Hiring Staff
When I first regressed, I thought everything would fall into place easily enough, but once I actually started bumping into reality, I found it wasn’t nearly so forgiving.
First, I didn’t know everything that would happen in the future.
Unless I’d lived through something myself, I had only ever seen it in articles, so I didn’t know the details behind the scenes. And more often than not, what was reported and what was true weren’t the same thing at all.
Second, even when I did know something, it wasn’t easy to convince other people how I knew it.
Take the Bridge World Airlines engine explosion, for example. The reason I’d been able to persuade anyone was because I could say I’d been on that plane and heard something strange with my own ears. If I’d tried to warn them over the phone, I would have been arrested on the spot and treated like a terrorist.
Third, even if I knew the future and could convince other people of it, making it real was another matter entirely.
What was the point of having a great opportunity if I didn’t have the money to act on it?
The board was set. Now all I needed was capital.
Raising hundreds of billions of dollars right away was impossible, but I at least needed enough to cover a deposit. To do that, I’d have to invest what I already had and grow it.
And conveniently, there was a good opportunity to invest in right now.
“I’d like to hire some staff. Do you know anyone?”
David thought for a moment before answering.
“I have a few former teammates from my time at Victory Investment. A couple of them have moved on to other firms, but some are still taking a break.”
He had not only talent, but character as well.
Back in my first life, when David joined Shark Management, quite a few of the employees he’d worked with at Victory Investment followed him there.
His colleagues’ support had probably played no small part in the strong results he produced.
“Good. Ask them if they’d be interested in some side work.”
“What sort of terms are you thinking?”
“One week to ten days. Tell them I’ll pay one hundred thousand dollars.”
“I’ll look into it.”
David sent out texts and made calls in all directions.
About two hours later, he told me, “Three of them can start right away.”
I took a look at the information on the candidates.
A white man, a Black man, and a Hispanic woman.
I clicked my tongue.
Just their academic backgrounds were enough to blind me. NYU in accounting, Stanford in mathematics, Yale Business School. Korea University’s economics department didn’t even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.
“Are they all good at their jobs?”
“I’ll stand behind them.”
“That’s enough for me. Let’s hire them.”
David glanced at me and asked, “Would it be all right if I took a trip to New York?”
“To meet them in person?”
“That too. But I’d also like to see my daughter’s face.”
His daughter was currently hospitalized in New York. Even if he called and video-chatted with her every day, of course he’d still want to see her with his own eyes.
The look on his face said he wanted to run there this instant.
What a hopeless daughter doting fool.
“Go ahead.”
David nodded at once.
“I’ll be back within two days.”
* * *
David flew out, and I was left alone in unfamiliar American territory.
I was bored sitting around in the hotel, so I decided to go sightseeing in San Francisco. Sid was on leave too, having handed in his resignation, so he came along.
If this had been my first life, I’d probably have been working myself to the bone at a securities firm. Instead, I was touring America with a genius who would help shape the world in the years to come.
It suddenly reminded me of the time he’d visited Korea. He’d been invited to the Blue House, met the president one-on-one, and powerful politicians and business leaders had lined up just to see him.
Back in my first life, I wouldn’t even have had the nerve to speak to someone like that, yet here I was, casually calling him hyung and treating him like a younger brother. When I thought about it, it was obvious: whether it was a person or a company, you had to invest in undervalued blue-chip assets.
The weather was chilly, but the sun was pouring down hard.
“It’s been a while since I was outside. When did it get this cold?”
Sid was wearing only a T-shirt, with no shoes on his feet except Crocs. I dragged him into a nearby store before he froze to death and bought him a padded jacket.
Unlike New York, with its dense forest of skyscrapers, San Francisco was mostly low-rise buildings.
The reason was weak ground and the risk of earthquakes.
With the San Andreas Fault running beneath the city, tremors really did happen from time to time.
Come to think of it, I’d once read a novel set in San Francisco where a massive earthquake hit.
The protagonist had been running around trying to stop it because he knew it was coming... what was the title again?
We sat in a cafe and drank coffee.
Just sitting there watching people pass by made it clear all over again that this was a city where all kinds of races lived side by side.
Sid ate cake as he said, “There’s a technology you absolutely need if you want to build the metaverse.”
“VR?”
“Exactly. Decades have passed since computers first appeared, and yet the input and output devices are still basically the same. Input is keyboard and mouse, output is the monitor. Smartphones changed to touch, but the mechanism is still the same.”
“Still, voice recognition and things like that have started showing up these days.”
At my words, Sid nodded.
“That’s the start of the change. One day, we’re going to have computers we can move with just our thoughts.”
VR devices were already starting to appear. But they were still a long way from what anyone would honestly call virtual reality.
Later on, though, brainwave-based input and output devices would become widespread, and that would change the entire IT industry.
It would become possible to move an avatar in a virtual world just by thinking.
