Rebirth of the Internet Overlord

The plan to acquire Skype was originally scheduled to be completed before December, but after being delayed by lengthy negotiations for more than half a month, Rothschild signed the final acquisition confirmation contract and couldn't wait to arrange for someone to transfer the money.

The contract included a 30% down payment, and the second payment of 40% was credited to eBay's account the next day.

For no other reason than to quickly take over and become familiar with Skype’s business before Christmas this year.

After all, this is the most important development direction for their team in the future. Only if the pace is fast enough can they seize back enough markets in the social networking part of the market by relying on MySpace and Skype.

When he got off the car and stood at the door of Skype's US headquarters, Rothschild was planning the integration of Skype and MySpace with great ambition, thinking that these two expensive projects in his hands would be like Bing coming to the United States in the future.

Then it knocked Google to the ground and went public.

With firm belief, Rothschild stepped into Skype's US headquarters. Behind him were the equally arrogant Winston and Zhang Junhao.

Their brilliant appearance left the receptionist stunned for a while. It wasn't until his back disappeared around the corner inside the company that the receptionist realized that Skype had now changed owners, and the person just now was theirs.

The new master of Skype.

In less than 24 hours, two days before and after, the new master arrived here.

This extremely fast pace made the girl at the front desk realize that the company might be about to change!

…

As they turned the corner, Rothschild was listening to Winston's introduction.

"Looking at Skype's business data after 2004, we can definitely conclude that as CEO Niklas and COO Frith are almost useless. Because Skype has grown almost explosively since its launch in 2002.

Although by the half-year period of 2003, the number of Skype users and revenue had grown at a relatively stable 30% growth rate. However, after being acquired by eBay in 2004, the once stable overall rate fell to a cliff-like decline.

Within 10 percentage points.”

When mentioning the two current main leaders of Skype, Winston looked disdainful:

"The growth of MySpace and Facebook users in the past year has squeezed out Skype's development space. The user growth data in the past four years also clearly shows that these two people are useless. It's just that eBay is not familiar with social networks, so,

Only these two trash will continue to exist here."

The word "trash" that came out of Winston's mouth was deliberately emphasized, but the tone of his entire sentence still seemed very indifferent.

A stern look flashed in Rothschild's eyes, and he said lightly, "MySpace and Skype need to be integrated to compete with Bing. Since we have completely taken down Skype, the subsequent operations must be completely in accordance with our own arrangements."

"There is this clause in the contract," Zhang Junhao followed up from the side, "Ebay will provide resettlement fees for 20% of the lower-level employees, 30% for the middle-level employees, and 50% for the senior executives."

"Then what's the point?" Winston curled his lips, "Cut off two worthless people with an annual salary of one million, and we can turn Skype back into profit right away."

The audit report before the acquisition listed the salaries of these two senior executives who were involved in the development process of Skype very early.

The average salary of the two is as high as 1 million euros, which indeed accounts for a relatively large proportion of their post-acquisition system.

But the new ship of Skype is ready to go and does not need these two high-cost managers.

At this point, the group of people who had arranged the two managers properly in a few words also stood at the door of the office with the Skype CEO sign.

Before Rothschild could speak, Winston stepped forward without knocking. He turned the handle and pushed the door open.

Across a door frame, the imposing group of people startled the two people sitting opposite each other in front of the executive desk inside the door.

In an instant, they all looked over and happened to be looking at each other with the Rothschilds outside the door.

Niklas and Frith, the current CEO and COO of Skype. Seeing the new majority shareholder team of Skype outside the door, they looked at each other and stood up silently.

Rothschild met the two people's attention and walked into the door without saying a word. With his chin held high, his eyes did not even fall on the two people in the room. His eyes only stopped on the sofa for two seconds.

So, without him opening his mouth, Niklas and Fries moved there quietly.

Seeing this, Rothschild didn't say much and walked quickly to the CEO's desk.

No matter what video was playing on the computer in front of him, he just leaned on the chair and raised his chin to Winston, who was also sitting on the sofa.

When the intersection was realized, Winston leaned forward with understanding. As he moved, Niklas and Frith followed suit and leaned forward.

"Today is the first day that our boss officially takes over Skype. From now on, Skype will move towards a new development trajectory." Winston paused deliberately when he said this.

Immediately, he turned to look at the two of them with a smile, the disdain that could not be hidden at the corner of his mouth was revealed, and even his momentum suddenly rose.

"You two have been dismissed." Winston said these words nakedly in front of the two of them.

But what surprised him was that the expressions of the two people sitting beside him did not change at all. Even after the two looked at each other, they breathed a sigh of relief.

The strange reactions of the two people made Winston very confused, and the corners of his eyebrows jumped up unconsciously.

Zhang Junhao on the side was also quite curious. After thinking for a long time, he realized that he should do something.

"The compensation for the two of them after they are dismissed will be paid by them within the scope defined by eBay in accordance with the agreement when we acquired Skye, and the shares held by the two..."

