reduce costs to a much lower level than TSMC, and can use its cost advantages to compete for the market.
If TSMC and ASML hadn't joined forces to achieve a breakthrough in photolithography machines and thus in chip process technology, SMIC might not have been able to occupy a place in the high-end market.
The comprehensive advantages brought by technological breakthroughs have helped TSMC evolve from the star of the Hsinchu campus to the island protector of the entire Wanwan region.
When SMIC develops to a certain scale and its market share is seized, TSMC will naturally launch an attack from the perspective of patents.
This is a trick used by semiconductor companies.
Zhang Rujing immediately understood Zhou Xin's hint, but he was very confident and said that he would not be caught by TSMC.
Zhou Xin didn't say much more. In this regard, it is very taboo to talk briefly or deeply. Zhou Xin plans to talk more specifically after the cooperation between Xinxin Lithography Machine and SMIC deepens.
Tell Zhang Rujing how TSMC later took advantage of SMIC as a case study.
As for Li Jingyi, she will graduate in half a year and will not come to San Francisco until after graduation.
Therefore, in the first half of the year, Zhou Xin was still alone in San Francisco.
There happens to be a lot to deal with.
"Newman, we have made the first version of enterprise QQ. This is the installation package. Take a look. If you have any comments, please feel free to give me feedback."
After investing in Tencent and exchanging emails, Pony Ma sent an email to Zhou Xin almost every day, ranging from the functional details of enterprise QQ to the charging model and target audience of QQ show.
After Pony Ma's problems accumulate to a certain extent, he will send an email to Zhou Xin.
Tencent also gave Zhou Xin the position of chief operating officer, a free position with salary and options.
But Pony Ma had so many questions that Zhou Xin only answered selectively after seeing them.
"Pony, I think you should be more flexible when setting up a group.
A large enterprise will have many departments, and these departments should be organized into groups. Then there is an address book in the enterprise QQ. The address book stores the information of each employee in categories according to the organizational structure of the enterprise.
These employee information include names, mobile phone numbers, corporate QQ numbers, etc., and then set up permission isolation. For example, employees can only see information within the department, and department leaders can only see information at the same level as them.
During the process of building a group, you can select the address book and add departments as units, and then all the employees in the department will also be included.
To put it simply, every person and every group can be an element in the group building process. "
After Zhou Xin replied to Pony's email, he started the meeting. He planned to spend a lot of time on matrix this year.
Originally, in his plan, matrix would release its first product this fall.
But now judging from the progress, it may not be possible to do it this fall.
Because not long ago, matrix acquired handspring and successfully recruited Jeff Hawking.
"MOS must be an operating system based on the Linux kernel, Jeff, your thinking needs to change.
What we want to do is not a handheld computer, what we want to do is a mobile phone. I hope that matrix, as a mobile phone, will be as close to a handheld computer as possible in terms of functionality.
Hopefully it's more feature-rich, but it's not going to be a handheld computer, it's far from being a handheld computer. "
Yes, after acquiring handspring, Zhou Xin plans to still develop an open source mobile operating system.
Originally, he did not plan to build an overly complicated operating system on the matrix, and just used a mature embedded operating system solution.
Because the mobile phone market is developing rapidly, there are many companies on the market that can provide mature embedded operating system solutions.
Matrix only needs to carry out personalized transformation on these mature solutions.
But Zhou Xin hopes to make Matrix's first product a transitional product between traditional feature phones and smartphones.
A semi-smartphone to be exact.
In addition to still relying on traditional buttons for control, the system application is as close as possible to the form of a smartphone application.
To achieve this goal, you need to re-develop the operating system from the bottom up.
So they acquired Handspring, a company that made handheld computers. The founder, Jeff Hawking, was one of the explorers in the field of handheld computers.
The company he founded before was called Palm, which can be said to be the earliest manufacturer of handheld computers.
The handwriting input method developed by Jeff Hawking is very popular among Apple Newton users. Apple Newton is a handheld computer launched by Apple.
After Jeff Hawking joined, he was fully responsible for the research and development of the mobile operating system. Zhou Xin had high hopes for this mobile operating system named MOS.
"Newman, I know what you mean. We are also working in this direction, but unlike embedded operating systems, Linux-based mobile operating systems have many practical problems that need to be overcome.
I'm worried that it will affect the goal of releasing matrix's first mobile phone this year.
We need to develop MOS, at least the kernel, so that applications based on it can start.
And as system development gradually improves, applications need to be adjusted in turn according to changes in the operating system.
This takes a lot of time. "
"We can postpone it. Good products are not afraid of delay. I don't mind launching matrix next year.
