Chapter 49#

Regarding the establishment of the downstream factory, Chen Yuanming and Yan Qiaosen had some quite detailed discussions. Finally, they decided that Chen Yuanming would take the lead, with Professor Yan assisting, to find partners near Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen. In the early stage, they would set up a CD factory first. Later, when the VCD industry developed and MPEG-2 entered development, they would then cut into the framework of the chip factory. However, the specific details still needed to be communicated to Meng Lisheng, and the partners for the new factory must also be carefully selected. So what was reached today was just an intention, and later planning would require more effort.

After talking about business, it was already getting dark. This time, Professor Yan was the host, and the group went to a quite famous steakhouse nearby for dinner. However, although it was also a Michelin-starred restaurant, the dining atmosphere here was far from that of Wall Street. Suits and evening gowns were nowhere to be seen, nor were there those pretentious diners who were polite to the point of hypocrisy. Instead, groups of young people in jeans and T-shirts were seen in threes and fives. More than half of them wore heavy glasses frames and had messy hair comparable to bird’s nests. There was a casual atmosphere completely inconsistent with high-end restaurants, as if they had accidentally stumbled into the scene of a university sorority party.

Facing such a relaxed and comfortable dining environment, Chen Yuanming had some small emotions. Isn’t this surprising contrast between the two major gold rush holy lands on the east and west coasts of the United States an interesting reflection of American culture? In this noisy and cheerful restaurant, Chen Yuanming finished the delicious steak in front of him with a smile.

The next day, without calling Professor Yan again, Chen Yuanming began his own trip to Silicon Valley. His destination this time was not any well-known high-tech company, but the famous street located in Menlo Park, Sand Hill Road.

Walking on this road, which was only two or three kilometers long, buildings of various heights came into view. Unlike the concrete jungle full of skyscrapers on the East Coast, the buildings here were mostly soothing and comfortable, with very rich vegetation and green spaces. It seemed that what they were facing was not the great venture capital center known as the “Wall Street of the West Coast”, nor the financial giants who decided the fate of Silicon Valley, but a villa area centered on leisure.

There were not too many hurried office workers on the road. Instead, one could vaguely see some young people dressed in typical “Silicon Valley” style, carrying their materials, crossing the street excitedly or dejectedly, picking up their small broken cars next to those most famous luxury cars, and leaving this adventurer’s paradise with dreams or shattered hopes. Chen Yuanming smiled and didn’t delay too long on the road, walking straight to his goal. He chose not a large venture capital firm like Sequoia Capital or KPCB this time, but an angel investment club with a very good reputation in the industry.

Speaking of angel investment clubs, many people might feel confused. In fact, for the venture capital industry, this is the starting point of venture capital and the real raw ore. Those small companies, cooperative teams, or individuals in the start-up stage may not even have the most basic start-up funds, except for the genius ideas in their heads. What they need is not huge financing of millions or tens of millions, but a simple goal: to survive.

And angel investors target such pitiful small groups. These industry insiders with excellent vision see the potential brought by new technologies through rough business plans and conduct the first round of investment in entrepreneurs—ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. Through this money, they raise those stars of tomorrow. When the company matures day by day, they either conduct a second round of financing or go public directly to cash out, obtaining high profits of more than a hundred times.

While obtaining unimaginable profits, these investors also saved those young people who had dreams but were unable to implement them, so they were naturally crowned with the title of “angel”. It’s just that wanting to be an angel sometimes involves higher risks. After all, there are still many times when they misjudge and throw money down the drain. Therefore, angel investment clubs are very different from real big venture capital firms in terms of funding sources and are often not favored by large foundations.

Walking into this building that looked like a garden villa, a beautiful receptionist came up to greet him. Being able to work as a receptionist, she was naturally quite perceptive in dealing with people. With just one glance, this beauty realized that the Chinese young man in front of her was not an entrepreneur truly seeking investment—after all, a well-fitting elegant custom suit + sunglasses bodyguard was not something those poor tech geeks could possess—but looked like a real wealthy man. Was this an investor?

“Sir, is there anything I can do for you?” The beauty’s appearance was impeccable, and her voice was crisp and pleasant, with sincere friendliness.

Chen Yuanming raised the corner of his mouth slightly, “Yes, I want to do some investment business recently. I heard that this is an investment team with a very good reputation in the industry, so I came to understand the situation.”

“Aaron Investment Company has the most mature angel investment team and information channels in the industry.” The smile on the receptionist’s face became sweeter, “Please wait a moment, let me contact Mr. Jonathan, a senior partner of the company. He will give you the most detailed answer.”

