A salary of 500,000 USD and 30,000 shares of stock options. This was the salary given by Li Mu. The cash-out rule was that the maximum number of shares a year was 10,000 shares.
According to the employee option rules formulated by Li Mu, under the premise of not leaving the company, these original shares could be held until the company was listed and automatically converted into shares of equal value. Once he left the company within three years, the remaining options that had not yet expired would be automatically withdrawn. If he left the company after three years and the options were not fully exercised, the remaining options must be repurchased by the company before he left the company at the valuation of the company's last financing or the market price after the company was listed.
Li Mu's option agreement was the most open and transparent in the industry. It was also the most reasonable. There were no traps for employees, and it was not like some unscrupulous companies that forced employees to buy back the options based on the registered capital. Li Mu's motto was that suitable talents should stay in the company for a long time and work together with the company. The company would never treat them badly. However, if they wanted to leave halfway, the company would also have objective and reasonable ways to protect their vested interests. Li Mu's expectation for employees who left on good terms was to part on good terms.
At this stage, the salary of the editor-in-chief of a magazine was about 200,000 USD a year, which was considered a standard high-income person in Silicon Valley.
Li Mu gave him more than double his current salary. What was really worth looking forward to was the 30,000 shares of stock options.
According to the current valuation, the total value of the 30,000 shares of stock options was about one million USD. With the development speed of Makino Technology, the actual value of the options could double next year, reaching two million USD. At that time, he would be able to exercise one-third of the options, which would be hundreds of thousands of USD. If he was not in a hurry to exercise his options, and waited for Makino Technology to go public, it could even double 300 to 500 USD.
After receiving this clear salary, Mrs. He decided to accept the offer almost without hesitation. In order to ensure that there would be no more accidents during the process of him joining Makino Technology, Li Mu asked Lin Ching-ah to sign a guarantee agreement with him first. In this guarantee agreement, it was clear that Makino Technology would give him a lot of salary and benefits. At the same time, Makino Technology would provide him with a house of no less than 120 square meters and a private car of no less than 500,000 RMB in an area within three kilometers of the Makino Technology headquarters in Yanjing.
The house and car were provided free of charge, not a gift. However, for him, this was already far beyond his expectations. The company gave him such considerate benefits, which surprised him and his wife.
Li Mu decided to go back to China when the resignation process of the magazine he worked for started.
Although there were still many important things to do in the US, he still decided to prepare to return to China.
Lin Ching-ah did not understand Li Mu's sudden eagerness and obsession to return to China. She looked for Li Mu many times and begged him to stay in the US until the middle of next month, but Li Mu refused.
Lin Ching-ah felt that she had a good reason to beg Li Mu to stay.
First of all, Sequoia had already begun to understand the company's cash flow. According to the "unequal contract" that Li Mu had with them, after they understood the company's cash flow, they had to immediately transfer 3.3 billion USD to Makino Technology's account. The money should be transferred by early December at the latest. If Li Mu left at this time, she was worried that there would be unexpected changes to the financing. After all, the venture capital industry was a very messed up industry. She might finish all the work, finance, and signing today, but the investors would still go back on their word. Without Li Mu, she was not confident that Makino Technology would be able to raise 3.3 billion USD.
Secondly, Thanksgiving Day was coming soon. The Thanksgiving Day international competition for "Paradise Town" was coming to an end. This event had attracted hundreds of millions of players around the world, and it would definitely attract more attention in the final stages. If Li Mu was there, the team would be more confident.
Thirdly, the competition for the most beautiful girl in school had been steadily progressing. This event was very influential, and everyone hoped that Li Mu would continue to stay in the US.
However, Li Mu did not agree.
The reason he told Lin Ching-ah was that there were two movies that were going to be released one after another. It involved the online ticketing system, so he had to go back and keep an eye on it. Besides that, Taobao Logistics had been developing rapidly, so he wanted to go back and take a look.
As for the financing and the two major events for "Paradise Town", Li Mu was not worried at all.
He told Lin Ching-ah that Sequoia's financing would not be changed. If Sequoia did not have the foresight to become one of the top investment banks in the world, there was no way Sequoia could become one of the top investment banks in the world. As for the two events, the entire plan had already been decided, and all that was left was to follow the plan. Even if he stayed in the US, he would not do any actual work. Everything would still be under the control of the team in the US.
