Tan Yaocheng had mixed feelings about seeing Li Mu again. Makino Technology's current valuation had far exceeded that of Baidu. In his eyes, Li Mu was just a personal webmaster who was similar to Li Xingping. However, he did not expect that he had raised Makino Technology to such a height in such a short period of time.
Tan Yaocheng did not understand and could not understand. Makino Technology under Li Mu's control was like a plug-in. It was like a super player in Legend of Mir 2 who had full map coordinates and vision. Compared to him, other companies were like the lowest-level players. They had no map, no coordinates, and only a little vision illuminated by candles. In order to find a location, they might have to take a detour and walk the entire map.
Makino Technology had taken one step at a time from the beginning to the present, and every step shocked the entire Internet industry. He was not even twenty years old this year. No one knew how much room for development Makino Technology would have in the future.
What made Tan Yaocheng's heart ache the most was that Baidu had withdrawn from Makino Technology and used Makino Technology's shares to exchange for 20% of Easy Listening Network's shares. Looking at it now, it was like exchanging a watermelon for a sesame seed. The loss was extremely heavy.
Now, Tan Yaocheng was ordered by Li Zong to look for Li Mu to communicate about Easy Listening Network's shares. The golden age of MP3 search had begun. If Baidu could not integrate Easy Listening Network, it would really miss this excellent opportunity. With Easy Listening Network's current influence, Baidu could no longer ignore it and directly do MP3 search. If Baidu did so, Li Mu would definitely go against Baidu. The gains would not make up for the losses.
For Baidu, the best way was to acquire more Easy Listening Network shares from Li Mu's hands and achieve absolute control as soon as possible. Then, they could directly integrate Easy Listening Network.
The two of them agreed to meet at 7 pm. Li Mu was a little late by seven or eight minutes. When they arrived at the restaurant, Tan Yaocheng had already waited for half an hour.
As soon as they met, Li Mu apologized to Tan Yaocheng, "I'm sorry, Mr. Tan. I was too busy and delayed a bit."
Tan Yaocheng smiled, pushed up his glasses and said, "You're a busy man now, with so many things to do. I'm already very satisfied that you have time to see me."
Li Mu sat down opposite Tan Yaocheng and said with a smile, "Speaking of which, we haven't seen each other for a long time."
Tan Yaocheng nodded. "Who wouldn't? We've been very busy recently. We've just developed a search plugin for IE. In the future, users can directly enter keywords into IE to search."
Li Mu smiled and said, "Your business is very active now. Do you have any new directions in other areas?"
Tan Yaocheng smiled and said, "No matter how active our business is, we can't compare to Makino Technology. Look at your recent actions. It's too frequent. Even QQ was killed by you. I see that next year, Makino Technology will be the largest Internet company in the country. At that time, it won't be a problem for you to be on the rich list."
Li Mu said, "That's all fake. It's not like you can cash in."
Tan Yaocheng said, "Who said you can't cash in? The capital market will give you a valuation of six billion. As long as you agree, you can immediately cash in. "
Li Mu smiled and said, "Forget it. I don't have any thoughts of cash out now. After all, I'm not short of money. Why should I raise funds to cash out?"
Tan Yaocheng asked him curiously, "You're not going to raise funds before going public?"
Li Mu nodded. "As long as the cash flow of Makino Technology is positive, I don't need to raise funds. YY will start accepting commercial advertising soon, and the income will increase again. The cash flow will be enough."
Tan Yaocheng sighed. "I really envy you. Even Li Zong often laments that us Internet people who came back from overseas think that we're the ones who know the Internet the best in the country, but none of us are as good as you. There are so many Internet companies in the country now, but only a few have really found a business model. You're one of them. The income of YY is so stable, and that's the main reason why the capital market is so keen on Makino Technology."
Li Mu said, "You can't just look at the income of YY and ignore the cost of YY. We have a team of a few hundred people now, and the cost of manpower and office work is extremely high. The cost of server bandwidth is also extremely high."
Speaking up to this point, Li Mu could not help but ask him, "By the way, Mr. Tan, you should know a lot of high-level data processing talents. Can you introduce me to some of them and help me set up a few IDC (Internet Data Center)?"
Tan Yaocheng said, "You want to build a large data center?"
Li Mu nodded. "We've had this idea for a long time, but we haven't had high-end talents in this area. We've been focusing our energy on competing with Teng Xun for a while now, so it's time to start planning for a rainy day."