Matrix is my own company, so we don’t have to face the pressure of investors.
From a product perspective, I'm a perfectionist and we can take our time.
Also, if you want to add someone, please let me know at any time. "
Based on Zhou Xin's understanding, the Nasdaq crisis is just the beginning. It has not even reached a 50% decline, and it is far from over.
In this process, countless Internet companies will go bankrupt and a large number of talents will be released to the market.
Development progress can be partly solved by recruiting people.
“The annual reports of Nasdaq Internet companies have been released intensively, and more than 80% of the companies have experienced net operating losses.
Recently, the annual reports of major Internet companies have been released, and the focus of investors has shifted from user growth and clicks to operating income, total profits, and profit growth rates.
The 1999 annual reports of most Internet companies did not satisfy investors. The Nasdaq Composite Stock Market Index fell 25% after opening today. A large number of investors were forced to sell their stocks before tax day, and a large number of Internet companies were forced to re-open. Evaluate its spend on advertising campaigns. "
“Yesterday, a company that was backed by Amazon and promoted with much fanfare collapsed just nine months after completing its IPO.”
"The 'growth is greater than profits' mentality of Internet companies and the invincible halo of the 'new economy' are beginning to shatter."
"As of March 2000, the value of most Internet stocks had fallen by more than 50% from their highs."
“The growth of Quora was not as expected, and Time Warner’s market value shrank by more than 40%. In order to maintain high profit growth, Quora began to try to insert advertisements. This behavior was criticized by a large number of Quora users.
Loyal Quora users pulled banners in front of the Time Warner headquarters building to protest, with the banner 'Bring Newman Back' standing out. "
"The news that Neon has fallen into recession again triggered a global sell-off in technology stocks. The day after the news came out, Yahoo stopped its merger talks with Ebay, and the Nasdaq index continued to fall."
"Rist Games, run by Newman, fell only 20%, becoming the Internet company with the smallest decline in the entire Nasdaq market."
Throughout the first quarter of 2000, the world's attention was focused on the bursting of the Nasdaq bubble.
The Nasdaq index did not stop falling by 20%. It fell by a full 70%, and a large number of Internet companies went bankrupt.
Among them, the S&P strategy designated Emerging Investments rose more than 50 percent in the first quarter.
In the first quarter, the S&P Index rose by 42%, and a large amount of money fled from technology stocks and poured into high-yield companies in traditional industries.
Investment income from emerging investments in the first quarter was US$6.7 billion.
That's because you can't eat the entire earnings band, and as the market values of S&P-related companies continue to rise, emerging investments continue to sell off related stocks.
After the end of the first quarter, Warren Johnson took the initiative and launched intensive negotiations with major investment banks and other types of investment institutions.
Acquire large quantities of companies in the computer field at very low prices.
The Nasdaq bubble burst, and the companies affected were far more than just Internet companies. The valuations of hardware companies like Cisco and IBM, as well as enterprise-end hardware, all suffered a serious blow.
Cisco's valuation fell 80%.
Under the leadership of Warren Johnson, emerging investments have successively achieved actual control of Nvidia and ARM.
Unlike Intel and AMD, NVIDIA at this time focused on graphics processing. In 1999, its annual revenue was US$160 million, and it had just won a large order from Microsoft's Xbox.
Even the Internet winter has limited impact on Nvidia.
But it had an impact after all. Under the premise of a relatively high premium, Xinxing Investment successfully acquired over 60% of Nvidia's shares from the investors behind Nvidia.
NVIDIA's market capitalization is around US$600 million, while Emerging Investments has given it a valuation of US$1 billion.
As for ARM, it only cost $200 million.
At least everyone can understand the value of NVIDIA, it has revenue, and the image processing field will become more and more important with the development of the Internet.
Although Nvidia may not be able to win in the competition with ATI, the business model and profit growth points are very clear.
But ARM is different. As a company specializing in chip architecture, industry insiders are not optimistic about the prospects of this field.
To put it simply, chip design companies can design the architecture themselves. No one could have predicted that technology would develop so fast in the future. The chip industry would be so subdivided that even the chip architecture would be enough to support a company specializing in this.
Apple previously invested US$3 million and owned 43% of ARM's shares. After ARM went public, Apple successively sold these shares, and then in 2010 it hoped to acquire ARM for US$8.5 billion.
Even professional companies like Apple couldn't see the value of ARM in 2000, let alone investors on Wall Street and London's Financial Street.
What other companies can I acquire?
Some advice for Crow, companies in the technology field.
My own thoughts are definitely not as complete as everyone else’s. This point in time is a rare opportunity in twenty years.
(End of chapter)
