A carrot and stick approach worked wonders.

The McKinsey team hadn't arrived yet. Every day, Su Yehao visited the iCQ and tvt headquarters, and he could clearly see that these employees were much more well-behaved.

Both companies had plans to go public, but they might not catch this round of the Internet bubble. The main reason was that even if they forced an IPO, it might not be well-received. There was no time to settle down and accumulate.

Considering that after the frenzy, there would be a mess everywhere, and the market would probably be quiet for a few years, Su Yehao wasn't in a hurry to go public and raise money. He continued to focus his energy on catching a ride on the bandwagon, and used some funds to add leverage, being bullish on the NASDAQ index and many listed companies.

His net worth rose again and again. Counting the valuation of tvt, he had a net worth of about $700 million. Most of it was earned from the NASDAQ market. The profit from option positions during this period exceeded the gains from the increase in stock holdings. In the past month or so, he had earned more than $300 million, which was equivalent to earning back the money used to acquire iCQ.

Su Yehao's net worth seemed to be far behind many super-rich people in the tech circle.

But it should be noted that this was only the result of his efforts in just over a year, which was enough to shock people.

In other industries, it would be as difficult as climbing to the sky to earn so much money in such a short period of time, but the current Silicon Valley market was setting off a wave of wealth creation myths.

For example, Bill Gates' net worth had increased by more than $10 billion this year, and Yahoo founder Yang Zhiyuan had also earned about $2 billion this year. The rich list was shuffled, and the rankings of many veteran rich people fell.

It was only mid-July, and the hot weather couldn't suppress the investors'狂热 (kuángrè, fervent) ambitions. Many startups could get millions of dollars in investment with a business plan, so it was no wonder that tvt's valuation rose rapidly.

Since iCQ was acquired by Su Yehao and spread the news that it had found a way to make a profit, iCQ's valuation had also reached about $450 million, but it didn't plan to accept financing for the time being, so the valuation was just a number.

In the past few days, Su Yehao had been taken to small parties by John Zhou, and had met many new friends there.

Hearing others say how easy it was to find money, and that it wasn't enough to ask for ten million, and investors had to finance twenty or thirty million dollars, this reminded Su Yehao.

Although he wasn't in a hurry to go public, he should pull up the two companies in his hands as soon as possible, and take advantage of the hot market to shout around and raise a sum of financing.

Once the funding problem was solved, he probably wouldn't have to pay out of his own pocket for the company's expenses for the next few years.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to borrow a chicken to lay eggs?

If he was shameless enough, when the bubble burst and the valuation fell, there would be an opportunity to buy back the transferred shares at a low price, and the price difference could be as high as hundreds of millions of dollars.

Thinking of this, Su Yehao found Roger Cluyff, the newly appointed interim CEO of tvt, and said with a smile that he would provide him with another $20 million, and he had to find a way to increase the number of users of the product.

Profit points such as membership, virtual goods, and advertising could also be prepared and launched, striving to make the revenue data look better.

……

Sunshine, lawn, beach chairs, and a blue outdoor swimming pool.

It was July 22nd.

Su Yehao was wearing big shorts, lying under a parasol, drinking smoothies and eating watermelon.

Nong Qingying was wearing a long dress, sitting next to him, reading a book with her head down. She said:

"You're supposed to be busy with ghosts, but you've been so idle lately, isn't that the same as recuperating in another place? Silicon Valley is so boring, why don't we go back together? It's my mom's birthday the day after tomorrow."

"Sigh."

Su Yehao put down his cup, put his arms under his head, sighed, and then said: "I never expected that the business I'm optimistic about would be so unpopular. Looking around, except for America Online, no one is competing with me. The advertising effect is also very good. I can't go to the company every day and sit there, from daydreaming at work to getting off work, right?"

"...Isn't your competitor acquired by you? Continue to grab the market with America Online."

"Isn't that what I'm doing? Besides, their paid chat groups are destined to be a dead end. I can't beat them in throwing money, so what can I do?"

Su Yehao looked lazy, closed his eyes, and was so comfortable that he was about to fall asleep.

His so-called "unpopularity" referred to the fact that there were not many teams starting businesses in the field of instant messaging. Occasionally, some could be seen, but they had not yet developed.

The strong were too strong, and the total market value of America Online was already close to 50 billion US dollars.

The weak were too weak, and they were all small teams that didn't know if they would have a tomorrow.

In this situation, tvt was having a great time. After coming to the United States for a week, with the blessing of advertising and traffic, the daily active users of tvt increased by more than 80,000, and the increase was still expanding. Word of mouth spread, attracting many new users.

Some users were still snatched from iCQ, which was equivalent to switching from the left hand to the right hand, and not flowing into the hands of outsiders.

The reason why the instant messaging market was not paid attention to was nothing more than the dark future. Even iCQ, a company with 7 million users, was not worth a fraction of the market value of Cisco and Yahoo. Attracting users was also particularly expensive, and there was no return in sight.

With this precedent, how could entrepreneurs not see it? Investment institutions also abandoned iCQ, and regarded it as a niche market that would die at any time.

In fact, America Online was not worth so much money just by relying on paid group chats.

The reason why the market value of this company was so surprisingly high was mainly supported by businesses such as online communities, online news, and information services. Nowadays, it claimed to have 20 million users, and was very close to advertisers, making people feel that there was a future.

In short, America Online was a large group, and the paid chat rooms that Su Yehao was paying attention to were only a small part of its many businesses. Separately, it was worth at most about 1.5 billion US dollars.

The ceiling was there, and it was particularly expensive to attract users, so it was no wonder that entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley did not dare to enter this industry.

The reason why iCQ achieved the accumulation of 7 million users with particularly simple functions was partly because no one was competing with it, and the space for users to choose was too small, so small that there was almost only iCQ before, and recently there was another tvt.

After Roger Cluyff took office, after the investigation, he only found a few suitable advertising spaces in his personal space. Any more would easily be annoying.

The disadvantages were obvious, and how to realize it was a problem.

Su Yehao had recently been sending people to look for suitable game development teams, and at the same time paying attention to search engines, browsers, video software, news websites, etc., in order to find a way to convert the customers accumulated by instant messaging software into company revenue through traffic diversion.

He didn't have a clue for a while, so Su Yehao wasn't in a hurry. Anyway, investment was the main thing, so he could hold on here.

The eighth day of arriving in Silicon Valley.

There was no grand strategy as imagined, and the company had nothing to do.

Hearing Nong Qingying say that she wanted to return to Hong Kong, Su Yehao also felt that it was meaningless to continue to live here, so he simply agreed to go back together...