Li Mu was not going to give Sequoia any face at all.
Once the financing window was closed, it was not up to the capital to open it again. It was up to Li Mu himself.
You rejected me in the first round, so if you want to find me again, you have to look at my face. He was not worried that Sequoia would hate him because of this, because in the eyes of the capital, interests were the most important.
In fact, when he first talked to Sequoia, Li Mu was setting a trap for Sequoia. He knew that Sequoia would reject his offer, but he still insisted on the offer and put himself in a very high position. What he wanted was for Sequoia to reject him.
If Sequoia rejected him, he would have the initiative in the future. On the contrary, if Sequoia had agreed at the beginning, Li Mu would be dumbfounded.
Fortunately, Sequoia had its own pride. It perfectly followed Li Mu's script, and Paradise Town's Most Beautiful Campus List also unexpectedly gained a lot of social attention. With this foundation, in the future, all the initiative was in Li Mu's hands.
Larry Page did shoulder the task of persuading Li Mu. Sequoia's CEO hoped that he could influence Li Mu from the side and let Li Mu restart the negotiations with Sequoia as soon as possible. However, the result was cruel. Li Mu refused too simply. He did not change anything for Larry Page's sake. He did not even say a polite word to ask him to consider it.
Sequoia held an internal discussion to discuss the opening time of the next financing window for Makino Technology. Most people thought that Li Mu would now hype up the "Most Beautiful Campus List" in one go. It was very likely that he would open the financing window again in the final stage of the "Most Beautiful Campus List" when the "Most Beautiful Campus List" was the most popular.
Sequoia's CEO could not do anything about it. This speculation was in line with the law of most corporate financing. Financing was the same as operating stocks. The holders of the stocks hoped to sell when the stock price was the highest. As the holders of the stocks, Li Mu and the shareholders of Makino Technology must have the same idea.
The CEO was under great pressure when he thought about how he might be able to achieve more than 20 billion yuan in a deal that was worth 17 billion yuan. He might even end up with nothing in the end.
However, Li Mu's exhibition in the United States was still going on.
The "Most Beautiful Campus List" event did attract the attention of the United States, but it had a huge limitation: the direct participants of the event and the beneficiaries of the huge rewards of the event were limited to the group of female college students. There were only a few million people in total. No matter how many people there were, they were just there to accompany the event. There might be more than a hundred million people watching, but only a small number of people could really devote their time and energy to participate in the event.
Therefore, how to let hundreds of millions of Americans participate in "Paradise Town" and benefit from "Paradise Town" had to start the second plan of Li Mu.
So, on the second day after Li Mu and Larry Page met, the official "Paradise Town" once again released a big announcement.
"Paradise Town – Thanksgiving Day Global Competition" was officially launched.
This event was aimed at all "Paradise Town" users around the world. Of course, because domestic users played "Happy Farm" instead of "Paradise Town," domestic users were not included in the scope of this event. The focus of this competition was on the players in the United States.
As for the domestic market, Li Mu had communicated with the operation team of "Happy Farm". Because "Happy Farm" and "Paradise Town" were currently not interconnected in terms of data, they would try not to use foreign festivals for game activities in the domestic market. Correspondingly, they could use traditional festivals such as the Lunar New Year, the Dragon Boat Festival, and the Mid-Autumn Festival to develop corresponding activities for domestic users.
In Li Mu's strategic plan, the "Paradise Town – Thanksgiving Day Global Competition" was a strategic complement to the "Top American Campus Belle List." If the latter only allowed female students in the United States to participate and benefit, the former could allow all users in the United States to have the opportunity to benefit.
The participation requirements for the "Paradise Town – Thanksgiving Day Global Competition" were very simple. As long as one was a registered player, one could directly participate in this interesting competition in the game. Players would raise designated turkeys, produce designated feed, and plant designated crops according to the rules. The global player ranking would be calculated at 24 o 'clock on Thanksgiving Day. The top 10,000 players would receive a generous prize.
According to Li Mu's domestic plan, only the top 100 players in the "Paradise Town – Thanksgiving Day Global Competition" would receive a prize. However, because of the temporary increase in the "Top American Campus Belle List," the event's attention skyrocketed. Therefore, this time, Li Mu temporarily increased the prize for the "Paradise Town – Thanksgiving Day Global Competition".
