Rebirth of the Tech Madman

In fact, in terms of qualifications in Silicon Valley, William Millard, who is nearly fifty years old this year, is definitely a veteran figure in the field of personal computers. Seymour Rubinstein, who made his fortune by word processing software, was one of his subordinates at the beginning. name manager. ◎,

William Millard was born as a salesman, originally worked for IBM, and later served as the head of the data processing business in the San Francisco area, so he had the opportunity to deal with various mainframe and minicomputer companies, and accumulated the industry experience necessary for self-establishment.

After his first company went bankrupt, William Millard founded imsaates in 1973 to provide consulting services.

As a result, he caught up with a wave of good market prices. Edward Roberts' company launched a microcomputer with an acceptable market price, which opened the real prelude to the development of personal computers.

William Millard seized this opportunity and imitated and developed the famous personal computer.

In order to build a team of unparalleled loyalty, William Millard encouraged his subordinates to participate in the training of the Erhard Seminar. The essence of the content is to teach students to self-help and strengthen their hearts. It should be regarded as a kind of successful learning. .

At that time, many Hollywood stars and celebrities in the business world were brainwashed by this Erhard seminar, so its reputation was quite loud.

Many employees, including the rebellious Seymour Rubinstein, naturally threw themselves into it without any psychological burden.

And these graduates basically have a characteristic, that is, they are unwilling to easily admit that something cannot be done or that a certain goal cannot be achieved. In other words. Advocating self-surpassing and creating miracles.

Ever since. With William Millard as the center, an extraordinary operation team was formed, with only one will from top to bottom. Even if William Millard is not in the company, it will not be affected.

Edward Roberts' company is product-oriented, and engineers are concerned about the exciting functions that personal computers can provide; while William Millard's company is market-oriented, and marketers care about the sales report. number.

Obviously, these salesmen in suits and ties are more professional. Soon the latter came from behind, and the limelight of the counterfeit machine overshadowed the genuine product.

No matter how much the personal computer is worshiped as a god by enthusiasts, its hardware production, like other products, follows the traditional parts procurement, factory manufacturing, and so on.

This is very different from Tang Huan’s first pot of gold writing spreadsheet software. He found a personal computer, slept less to fight for progress, and drank more water to pad his stomach, so that he could inhumanely reduce the cost to the limit and survive the difficult period. . And the initial operation of the company is inseparable from the actual support of real money.

Seeing that the cash flow is in a hurry, and the market prospect is so promising. William Millard borrowed a sum of money from Marina Company, but the other party added a condition that this bond can be converted into a company, or William Millard's holding company, and any other company that William Millard may set up. 20 percent of the company's shares.

Taking advantage of the trend, Hebei became the duo in the first stage of personal computer development.

But too much emphasis on marketing and ignoring hardware has gradually ruined word of mouth, and found the rejection of users and sellers; although it paid attention to technology investment, the technical threshold of personal computers at this time was very low, and it was quickly overwhelmed by imitators successively.

In the end, and both became short-lived, the former went bankrupt, the latter was sold off, and the development of personal computers entered the second stage led by Apple, Tang Di, and Commodore.

Compared with Edward Roberts, the founder of the company, who took the $2 million proceeds from the sale of the company and became a carefree farmer, William Millard shifted his energy to the personal computer company founded in 1976 long before the situation was bad. Sales chain store computer garden, and ushered in the second peak of personal career.

The one Tang Huan bought has a larger network, but its business scope is not limited to personal computers, and its style is relatively stable.

Computer Corner continues to adhere to William Millard's aggressive marketing strategy, and expands extremely rapidly through franchise stores.

Tang Huan launched the second-generation Fangyuan computer, bringing the development of personal computers to the third stage of using 16-bit CPUs.

The ibm-, which quickly followed up, has a total of three franchised dealers, and the computer garden is one of them.

According to the historical development, the sales of the computer garden will reach 400 million US dollars in 1982, that is, next year, and 1 billion US dollars in 1984.

But it was such a well-known veteran of the personal computer industry, but when the good times came, he was targeted by people who wanted to get involved in the shares of the computer field.

It is said that the grievances in Silicon Valley this time were provoked by a former employee of the computer field named Martin Musumeh after he was fired by the company.

This ruthless man got acquainted with a wealthy businessman in California named Andrigetto. Not only did he sell one percent of his shares in the computer park to the other party, but he also told the story of the relationship between William Millard and the Marina Company in the early years. The Mystery of Debt.

It has to be said that these two speculative minds are so strong that they formed a special partnership to form a company called Micro-West, and quietly bought William Miller from the Marina Company for $300,000. Ludd's IOU.

The ripping off company was calculating the debt time, and seeing that the time was ripe, it recently notified William Millard of its intention to exchange the IOU for 20% of the shares of Computer Land Company.

Now the computer field has obtained the franchise rights of several personal computers, and the number of stores has expanded to hundreds. It can be said that the business is booming and the development is booming. No one would be willing to let the $250,000 bond that year be replaced. In exchange for the current 20% of the family business.

William Millard, who disagreed. He believes that this IOU cannot be transferred from Marina Company, and argues that the 20% ownership at that time does not constitute the corresponding proportion of shares in Computer Park Company.

In Tang Huan's view, the IOU signed by William Millard back then was a veritable convertible bond, and the Micro-West Company was established specifically for this purpose, obviously wanting to take advantage of this loophole. Make a huge fortune.

