Raise My Stake (1)
David understood what I meant immediately.
"So this is the time?"
"Yes. Change doesn’t happen gradually. At a certain point, it erupts all at once, almost like an explosion. Right now, the industry’s paradigm is shifting. And whenever change comes, opportunity comes with it."
"So whether we seize that opportunity or miss it will decide our fate from here on out."
I nodded.
"The future will arrive faster than anyone expects. That means we need to secure the companies that will become essential to it as quickly as possible."
"And one of them is Cooloud?"
"Not one of them. The one."
Because I knew the future, I could say that with certainty.
"So no matter what it takes, you mean to buy it."
"Yes. If it works, the wealth it’ll bring will be beyond imagination."
David gave a disbelieving laugh.
"You’re talking about a hostile M&A without a single share?"
"Exactly."
After thinking for a moment, he shook his head.
"When you spend enough time in the financial markets, you meet a lot of people who spout ridiculous nonsense. Most of them have no real ability, but their dreams are enormous."
"What do you think I am?"
"Honestly? When I first heard you say you were going to acquire Cooloud, I thought it was nonsense. The executives had no intention of selling, and Continue Capital didn’t have the money to buy it."
"And now?"
David looked at me.
"Then let’s do it."
After that, David and I discussed our strategy going forward.
"In negotiations, the side that feels the pinch loses."
And the side that was feeling the pinch here was me.
The other side had no intention of selling, while I was the one trying to buy. Even if the price climbed several times higher than it was now, it wouldn’t be strange at all.
So I had to make them the ones who felt uneasy, not me.
Once our discussion was over, I called Syd.
"Can you come by for a minute?"
[Yes. I’ll head to the hotel right away.]
Syd dropped his work and rushed over to the hotel.
"Is it okay for you to leave in the middle of work?"
"It’s fine. What’s going on?"
"I looked into what you told me."
"About what?"
"That Rolf doesn’t seem to have developed Minerva himself."
Syd’s eyes widened.
"Really? So what did you find?"
"Take a look at this."
I showed him Jason’s laptop. The moment Syd saw the program saved in the cloud, he went pale.
"Huh!"
"You recognize it?"
"Of course. It’s an early version of Minerva."
He knew it instantly, just as I’d expected.
"Where did you get this?"
"Look at this too."
I then showed him the emails and messenger exchanges between Jason Kim and Rolf Buchi.
"Damn it! I knew it! So it really was made by someone else! Figures. Where is this guy now?"
"He’s dead."
I told Syd everything I had found out so far.
"So that’s why nobody ever said anything about it."
"That’s right."
Syd said in a heated voice,
"Wow. I knew he was an idiot, but I never expected him to be this kind of trash."
"You already knew Rolf hadn’t developed it himself."
At my words, Syd shook his head.
"Still, I thought he at least played some part in development, or maybe bought it from someone. I never imagined he’d steal a dead friend’s program and claim he made it himself. And now he still struts around bragging that he developed Minerva whenever he gets the chance."
It wasn’t unusual for developers to study someone else’s program and build something similar.
It was no different from the flood of me-too products in the restaurant industry.
But stealing a dead friend’s program and presenting it as your own was something entirely different. If that ever came out, his career would be effectively finished.
After cursing Rolf for a while, Syd asked me,
"So who owns the copyright to that program now?"
"Originally, Jason Kim’s wife did."
"And now?"
"I bought it."
Syd blinked in shock.
"You bought Minerva?"
"Yep. It’s mine now."
Syd looked at me and asked,
"What are you going to do with it? You’re not planning to sell it to Cooloud, are you?"
"What do you think?"
"You should tell people, obviously. Make Rolf pay for it."
"Cooloud’s stock will crash. You okay with that?"
"I was going to quit anyway."
"If you leave now, you’ll have to give up your stock options, won’t you?"
The shares Syd held were worth a full 5 percent.
Even if he sold them right away, they’d be worth more than 300 billion won. A normal person would never dream of walking away from money like that.
"I don’t care. It’s better than working with trash like that."
Syd made no effort to hide his contempt and disgust.
Come to think of it, when the incident first broke, he’d shouted that if Alex and Rolf didn’t leave the company, he would.
The developers and the other shareholders had all backed Syd, and in the end, the two men, unable to withstand the pressure, stepped down as co-CEOs.
Whether they still had some sense of shame or were just worried the shareholders would revolt, I didn’t know, but part of the settlement money was paid out by Rolf using his own shares.
In any case, since Syd was saying he wanted to quit, the conversation became a lot easier.
"I’ve got a plan that’s good for me."
"What is it?"
After hearing me out, Syd tilted his head.
"Huh! If we do that, I might have to keep working with those idiots."
"Don’t worry. I’m going to acquire Cooloud and kick Alex and Rolf out."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I’ll restore Minerva to its original name, Mimir, and make you CEO."
