As the Western media revealed more details about 3321, Li Mu's influence in the Western world rose to an unprecedented level.
At the same time, far away in China, due to Li Mu's earth-shattering actions overseas, the domestic media and the public's respect for Li Mu also rose. There was even an additional layer of pride from Li Mu winning glory for Hua Xia and the Chinese people overseas.
The domestic media's coverage of Li Mu could be described as overwhelming. If you turned on the TV and changed a few channels, there would definitely be one reporting on Li Mu or news related to Li Mu. Moreover, the Chinese people didn't feel tired at all. Instead, they felt like they couldn't get enough of it.
The extremely large amount of exposure made Li Mu's influence rise rapidly even though he wasn't in China, reaching a new height that had never been reached before.
The night before the second round of meetings with the major capitals, Li Mu called Dong Ai, who was far away in Beijing and in charge of 3321. In the phone call, Li Mu told Dong Ai to immediately start preparing for the trip to the United States. When the time came, he would arrange for the technical team of Makino Technology to go with her to the United States to meet with Lawrence to discuss the establishment of 3321. Since the American society was full of praise for 3321, then it would be better to let 3321 take root in the United States as soon as possible.
The United States Station would be the first step for 3321. If its current operating concept could develop healthily in the United States, then it would basically have the possibility to smoothly develop in all developed countries, as well as China, where the economy was relatively better. Continuous expansion might make 3321 the world's largest educational charity project, as well as the largest educational charity fund.
Dong Ai had been looking forward to this for a long time. After receiving instructions from Li Mu, she immediately started to apply for visas for the core team of 3321 to go to the United States. Because of 3321's popularity in the United States, the US Embassy in China paid special attention to the project. Almost at the same time that Li Mu contacted Dong Ai, the staff of the US Embassy in China also contacted Dong Ai and offered to expedite the application for visas for the members of 3321 to go to the United States.
Li Mu no longer had the energy to handle Dong Ai's trip to the United States and the cooperation between 3321 and Harvard. He believed in Dong Ai's ability. Since she could manage 3321 to its current scale in the vast and complicated Hua Xia, then she would definitely be able to do it well in the United States.
Li Mu did not participate in the second round of financing negotiations. He completely handed over the negotiations to Ding Zhenglin, who was in charge of financing negotiations. He asked Ding Zhenglin to screen out the capital that was interested in Makino Technology. Finally, after screening out a few, he would talk to them in person.
However, Li Mu's request to Ding Zhenglin was to control the pace of the negotiations. While firmly grasping the initiative, he had to slow down the speed of the financing negotiations.
Slowing down the speed was to give Makino Technology more time to develop. This wave of hormones came too fast, and it would take a certain amount of time for it to be properly digested.
Ding Zhenglin commented that Li Mu's trip to Harvard was worth at least billions of dollars. Li Mu and the entire senior management of Makino Technology quite agreed with his statement.
Because of the full support of the American media, the huge shock that Li Mu brought to the students of Harvard and MIT was magnified to the entire Western society. The result of this operation was not only to make Li Mu famous, but more importantly, to bring about the vigorous development of YY.
In just a few days, the number of YY users overseas had achieved the effect of several times the number of users. In the United States alone, which had more than 100 million netizens, more than 60 million people had downloaded and registered YY. The entire Europe had brought another 20 million registered users to YY. As a result, the overall number of YY users had skyrocketed.
The surge in YY users had directly brought two major impacts to Makino Technology. The first was that the cash flow continued to rise. The payment rates of users in developed countries were very high, so the proportion of paying members among YY's overseas users was also astonishingly high. Within a few days, tens of millions of paying members had increased Makino Technology's monthly income by more than 100 million US dollars. The speed of making money was so fast that it left the world speechless.
However, although the speed of cash inflow was very fast, the second major impact was the further increase in operating costs, as well as the speed of cash outflow. This major impact was the rapid increase in server and bandwidth demand.
In the United States, Li Mu's team had been setting up servers in excess of demand, so the demand in the American market could still be met. However, in the European market, the rapid increase in users and demand forced Li Mu to make a last-minute decision to use all the servers that had been prepared for Paradise Town and Plants vs Zombies in Europe in advance for YY, delaying the promotion of Paradise Town and Plants vs Zombies in Europe.
These servers were all provided to YY, and only then did Makino Technology barely manage to withstand the huge demand in the European market.
