Top of the big era

If Zhou Buqi wants to lead Ziweixing and Ziweixing International, the two Internet companies in the eastern and western hemispheres, he must overcome the obstacle of time difference.

Almost every day, he works for 1-2 hours in the early morning.

In fact, not only him, but also the core executives of overseas companies have to deal with this complex situation, and they have to fight on the front line in the middle of the night.

During this period, Jobs' health was getting worse and worse. Although the media in the United States expressed restraint, it was already clear that he might not be able to persist.

Even Jobs has completely resigned from his position at Apple, handing over the reins of Apple's business to Cook. His board seat was recommended to a good friend, Disney President Robert Iger, in an attempt to continue the creativity and artistry of Apple products through Iger.

Under this general situation, many financial and technology magazines have reported on Cook's resume.

What kind of virtue and ability does this person have to succeed Steve Jobs?

There are many similar articles, and one of the most important points is hard work. He has to work until two or three in the morning almost every day. Because he is the person in charge of Apple's supply chain, he has to connect with the domestic side and coordinate and maintain the relationship with hundreds of supply chains. This is a very complicated matter.

It's similar to Zhou Buqi's situation, he has to work early in the morning.

The difference is that although the rest time is later during the week, the wake-up time is also later, and the overall sleep is relatively sufficient. It was different for Cook. He got up at around six in the morning and started running.

It feels like he has unlimited energy.

He doesn't know if his boyfriend injected it into him.

Fortunately, Zhou Buqi has seen too many people like this. Not to mention Cook, he has a lot of workaholics under him, such as Lu Qi... Zhou Buqi is particularly surprised sometimes, no matter when he sends him a message He can reply to emails as soon as possible, as if he is working 24 hours a day.

It is now 11 o'clock in the morning domestic time. Zhou Buqi is drinking a cup of milk tea and chatting with Lu Qi about the two major businesses of Ziweixing International.

"The case of EA's acquisition of a friend's studio has passed supervision, and the matter has been completely settled. It is estimated that the payment will be received within a week."

"So fast?"

Zhou Buqi was a little surprised that the work efficiency of relevant departments in the United States was so high? Logically speaking, their efficiency should be much worse than that in China.

Lu Qi said with a smile: "It seems that EA is working on it, speeding up the regulatory approval. The market is changing too fast, and they are worried about changes."

"Change?" Zhou Buqi didn't quite understand, "What change? Haven't the contracts been signed?"

Lu Qi said: "But the liquidated damages are too low, only US$650 million."

EA and Ziweixing International have indeed reached an agreement on the deal for their friend's studio and signed a contract. However, the contract is not yet fully effective. It needs to be approved by the relevant regulatory authorities to confirm that the transaction is legal before the contract can be deemed legal.

In other words, before the regulation is passed, even if both parties sign a contract, the contract is not a contract protected by law in the true sense.

Only legal contracts are real contracts. If supervision fails, then the contract is illegal and meaningless.

In order to cope with this situation, both parties to the transaction often need a supplementary agreement under the legal framework to ensure their own rights and interests, that is, to limit unilateral breach of contract through liquidated damages clauses.

If before the approval is passed, EA or Ziweixing International changes their mind and withdraws from the contract because they no longer want to trade, they will have to pay US$650 million to the other party to make up for the other party's losses.

"What?" Zhou Buqi thought he heard wrongly, "The liquidated damages of US$650 million are very low?"

Lu Qidao: "Based on the changes in the market and the growth prospects of my friend's studio, there is a certain possibility of default. Zynga has postponed its listing plan, did you know?"

"what happened?"

Over the past few months, Mattrick has often talked about Zynga, a social gaming company that is a leader in the industry.

The trading and valuation of Friend Studios will be largely influenced by Zynga. In other words, Zynga's listing will be closely related to the final transaction price of a friend's studio.

Zynga was originally scheduled to go public in July.

Later, the European debt crisis spread to the United States, and the date was changed to May, hoping to go public in advance. Later, it was discovered that the impact of European debt was too severe, so it was changed back to July.

However, this is early August, and Zynga is still not on the market.

Lu Qi elaborated on this: "The financial market here in the United States has picked up, and the game market is also picking up. Social games are at the forefront of the game industry's recovery. Zynga's board of directors believes that July is the bottom of the market and is not suitable for Listed. So they postponed the listing plan again, planning to wait until the market picks up further before going public, probably until the end of the year."

Zhou Buqi couldn't help but laugh, "So EA is worried that we will breach the contract?"

Lu Qi said: "Yes, if the regulatory review takes three or five months, the market will pick up further. Once the market valuation of our friend's studio reaches over US$2.5 billion or US$3 billion, we will There is a possibility of default. So EA was very anxious, lobbied a lot, and quickly finalized the deal."

It's obvious that the brains at EA don't understand the social gaming industry.