“That could be useful in games too.”
“Right. Everything in gaming is going to run on the cloud eventually.”
At present, the company pushing that the hardest was NS.
NS had originally revolved around its own PC OS, Windoors. But after Satya Sharmalan became its third CEO, he reorganized the company around the cloud.
No matter which operating system you used, you could connect to NS’s cloud, Azure, and manage data and run programs there.
On top of that, they hadn’t spared any investment in games.
The best way to enjoy games regardless of platform or device was, after all, the cloud. NS grew into the second-largest cloud company after AMZ, and its stock price soared.
That alone made the cloud’s growth potential obvious.
“When are you going to acquire Cooloud?”
“In about ten days.”
I’d already worked out how to raise the money for the acquisition and how to go through with it.
We were still deep in conversation when Sid’s phone rang on the table. I glanced over and saw Rolf’s name on the screen.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“If I do, he’ll probably just say something useless. Like let’s eat, let’s grab coffee, let’s talk, and so on.”
He must really be desperate.
Then again, everything Rolf could do to pretend he was a genius was thanks to Sid. So if he thought Sid might leave him, of course he’d be sweating bullets.
Thinking you can make use of a genius is nothing but an illusion.
I looked at Sid.
On the surface, he seemed like nothing more than a slightly absent-minded young man. But he was a genius on the level of Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton.
If I hadn’t known what he would go on to accomplish, I might have fallen for the same illusion Rolf had.
Sid shook his head.
“If I’m being honest, I don’t even want to face him anymore.”
“Even if he offered you a 15 percent stake?”
“I don’t really need that.”
He didn’t seem very interested in money.
Maybe wealth in the real world truly wasn’t very important to him. He was a creator of virtual worlds, after all.
All the limitless riches of a new world were already in his hands.
I said, trying to reassure him, “Don’t worry. Once I acquire it, I’ll kick him out right away.”
Cooloud had two essential pillars.
First, Sid Lucas. Second, Mimir.
Using those two, I could probably just build a new company from scratch, but...
It wasn’t that simple.
Why did today’s giant IT companies prefer to buy startups for huge sums rather than simply copying the service or poaching the staff?
Because every company has its own identity.
On top of that, Mimir was a program that grew through deep learning.
Even twins born with identical genes could grow into completely different adults depending on what they went through in life.
Cooloud’s Minerva had already undergone three years of deep learning.
If I tried to restart that from scratch, there was no telling whether it would take three years or much longer, and there was no guarantee the AI built that way would function the same.
Besides, the very fact that I was acquiring Cooloud at this point in time was something that had never happened in my first life. If I could reduce variables, I should.
In the end, the conclusion was clear: the best option was to acquire Cooloud as it was. If that failed, I’d have no choice but to build a new company.
“What do you want to do first if you become CEO?”
“There’s plenty to do.”
“Because on the internet, every day is Day 1?”
“Oh! Exactly.”
After Pangaea had been created, people had asked Sid:
“Is the internet world complete now?”
To that question, he’d answered:
“We’ve only just managed to stumble out of the Stone Age and into the Bronze Age.”
The Gold Rush ended the moment the last ounce of gold was mined. But on the internet, today is always the least developed moment.
Sid was the pioneer who would drag civilization in that underdeveloped world upward.
“For some reason, hyung, you’re a little different from other people.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You spotted those two were idiots the moment you saw them. Honestly, I’d been thinking that for a long time, but I couldn’t say it out loud. And this is the first time I’ve ever talked so casually with someone else.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. Most of the time, when I say something, people just react like they don’t understand me.”
I could guess why.
The more you know, the more you see. So the world a genius sees has to be different from the one ordinary people see.
The world Sid saw right now was probably nothing like the world other people saw. That was why most people couldn’t understand the essence of what he said.
But I had lived in the future he created. That was why I could understand him.
Still, I wasn’t a genius or anything of the sort. There was only one reason I’d made it this far: regression.
As Sid said, the internet world had no doubt kept advancing after that.
The future I knew would come to an end someday. So before that happened, I had to seize as much as I could.
* * *
Two days later.
David Lockhart returned to Silicon Valley. Three men and women were with him.
I greeted them.
“Hello. I’m Han Miru, co-CEO of Continue Capital. I’m sure you’ve heard enough about me already, so I’ll skip the self-introductions.”
The white man was Morris Pearson, the Black man was Edward Benson, and the Hispanic woman was Gabriella Chavez.
All three had worked with David at Victory Investment.
Since we didn’t have much time, I got straight to the point.
“Continue Capital has roughly one hundred million dollars in capital. Our goal is to grow that as much as possible in a short period of time.”
Morris raised a hand and asked, “What kind of return are you expecting?”
“At least ten times.”
“...”
Everyone looked at me as if they were asking, What kind of nonsense is this?
My target was a little large, I knew.