This kind of opponent is the most difficult to deal with. After all, Computerland is a company with regular business, and business operation is its own business, and it can't afford to waste money with such a well-prepared rogue.

The ending in the original time and space is also the same. This lawsuit has been entangled for 4 years. In the end, Micro-West Company won a big victory and successfully ripped off, while William Millard failed completely. The computer garden not only spent 3 million Court fees, handed over 20% of the company's shares. It was also ordered by the court to pay more than $14.1 billion in damages.

The computer field suffered heavy losses, and William Millard's business reputation plummeted.

At last. He had to withdraw from the computer field, sold the remaining shares for 200 million US dollars, completely avoided public view, and went to Saipan Island in the Pacific Ocean far away from the United States, similar to the founder Edward Roberts's retreat pastoral.

Regarding William Millard's current resistance, Tang Huan felt that it was a bit futile. After all, all the details of this loan were traceable. Perhaps it was the most appropriate way to deal with it, but William Millard's reaction was also excusable. , it is an unsolvable situation

Like the attitude of most bystanders, in Tang Huan's eyes, this ripped-off show was nothing more than a commotion, and at most it was used as a negative teaching material to alert himself.

But what he didn't expect was that Atari, his old rival, made up an excuse according to this, disgusting himself, and ruining the layout of wooing Jamina.

Now that the interest rate in the United States is so high, the cost of loans continues to increase, and many small and medium-sized enterprises cannot survive bankruptcy. Some small-scale companies in Silicon Valley are naturally facing a similar dilemma.

Tang Huan is using convertible bonds to hunt down some selected targets.

Because the daunting high interest rate is replaced by the future convertible share rights, the attractiveness of convertible bonds has repeatedly won Tang Huan's hands.

Jemina is mainly responsible for the design and development of the video display function module of the game console at Atari. The result is that the Atari 2600 is only 128 bytes, and the excellent game performance depends on it.

After Bushnell left Atari and Recasa took over, he shifted his focus to how to more effectively market existing products.

And Jemina wants to develop a game platform based on a more powerful microprocessor, but Atari's executives, who have undergone a major change, prefer cheap ones.

When this contradiction was unresolved, like other employees who left, Jemina also chose to leave Atari with a group of followers.

Among the talents lost by Atari, - David Crane, larrykaplan - Larry Kaplan, - Alan Miller and - Bob Whitehead, co-founded the first third-party game publisher — Activision. .

This year, game designer and programmer Larry Kaplan, developed !, which fully proved the strength of these technical elites in the game industry, and it was well received and acclaimed.

To be fair, this game is derived from a published game by Atari. After all, it was developed by a group of people, but now the authors are flying solo.

As a result, Atari and Activision's companies fought more fiercely. In Atari's view, Activision was simply cutting its own flesh.

In the current American video game industry, hot money is pouring in, chaos is everywhere, and even the minds of the practitioners themselves are extremely impetuous.

For example, a group of investors took a fancy to Larry Kaplan's ability, found him, and encouraged him to start anew.

Larry Kaplan, who knew Atari well, immediately found Jamina, who was also flying solo, and planned to cooperate to develop a new game platform. The money that came out started working.

Tang Huan, who has been paying attention to collecting news in Silicon Valley, heard the news not long after, which immediately aroused his vigilance.

The second-generation Xiaobawang game console that is being revised is based on the hardware platform. Jamina, who has been working in this field for many years and has profound qualifications, also plans to develop a new game console. Maybe it will be a competitor in the future.

In addition, Tang Huan knew the details of Jamina,

In the original time and space, his so-called project took out a prototype in 1983, but sadly caught up with the collapse of the North American video game industry and had to be put on hold.

However, the excellent performance has caused several companies to compete for it. In the end, Commodore spent more than 20 million US dollars to win it and found a new generation of successor for itself.

Technologies such as coprocessors are used on the hardware, and the operating system supports preemptive multitasking features, because it performs very well in video and audio.

Commodore didn't recognize its true positioning as a multimedia computer and launched it as a commercial computer, but it still achieved market success and sold millions of machines in total.

It can be said that the work Jamina is currently doing on the Internet is similar to some projects in the Zheru R\u0026D Center, and Tang Huan naturally wants to control this team.

However, there are some taboos Tang Huan has to take into account.

EA is now a global listed company, and it must pay attention to its public image and be particular about its work. If it directly recruits important employees like Jemina who have just left from Atari, it will inevitably lead to a crazy counterattack from the other party. The lawsuit between him and Activision is A proof.

Therefore, Tang Huan could only take a roundabout route.

The pursuit of hot money is short, smooth and quick profit, and the orderly progress of the project is torturing one's patience in the eyes of laymen. The enthusiasm gradually fades away, and the project team of Jemina fell into financial difficulties.

Tang Wenmao immediately seized the opportunity and sent a convertible bond of 500,000 US dollars.

But Jemina and his group were born in Atari after all, so they couldn't help being cut off from their old club.

So Atari, who got the news, jumped out and clamored, Convertible bonds are very insidious. Do you want to become William Millard's second? The old club subsidizes you with 500,000 US dollars, on the condition that the new platform is exclusive for one year. right of use.

Tang Huan was very annoyed by this, because Atari was nothing but a shit-stirring stick.

Dare to be richer than me. After Tang Huan snorted coldly, he immediately told Tang Wenmao, The same conditions as Atari, I will offer 750,000 US dollars, you can adapt accordingly. Remember, the ultimate goal is to make Jie The Miner team is isolated and cannot fall into the hands of competitors like Atari.” (To be continued..) u

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