Chapter 446: 3000 million to test the waters

Chapter 446: 3000 million to test the waters

Chapter 446: 3000 million to test the waters
That night.

After calculating the time difference, Fan Wumian called Xiao Ma Ge.

After briefly introducing the situation.

He said to the Penguin Horse boss:

"I am only responsible for providing some suggestions and ideas. As for whether to do it or not and how to do it, you deal with business all day long, so you are better at it than me. I think the international market is very promising, but the competition is very fierce. It is best for us to do it ourselves in the early stage, and then find some powerful allies to cooperate with us and protect us when we encounter troubles. Otherwise, we will be easily messed up."

This is not an unfounded worry.

If you look at the international version of Douyin in its previous life, you will find out how much the U.S. government and some media groups fear that external forces will control their discourse.

Whether it is Samsung in South Korea, Sony in the island country, or TSMC in Taiwan, if they had not "paid protection fees" to the Americans and given up a large amount of equity in exchange for a place in the market, they would have been knocked down by various sanctions long ago and would have had no chance to get involved in high-tech manufacturing.

In the field of social media, many Americans are even more cautious.

They are afraid that voters will discover that the lives of the local middle and lower-class residents are actually far from as good as they imagine. They are said to receive high salaries, but education, medical care, water and electricity bills, property taxes, high-priced necessities of life, etc., have drained every penny from their pockets.

Especially in Washington, the two sides fought fiercely, which directly affected many Internet companies.

Whether it is Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, Musk, who later bought Twitter, or the executives of the international version of Douyin, life is not easy.

It was clear that in a few years, the United States would become more and more magical. Thinking that people who do not plan for the future will have immediate worries, Fan Wumian was prepared from the beginning to retreat bravely if things became impossible.

His original intention of trying to create an international version of Penguin Weibo was just to make some money and advertise the works of Myth Film Studio. He had no intention of getting involved in the mess.

On the other side of the phone.

Xiao Ma Ge was also considering the feasibility of entering the international market through Weibo, and slowly replied:
"It's not easy to open up international markets. We spent a lot of money in many countries and regions in Asia last year and finally achieved some success through QQ. Then companies like Facebook and Microsoft also started to make efforts to enter the international market and snatched away our market share in a short time."

"They were suppressing our company while spending a lot of money on advertising. However, many users believed that Silicon Valley companies were the best. In fact, I felt that QQ was more interesting than Facebook and MSN under Microsoft, but it just couldn't take over the market and has lost tens of millions of dollars."

"If I go to the headquarters of an American Internet company, I'm afraid troubles will come one after another. Compared to starting my own business, wouldn't it be safer to invest in a stake?"

Multinational corporations are particularly vulnerable to being hit when they go to the United States to do business.

The Japanese people in the 80s and 90s were precisely harvested by the Americans, and are still "lost" until now, with no hope of turning things around.

Ma likes to take steady steps, and his style of dealing with people and things is particularly steady. He is worried that if he rashly goes to the United States to grab a job, he will lose tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. By then, the stock price on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange will probably fall further.

As the largest shareholder, Fan Wumian certainly has some say in the company's decision-making. He explained slowly:
"I have some connections in the United States. I can ask some influential Hollywood stars to help promote it and keep the cost down as much as possible. As long as we find the right allies, we shouldn't encounter too many problems before it really becomes a big deal."

"I think that instead of spending money on stock repurchases, it is better to invest the money in the United States to test the waters. With the $3000 million as start-up capital, we can raise funds in the U.S. market later, which may be more effective in boosting the stock price than repurchasing stocks."

“YouTube, which I invested in before, seems to be about to reach an acquisition agreement with Google and sell it for about US$16 billion. If we feel it is not feasible at that time, we can also try to sell the international version of Weibo in a package. With so many popular games contributing to cash flow, the cost of trial and error seems to be within an acceptable range. If we miss this opportunity, I am afraid we will never get it again.”