"We don't have shares, we are just two managers." Nicholas looked relaxed.

Shares? Although the idea of ​​P2P instant messaging software was theirs, before their ideas were still in their minds, the former boss named Ning Zimo had already implemented their ideas into the actual Skype.

This initiative was half a year ahead of them, and the Skype that was presented to them was much better than they had imagined.

For this reason, he even contacted Skype customer service to vent his emotions. But because of this, he accidentally met the founder and was recruited into the team.

Everything is the original beauty,

Thinking of all the fun and games at that time, Nicholas didn't want to say a single extra word when faced with the situation in front of him.

His reaction brought Zhang Junhao's high mood to an abrupt end. Winston, who was sitting aside, did not gain any condescending achievements, and he suddenly ignited an unknown fire.

"Now that you know this, why are you still sitting here? Do you want to waste our time?"

"No, no, no, we are just waiting for an announcement." Fries shook his head.

At this moment, he couldn't help but think of the young founder who was gentle and well-controlled.

Only now did he realize that no matter what they had just seen, no matter how the young founder wanted to develop in the future, the big ship he was at the helm had already been abandoned by themselves when Skype was first acquired.

location.

He chose to turn against Niklas at that time, originally thinking that he could gain more from his new employer.

But within a few years, not only did they not acquire any shares, but even Skype, which they once did well, was losing ground.

It has been almost 5 years, and it is already late December. If it takes more than one month, they will have stayed on Skype in the new house for 5 years.

In the past five years, they have watched Skype's performance decline step by step until a new acquirer stepped forward to rescue the company.

But, is this new acquirer stepping forward to save the market?

As the results of the decline gradually emerged, he had already realized it.

The original founder didn't just come up with the idea of ​​Skype.

There is also a business philosophy behind him that supports Skype, which allowed Skype to grow rapidly before its first acquisition.

The same method he can use in Skype can also be used in his other projects.

As long as he is around, he can put any of his projects on the high-speed development train.

Unfortunately, it is too late to know this now.

At the negotiating table for the first acquisition, they passed up the opportunity to go down the road with that great team and their great founders.

At that time, they even gave up the potential huge gains from Skype's first acquisition for the sake of future benefits.

There are rumors that Feixun Technology CEO Zhuang Zhanpeng, who is now gradually emerging, received tens of millions of dollars in profits from the sale of Skype.

Even the most unknown rookie on the Skype founding team in the video just now has made a lot of money.

And what about him and Niklas? In five years, due to declining profits, apart from an annual salary of one million, they did not receive any new income.

This account was made confusing by him from the beginning.

Now, he doesn't want to stay here.

With these complicated emotions flashing through his mind, Frith finally stood up silently. As he stood up, he took Niklas to his feet.

The two looked at each other, and once again saw regret and unwillingness in each other's eyes.

However, they didn't know it when the opportunity was presented to them.

On the contrary, they were like the arrogant people in front of them, trying to get more from the young founder in other ways.

Traitors never end well.

And high-profile, obviously the same is true.

Eyes crossed,

Nodding silently,

The two of them stood up together and walked out of the house.

Anyway, they were fully prepared before coming today, so anything that happens now and in the future has nothing to do with them.

That,

Why before the last acquisition,

Why can't they have such a clear understanding?

Fries frowned and suddenly smiled,

Nicholas looked at him and shook his head slightly.

silent,

silent,

Keep going out.

Seeing that the two people he wanted to drive away didn't resist at all, Winston didn't know what was causing panic in his heart.

With nothing to do, he glanced at his boss. When he saw Rothschild also frowning, he stood up angrily with a gloomy face:

"Do you know why you were fired? It's not because of your improper management..."

Fries stopped when Winston opened his mouth. He turned to look at Winston, who looked angry. Although he couldn't remember his name at the moment, he had no interest in learning about it.

When the man's temper suddenly worsened, he suddenly burst into laughter.

When he smiled, the man couldn't continue talking.

"Not only do I know that we are not operating well, I even know why we are not operating well." Seeing that he was speechless, Fries shrugged, "But so what if I knew? We made mistakes all the way because of our wrong choices. And what about you,

You don't even know how powerful your opponent is."

Pointing to the computer playing the video on the desktop, Fries shrugged again: "I hope you can clearly understand that your opponent has already started the next strategy while you are arrogant."

After a pause, Fries suddenly shook his head, "No, he should have planned the next strategy very early. When it is fully rolled out, it will be the tip of the iceberg that you can see now."

Niklas on the side gave him a tug at this moment, but Fries was unmoved as he spoke of emotion.

"We are traitors, do you know that? It is not a pity to die for a traitor. Because in his eyes, the traitor is not terrible, but his opponent is terrible!"

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that he is afraid of opponents. What I mean is that facing him as his opponent is a very scary thing!"

Fries was blushing but felt very happy.

He raised his chin, his eyes full of enthusiasm:

"You are his opponent, but you are not his opponent!"