"They dropped the price by hundreds of thousands of dollars in one breath. They agreed so readily," Su Yehao remarked.

After the negotiation concluded, an agreement was signed directly, signifying the deal was essentially finalized, awaiting only the release of funds to transfer the patent technology.

Some of the original company's talent would also be incorporated into tAt's R&D center.

The current search engine was named "Kassos," but Su Yehao found it lacking and was considering changing it to something like "tvt" or "tot," leveraging emojis to build a brand image and deepen user impressions.

John Zhou hesitated for a few seconds before finally saying:

"As I mentioned before, they once received a million dollars in funding, but unfortunately, the product never took off. The investors had to withdraw their capital at a low price and transfer the shares back to the founders. Actually, if you had insisted on $300,000, they probably would have agreed. Look how readily they signed the contract. Silicon Valley now has thousands upon thousands of startups, and being able to cash out for just over $300,000 is considered lucky for them to have met us."

Su Yehao was in high spirits and didn't mind the loss of a few tens of thousands of dollars. He asked with interest, "They poured a million dollars into it. Why do you think it didn't take off?"

"What else could it be? On the one hand, the influence wasn't enough, and on the other hand, the money wasn't enough. Spending a million dollars on promotion only generated a few thousand users, which is too costly. With Yahoo dominating the top, and a few companies occupying a large market share, maybe the Kassos search engine could have succeeded if they had invested another hundred million dollars. But no one is willing to gamble so heavily. They'd rather invest in already successful companies. The Pareto principle is especially evident in the internet industry; the winner takes almost all the market share."

John Zhou clicked his tongue after speaking and continued:

"You're using your own funds, so you don't feel it. But this market is very realistic. The cost of trial and error is too high. Once it's initially proven to be failing, all investors will choose to give up. For example, the Kassos search engine, after receiving a million dollars, no one dared to invest in it again. The number of retained users was too small, costing twenty dollars per user, and they could very likely lose everything they had."

Su Yehao suddenly understood and nodded, seeming to grasp the situation.

John Zhou was right. Su Yehao had his own money and didn't need to look for investment in the market. His previous contact with Silicon Valley was only to invest in Yahoo and Amazon stocks.

He really didn't understand the "ecological environment" of Silicon Valley, where the strong preyed on the weak. The mainland market he was aiming at was like an undeveloped new continent, with no direct collision or competition with Silicon Valley companies yet, only WPS and Microsoft Word wrestling for market share.

Speaking of Yinhai's WPS Office suite, Su Yehao was planning to further reduce the price by injecting ten million in interest-free loans into Yinhai, joining forces with other shareholders to strive for making the office software free, divided into "Simplified Edition" and "Full-Featured Edition," with the latter priced at no more than ten yuan.

After all, whether Yinhai made money or not was unimportant to him as a major shareholder. Seizing market share was the key.

Since reaping great rewards in the stock market, Su Yehao undoubtedly had a strong foundation. Investments at the level of tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars no longer required too much hesitation. Compared with other entrepreneurs, the advantages were obvious.

At this moment.

Su Yehao told John Zhou, "It's the holidays over here in America, so there's nothing to be done about it. Remember to take the product back and hand it over to the Hong Kong team to modify and improve it as soon as possible. The sooner it enters the mainland market, the better. I'll have someone else handle things like registering a new company. Let's just call it tot."

"...tot, another strange name."

"The name doesn't matter, as long as people can remember it."

Su Yehao changed the subject, "By the way, Lao Zhou, I see how busy you've been lately. When I get back, I'll have the finance department transfer a bonus to you privately, and your salary will be increased to seven hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars next year. Work hard."

The company was small, and it was difficult to poach well-known managers. Even if they were poached, they might not have the same rapport as John Zhou.

Some bosses, out of cost control considerations, liked to raise salaries by hiring new people instead of promoting internal veteran employees. Su Yehao didn't think so.

In his opinion, as long as the direction of advancement was correct, the capabilities of the management were only slightly different. Compared with smart people with personality, being obedient, reliable, and serious in their work was what Su Yehao cared about.

Counting heads, there were only a little over a hundred people under him. Even if everyone got a raise, the cost wouldn't be too high, and he wouldn't have to worry too much about management. After all, it was just a small company that had been developing for half a year...

John Zhou had some friends locally.

After leaving the R&D center, he took Su Yehao and Yin Liuli to visit other companies.

Unlike ordinary retail businesses, the backend couldn't be separated from people. Therefore, even during holidays, there were staff on duty, so they wouldn't be turned away.

On the side of the road.

Su Yehao saw many familiar signs, including iBm, Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and so on. Yahoo, in which he had heavily invested, also had advertisements, saying things like "High Salaries, Hiring Now."

As a major shareholder, he couldn't help but feel the urge to take a walk around Yahoo headquarters.

He had several hundred million Hong Kong dollars of assets riding on Yahoo. After all, he was currently the eighth-largest shareholder, so he would definitely not be kicked out.

Su Yehao's name had been steadily rising in Yahoo's publicly disclosed list of major shareholders. In fact, his holdings had not changed in the past two months, but other major shareholders had taken advantage of the stock split to cash out some of their shares, which led to his name moving up another position.

Since Yahoo went public, its stock had been soaring all the way, and its current total market value had broken through the thirty billion dollar threshold. Some people felt they had earned enough and chose to withdraw their investment, which was not surprising.

Judging solely from Yahoo's profits, it was obvious that it couldn't support a market value of thirty billion dollars. The price-to-earnings ratio was shockingly high, far exceeding many long-established listed companies.

The view that the Nasdaq market was seriously overvalued had existed for many years, and some people really believed it.

There were also people who had been shorting all the way, losing everything they had, but still hadn't changed their pessimistic view of the internet. These people were often over forty years old, and their ideas couldn't keep up with the development of the times, and they couldn't see the way forward at all.

Su Yehao bought shares in Berkshire Hathaway at the end of March, and then sold them as soon as possible, also because he felt that the old stock god was outdated and couldn't keep up with the fast track to getting rich overnight.

While valuing value investing was certainly prudent, it ultimately missed the opportunity for development.

In the next hour or so, he successively inspected two small companies, but didn't encounter any investment targets that moved Su Yehao's heart. He casually asked about Steve Jobs and Apple.

From John Zhou, he learned that Jobs had just returned to Apple last year, a few years after being driven out of the company he founded, and had once again become Apple's CEO.

This was about the same time as Su Yehao remembered. Apple was still half-dead, having just been invested $150 million by Microsoft, and hadn't yet produced any decent products.

Experiencing these old historical events firsthand felt quite wonderful.

Su Yehao finally went to Yahoo. After stating his identity, he was personally led by Yahoo's Chief Operating Officer to visit the company.

Although he was a shareholder, everything seemed very unfamiliar.

Originally, it was just for investment and making money, so it was difficult to find a sense of identity and belonging.

Instead, Su Yehao kept thinking about poaching people, finding some experienced talent to work for him, and striving to nip Baidu in the bud...