Xiao Ma Ge mainly does business in the domestic market. He is used to using his own funds for expansion. He almost forgets that as long as the initial framework is built, there is still an opportunity to raise funds directly from the US market. There is no need to continuously pour money into it.

After listening to Fan Wumian's words, Xiao Ma continued:

"If we only invest 3000 million US dollars in total, then the problem is not too big. Mr. Fan, are you going to run the American version of Weibo alone? If there is a chance, you can try to list it on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange?" "Well, it's better to split it up clearly so that it will be easier to raise funds later."

originally.

At the Penguin Group board meeting, a senior executive proposed to spend HK$2 million to repurchase a batch of shares from the circulating market to boost investors' confidence.

Pony Ma has already expressed his initial agreement with the repurchase plan, and the company does not lack the cash in its account.

The total market value of the entire Penguin Group still remains around HK$240 billion. Setting aside US$3000 million to launch a new project is equivalent to trying one's luck with only 1% of the total market value.

If you lose money, it won't hurt you much. If you succeed, the profit will be considerable.

There are many Chinese stocks listed in the United States, but when it comes to mainland Internet companies that have truly captured the U.S. market, Pony Ma can't even think of a single competitor at the moment.

After hearing Fan Wumian say that he had some connections in the United States and could get Hollywood stars to help attract traffic, he couldn't help but be tempted.

Let’s not talk about anything else for now.

As long as the news that "Penguin Weibo will soon enter the US market" is released, the share price of Penguin Group will probably rise by about 10%.

After all, the market size is there. The total market value of Baidu, the largest search engine in mainland China, is only about US$18 billion, while Google's total market value has exceeded US$ billion.

Even if they just draw a big picture first, it can still mobilize the enthusiasm of investors. By then, even if the American version of Weibo project fails, other projects may be able to contribute more net profits, and there will still be a chance to support a higher stock price.

That’s what Internet entrepreneurship is all about.

Some people have nothing but rely on deceiving investors into paying money. As long as they can really complete the project, no one will care about being cheated.

The current situation is that Penguin Group's stock price is inflated, but the growth rate of net profit is lower than market expectations. In Pony Ma's eyes, overcoming the short-term difficulties is the top priority, and other things can be put aside.

Seeing that Xiao Ma Ge suddenly gave in, Fan Wumian didn't care.

Even if Penguin Group is not interested, he can still invest in his personal name. The only difference is that he will have to spend more time and energy to keep an eye on the project in person.

Fan Wumian continued:
"I think it will be no problem to use this 30 million dollars to support us for two to three years. Weibo has a relatively small number of characters and the server requirements are much lower than YouTube. Then we can find some gimmicks to trick Americans into paying to become members, such as glowing avatar frames, red usernames, exclusive logos, accelerated growth, and permanent roaming of chat messages. They have never seen anything like this before."

"."

Xiao Ma Ge laughed awkwardly and said:

"Our company has always been doing business in a law-abiding manner. How can we be accused of cheating? The more money a client pays, the more privileges they can enjoy. But I think the idea of ​​combining Weibo and QQ in the United States is interesting. There are no technical problems. Just like what you said before, you can just find a few people to form a team to do it. It's just a matter of deleting messages at a scheduled time."

Fan Wumian couldn't help but curl up the corners of his mouth and said to Xiao Ma Ge:

"The social and cultural background is different. The atmosphere here in the United States is particularly open. People often like to post colored pictures, but they are afraid that others will save and share them everywhere, which will leak their privacy. So deleting them alone may not be enough. We also have to prohibit the other party from taking screenshots or recording the screen. It is not necessary to implement this function 100%. Just relying on this gimmick can easily attract countless users to join spontaneously."

Xiao Ma said with a smile:
"Screenshots or screen recording are prohibited. This is difficult to do. If you use a video camera to record the screen while surfing the Internet, it is impossible to ask the technician to climb out of the screen and turn off the camera."

(End of this chapter)