Chapter 164 Video Website
Chapter 164 Video Website
I just quit my job to start my own business a few months ago.
Just before the website was officially launched, an investor suddenly showed up and wanted to acquire the product he had created.
Wang Wei, the founder of Tudou.com, was a little confused by this.
He was born into a doctor's family. His conditions were good, but not particularly wealthy.
In his early years, his family almost emptied out their savings to support him studying in the United States.
After graduating from university, he successfully joined Hughes Satellite Corporation in the United States and continued to study for a master's degree while working. However, due to the high tuition fees, he did not save much money during that time.
If everything goes well, life would be pretty good.
However, a few years ago, the Nasdaq Internet bubble suddenly emerged, causing Wang Wei to lose his job at Hughes Satellite Corporation.
There were unemployed programmers everywhere, making it quite difficult to find a job. He then went to France to continue his studies for an MBA, during which time he spent a lot of his savings.
Fortunately, after graduation, I successfully joined the Bertelsmann Group.
I am responsible for some work in the Huaxia region. The income is not as much as the management in Europe and the United States, but it is more relaxed and free.
After continuing to work for a while.
Wang Wei was attracted by the "podcast" technology and was tired of his boring job. With the more than one million yuan he had saved over the years, he planned to create a website in the mainland that would allow users to share videos spontaneously.
His current thinking is actually similar to that of Youtube. Due to the limitations of network transmission speed and technical level, he has never thought of using it specifically to play long videos.
In order to develop Tudou.com, Wang Wei almost emptied his savings. During this period, he tried to find some investors, but failed.
Venture capital firms have deep pockets and can afford many failures.
However, if one fails in personal investment in entrepreneurship or starting an Internet company just once, one can fall back into poverty overnight.
This is also the reason why three former PalPay employees who used to work with Elon Musk at Youtube were willing to accept Fan Wumian's $50 angel round of financing. It is equivalent to taking risks with other people's money, and the pressure is suddenly much less.
Starting a business on the Internet is like a huge crowd of people crossing a single-plank bridge. No one dares to say that they will really succeed.
They often start developing products after finding a direction. Even if they have accumulated hundreds of thousands or millions of users and received a valuation of tens of millions of dollars, they will fail immediately if they cannot find a monetization channel.
Wang Wei sometimes feels a lot of pressure, thinking that if his business fails, he will be ruined too.
I always feel that after more than ten years of studying and working, I still cannot make my family feel at ease, and I feel a little sorry for them.
Once the arrow is shot, there is no turning back. Wang Wei was mentally prepared to go out and look for a job if he lost the bet this time.
However, Fan Wumian suddenly appeared, willing to spend 200 million to acquire the company and offer a job with an annual salary of one million. This gave Wang Wei a chance to regret and make a lot of money from it.
have to say.
The temptation is very great.
The gambler's mentality of being blinded by rage is not a good thing. There are not many opportunities to earn a million dollars a year in China.
Therefore, after careful consideration, Wang Wei quickly inclined to be "recruited", but still wanted to retain some shares rather than just working for others.
At this moment.
Ji Qiao, who was not so professional in business negotiations, called Fan Wumian in front of Wang Wei while sitting in the teahouse.
Soon after.
Ji Qiao smiled, shook his head slowly and said:
"My boss didn't agree. He said he didn't want to do the same thing as other Internet projects, where they kept raising funds to expand their scale and then went public to raise money. He just wanted to build a video website for his own entertainment and to play some of the movies and TV series produced by the company. It would be troublesome to cooperate with others."
Wang Wei sighed and said:
"That's true, actually. Even if I retain some shares, I won't be able to keep up with the additional investment, and my equity will only be diluted. But I always feel a little reluctant to sell the company I founded myself, and subconsciously I think it may develop well."
Ji Qiao took a sip of tea and said to him:
"Look at the bright side, at least it can be sold at a good price."
"My boss just said that if you are willing to sell, the purchase price can be increased to 220 million."
"If the company is really listed in the future, or sold to a company, you can get an additional cash bonus of HK$100 million. This clause can be written into the contract. If not, you can only look for another one."
It’s not that Fan Wumian is reluctant to pay.
The main concern is that if the offer is too high, it will easily give rise to other people's ambitions and bring unnecessary trouble.
If Wang Wei felt that his company was valuable and had great potential, he might re-evaluate whether to accept the acquisition offer, thus ruining a project that had a chance to be concluded.
No matter how much it was worth in its previous life.
Anyway, considering that the website is not yet online and there are only a few employees, Fan Wumian’s offer is already very good.
If you find another team to build a similar video website, it may only cost a few hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars to attract a group of people to compete for the outsourcing contract, but this may waste several months.
Calculate your recent total expenses.
Wang Wei thought about selling the company at this price and making more than one million yuan.
Besides, it was hard to say whether he could succeed in starting his own business, but a million-dollar annual salary was a real income. After gritting his teeth and making up his mind, Wang Wei finally gave in and replied:
"Okay, based on this price, is the annual salary I gave you before okay?"
".I'll make another call to clarify." Ji Qiao said. Hong Kong City.
Fan Wumian is full of confidence in financial investment.
But when it comes to starting my own business, I have no confidence at all because I don’t know much.
