Top of the big era

Zhou Buqi led Boss Ma around in circles between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which was actually a way to flex his muscles.

It is a display of strength.

Ageism is pervasive in the business world and it’s a mindset.

When you are older, you are considered to be unable to keep up with the times, backward and conservative and do not understand new trends; when you are young, you are considered to have too little experience, are impetuous and impulsive and do not understand social reality.

In fact, Zhou Buqi knew that many people in the country were waiting to see his joke.

I think there is too much luck in his success.

Like the lucky ones under this era.

Watching him rise from a tall building, watching him entertain guests, watching his building collapse.

Everyone seems to be waiting for him to collapse.

It's just people outside the circle and unfamiliar people. They can think whatever they want, Zhou Buqi doesn't care. But Boss Ma is different. After all, he is an old acquaintance in the circle. It is necessary to show his strength appropriately and correct his cognitive bias.

Only with accurate understanding can we strengthen our confidence and business cooperation can be carried out more easily.

Just like cloud computing.

Alibaba has grown to its current scale, which is almost the same as Amazon in previous years. It has reached a stage where it has to make a decision. Should we build a cloud computing platform?

If you don't do it, you will have to spend a lot of money to buy high-end and high-priced servers. All the profits will not be enough to buy IOE basic equipment.

Once done, you can use cloud computing related technologies to abandon expensive IOE equipment and instead purchase low-cost modular equipment.

However, this path is too risky and requires far more investment in the short term than high-end IOE equipment.

So now Boss Ma is choosing one of the two.

But the emergence of Ziweixing gave him a third option, which was to purchase Ziweiyun's services. This requires confidence. If Ziweixing's strength is too weak and its level is too low, Alibaba will definitely have doubts. Perhaps after some evaluation, it was found that the risk of cooperation with Ziwei Cloud was greater than developing Alibaba Cloud on its own.

The ownership spirit shown by Zhou Buqi during Boss Ma's trip to the United States is a process of cultivating confidence in the other party. He even suggested a trip to London, where development is better and the policies are more powerful!

It's a pity that Boss Ma doesn't have a schedule. He will have a flight back to China tomorrow morning.

On this day, Zhou Buqi was not idle. He went to LinkedIn in the morning, and in the afternoon he went to a magical company - Lucasfilm.

Lucasfilm is headquartered between Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

This is both a Silicon Valley high-tech company and a Hollywood film company.

According to George Lucas, what he dislikes most is the constraints of creativity and inspiration imposed by the Hollywood studio system. He has made movies all his life, but none of his movies have been shot in Hollywood.

Unfortunately, George Lucas himself was on summer vacation in Finland.

Fortunately, Zhou Buqi's popularity was so high that the staff of Lucasfilm almost shut down the entire company's business to come specifically to receive their group.

The interior of this company is a special effects museum. There are many posters and props from past film projects in the corridor, which will give people a strong sense of history.

In this process, the most important thing to demonstrate is how it was possible to produce a movie as shocking as "Star Wars" with the technological level of thirty years ago.

Many of the shooting techniques, model designs and optical principles are amazing, and Boss Ma is very interested.

Zhou Buqi is different. Although he doesn't understand technology, he is very motivated and is working hard to improve his understanding of technology bit by bit.

Then, he heard a story that made him sigh that "success is no accident."

Lucasfilm established the Skywalker Sound Effects Studio to do sound special effects; it established the Industrial Light and Magic Studio to do visual special effects.

There was still some picture modification work to do, so a staff member used his spare time to make a software to complete this task. Later, this man went out to start his own business and became the software giant Adobe. This software was Photoshop.

The technological legend that belongs to Lucasfilm doesn’t stop there.

There were no digital movies back then, so movies could only be shot on film.

But many special effects pictures are made using computers. How can we transfer the special effects pictures on the computer to film?

In order to solve this problem, Lucas established a computer development studio, hoping to produce a computer that could transfer computer images to film.

Then, this computer was built and was called Pixar.

In order to verify the effectiveness of Pixar Computer, an animated short film was specially produced, and the effect was very good. Then, the studio was renamed Pixar Studios.

With the success of the development of Pixar Computer, the help to Lucasfilm was gone, and they wanted to sell it. The person who took over was Steve Jobs, who bought the technology company whose core business was still Pixar Computer for $10 million.

After taking over Pixar, Jobs began a decade-long strategic adjustment and business design for Pixar, which was mainly divided into four major businesses: Pixar computers, Pixar special effects rendering software, Pixar feature-length animation and Pixar animated advertising.