Social games have become so popular in recent years, and the reasons at home and abroad are actually the same.

Domestically, it’s because friends.com became popular.

Abroad, it’s because Facebook is popular.

The popularity of this type of SNS social platform has led to the popularity of social games.

In other words, social games have no foundation of their own and must be parasitic on the websites of social platforms. Now that we have entered the mobile Internet era, Facebook's actions have been relatively slow, and there have been certain misjudgments.

However, Facebook has already made corrections and made strategic changes.

Early next year, Facebook will launch an IPO, and it is clearly marked in the prospectus. After raising money, Facebook will focus on the mobile Internet.

This is the crisis of the social industry!

Social games are products of the PC Internet era. The product logic of playing social games on smartphones simply does not exist.

The product logic of social games is that white-collar workers can click a few times after work, hang up a web page, operate it easily, and be sneaky without being discovered by their leaders.

Cell phones are different, they can be easily discovered.

If you can play on your mobile phone without being discovered... Damn, then who will play social games? How about playing other mobile games? Isn’t “Angry Birds” great?

Once Facebook focuses on the mobile Internet, their team will already conduct analysis on data, models and operating models, and then make adjustments to traffic allocation.

As long as it is discovered that social games have lost their magic on mobile and mobile strategies have surpassed the importance of PC strategies, it will inevitably reduce the promotion of social games on the platform.

If a giant like Facebook makes a few adjustments at the business level, the seemingly grand but completely unfounded industry of social games will collapse.

Zhou Buqi has been very concerned about the transactions of his friend's studio during this period, mainly because he is afraid that there are capable people at EA who will see some potential future risks in the social game industry through strategic adjustments to Facebook.

So he repeatedly reiterated his request that Lu Qi and Don Mattrick must speed up operations and sell their friend's studio as soon as possible! Don't delay!

If you run if you hear the gunshot, it will be too late!

Everyone on Facebook has put his hand in his trouser pocket and is about to pull out a gun. If he doesn’t run away now, when will he wait?

Unexpectedly, things were developing in the opposite direction.

This made Zhou Buqi dumbfounded.

It seems that one really cannot think too highly of the world's heroes.

Zynga is full of confidence in the future, so it has delayed its launch date, planning to wait for the market to improve and make more money; EA is even more ridiculous. They are worried that Ziweixing will regret it, so they want to end the relationship between their friend's studio as soon as possible acquisition case.

This is so funny.

What he was worried about was that there were experts at EA who would see the adjustment in Facebook's strategic direction and the underlying logic of social games, leading to the suspension of the deal with his friend's studio.

Unexpectedly, not only did they not see it, but they were following Zynga's footsteps.

Zhou Buqi said: "It can be seen that EA's board of directors is a group of old guys who are out of touch with the times. They don't understand social games, let alone the mobile Internet. Let me see, this wave of crisis in EA, there are no three It won’t be solved in five years, it’s a cognitive issue.”

Lu Qi is actually quite confused. He doesn't know how Boss Zhou can draw such a certain industry trend judgment from clues. Fortunately, he doesn't need to understand the arguments, he can just use them directly. This is the biggest advantage of working under Boss Zhou.

There are two arguments: the future is the era of mobile Internet, and the social gaming industry will decline.

Based on these two arguments, it is easier to make a judgment on EA game company. Following this line of thinking, Lu Qi slowly said: "If EA wants to cater to the new era, it will face a new round of competition." Transformation. Unless the transformation goes smoothly, EA is likely to be stuck in a depressed stock price for a long time."

Zhou Buqi said: "The older you are, the more rigid and stubborn your thinking will be, and the more difficult it will be to transform. So we can't have illusions about EA. Since the transaction of our friend's studio has passed supervision, let's take action. As long as 3 Once the one-month lock-up period is over, sell the stocks quickly and exit the market as soon as possible.”

"Not even a penny left?"

"No! Ziweixing International has not yet been listed, cash is more important!"

In the Friend Studio deal, EA paid $750 million in cash and 49 million EA shares. Calculated based on the current stock price, the value of this stock has increased since the contract was signed, reaching US$1.23 billion.

Hurry up and cash out for money, the company is still useful!

Sure enough, Lu Qi then talked about Kurian's large expenditure, "Ziweiyun wants to acquire SaaS vendor ServiceNow. The other party is willing to trade, but the price is not very friendly."

"How many?"

"The other party demanded US$2.57 billion."

"Damn!" Zhou Buqi was a little angry, "Didn't Kurian say that the deal can be completed with less than 2 billion US dollars?"

Lu Qi smiled and said: "We are still negotiating, so don't rush it. This is good news. At least the other party is willing to talk to us and has the intention to sell. This is the best."

Zhou Buqi agreed, "Well, the price is a bit high, which is better than having a price but no market. You have to keep an eye on this case and promote it as soon as possible. The industry is at a low point now, and it would be a pity to miss it."