After sitting on the comfortable leather sofa next to him for only a few minutes, a blond man in his early 30s walked down quickly from the second floor. When he saw Chen Yuanming, he showed a huge smile, “Wow, you must be the Mr. Chen that Susie mentioned. You are even younger than I imagined. I am Evan Jonathan of Aaron Investment, one of the senior partners. Please come this way, we can discuss the relevant matters of angel investment in detail.”

Led by this attentive partner, the two walked into a reception room at the corner of the second floor. Unlike the warm and pleasant atmosphere of other rooms on the first floor, this reception room had a distinct Wall Street style, simple and smooth, but full of low-key luxury. After sitting down on the sofa chair, hand-ground Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee was placed on the table, and a pleasant fragrance wafted to the nose. On the opposite wall, three rows of a total of more than 20 LOGOs were decorated, showing the successful investment projects of Aaron Investment, some of which were even familiar to Chen Yuanming.

Jonathan was a quite talkative professional manager with a natural gift of gab. He didn’t look like a typical Silicon Valley engineer or a Wall Street financier, but rather a bit like a senior lawyer. He introduced the current status of Aaron Investment Company to Chen Yuanming in detail and systematically. This was a personal joint investment group, usually with 8-12 investors. More than half were executives or founders of well-known companies in Silicon Valley, and the rest were ordinary partners with a strong interest in high technology. They were responsible for screening the projects submitted daily, finding those projects that other partners were not very interested in but had potential, and then raising funds, contacting financiers or wealthy people to inject capital. If successful, they would charge high commissions.

Jonathan was the latter, specifically responsible for fundraising. Potential clients like Chen Yuanming had always been his biggest goal. This time, one actually came directly to his door, which naturally made him overjoyed. Although the venture capital industry in Silicon Valley is not unpopular at present, venture capital firms often target developing companies that need secondary financing, rather than poor and high-risk fledglings. Aaron has also faced the dilemma of lack of funds for a long time.

Listening carefully to Mr. Jonathan’s introduction, Chen Yuanming roughly familiarized himself with the basic structure of this company. Currently, his network in Silicon Valley was still very narrow. Even with Professor Yan’s help, it was difficult to find projects truly worth investing in. So having such an intermediary agency was simply wonderful.

After the introduction finally came to an end, Chen Yuanming smiled and nodded, “Nice company, very similar to what I imagined. But there is one thing I want to ask clearly. Can an investor like me who is not from Silicon Valley directly participate in project selection and choose the plans I like, instead of entrusting them in the form of a fund?”

Jonathan was stunned, but still answered dutifully, “Mr. Chen, I understand your desire to control the flow of funds yourself. This can be said to be the initial goal of every angel investor. But high technology is not like other traditional industries. Not every sum of money invested can get a satisfactory return. So if you choose projects yourself, you will face greater risks.”

Chen Yuanming’s smile deepened a bit, “Since I came to play venture capital, naturally I want to get enough fun from this kind of adventure. So there is no need to worry about this. I have complete control over the funds on hand. Whether I lose or earn is within my tolerance.”

Jonathan blinked, not letting the bitter smile at the bottom of his heart surface on his cheeks. He had now discovered that this young man might be a rich second generation who had obtained a large amount of inheritance or start-up funds through some means, impatient with the rigid fund operation mode of Wall Street, and wanted to come to Silicon Valley to try his luck and squander his ancestral property by the way. However, the other party’s purpose was not something he needed to worry about. No matter what kind of investment, they welcomed it at present.

“Of course, Mr. Chen.” When he spoke again, Jonathan had already put on an appropriate tone of appreciation, “Risk is indeed where the fun of this kind of investment lies. If you choose projects yourself, we will only charge a commission of 5% of the total investment amount each year, and a 2% profit share. But similarly, you will have to bear the investment risk alone.”

“A very fair deal.” Chen Yuanming clapped his hands lightly, “Then I’ll invest two million first in the initial stage to see what surprising things are here.”

Two million! Jonathan blinked again, barely maintaining the smile on his face. The current venture capital amount of Aaron Company generally starts from one hundred thousand and ends at five hundred thousand. Individual investments exceeding one million are rare. This sum of money alone is enough to support the investment of at least 4 and at most more than a dozen small companies. And this is still “initial stage”. Does the young man in front of him know what he is doing?!

Taking a deep breath, Jonathan twitched his slightly stiff cheeks and revealed a slightly awkward smile. “Then does this money need your lawyer to approve the payment, or…”

“Oh, no need to trouble with that.” Chen Yuanming sat up straight, took out a small notebook from his pocket, scribbled a few strokes on it, then tore off that slip of paper and handed it out.

