Chapter 444 Asking for $50

Chapter 444 Asking for $50

Chapter 444 Asking for $50

Jim Elliot and others thought Fan Wumian had an easy-going personality and thought he was easy to talk to.

The fact is that throughout the year, hundreds of entrepreneurs from all walks of life try to contact him for help.

More than 99% of them couldn't even see Fan Wumian, let alone successfully attract his attention.

The same is true in the entertainment industry.

In the first half of the year, Shanzeiwang Media received hundreds of scripts that were submitted to it unsolicitedly, and only selected a dozen good ones. Some of them were directly bought out by Fan Wumian, while others were invested and filmed in cooperation with peers.

As his business grew, people always tried to find ways to ask him for help.

If Jim Elliott and his friends hadn't written "American version of Penguin Weibo" on the small piece of paper, which made Fan Wumian find it a bit interesting, at most he would have sent Pu Jiajing to receive the documents and then sent them away.

People often feel that some people become ruthless and ruthless after they become rich.

In fact, most of the time, it is just out of helplessness. If I don’t act a little cool, I will be annoyed by countless human relationships.

For example, Fan Wumian.

Because he was afraid of trouble, he even seldom attended large-scale events in the film and television and music circles, and he simply turned down many forums, conferences, and activities that came to him.

People who have fed wild parrots in Australia will find that once they are kind enough to give them food, more wild parrots will be attracted within a few days, causing their balconies or yards to be occupied by them, leaving bird droppings all over the ground and making a lot of chirping noises.

Worried that this would set a bad precedent and lead to more institutions seeking help, and that various charitable organizations would not be able to come to his door to "beg for alms", he usually only proactively donates a portion of the supplies to those who are really in need.

Hearing Jim Elliot asking for $50 for only 25% of the original shares, Fan Wumian waved his hand and said:

"It's too early to talk about this now. I haven't tried the products you developed yet."

"In addition, when I invested in YouTube, they gave me 35% of the original shares, and I also invested $50. In my opinion, YouTube's business model is more interesting. In the field of microblogging, many Americans are already doing it."

“It is no exaggeration to say that almost every startup team believes that their project is promising, but the number of projects that succeed in ringing the bell at the Nasdaq Stock Exchange is probably less than one in five hundred.”

Jim Elliott understood what he meant and was considering whether he should change his mind and agree to put out 35% of the original shares.

The three of them pooled together more than 2 US dollars, and their business location was in the basement of a warehouse, where they never saw sunlight all day long. Their conditions were worse than those of many small teams that rented a garage to start a company.

After using more than 2 US dollars to support himself for three or four months, eating has now become a big problem. How can he have the confidence to bargain with Fan Wumian?

If they fail to get angel round financing in the next two months, their startup team of three will have to disband on the spot and go out to look for jobs to earn a living. The most important issue is how to survive.

and so.

Jim Elliott took out an IBM-branded laptop and said cheerfully:

"We can discuss the issue of how many original shares to give. Could you please take a look at the platform we developed first? It has many advantages. If it is convenient, I can introduce it to you in detail through a presentation. Your Penguin Weibo has tens of millions of users in Asia. I believe you should know its potential better than us."

Fan Wumian did not follow their pace and continued:
"It's a bit inconvenient tonight. I need to discuss some post-production matters with the director and the Paramount representatives. How about this? You send the PPT to my assistant's email. I'll take some time to look at it when I'm free in the next few days."

Although Penguin Weibo is still in a state of huge losses, the growth rate of active users is particularly fast.

Revenues such as advertising, membership, and peripheral revenues are increasing month by month, and the development prospects are obviously good.

Speaking of the American version of Weibo, Fan Wumian naturally thinks of "Twitter", "Photo Wall", "Snapchat" and other internationally renowned social software.

He didn't know whether these companies had appeared or not, and he was usually too busy to pay attention to the latest situation in Silicon Valley, but given that the investment amount was not large, it would be okay to invest a little money to test the waters, just like going to the casino to gamble for fun. Of course.