Lin Ching-ah felt that the things Li Mu said were not as important as he made them out to be. However, since Li Mu was her leader, there was nothing Lin Ching-ah could do if he insisted on leaving.
The main reason Li Mu was in a hurry to return to the US was that SARS was close at hand. If he remembered correctly, there would be a confirmed case in December. There was less than a month left, so he wanted to return to the US early to prepare.
In addition, the online ticketing system led by Fang Xudong was still waiting for him to personally check it out. After the system was checked, "The Girl We Chased Together All Those Years" would be released on December 7th. It was a good opportunity to test the system. "Crazy Stone" would also be released during the Spring Festival in January 2003. If these two movies were good enough, his online ticketing system would definitely rise quickly and take over the domestic cinemas as soon as possible.
Therefore, Li Mu had already made the decision to return to the US as soon as possible, and no one could persuade him otherwise.
However, Li Mu still had one last thing to do in the US, and that was to meet Jobs.
When Li Mu came to the US, he asked Lin Ching-ah to make an appointment with Larry Page, Bill Gates, and Jobs. He had already met Larry Page, but he had not met Bill Gates and Jobs. However, because of his speech at Harvard some time ago, Bill Gates suddenly did not want to meet him. Now, only Jobs was left.
Speaking of Jobs, he did not put on any airs with Li Mu. After Lin Ching-ah revealed her identity and purpose, he basically agreed to meet with Li Mu. However, Li Mu was running around behind the scenes, so he could not match up with Jobs.
Now that he was leaving, Li Mu asked Lin Ching-ah to make an appointment with Jobs again. What Li Mu did not expect was that Jobs had just left Silicon Valley and would not be back until at least after Thanksgiving.
Li Mu could only give up. He originally wanted to meet the super boss-level figure who would be worshipped by the whole world in the future, but it seemed that there was no chance this time.
Therefore, three days before Thanksgiving, Li Mu, Li Ziwei, Wang Yuanlang, and the three bodyguards took a Air China flight back to Yanjing.
At this stage, Li Mu was very famous in China. He had reached the stage of being a national idol. The speech at Harvard was seen as a counterattack by the people of Hua Xia and Hua Xia entrepreneurs. The 33 billion dollar financing contract with Sequoia also made Li Mu famous in China.
Because the general public paid special attention to Li Mu, the media had also been paying attention to when Li Mu would return to China. However, they did not expect that there would be no news from Li Mu's country.
In Li Mu's country, except for his parents, Su Yingxue, Zhao Ziqiu, Makino Technology, Taobao, and friends like Chen Ze, Song Liang, and Wei Lan, no one else knew about it. The news of his return to China was blocked by all the insiders. From beginning to end, no media knew about it. Even the customs when he returned to China, after knowing that Li Mu did not want to publicize it, gave full respect and strictly blocked the news of his return.
After returning to China, Li Mu did not immediately appear in front of the public. The first thing he did was to experience the online ticketing system with Fang Xudong, which had already completed the internal testing.
This online ticketing system was the key to Li Mu's foothold in Hua Xia and the Hollywood film industry. It was very important for Li Mu's future in the pan-entertainment industry, so Li Mu paid special attention to it.
The full name of the online ticketing system was "Mu Ying Online Ticketing System". Its real brand name was "Mu Ying". The online ticketing system actually belonged to an independent company, Makino Image. The technical support and daily operations were handled by Makino Technology's team.
The Mu Ying system was the first internet product that used all of Li Mu's resources. It was a product that was born with a golden spoon in Hua Xia's mouth.
First of all, not only did Mu Ying have its own independent domain name, but it was also fully embedded in YY and Taobao.
After users in Hua Xia updated the latest version of the YY client, there would be a new option for Mu Ying ticketing. After clicking on it, it would directly open the independent secondary domain name of Mu Ying ticketing in YY. Taobao's homepage added a product category of "Movie Ticket". When users click on "Movie Ticket", they would enter the secondary domain name of Mu Ying ticketing in Taobao. Second of all, the promotion of the Mu Ying system would be jointly provided by Makino Technology and Taobao Technology. In other words, in the future, both YY and Taobao would spare no effort to promote the system and guide traffic.
Third of all, Alipay would be the only online payment channel for the Mu Ying system, providing safe, reliable, and convenient payment support for Mu Ying.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
