Chapter 445 New Overseas Project

Chapter 445 New Overseas Project

Chapter 445 New Overseas Project
Some Americans order a bottle of beer and relax in the bar for two or three hours.

Change to the mainland.

The bar owner was already furious, disliking them for occupying the toilet without doing anything, being incompetent and just playing around.

This is very normal in the United States. Fan Wumian had long discovered that he drank too much when hanging out with these foreigners, so during the dinner, he only drank two small glasses of red wine.

Back at the Four Seasons Hotel Beverly Hills.

Pu Jiajing came to his room, helped to pack the hotel's dry-cleaned clothes, and asked Fan Wumian:

"The crew has finished filming. You must have finished your work here. When can we go back?"

"You can leave anytime. Stay for another day or two. I want to rest first."

The last time I saw Zhuang Muxi and Feng Ying'er was more than a month ago. Zuo Ziyan's summer vacation hasn't ended yet, and she will return to the UK to study in mid-September.

After the meeting, he estimated that he would face another tough battle and really needed to rest for a while and take care of his body, otherwise he was worried that he would suffer from lumbar muscle strain at such a young age.

There are also some trivial matters in the Myth Film Studio that require Fan Wumian to make the final decision.

For example, the new project of cooperating with Disney Group to adapt "Nonsense" has just been agreed upon by both parties and nothing has been arranged yet.

Fan Wumian sat at the desk and continued:

"The downside of working with those Hollywood giants is that they take away a large portion of the profits, but the upside is that they have all the resources I need, which saves me a lot of trouble."

"To be precise, Silicon Valley is actually similar. Hollywood's resources are controlled by the six major film companies. If Silicon Valley companies want to rise smoothly, they cannot avoid the support of Wall Street capital."

"Look at YouTube. It actually had great potential, but in the end it had to be sold off. It had a gun to its temple a long time ago."

Pu Jiajing put the tie into the box and asked curiously:
“Movies can schedule and release dates, but will Silicon Valley internet companies also be threatened?”

Trying to search for the official website of "American Weibo", Fan Wumian smiled and said:
"It's not easy to deal with it. If it doesn't agree to be acquired, YouTube will face scrutiny, saying that it has videos selling banned drugs and involving underage children, and then be sued for a large amount of punitive damages."

"Other investors are afraid to continue financing due to the risk of litigation. Coupled with the huge amount of punitive damages, it will drain all of YouTube's cash flow and put it on the verge of bankruptcy."

"In addition, Silicon Valley giants like Google can also launch similar video websites of their own to forcibly squeeze YouTube's market share. They have more abundant funds, lower traffic costs, and ready-made advertisers. The reason for choosing to acquire YouTube may be just to eliminate potential competitors and shorten the development cycle of opening up the market. This can also be regarded as a top-notch merger and acquisition."

As a former shareholder of YouTube, Fan Wumian would of course be concerned about the company's situation.

Moreover, he is now a major shareholder of Penguin Group. With Penguin Group's position in the mainland market, it can also play the "best mergers and acquisitions" game, spend money to acquire other good projects, and try to build a complete Internet ecosystem in advance.

Therefore, Fan Wumian felt it was necessary to learn from Silicon Valley and see how others did business and firmly occupied a dominant position in the market.

Pu Jiajing sighed: "When the business grows bigger, it will also be a headache."

"Indeed, the saying that a man is innocent unless he possesses a treasure is true applies everywhere. So I only plan to lead one Penguin and one Tudou.com, and I can invest in the rest of the projects or expand through the Penguin Group."

Fan Wumian found "American Weibo" and discovered that the page layout was very similar to Penguin Weibo, but there were slight differences in some functions.

It allows users to send text, pictures and short videos to each other. A girl from Stanford University shared a selfie with more than a dozen comments below.

The functions are quite comprehensive, but the number of users is too small, resulting in a lack of high-quality content on the platform. It is mostly a group of Stanford University students entertaining themselves.

If there is no capital injection for promotion, to attract new users and to create more interesting Weibo content, it is estimated that this website will die out naturally before long.

After a brief understanding.

