Business Trip (4)
Yohanbel, the representative, looked at me and said, “Wasn’t it Snow Crash that first invaded our territory? We asked you to withdraw the overlapping service, but you refused.”
“There are plenty of companies offering similar services, aren’t there? If that were really the reason, you’d have to sanction half the industry.”
Smartphones came with default apps installed by the manufacturer, like the mail app and the maps app. That didn’t mean no one else was allowed to release the same kind of app.
The same went for cloud services.
When it came down to it, data was still data. As long as the basic function was the same, there was nothing stopping similar services from appearing.
And yet they singled out Snow Crash for pressure anyway because…
“Or is it because Snow Crash is simply better?”
“……”
He didn’t deny it.
This was a man who had risen to the position of CEO of the world’s largest cloud company in his thirties.
At that age, with that level of success, he had more than earned the right to be called a genius wherever he went.
They said the world only showed you as much as you knew, and as a genius himself, he must have understood better than anyone just how extraordinary Sid really was.
From a customer’s point of view, it was just a matter of finding the service easier and better to use. But the developers who examined the program must have been stunned.
Maybe he thought you could simply build the same thing or improve on it, but if that were really so easy, why had everyone else failed to do it until now?
He had probably felt a severe threat and was responding this aggressively because of it.
Yohanbel leaned slightly forward and said, “I’ll be frank. We’re very interested in Snow Crash.”
At least he was honest.
Since I’d already heard as much, I gave a small nod.
“I heard you separately made a recruitment offer to CEO Lucas.”
He didn’t deny that either.
“If that was rude of us, I apologize.”
I waved it off. “No, it’s fine. Headhunting talent is perfectly normal. The choice is up to the person involved, after all.”
I could say that because I was certain Sid wouldn’t leave.
His stake alone was a full 30 percent, and Mimir was practically his own extension. No matter how good the terms were, there was no way he’d walk away from the company.
Which meant the remaining option was…
“We’re also willing to acquire Snow Crash.”
When a dominant company faced a powerful new rival, there were only two ways to deal with it.
Eliminate it before it grew any larger, or buy it and keep it under your control.
Right now, the biggest players in Silicon Valley were the global IT giants.
They already had massive reserves of capital. Some had even created in-house investment arms, swallowing up promising startups and expanding their empires without limit.
“You wouldn’t need to transfer all your shares.”
“How much are you asking for?”
“Fifty-one percent would be enough.”
“And the price?”
“Including the rights to Mimir, we’re thinking thirty-five billion dollars.”
So the implied value of the entire company was seventy billion dollars.
I gave a wry smile. “That’s lower than I expected. Snow Crash is currently valued at one hundred billion dollars.”
I’d expected them to lowball us, but this was a bit much.
Rich people really were the worst.
“That’s under the assumption that the company keeps growing steadily. And it’s still far higher than the price Continue Capital paid to acquire it. As I understand it, you still haven’t finished paying the purchase price.”
The fact that he knew even that much meant they’d gathered a serious amount of information about us.
“Even this would be the largest merger and acquisition in AMZ history. It’s not a bad offer. If you accept it, ZWS will actively support Snow Crash. The company’s value will grow several times over from where it is now.”
If a giant corporation acquired you, you could grow under stable support.
Even if you sold 51 percent for thirty-five billion dollars, if the remaining shares rose in value to one hundred billion, it would still be a very profitable deal.
That was why people often sold equity cheaply on purpose to gain the synergy.
I asked him, “Let me ask one thing. Is it Snow Crash you want, or Sid Lucas? If CEO Lucas leaves, do the acquisition terms stay the same?”
Yohanbel said it as if it were only natural. “The condition is that CEO Lucas works here for seven years.”
“I see.”
After that, they would probably try to bind him with all kinds of stock options and similar terms. The so-called golden chain.
ZWS was Snow Crash’s most important partner.
There was no need to make a scene here, but…
“I appreciate the offer, but I must decline.”
Apparently he hadn’t expected me to reject him so directly, because Yohanbel’s expression stiffened.
“Why?”
“Because our goals are different.”
If all I wanted was success in the cloud market, being acquired by ZWS might have been the smarter move. But what Sid wanted was a metaverse in which every cloud was connected.
If AMZ acquired Snow Crash and then changed the business direction, AMZ would become the leading player in the metaverse market that was soon to open.
After all that trouble, I had no intention of doing them any favors.
If anyone was going to eat, I was going to eat the whole thing myself.
Yohanbel said in a hard voice, “You should think carefully. No matter how brilliant a genius is, there are obvious limits to what they can do alone.”
His tone was courteous, but the content was little different from a warning.
“The way you say that makes me think you still don’t understand Sid very well.”
He looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Sid isn’t just a genius.”
“Oh?”
“He’s one of the greatest geniuses in human history.”
“……”
He looked a little taken aback.
No matter how I said it now, he still wouldn’t understand. He would only understand once he saw the world Sid created.