In the future, large Internet companies would cooperate with operators to set up their own data centers. Not only could it reduce costs, but it could also provide better servers and network support for their own products. Li Mu also wanted to provide a strong server support for Makino Technology, so this had been put on the agenda.
Tan Yaocheng said, "When the time comes, I can introduce some senior engineers in the industry to you. They can give you some advice and even help you solve some of your problems."
Li Mu smiled and said, "Thank you so much. I'll treat you to a meal after this is done."
Tan Yaocheng waved his hand. "With our relationship, do you still need to be so polite?"
As he said this, Tan Yaocheng also began to get down to business. He said to Li Mu, "Actually, the reason I asked you to meet today is because I have something to discuss with you."
"Go ahead."
Tan Yaocheng said, "It's like this. Recently, we've been deeply inspired by Makino Technology. We want to use it as the core and develop a subsidiary product. We're quite interested in MP3 search. Li Zong said that you promised him before that you would leave Easy Listening within three years and transfer all your shares to Baidu. So, he wants me to ask you if you can do a round of equity acquisition first."
Li Mu smiled and asked, "How much does Li Zong want to buy?"
Tan Yaocheng said, "What Li Zong means is to value Easy Listening at 500 million yuan. We'll buy 30% of the shares from you and another shareholder in cash."
Li Mu nodded. The price of 500 million yuan was not low. After all, it was still difficult to find a profit model in the field of MP3 search, listening, and downloading. They could only do the simplest traffic advertising. Based on Easy Listening's current traffic, the advertising income potential was about one or two million yuan per month. Even if there was room for growth, it was not worth 500 million yuan overall.
If it was sold to other companies, it would probably be worth one or two hundred million yuan at most. However, Li Mu would definitely not sell it at this price, and other companies might not buy it if it was too high. However, it was different for Baidu. Their core business was search. Now, the demand for MP3 search was increasing, but Easy Listening controlled most of the traffic and users. If Baidu wanted to improve its search service, it had to take over MP3, a huge source of traffic.
Li Mu asked Tan Yaocheng, "If you control Easy Listening, do you want to use Easy Listening to do Baidu's MP3 search?"
Tan Yaocheng knew that he could not hide it from Li Mu, so he nodded frankly. "We also need some new business to increase user loyalty."
Li Mu said, "Old Tan, we have a good relationship, but private matters are private matters, and business matters are business matters. If Baidu has this idea, I have to say the ugly words first. Even if I agree to transfer 30% of the shares to Baidu, I will at most let Baidu open a special entrance to Easy Listening. I will not let Easy Listening guide Baidu's products or make a wedding dress for them."
Li Mu knew what Baidu was thinking. Baidu wanted to integrate Easy Listening into their engine, and they would definitely focus on their MP3 search. Therefore, if Easy Listening was given to them, they would not think about how to make Easy Listening better. They would only think about how to direct Easy Listening's users to their MP3 search section as much as possible.
When Tan Yaocheng heard Li Mu's words, he smiled awkwardly and said, "Li Mu, to be honest, if Easy Listening can't guide our own products, then Easy Listening is meaningless to us."
Li Mu said, "How is it meaningless? At least you have 30% of Easy Listening's shares. Even if you can't integrate Easy Listening into your engine, it's still one of Baidu's assets. You invested five million yuan back then, and now 30% of Easy Listening's shares are worth at least 50 million yuan. It hasn't even been a year, and you've already made a lot of money."
Tan Yaocheng said angrily, "If you hadn't chased us out of the car halfway, our initial five million yuan would have been worth at least 500 million yuan!"
Li Mu snorted. "Old Tan, you're often chased out of the car by the banker when you open an account with 10,000 yuan, let alone investing a few million yuan in a company. You can only blame yourself for not having a strong will. How can you blame the banker for being unkind? "
Tan Yaocheng smiled bitterly and said, "You're right. We didn't have a strong will, so we didn't say anything more about this matter. But to be honest, Easy Listening isn't very useful to you now, but it's different for us. If you give Easy Listening to Baidu now, Baidu will definitely give you greater returns in terms of resources in the future."
Li Mu said, "Old Tan, who told you that Easy Listening isn't important to me? To tell you the truth, I just did an analysis of the MP3 download market some time ago, and I also did an analysis of the competitors in the same industry. Now that the demand for digital music is increasing, it will soon become the most searched category of Internet users. Tell me, how can I give Easy Listening to you under such circumstances? "
Tan Yaocheng looked at Li Mu in surprise and asked him subconsciously, "You still have the time and energy to study the digital music market?!"
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