Investing in a Legend
Yoo Jae-won read the report. “Next is the Silicon Valley investment report.”
ID Investment was known in Silicon Valley as an “angel.” It was an investment firm with an enormous war chest of five billion dollars. It had already spent 1.25 billion dollars on the Microsoft acquisition and burned through additional capital acquiring and investing in various technologies, yet it still held more than 3.5 billion dollars in reserves.
When Yoo Jae-won declared he would pour that capital into IT, and then actually followed through, startups across Silicon Valley that dreamed of becoming the next HP, Dell, or Apple cheered. They began knocking on ID Investment’s door with every kind of new technology. There was no need to travel all the way to the Manhattan headquarters; ID Investment had recently opened a branch right in Silicon Valley. From the moment it opened, the office had been bustling with investors chasing higher returns than banks could offer and founders desperate for funding.
Every time a founder seeking capital visited the branch, the staff had one mandatory task: prepare a report on the founder and their technology, then send it to the Manhattan headquarters. The headquarters would compile the reports and forward them to Yoo Jae-won, exactly as they had today. Nothing was omitted from the process. If headquarters spotted a promising technology, they would instruct the branch to investigate further. The Silicon Valley office could approve investments up to one hundred thousand dollars, Manhattan headquarters up to five hundred thousand, and anything larger required Yoo Jae-won’s personal sign-off.
“Over a hundred today, too?”
Reports on Silicon Valley investment trends arrived every Tuesday and Thursday. With the online workflow fully established, daily updates were technically possible, but Yoo Jae-won had limited them to twice a week because of his own packed schedule. As a result, each report contained a substantial number of items to review. Among Vincent Greenhill’s emails, the Silicon Valley investment trends report was by far the largest.
“Hmm.”
Yoo Jae-won scanned the list quickly. Silicon Valley startups sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain and vanished just as fast. Even after careful filtering, few of them struck him as particularly compelling.
“Huh?”
One entry caught his eye.
“Next Inc.?”
The name was strikingly similar to Nextcom, the company currently thriving in both Korea and the United States. At first glance it looked like someone had simply copied Nextcom’s success. Yet according to their founding dates, Nextcom had been established in 1990 while Next Inc. had begun in 1985. It was a full-service computer company that manufactured both hardware and its own operating system. Its flagship products were the NextStep operating system and the NextStation workstation.
What truly set Next Inc. apart, however, was its founder: Steve Jobs. He had been a first-generation Silicon Valley entrepreneur, an icon of his era, and the man widely regarded as the father of the smartphone. After being ousted from the very company he had built—Apple—he founded Next Inc. in 1985. The first products launched in 1988: high-performance machines powered by Motorola’s 68-series processors and equipped with a full eight megabytes of memory. Priced at an astronomical 6,500 dollars per unit, they never reached the mass market. Calling the launch a disaster would not have been an exaggeration.
The previous year the company had released the NextStation workstation—again, high-performance and high-priced. It was the very system Tim Berners-Lee had used while laying the foundations of the World Wide Web. Tim had eventually switched to an Egg PC because the NextStation’s popularity was so low. The only modest demand came from the personal workstation niche, which allowed the company to limp along.
Next Inc.’s fortunes had taken a sharp downturn with the arrival of the Egg PC, jointly developed by ID Technology and Sambo Computer. The Egg PC delivered nearly all the NextStation’s capabilities at a fraction of the price and looked far more appealing. Sales of the already niche NextStation collapsed. With the company in dire straits, Steve Jobs naturally turned to ID Investment’s Silicon Valley branch.
“Unbelievable.”
Steve Jobs still commanded enormous prestige, so the proposal he had submitted, along with the accompanying analysis, was quite lengthy. The final assessment from Manhattan headquarters, however, was a C grade. Since even a B was considered mediocre, a C was effectively a failing mark.
Steve Jobs was seeking ten million dollars. Headquarters had deemed the business plan unrealistic. The proposal centered on bolstering Pixar—the computer-graphics subsidiary he had acquired for ten million dollars—with new software and image-processing technology to break into fresh markets. That was precisely why headquarters had assigned the C. Pixar had yet to release a single notable work. While it produced computer-graphics systems and software, its track record was thin. Silicon Graphics remained the undisputed leader in the field, wielding even greater market dominance than ID Technology. The analysts concluded that Pixar stood little chance of making meaningful inroads. Pouring additional massive funding into computer graphics without a stable revenue stream looked less like a business plan and more like an expensive hobby. Hence the C grade.