First, the prize for the first place was directly increased from the previous 100,000 dollars to one million dollars. The second place was 500,000 dollars, and the third place was 300,000 dollars.
Fourth to sixth place, 100,000 dollars.
Seventh to tenth place, 50,000 dollars.
11th to 20th place, 10,000 dollars.
21st to 50th place, 5,000 dollars.
51st to 100th place, 3,000 dollars.
101st to 10000 place, 1,000 dollars.
The reason why the scope of the prize was increased from the top 100 to the top 10,000 was to further expand the influence and let all potential players feel that there was a greater chance of receiving the prize.
Li Mu's calculation was very simple. The prize of tens of millions of dollars seemed very scary, but these prizes were also promised costs. If this competition could attract a large number of users for Paradise Town, it would be a very cost-effective deal. Moreover, the proportion of users in Paradise Town who paid for the game was very high. When the time came, the global competition would definitely encourage a large number of users to pay to participate in the game. It was possible that the tens of millions of dollars in prize costs would be recovered before Thanksgiving Day actually arrived.
The main purpose of Li Mu's holding this event was to greatly mobilize the enthusiasm of the netizens in the United States through this event, so that all players could become potential beneficiaries. More importantly, it could be deeply integrated with the "Most Beautiful American School Belle List."
According to the rules of the "Most Beautiful American School Belle List," whether players wanted to vote for their favorite school belle or ordinary people wanted to vote for their favorite school belle, they had to complete the corresponding tasks in the game in order to obtain the corresponding "Resident Voucher." Before this, all the motivation for players to obtain the "Resident Voucher" came from two aspects: first, the entertainment of the game itself; second, the attractiveness of the school belle.
Now, there was another motivation for players to obtain the "Most Beautiful American School Belle List" — to participate in the "Paradise Town — Thanksgiving Global Competition." By participating in this Thanksgiving Day competition, players could complete the requirements of obtaining the "Resident Voucher" in the game and obtain the "Resident Voucher." There was also a prize of up to a million dollars waiting for them to fight for it. In this way, users would have two complementary motivational systems.
Players who were originally interested in the "Most Beautiful American School Belle List" now had a powerful new motivation.
The players who weren't interested in the "All-American Campus Belle Rankings" were motivated by the Thanksgiving Day competition. Naturally, they could participate in the competition without paying too much of a price. This was very interesting.
This was like Qidian's monthly vote policy. If it was relatively difficult to obtain monthly votes, then only some hardcore fans would think of ways to obtain them in order to vote for the books they liked. In that case, the enthusiasm of ordinary users to vote for monthly votes would be greatly reduced. Therefore, the product logic was defined as: as long as the original subscription reached a certain amount, they would automatically obtain a monthly vote. This basically allowed the original users to obtain the monthly vote while reading the book normally. In this way, the enthusiasm of voting would naturally be greatly increased.
What Li Mu wanted to play now was a two-pronged approach. On one hand, he wanted everyone to play with prizes, and if they played well, they could get a cash prize. On the other hand, he wanted everyone to play with the highest "Most Beautiful American School Belle List" — killing two birds with one stone.
Li Mu's plan worked very quickly.
While American netizens were envious of American female college students and wanted to buy "Most Beautiful American School Belle List" for various reasons, the "Paradise Town – Thanksgiving Day Global Competition" that made them excited was launched.
The operators of Paradise Town finally thought of them and also made a competition for them. They also gave tens of millions of dollars in cash prizes. This gave all groups of people other than female college students a huge stimulus, and the social impact was extraordinary.
After the launch of the Thanksgiving Day competition, the users of Paradise Town began to surge. The number of registered users in the United States quickly exceeded 50 million, becoming the online game with the largest number of registered users in the United States. It was also the online game with the highest number of daily online users, reaching more than 30 million.
Just recently, the United Nations released a report that showed the current total number of netizens in the United States was about 143 million. Among them, the most visited website was Microsoft's MSN, with about 90 million daily visits. The software with the most daily active users was also Microsoft's MSN, with close to 100 million daily active users.
The number of daily active users of Paradise Town had been increasing rapidly. This constantly increasing number shocked Microsoft. The popularity of Paradise Town had a certain impact on the rest of the Internet companies in the United States, but the impact was not significant. However, Microsoft could not sit still.
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