Fan Wumian checked the relevant information again and found that Twitter had been launched a few months ago. However, Twitter is currently only used to send text messages to friends' mobile phones, which is different from the Weibo platform.

There are also several other companies developing microblogging platforms that are similar to "American Weibo", but none of them have yet to make a name for themselves as users have flocked to Facebook.

With his chin supported by his hand, Fan Wumian began to think about whether this project really had a future.

Now that Facebook has already been launched and has some overlapping functions with Weibo, making this American Weibo platform seem a bit useless will inevitably lead to higher customer acquisition costs and lower advertising revenue.

In other words, the cost of attracting traffic is too high and it is difficult to monetize users.

This means that the larger the user base, the greater the company's expenses. Even if a company makes a name for itself in the early stages, it can still easily fail halfway when the company's cash flow runs out.

Penguin Weibo has hundreds of millions of users and can attract traffic at low cost, but this approach is not feasible in the United States, so there is no way to copy Penguin Weibo's development experience.

Naturally, Fan Wumian also thought that this was the United States, and many censorship systems were not as strict and harsh as those in the mainland.

If the "disappear after reading" function is launched ahead of time, giving the American version of Weibo some "dating" attributes, there may be a chance to attract a group of hungry young users to flock in spontaneously, thus lowering the cost of acquiring customers.

Add some color and attract Hollywood stars to join like Penguin Weibo, and turn it into a place for eating melons, sharing interesting things and making friends. This way, its function will be different from that of Facebook.

Facebook users are mainly concentrated among friends, and the difference is probably similar to that between QQ and Weibo.

Gradually, he came up with the functions of "Twitter + self-destructing messages + photo wall" in his mind. Fan Wumian felt that this track was relatively new in the United States and seemed worth investing some money to give it a try.

Then he felt that there seemed no need to bring founder Jim Elliott and others to play together.

Directly acquire the entire platform from the three co-founders in the name of Penguin Weibo, and then promote it as the "overseas version of Penguin Weibo". This is the easiest and most convenient way, and will also make it more likely to succeed.

After all, if it’s just about raising funds, the management of the company will be in the hands of the three co-founders, and they may not necessarily listen to Fan Wumian’s good suggestions.

In addition, the share price of Penguin Group has been sluggish in the past two or three months, and the board of directors has begun to consider spending HK$2 million to repurchase shares to prevent the share price from falling further.

Compared with buying back stocks from the circulating market, Fan Wumian felt that it would be better to spend the money on developing the American market.

If it runs this new company independently, accepts external financing, and wins over more powerful Wall Street allies, it may have a chance to grab a share from Facebook.

Fan Wumian also registered a Facebook account, which felt similar to the "Friends Circle" function on WeChat. It was only suitable for occasional browsing. Apart from the beautiful photos shared by the girls, the other content was a bit boring.

The more I think about it, the more I think I can give it a try.

After calculating the time difference, I decided not to rush to call Brother Xiao Ma.

Fan Wumian continued to search for information of interest and discovered that Netflix was still engaged in the Internet video rental and sales business, with a total market value of only a few billion US dollars.

Another project suitable for short-term speculation is the already listed Marvel Entertainment. After it used a large number of copyrights as collateral for mortgage loans, its total market value recently remained at only US$8.2 million.

Fan Wumian clearly remembers that after "Iron Man" became a hit, Disney Group directly acquired Marvel Entertainment for about US$2009 billion in 40, which created huge profits for Disney Group.

Last year he wanted to invest in the "Iron Man" project, but Marvel was not short of money after getting the loan, and the two sides contacted each other several times and there was no follow-up.

After such a long time, "Iron Man" has still not started filming.

He now hopes that the preparations can proceed at a slower pace, in case he has more funds at that time, he might have the opportunity to buy some Marvel stocks in advance and make some quick money.

If we calculate the dates and create a time difference, perhaps we can use the profits earned from investing in Marvel to continue investing in Netflix, a company whose potential is beyond everyone's expectations.

As for Tudou.com, whose film library resources were copied for free by countless pirated websites, Fan Wumian no longer had much hope. He even considered waiting for the right time to let Penguin Group swallow up Tudou.com, so as to avoid trouble for himself by keeping it in his hands.
(End of this chapter)