His idea now is to take advantage of the relatively low prices to buy more digital copyrights of film and television dramas and store them in his own hands, so as to build a small but excellent video website.
Sooner or later, a group of Internet giants will take a fancy to the video website business.
In the future, if someone is willing to make a good offer, maybe we can sell it directly. If that doesn't work, we can also do digital copyright transfer and licensing business. Of course, we don't have to worry about financing, listing and other messy issues.
I heard before that the founder of Tudou.com wanted to retain 40% of the shares and inject the 200 million acquisition funds into the company in the form of investment.
Fan Wumian just felt that it was troublesome and had begun to consider building a small platform of his own.
This idea seems to lack Internet thinking, but the reason behind it is because he remembers that the three large websites, iQiyi, Tencent, and Youku, are in fierce competition and have been in a state of loss for a long time.
On the contrary, the small-scale Mango TV has been making a fortune quietly.
After Boss Jia, who said he would return to China next week, ran away.
The reason why hundreds of LeTV employees are still there is that they can even raise their own salaries and live a fairy-tale life without overtime and PUA.
It mainly relies on the genuine digital copyrights of 9 episodes of TV series and 5000 movies. The annual income from the copyright of "The Legend of Zhen Huan" alone is as high as tens of millions of RMB.
For this reason, people in the circle have been talking about it, saying that LeTV has actually defeated several industry giants, achieved positive profits every year, and has film and television copyrights worth billions.
Rather than investing in video websites, it is more like buying at the bottom and hoarding the digital copyrights of film and television dramas in advance.
If he remembered correctly, he had seen somewhere that the digital rights to the 80 episodes of "Wulin Waijia" were sold for a total of only 10 yuan, an average of 1250 yuan per episode.
By the time "Love Apartment 2014" was launched in 4, the purchasing price of a single episode had risen to millions.
Doing digital copyright business is the main point, and operating a video website is just a byproduct. In this case, Fan Wumian certainly does not want to take others for a ride, after all, he is not unable to afford it.
If Wang Wei wants to quit his job and start his own business in the future, he just needs to submit a report. Sooner or later, there will be many competitors, and one more or one less will not make much difference.
As long as the film library resources in his hands are large enough, Fan Wumian can sit back and relax, and not bother to get involved with those big studios.
At this moment.
Received a call from Ji Qiao again.
Knowing that Wang Wei was hesitant and ultimately succumbed to the temptation of a million-dollar annual salary, Fan Wumian thought that this would save a lot of trouble.
He stroked his chin and thought about it.
He immediately took action and asked Hong Kong City Bandit King Media to set up a new department specifically responsible for film and television copyright business, and to pay 400 million US dollars to buy back some digital copyrights.
The money comes from Miramax Films, a total deposit of $600 million, which was received yesterday.
Once "A Quiet Place 1" is released across the Taiwan Straits and Hong Kong, we will start paying box office dividends. It will not be a big problem to use this deposit temporarily.
Considering that it has a large and low-cost film library, its video website business should not be too bad, and he does not plan to continue increasing his holdings of Penguin shares in the near future.
After being busy for a while, I handed over the matter.
Fan Wumian called his agent Jiang Shixi again and said:
"Brother Jiang, please help me find out in the mainland which film and television companies are willing to sell the digital copyright of their works, that is, the copyright for broadcasting on the Internet. It would be best if I could buy them out directly."
On the other side of the phone.
Jiang Shixi was puzzled and asked, "Why did you buy these?"
"Play it online and try to make some money from Internet advertising. There seems to be no clear price positioning in the market right now. I guess if I pay a little money, some people will be willing to sell it."
Fan Wumian added:
"Except for me, no one will buy these in the short term, so it's okay to be a little high-profile. I will develop a digital copyright trading platform in Hong Kong City recently, specifically for companies to trade digital copyrights on it. Please help me promote it when the time comes."
Video websites are not yet popular.
Many people don't know how to use digital copyright, so it is useless in their hands.
If it can be sold for some money, there will always be people who are interested.
Some film and television companies hold the new media digital copyrights of several or even dozens of TV series or movies. Even if they are calculated at 10 or 20 each, as long as the quantity is large enough and the quality of the works is good enough, they can be sold for hundreds of thousands or even millions.
Although he didn't quite understand Fan Wumian's idea, and couldn't guess the commercial value of it, Jiang Shixi still helped to give some advice:
"Then you should contact audio-visual companies, TV stations, and film distributors. They have a lot of copyrights. When you sold A Quiet Place, you specifically reserved the digital copyright. Some other film and television companies have already sold it together. If you want to buy it at a cheap price, it's best not to show up yourself. That way it will be easier to negotiate the price."
Fan Wumian explained:
"I have also considered whether I should set up a shell company and make low-key acquisitions from the market."
"But since there are no other buyers who will compete with me in this industry, it doesn't matter whether I am hiding my head or showing my tail. I am not afraid of competitors appearing. I can just ask them to help me find digital copyrights, and then I will find a way to spend money to acquire them."
"I have a great influence now. When my colleagues in the film and television industry hear the news and know that they can get a good price by selling the digital copyright to me, it will be easy to attract more people to actively come to me for transactions. It will be like buying a horse bone with a lot of gold."
(End of this chapter)