Later, when Jobs went to Apple, Pixar's hardware and software ideas were devoted to Apple, and Pixar began to focus on making cartoons.

Such a historical background made Zhou Buqi very frightened.

It turns out that as early as when he was working on Pixar more than ten years ago, Jobs had already constructed the prototype of his business model for the future world.

Computers + software + animation + advertising are actually the current ecosystem model of “hardware consumption + software consumption + content consumption + advertising consumption” under Apple’s model.

In the Ziweixing Global project, Zhou Buqi has been interested in Lucasfilm for a long time. With the two super IPs of "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark", he has produced movies, TV series, and cartoons. You can make money continuously.

Very attractive.

But after current research, I found that the value of Lucasfilm is not only that, the company's exploration in the field of technology is also very desirable.

Lucasfilm has three major technology companies: Skywalker Sound Effects, Industrial Light and Magic Special Effects and Lucas Game Studios. There are also many small projects, such as converting film into digital version, converting digital version into film version, converting 2D version into 3D version, converting ordinary version into giant screen version...

Almost all technologies that promote the progress of the film and television industry are related to Lucasfilm.

Zhou Buqi was very interested in this.

The development of the streaming media industry is inseparable from technological progress.

Even in the distant future, AR and VR visual effects, as well as new presentation methods of holographic viewing, including the broader metaverse, are often technological advancements in the same vein.

In this field, the company with the deepest technical expertise is of course Lucasfilm.

This is no longer just about Ziweixing Global, but about the possible strategic layout of Ziweixing in the future.

After leaving Lucasfilm, on the way back to Los Angeles, Zhou Buqi said bluntly: "I am very interested in this company."

"Yeah, who wouldn't be interested?" Boss Ma nodded, "'Star Wars' is really a sign of the times."

Zhou Buqi said with a smile: "That's not what I meant when I said interest."

"Um?"

"I want to buy this company."

"What?"

Boss Ma was very surprised and thought this guy was bragging.

Zhou Buqi snorted and glanced at him, "Don't believe it?"

Boss Ma said: "You are crazy!"

Zhou Buqi said: "I've asked. Lucasfilm's performance in the past few years has not been very good. If it hadn't been for the theatrical version of the animated film "Attack of the Clones" released last year, it might have lost money. This company is too old. There are too many old men with high salaries and they need to be replaced.”

Boss Ma finally realized that this guy was not kidding, "Do you really want to buy it?"

"What's the point? Lucasfilm has reached a bottleneck now." Zhou Buqi made a simple analysis, "The new "Star Wars" cannot be filmed. Although Industrial Light and Magic is still the number one in the world, the British , New Zealand, Australia, and France have made rapid progress in the special effects industry, and the gap is already very small. There are also low-end special effects outsourcing in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. If Industrial Light \u0026 Magic wants to maintain its leading market position, it must be global Globalized layout. Lucasfilm’s strength alone will make it difficult to build a global industry.”

Boss Ma still didn’t quite believe it, “This is too mysterious.”

"Let's see how I buy it!"

"Really want to buy it?"

"certainly!"

"Do not believe!"

Boss Ma thinks this guy is bragging.

Zhou Buqi himself lacks confidence, but he has to be tough, "I tell you, I have already bought MGM! And Marvel and Summit Entertainment! Next is DreamWorks Animation and Universal Pictures! Old Ma, don’t you understand movies?”

Boss Ma felt his ears tingle upon hearing this. He sighed and had no choice but to accept, "I know you are great."

Zhou Buqi was very satisfied and said with a smile: "Forget it, let's not talk about movies. Well... after you return to China, quickly arrange for Ali and Ziweixing to connect. This year's Singles' Day is less than three months away. Cloud services are not yet mature yet, so more time should be left for Ziweiyun and Taobao to practice."

Boss Ma finally agreed, "Okay, I'll make arrangements when we get back. You, Zi Weiyun, have you entered the overseas market?"

"We have started doing it a long time ago. We have launched 20 cloud data center plans this year, with an estimated investment of... US$5 billion."

"Stop talking!"

"Haha, it's actually 3.5 billion US dollars."

"Not a word of truth!"

Boss Ma snorted coldly.

Zhou Buqi said seriously: "Okay, let me tell you the truth, our plan is to invest 2 billion US dollars, and may continue to increase. There is only one possibility for Ziweiyun's future, and that is success! Choose Ziweiyun , you won’t regret it!”