A bank check with a face value of 2 million US dollars appeared in front of Jonathan. This time he didn’t even blink, maintaining the still stiff smile, and stood up politely, “I will immediately notify the company’s lawyer and finance department to verify your check and sign the cooperation agreement.”

After speaking, he turned and left quickly, although it looked a bit like fleeing in panic. Chen Yuanming shook his head slightly and placed the check on the coffee table in front of him.

After a while, the contract was brought out. After carefully checking the content on it, Chen Yuanming signed his name. The check was also verified to be correct, and the agreement was formally established.

Mr. Jonathan, who had recovered his calm demeanor, handed the backup contract to Chen Yuanming with a genuine smile on his face. “So Mr. Chen, which aspect of projects are you more interested in? We receive project applications from all states across the country every day, sometimes as many as dozens a month. Since you want to select projects personally, we will naturally hand over the things you are interested in to you.”

“Oh, personal computers. I’m quite interested in computers.” Chen Yuanming answered truthfully.

The expression on Mr. Jonathan’s face stiffened again, “Uh, projects related to computers are actually a hot topic recently, so there will be very, very many such letters. To avoid unnecessary trouble, you’d better define a rough scope so that we can prepare relevant materials.”

“Is that so? Then let’s go with software and hardware related things.” This time the answer was even crisper.

Jonathan couldn’t speak for a moment. After a few seconds, he seemed to nod resignedly, “Tomorrow I will send the relevant project plans to the hotel where you are staying. After you select the projects, we will send someone to contact those companies to further discuss investment matters.”

Chen Yuanming certainly had no objection to this answer. However, the next day, when he saw the mountain of document boxes in the guest room, he couldn’t help but smile bitterly. He did have selfish motives and wanted to take advantage of his foresight to select those companies or projects that might be profitable in the future, but definitely not like this, seven large cardboard boxes full of project agreements. The power of popularity is indeed infinite…

However, even if the task was more arduous than he imagined, Chen Yuanming still did not shrink back, but began to read through them one by one. What he wanted to do now was something similar to picking up leaks in an antique street. Massive selection was naturally unavoidable. But reading these strange project plans one by one was really a headache. Most of these little guys who sent plans only had passion and dreams. They had no mature plans, no specific business goals, and even lacked vision for the future. They lived completely for interest. Even if there were countless wonderful ideas here, the terrible and grotesque way of description made people unable to trust easily.

Like searching for a gold mine in a garbage dump, Chen Yuanming spent three whole days finding 3 or 4 things that might be useful from this pile of plans. One was an idea about a universal serial bus for computers. In layman’s terms, it was a plan specifically researching the USB interface. One was an instant messaging software similar to a low-level version of ICQ, but the current framework was very sloppy, not yet truly formed, and could only operate short-range under the DOS system. There were also two rough program designs, but both were based on the C language, which was still very trendy at present, and had a certain degree of compatibility.

Except for the USB interface project, the other three plans had not even established a complete prototype, so they naturally would not be favored by any investors. And USB itself required a standardized interface jointly agreed upon and formulated by several major computer manufacturers. Small individual teams would not be able to succeed. However, based on the prospects of these ideas, Chen Yuanming was still willing to give it a try and eventually kept them all.

Flipping through seven boxes of materials was very slow, but eventually, it would be finished. When he saw the last box and was about to breathe a sigh of relief, a strange folder suddenly appeared in front of Chen Yuanming. It was a specially tailored large notebook. The cover was marked with the words “Silicon & Synapse” in a very decorative font, and next to it were hand-drawn images of three short and stout Vikings.

Chen Yuanming frowned and patiently opened the loose-leaf binder. Inside was a brief introduction about games, the current progress of “The Lost Vikings” developed by the company, the revenue obtained from the two games developed previously (it wasn’t written clearly here, probably not much), and the idea for the next game. The entire plan was full of fanaticism mixed with artists and tech geeks. As a business plan, it was a complete failure, but as a game introduction, it was somewhat interesting. However, PC games had not yet begun to emerge in these years, so the possibility of this plan being appreciated was minimal.

However, when he turned to the end of the page, Chen Yuanming suddenly opened his eyes wide. In the last few pages of the plan for the next game, a real-time strategy game was described. There was not too much detailed content. The story outline was probably about a battle between humans and orcs, with a few rough character design sketches. Only at the end of that text, a not-so-conspicuous tentative name was added: Warcraft.

Warcraft?! With a whoosh, Chen Yuanming jumped up from the sofa. That Warcraft?!!

Hurriedly flipping the plan book back to the cover and staring at that extremely weird company name, Chen Yuanming grinned. Whether it is it or not, won’t I know if I see it with my own eyes?