Yohanbel smiled. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that last answer. The sanctions will proceed as scheduled. That may change your mind. Come back and see me then.”
He was full of confidence.
And that confidence didn’t feel like empty bravado, because ZWS’s dominance in the cloud market was absolute.
I nodded. “Understood. I’ll see you again soon.”
My mind wasn’t going to change then, either.
But his might.
* * *
After finishing the meeting in Seattle, I moved on to Silicon Valley.
And the moment I got off the plane, I headed straight for Snow Crash.
This was my first visit since the acquisition.
For now, it was only the so-called largest startup in America and the fourth-largest cloud company in the U.S. cloud industry, but within ten years it would be a company with the largest market capitalization in the world.
Just thinking that this company belonged to me made me feel oddly proud.
The office was the same, but the staff had changed a lot.
We had let go of a large number of people who had followed Rolf Buchi and Alex Preston, and hired new faces in their place.
That caused a brief period of confusion, but things had since stabilized.
The headcount had also grown by about twenty.
Unlike Korea, where young people were struggling with unemployment, Silicon Valley was suffering from a labor shortage.
The IT sector was growing explosively, which meant the number of jobs was increasing, but the number of available talents was limited.
As a result, competition for talent was fierce across the board, from startups to conglomerates, and developers’ salaries had soared into the stratosphere.
In Silicon Valley, if you earned one hundred thousand dollars a year, people practically treated you like a charity case.
Well, housing and living costs had risen right along with it.
Fortunately, Snow Crash had been able to secure talent relatively easily.
That was thanks to the spread of Sid’s genius, which had made a lot of developers want to work with him.
“Hyung!”
As soon as I walked inside, a young man in a tracksuit and worn-out Crocs greeted me warmly.
His curly brown hair was tousled, and freckles still dotted his face.
His name was Sid Lucas.
The CEO of Snow Crash, and the world’s greatest genius developer.
“Have you been well?”
“Yes.”
“I heard you barely go home and just eat and sleep at the company?”
The office had sleeping rooms, showers, a gym, and everything else, so it wasn’t exactly hard to stay there. Still, it couldn’t have been better than resting at home.
“There’s nothing worth going home for anyway. Work is more fun.”
“……”
For a genius to live that diligently.
I thought I’d spent my own twenties drinking myself silly and running around town.
“I watched your big performance, Hyung.”
“Performance?”
Sid was curious and kept asking questions, and I explained the situation one piece at a time. It wasn’t exactly an exciting story, but Sid seemed to enjoy it immensely.
“Oh! Do you want to see the new program I made this time?”
“What is it?”
“It’s a program that finds the cause when a bug appears. Before, you had to comb through the code line by line, but with this, you can find the exact code that caused the bug and fix it right away.”
“Oh…”
Someone’s job was about to disappear because of this program, too.
Then again, if it was really this easy to make, why hadn’t other developers built it already?
Sid showed me all sorts of other things as well.
“When on earth did you develop all this?”
“I just made them when I was bored and not working.”
“……”
Was this the same thing as saying he doodled on a napkin and accidentally produced a masterpiece?
I was glad I wasn’t a programmer. If I heard someone say they’d made something like this just to kill time, I would’ve wanted to quit on the spot.
As Sid kept trying to show off all his creations, I finally said, “There’s something I need to talk about.”
We moved to a meeting room.
“You turned down the request to withdraw the overlapping service, didn’t you?”
Sid glanced at me nervously. “Yes. Was I not supposed to refuse?”
I shook my head. “No, you did well.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You’re the CEO, aren’t you?”
Apparently he hadn’t expected me to say that, because Sid looked at me in surprise.
“Why are you reacting like that?”
“I thought you were going to scold me.”
“I told you when I bought the company. I’d let you do whatever you wanted.”
At that, Sid’s eyes widened.
To be fair, how many investment firms said things like that and actually kept their word?
“I was expecting the Big Three to push back from the start. The problem is that the timing came earlier than expected, and the pressure is stronger than I thought. I was actually on my way back from meeting the ZWS representative about that.”
“What did he say?”
I summarized the conversation I’d had with Yohanbel.
Sid’s eyes went wide.
“Ah! You’re not seriously going to hand over the company, are you?”
“What do you think? Do you want to go to ZWS?”
There were advantages to being acquired by a giant corporation, like stable support.
Sid shook his head without even a second of hesitation.
“I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“They’d be telling me what to do from above, wouldn’t they? There’d be a bunch of idiots over there too. The CEO alone is an idiot.”
“……”
How many people did that leave, by his standards, who weren’t idiots?
In any case, Sid absolutely hated being interfered with. No matter how much money they offered, he had no intention of working under someone else.
I nodded. “Then don’t worry about anything else and keep doing what you’ve been doing.”
“Is that really okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll take full responsibility, so just trust me.”
Sid smiled and answered, “I’ll trust you, Hyung.”
I wasn’t saying that without any plan.
If I remembered correctly, some event would happen within the next few days.
And if that event took place, then the current situation would be resolved far more easily than expected.
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