"Me? Why?"
"So you can do whatever you want. For a start, how about changing Cooloud’s name to Snow Crash?"
"Oh! I like that."
I looked at Syd and asked,
"Can you help me?"
As if there was no need to think about it, Syd nodded.
"Sure. I’ll do it."
He didn’t even ask how I planned to pull off the acquisition. It seemed he assumed I would succeed no matter what.
"You believe me?"
"Yes. I do."
"Why?"
Syd answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Because you spotted an idiot at a glance. Because you like Zombienado. Because everyone else was fooled by Rolf, but you listened to me and found the truth. A person like that is worth believing."
Cooloud maintained a co-CEO structure under Alex Preston and Rolf Buchi.
From the company’s earliest days, the division of labor between the two had been clear.
Alex Preston handled finance, investment, publicity, and securing client companies, while Rolf Buchi was in charge of development and personnel.
In other words, Alex took care of everything outside the company, and Rolf handled everything inside it. The two of them cooperated smoothly, each staying within his own territory.
When Alex relayed what the clients wanted, Rolf would pass it to the development team and make it happen.
However unreasonable the request, they always managed to solve it by the deadline, and that in turn kept the clients satisfied. Then, all at once, trouble appeared.
When Rolf checked his email, he was so shocked that he called for Syd at once.
"What is this?"
Syd, who arrived in his usual worn-out jeans and Crocs dragging along behind him, answered with complete calm.
"You can see what it is. A resignation letter. It’s not strange, is it? It was my first time writing one, so I asked some of the other employees for help."
"You’re quitting Cooloud?"
"Yes."
Rolf tried to keep a calm expression, but inside he was thrown into confusion.
He had never imagined a situation like this.
He had hired Syd, who had been little more than a snot-nosed kid, and kept him working there for more than four years. During all that time, Syd had never once shown any dissatisfaction.
"Why are you quitting?"
Syd answered casually.
"Because they said they’d start a company for me."
"Who on earth said that?"
"The people who came to the company last time. I think they said they were Continue Capital?"
"What...?"
Rolf suddenly recalled the Asian man who had come looking for an investment and left after calling him an idiot.
Those bastards recruited Syd? Wait. Don’t tell me...
Had they approached him from the start planning to take Syd away?
"Y-you believe what they’re saying?"
"Yes. After hearing them out, they seemed serious about expanding into the cloud business. They also said they were considering acquiring other companies right now, so I recommended a few that looked useful to me."
“...”
Rolf saw himself as the head and Syd as the hands and feet.
In reality, Syd had done the work of both the head and the hands and feet, but at the very least, that was how Rolf saw it.
Just as a person considers the results of a tool he used to be his own, Rolf naturally treated the results produced through Syd as his own.
And now that tool was in danger of disappearing.
What happens if Syd is gone?
If a computer you were using broke down, you simply replaced it with another. Could Syd be replaced by another person the same way?
Of course not.
Any other employee could be replaced. Syd, however, was an exception in every sense.
"You really mean to leave the company?"
"Yes. They said they’d start a company for me."
"Running a company isn’t easy. There’s more to worry about than development."
"Ah! They said they’d take care of all that stuff over there. Apparently I’d only have to do development."
Whatever Syd had been told, one thing was clear: his mind was made up. He was going to leave Cooloud and start his own company.
"You know that if you quit now, you’ll have to give up your 5 percent stake, right?"
"Sure, fine. It’s not that much anyway. Continue Capital said they’d pay me several times more."
At this rate, he really would quit and walk away. Rolf had to hold him back somehow.
"How much did they offer you?"
"They said that with my skill, I should be getting four or five times what I’m making now. They said I’d been working for peanuts all this time."
Rolf felt the bile rise in his throat.
"Do you think so too?"
Syd answered without hesitation.
"Yes. After hearing that, it does feel like my share is too small."
"What...?"
"It’s true, though. I do all the work, and I only get 5 percent."
"..."
Rolf still couldn’t quite make sense of the situation. Then again, Syd had never cared much about money until now.
And now, all of a sudden, he was demanding his share.
"Is there anything you want from the company? A higher salary, maybe?"
As if he’d been waiting for the question, Syd said at once,
"I’m fine keeping my salary as it is. What I want is more stock."
"How much?"
"Fifteen percent."
"What!?"
With his current 5 percent, adding another 15 would bring him to a full 20 percent.
Just last time, Redstone had offered $18 billion to buy a 20 percent stake. And now this kid wanted a stake worth three-quarters of that for free?
Rolf wore an expression of complete disbelief.
"Isn’t that a ridiculous demand?"
Rather than waste words, Syd simply nodded.
"I guess you’re right. Maybe I should take investment and start my own company after all. Thanks for everything up to now."