A Mercedes S600 pulled over to the side of the road, and a short-haired woman in a trench coat stepped out.

This woman had blonde hair and looked to be around thirty-five years old. She carried a Hermès Kelly bag and wore high heels.

Her name was Danielle Kenning.

She had just jumped ship from a consulting firm on Wall Street last month to work for KOKO Ventures. A graduate of Columbia University Business School in New York, she had been working for ten years and now had an annual salary of $200,000, with the opportunity to earn bonuses on top of that.

A true female elite in the financial world, and quite beautiful to boot, she had helped Su Yehao close several projects in the past month alone.

However, Danielle Kenning was not in a good mood at the moment. She had been enjoying a party and chatting happily with a colleague when she was called away by the president of KOKO Ventures to help with some work.

It was after-hours, so it would be strange if she were in a good mood.

No matter where they were, employees always felt a deep-seated loathing for overtime work, especially in a small company with no reputation.

The fact that the company was located in a residential neighborhood was enough to explain a lot.

As she walked towards the door, the database engineer with the bushy beard inside quickly saw her through the yard lights and leaned against the window to look outside, excitedly saying, "Why is there a sexy woman at our door? Did someone fall in love?!"

"Wow, although she seems a bit older, I like this kind of temperament. She's my type," said Craig Silverstein, the technology director of BackRub, also leaning against the window with a smile.

The doorbell rang.

Larry Page went to open the door and asked, standing at the entrance, "Good evening, is my car blocking the road? Do you live..."

Danielle Kenning interrupted him and walked straight into the house.

She looked around and found the environment messy, with more than a dozen computers in the living room and pizza boxes on the sofa.

Sure enough, it was just a small company that didn't seem to have much of a future. There were startup teams like this all over Silicon Valley.

Her high heels clicked on the worn wooden floor. Danielle Kenning adopted a businesslike posture and said, "It's hard to imagine that my boss would be interested in your project. I'll give you ten minutes to change clothes, pack up, and come with me."

Undoubtedly, she was a particularly assertive woman.

Danielle Kenning's style was already very efficient. For example, she was the one in charge of negotiating the acquisition of the Iron Kong game company they had mentioned before.

At that time, the founder of Iron Kong game company, relying on the fact that the game had broken through 37,000 players, asked for a sky-high price of $7.4 million. Without saying a word, Danielle Kenning packed her things and left, and that afternoon she settled the other members of the startup team, almost turning the founder into a lone commander, and even potentially destroying that gorilla-themed level-breaking game, *Donkey Kong*.

With a little bit of maneuvering, she made the other party realize the gap between them and obediently accepted the acquisition price of $2.9 million.

First contact.

Larry Page didn't have much of a good impression of her, but a refined woman with temperament was always easier to forgive.

He didn't blame Danielle Kenning for barging into the house, but asked, "Who is interested in my project? Who is your boss? And how did you know I lived here? The company just moved more than a month ago, and the registered address is at..."

"The office in Stanford University, right? Never mind how I know. Hurry up and change clothes. I heard that you sent the project presentation materials to my boss today. The bosses of ICQ and TVT, he wants to meet you in person and hear your thoughts. Understand?"

Danielle Kenning was in a bad mood, but she also understood that with Su Yehao's usual style, he wouldn't be busy talking business late at night unless it was a big deal.

Originally, she thought that maybe there was a young and beautiful woman on the founding team, so she arranged the meeting place in a bar near Stanford University. But after seeing them, she realized that she was definitely overthinking it.

Larry Page hurriedly called Sergey Brin, and they each went upstairs to their rooms to change clothes.

Don't look at how many wealthy people there are in Silicon Valley, but for a small startup team, the opportunity to personally introduce a project to a super-rich man was definitely a rare stroke of luck.

As for Danielle Kenning, she looked at the particularly nerdy and bearded fatty and asked curiously, "Your company is working on a search engine, right? How many customers do you have?"

"...Eight thousand six hundred and something, seven hundred more than yesterday."

"..."

After hearing this, technology director Craig Silverstein barely suppressed the urge to strangle this colleague and hurriedly interjected to explain:

"Because we just created it more than a month ago, and we haven't started investing funds in external promotion. We want to polish the product to be more successful and strive to satisfy all users! The current users don't mean anything. We have a more scientific and mature algorithm patent. Yahoo seems too bad compared to it. They only know how to acquire some messy companies. I suspect that their CEO doesn't even know what the companies they acquired are used for. Anyway, Yahoo is still so inaccurate."

After hearing "algorithm patent," Danielle Kenning seemed to understand why Su Yehao was interested in it.

In Silicon Valley, patent advantage was a great weapon. It had the opportunity to be converted into a massive amount of wealth. Sometimes large companies would even be held back by the patents of small companies. Similar things were not uncommon.

She smiled slightly, her tone indifferent, and said, "If I remember correctly, my boss is now the seventh-largest shareholder of Yahoo, and Yahoo's CEO, Jerry Yang, went to play tennis with him last week. Maybe you can meet with Mr. Yang and talk about your opinions in person?"

"..."

Craig Silverstein's head was buzzing, feeling like he had run into the muzzle of a gun, and his whole life was bleak.

He hurriedly explained, "No, no, no, what I mean is that our search engine has more advantages, but it certainly can't be compared with a giant like Yahoo now. Since he is a Yahoo shareholder, isn't that even better? Your boss should know a lot about search engines. Our cooperation can produce an effect greater than one plus one equals two."

Danielle Kenning didn't care about his words.

She was just habitually maintaining a cold and creating a "difficult to talk to" persona.

She worked in venture capital and belonged to the capital side. If she was too gentle, it would be easy to suffer losses and be thought of as someone who could be taken advantage of, so it was better to be more assertive.

It had to be said that the effect was quite good, and several projects she had handled were done perfectly.

A few minutes later.

Larry and Sergey, who didn't have time to clean up carefully, ran downstairs in suits. One was wearing leather shoes barefoot, and the other's pants zipper was unzipped, and his shirt buttons were not buttoned.

If an internet business wants to succeed, it's inevitable to burn money in the early stages.

The two of them only had about $600,000 in startup funds in total. They couldn't do anything with it, and they were afraid of letting go of Su Yehao, this big money master.

Over at the bar.

When Su Yehao saw these two, he observed them carefully for a long time. They seemed a little familiar, especially Larry Page.

Sitting on the black sofa with fruit plates and drinks in front of him, Su Yehao didn't wait for them to speak before asking, "BackRub... why isn't your company called Google?"