Before you actually decide to invest, you need to understand the situation in the industry first.

In case a similar company has already received a large amount of financing and is doing well, it would be better to directly invest in other ready-made projects.

YouTube's success was just an accident, catching the wave of the rise of online videos. Facebook had already appeared in the North American market, and to some extent it could replace Weibo, greatly increasing the difficulty of the rise of other social platforms.

There are thousands of startups competing for food in Silicon Valley all year round.

For some successful projects, the technology may not be the best. Whether it can succeed depends mainly on whether there is capital to favor it and help promote it and suppress other competitors.

In terms of strength and background, Fan Wumian is certainly no match for some of the old Silicon Valley giants and Wall Street tycoons. If he invests money in some promotion but fails to attract the interest of other Silicon Valley venture capital institutions, this project will most likely fail.

Since the risk was too high, he didn't dare to have any expectations. He just thought that if he really chose to raise funds for this small team, he could ask Britney Spears and Megan Fox for help and let them run some free online advertisements to test the waters.

After a round of promotion, people will have a rough idea of ​​whether a project has real potential.

After a brief chat, Fan Wumian returned to the restaurant.

After handing over the business card, Pu Jiajing trotted over and said:

"Should I change my email address? In the US, everyone uses Yahoo, Google, and the like. I printed '@qq.com' on my business card, which seems a bit informal."

"The American version of Weibo sounds pretty good. I signed up for a Facebook account a while ago, but I found it boring after reading it."

"Boss, please move Weibo to the United States as soon as possible, so that these foreigners can also experience the charm of looking at the hot search list every day for gossip. If this project is successful, it will probably save millions of dollars in movie promotion costs. Now that you have sold YouTube, they will no longer give you face and help promote some new movies."

Fan Wumian took the plate and continued to get food.

He simply skipped over expensive and unpalatable foods like king crab and caviar, and first served a large plate of fried rice, plus beef stewed in red wine, lamb chops and the like as side dishes.

He said to Pu Jiajing:

"As for emails, it's enough for them to receive emails. We are the first party, so what are we afraid of?"

"Also, Facebook is only interesting if you add a lot of friends, just like QQ. If you play it alone, it will be boring. If you really can't do that, just take a few selfies and post them. You will probably get a bunch of old men messaging you soon, asking if you want to hang out tonight. This is the most basic function of American social software."

“If I invest money, I can only try to find ways to increase the probability of its success. The rest is up to luck. There is no need to overthink in the early stages. It is best to just treat it as a loss of money, because the possibility of a valuation exceeding $5000 million in the future may be less than 1%.”

Pu Jiajing smiled and said:
"I know that venture capital firms are busy casting a wide net to catch big fish. If each company has a 1% chance of success, and you invest in 100 companies in a row, doesn't it almost mean that one of them will succeed?"

".You can't say that. You certainly haven't won a prize in Penguin Group's games. If you are really unlucky, you may invest in hundreds of companies in a row, but none of them will be successfully listed. The $50 they want is just for the angel round. Some projects have reached the B and C rounds of financing, but eventually went bankrupt. The cost of trial and error is too high, and it is not that easy to cast a wide net."

Fan Wumian said calmly, and then thought of Facebook, which has been expanding rapidly recently.

It's not that he had no chance to raise funds for Facebook before, but he was worried that once the company developed, he might not be able to hold on to the assets, which might even backfire on him. That's why he decided to further increase his holdings in Penguin shares.

The waters inside Facebook are indeed too deep. It has been the focus of attention of Wall Street forces and several American media oligarchs, and various forces are fighting openly and secretly.

The two factions in Washington, as well as major traditional media, all hope to control Facebook, a new online voice channel.

If Fan Wumian rashly got involved, he could easily encounter bad luck, get robbed on the road, and end up dead on the street.
(End of this chapter)