America's Road to Fame

Chapter 474 Zhou Fan's First Investment

The whole method is similar to William Chen's "DD travel" in his previous life, except that the callers are all regular taxis in Atlanta, and the mini program will assign nearby taxis to pick up the order according to the caller's geographical location. The taxi that successfully receives the order will be able to rush to the other party's location for service.

And the income of each order needs to deduct a certain proportion, which is used as the cost of the Atlanta taxi company that provides the vehicle and operation service, and the rest belongs to the taxi driver.

Yes, taxi drivers do not need to purchase their own vehicles. All Atlanta taxis are provided by official taxi companies. After passing the audit, drivers can use the taxis provided by the company to receive orders and earn money .

This way, in this era, is still very novel, and it is also a way to make all tourists who come to Atlanta feel novel and convenient.

But at this time in the United States, there is also a company that provides similar services. The name of this company is Uber.

A year ago, Uber, which officially launched its APP less than a year ago, received a $3000 million investment from Meta Investment Company and paid 30% of its shares. This also made the founder of the company very excited, because it means With the support of the famous Meta Group, they can develop smoothly.

And recently, Zhou Fan, who is in charge of the Atlanta Fund, also went to the United States. This time, the Atlanta Fund will join Uber’s B round of financing, with an investment of 2 million US dollars in exchange for 20% of the company’s shares.

With the investment from Atlanta Fund, Uber is preparing to implement their ambitious plans to expand into the European market.

Interestingly, the earliest idea of ​​Uber came from Europe, and now it is going back to the place where the idea started to develop the market.

One night in 2008, good friends Travis and Gretel, the founders of Uber, were attending a conference in France. When they walked out of the conference, they found that there were no taxis on the streets of Paris.

Therefore, the two shivering people decided on the spot that they must launch a revolutionary application software to solve the problem of difficulty in hailing a taxi.

And it would be nice to be able to hail a car at the touch of a button.

And thus, Uber, Inc. was born.

At that time, both of them had just finished their first business ventures, had a lot of money in their hands, and were looking for their next business idea.

So after this idea appeared, they took action and planned to develop a taxi-hailing software for this purpose to solve the problem of people's difficulty in hailing a taxi.

For example, in a big city like San Francisco, it's almost impossible to get a taxi on Friday and Saturday nights.If there is a software that allows people to call a car with one click when needed, there will definitely be a market.

So after they returned to the United States, they bought a few high-end Mercedes-Benz cars, hired some professional drivers, and began to pick up Uber's early users in New York. This is how Uber's first tests were completed in New York.

In fact, Uber's early users were friends of Travis's.

At that time, their setup was such that you had to have an "invitation code" to use Uber services.

Originally they just wanted to try this idea, but more and more people asked for invitation codes. Travis realized that he really found a big market, so he established Uber and released the first One product — the Uber Cab.

At the beginning of the establishment of Uber, Nelson, the CEO of Meta Investment Company, used the company's services by accident, and immediately realized that this was a good project, and immediately reported to William Chen.

William Chen naturally knew the name of Uber in his previous life, but he didn't know that the company was founded so early, so he immediately agreed with Nelson to invest in this company and asked him to find Uber to discuss financing. .

At this time, the Meta investment company is not as obscure as it was when it was first established. Meta Group can be said to have existed on a par with giants such as Google and Facebook in the United States.

Therefore, after Meta Investment Company contacted Uber, the other party quickly agreed to their investment. This one-year-old start-up company paid 1% of the shares at a post-investment valuation of US$30 million and obtained Meta Investment Company. $3000 million investment.

Now, one year later, with the development of Uber, it has consolidated its foundation in the United States and hopes to continue to expand the European market.

Therefore, Uber is about to conduct a new round of financing. This time, the Atlanta Fund will participate. With a post-money valuation of US$10 billion, it will invest US$2 million and get a 20% stake in this promising company.

Because of his outstanding performance in charge of the Atlanta Fund's business, Zhou Fan was also affirmed by the Atlanta Management Committee. With the approval of William Chen, he became the head of the Atlanta Fund's foreign investment department.

The investment in Uber this time is also the largest business since she took office. She personally led the team to the United States for negotiations.

……

The helicopter took off from Atlan Island and flew to Malus Island.

"The construction ship below is laying the power transmission cable from the Luwa nuclear power plant to Marus Island."

In the cockpit, Li Ying sat beside William Chen, pointed to the sea that the helicopter had just passed, and said to him:
"Currently, the size of the economic zone on Marus Island has been constrained by the shortage of electricity. In the past, thermal power plants were used for emergency response. However, although thermal power plants are built faster, they pollute seriously. Once the transmission lines are laid, this problem will be solved."

"However, power transmission through submarine cables is more than 20 kilometers, and there is always loss."

William Chen watched the construction of the power transmission cable. The speed is not slow, and it is expected to be completed within a month.

"It's relatively acceptable, too."

Li Ying introduced to him that the current plan is to wait until the second phase of the Luwa nuclear power plant is completed and two sets of 35 megawatt generating units are connected to the grid, then the natural gas power plant on Atlanta Island can be dismantled and installed in Malaysia. The economic zone of Rus Island.

Now Maruos Island has begun to build LNG storage tanks in advance for the transfer of natural gas power stations.

Originally, with the increase of the population of Atlanta, the demand for natural gas for daily use is also continuously increasing, so the LNG storage area near the Freeport of Atlanta has to be expanded.

However, after transferring the natural gas power station to Malus Island, the LNG storage area on Atlanta Island can save a lot of consumption, and there is no need to increase the storage area for the time being.

The distance of nearly forty kilometers was reached soon, and the helicopter landed in the Atlanta Economic Zone of Malus Island.

Accompanied by Li Ying, Chen Weilian visited some factories here, including cement factory, petroleum refining base, paint factory and AT cosmetics production workshop.

At the beginning, the population of Malus Island was about 2.6, which still included the number of people in the refugee camps that Papua New Guinea helped Australia set up here.

However, after Atlanta successively invested in the port area and economic zone on Malus Island, the current population of Malus Island has increased to 5, and more than two-thirds of them are directly employed by these project.

Most of the remaining people are also related to various projects in Atlanta, such as providing various materials and services for the residential area here.

(End of this chapter)