If any other venture capitalist had submitted the same plan, it would never have reached Yoo Jae-won’s desk. Only because it came from Steve Jobs had it been forwarded at all.
“As expected—impressive.”
Yoo Jae-won’s reaction ran directly counter to headquarters’ analysis. Even if the vision was purely personal, he admired the foresight of preparing future revenue streams so early.
“This one gets approved immediately.”
It was not an investment in Next Inc. itself; it was an investment in Steve Jobs. Even if Next Inc. ultimately failed, ID Group could still extract valuable technology. NextStep, in particular, was a Unix-based operating system featuring a graphical interface driven by mouse input. Its developer-friendly environment implemented object-oriented programming in concrete form. The software-development efficiency was so high that the NextStation had survived for a full decade despite its steep price. The technology aligned perfectly with Android 1.0; acquiring and integrating it would pose no difficulty.
More importantly, the deal would open a direct line to Steve Jobs. If, as in the original timeline, Next Inc. closed its doors around 1995, what if Steve Jobs returned not to Apple but to ID Technology instead?
“Heh. Then Apple has no future.”
Microsoft had already been devoured. Without Apple as well, ID Group could dominate the dawn of smart devices in the early twenty-first century. The thought alone lifted his mood.
“Let’s do the signing ceremony together!”
As president of ID Investment, he could easily stand beside Steve Jobs for the handshake at the investment signing. Yoo Jae-won immediately marked the proposal “Approved” and sent it back to ID Investment, instructing them to schedule the ceremony at the earliest possible date.
He was about to add that sooner was better when he paused.
“Ah, the high-school equivalency exam is in April.”
Precisely April 21. He would have to travel up for the test, so that day was non-negotiable. He also needed to keep the five days before the exam clear for study. Even in his current state he was confident of passing, yet he clung to the old belief that every exam demanded one’s best effort. Clearing his schedule for focused preparation was therefore essential.
“That settles it.”
He added the note, hit send, and felt a surge of satisfaction at the prospect of meeting yet another legend after Tim Berners-Lee. Simply deciding to invest in Steve Jobs had made the day worthwhile.
The twenty-sixth was a temporary holiday for the local elections—the first in thirty years. Many companies still demanded employees come in despite the holiday. Yoo Jae-won, too young to vote, instructed every employee at the Yeoju factory and the Seoul office to stay home after casting their ballots and rest instead. Through his own account on Nextcom he posted messages encouraging voter turnout. Yet knowing the ruling Democratic Liberal Party was headed for a landslide victory left a bitter taste in his mouth. He was on friendly terms with President Roh and had received considerable consideration, but no amount of goodwill could make him warm to the old military-authoritarian faction.
The day passed. On the twenty-seventh the final results came in.
Yoo Jae-won’s mouth fell open as he watched the broadcast.
“What on earth…?”
In his previous life the ruling party had also won decisively, but not on this scale. Back then their elected candidates had numbered just over three thousand; now the figure had surged to 3,529. An enormous gale.
“What happened?”
He could not identify the variable. Even after the Nakdong River phenol-pollution scandal—an event that should have damaged the ruling party—the number of elected candidates had only grown.
“Don’t tell me… it’s because of me?”
Every scheduled scandal and windfall from the original timeline had occurred. The only variable large enough to sway a national election was himself. President Roh had used Yoo Jae-won and ID Group as the regime’s mascot, and Yoo Jae-won had not deliberately kept his distance. He had also paid an enormous amount in taxes. To the public, his success must have looked like the regime’s achievement—one hundred percent. With the national budget suddenly flush, the administration could promise to finally tackle long-delayed regional projects. It was entirely possible that the Blue House had funneled massive sums of election funds; the surplus was so large that diverting a portion would have been trivial.
“I only paid the taxes the law required, and now this is a problem.”
Though they could not say it openly, the opposition was almost certainly nursing deep resentment toward him.
“I need to rethink this.”
Yoo Jae-won realized it was time to consider support measures for an opposition party teetering on the brink of annihilation. If the Democratic Liberal Party and the president grew too powerful, they would eventually try to exert influence over him the same way they did with other conglomerates. Balance and checks were essential in politics; that was an immutable truth. Anything that raced forward without brakes was destined for catastrophe—and when the crash came, ordinary citizens would bear the full cost.
Yoo Jae-won’s thoughts grew heavier.