At the same time, Li Mu was even more eager to raise funds.
Currently, Makino Technology's operating costs were too high. Although it was still very profitable, the percentage that could be counted as net profit was very low. With its current profitability, it was basically impossible to expand at a high speed.
Li Mu urgently needed more than two billion US dollars in cash to quickly set up Makino Technology's own data processing centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, and other countries. The data centers would be used to meet the needs of Makino Technology, as well as all of Li Mu's own businesses. In the later stages, they would start to provide cloud computing services to the world.
The market for cloud computing services started relatively late. Amazon AWS, which occupied more than half of the world's market share, would also start in 2006. Therefore, Li Mu still had time to accumulate his own talents, technology, and hardware. If he built his own data processing centers around the world first, in a year or two, Makino Technology's successful IPO would at least push Makino Technology to a market value of more than 80 billion US dollars. At that time, financing would easily reach 8 billion or even 10 billion US dollars. At that time, he would have the money to back him up, and he could be the first to launch advanced cloud computing services to the world in 2004.
In Li Mu's mind, the blueprint for the future was already very perfect. Next, it was up to him to unfold this grand blueprint step by step and present it to the world.
…
After a few days of financing negotiations, the valuation of Makino Technology had reached 26 billion US dollars. Ding Zhenglin's prediction was right. Just based on the overall benefits brought about by Li Mu's speech at Harvard, the market value of Makino Technology had skyrocketed by several billion US dollars in a short period of time.
This was the charm of the Internet industry. If one could seize the opportunity, any consultation or product could spread all over the world overnight!
The skyrocketing valuation of Makino Technology mainly came from three points: the great social influence, the crazily rising number of users, and the constantly doubling of platform revenue. Each of these points further promoted the continuous rise of Makino Technology's valuation. The speed of the rise made American venture capitalists terrified.
However, no one thought that the rapid rise of Makino Technology's valuation was exaggerated because the overall speed of YY's growth was too fast.
A month ago, it was only a tool for a few elite groups in the United States and the West to improve their work efficiency. The number of overseas users was only slightly more than 10 million.
Then, the explosion of Paradise Town spread the influence of the game to the entire American university community. It even attracted a large number of reserve users for YY in advance through the Top List of American Campus Belles and the Thanksgiving Day global competition. With the sudden explosion of YY, these users were almost all brainwashed into YY's deep users overnight. It was even more shocking than the world's most amazing magician.
Then, Li Mu suddenly left Silicon Valley and went to Cambridge. Who would have thought that a speech originally intended for Harvard students would become so popular in the Western world!
This time, YY once again performed an earth-shattering super magic trick. Overnight, tens of millions of new users made this software quickly become the brightest new star in the Internet industry.
Because of his terrifying operating ability, Li Mu was crowned as a "magician" in the Internet industry. The entire Internet industry admired him from the bottom of their hearts. Before him, no one believed that the means and speed of obtaining users could be so fast.
Stanford University, which had sent a large number of talents to Silicon Valley, even held a special class to study and analyze Li Mu's means of operating YY. Many professors listed and analyzed each step of YY's development in the United States in detail, compiled it into a book, and then disseminated it in the form of photocopies within the university.
Stanford University's professors had a deep understanding of the Internet, and their level was extremely high. Moreover, this set of "teaching materials" that were not made public was jointly written by several professors. Therefore, it was very valuable and very popular among Stanford University's students.
It was said that in just a few days, this book analyzing Makino Technology was copied by everyone in Stanford. Businesses around Stanford University that provided copying services were copying this set of internal teaching materials almost non-stop.
This set of books with only 50 pages was targeted by publishers. The publishers even paid these professors a high royalty in advance, just to let them find a way to write the teaching materials longer so that they could publish it as a physical book and sell it at a good price.
The book market in the United States was relatively developed, and there were basically no pirated books. Coupled with the fact that electronic reading was not developed at this stage, the traditional publishing industry was still very popular. Any bestseller could sell more than a million copies. In this case, a bestseller could bring millions of dollars in royalties to the author. These Stanford University professors had each received an advance of 200,000 dollars before the book was officially completed.
These professors did not expect that they could get such a high royalty just by joining forces to analyze Makino Technology and Li Mu's promotion methods. Moreover, it was only a partial advance. This gave them great motivation to calm down and write this internal teaching material into a physical book that could be published.
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