vstars Chapter 188 Meat Delivered to Your Door
Chapter 188 Meat Delivered to Your Door
At 2 p.m., Lingyun pushed open the door to the conference room.
Three people were sitting around the long conference table.
On the far left is Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital, in his sixties, with gray hair, wearing a dark blue suit.
In the middle is Mike Moritz, a partner at Sequoia Capital, in his forties, wearing glasses, with a notebook in front of him.
On the far right is the contact person Sofia introduced, a woman in her thirties, with a voice recorder in front of her.
"Mr. Ling, please have a seat," Don Valentine said, his voice steady.
Ling Yun sat down opposite him. He was wearing a simple shirt today, but no tie.
Mike Moritz turned on the projector, the screen lowered, and a graph appeared: the Internet user growth curve from 1990 to 1996.
"What are your thoughts on the future of the Internet, Mr. Ling?" Moritz asked.
"The internet will change everything about us, including our lives and our work," Lingyun said.
"Specifically?"
"Information access, social interaction, business transactions, entertainment formats—all areas that require the flow or exchange of information will be changed."
Moritz moved on to the next chart: statistics on the number of websites worldwide in 1997, approximately 1.5 million.
"Here's the problem," he said, "with so much information, how do we find what we need?"
"search."
"Yes." Moritz changed the image again, this time showing the logos of several companies: Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek, and Lycos. "Current portal websites rely on manual categorization, but this is unsustainable. What if there are a hundred million websites? A billion?"
The meeting room fell silent for a few seconds.
Don Valentine leaned forward: "We invested in a team, two Stanford PhD students, who are working on a new search engine."
"What is the name of the project?"
"It's not officially decided yet. The internal codename is 'BackRub,' and it's based on webpage link analysis." Moritz pulled up the next diagram, a simplified technical architecture diagram. "Traditional search engines match by keywords, but these websites sort by the referencing relationships between webpages. The more references a page has, the higher its weight."
Ling Yun looked at the diagram; it was rough, but the core idea was correct.
"What do you need?" he asked.
"Three things," Don Valentine said. "First, funding. They need to buy servers and rent bandwidth. Second, talent. Especially talent in distributed systems. Third, application scenarios. Technology alone isn't enough; users need to be able to use it."
"Why are you looking for me?"
"Because you have the Star System, Star Language, and a browser," Moritz said. "If this search engine can be integrated into your ecosystem, so users can use it simply by opening their browser, and the search quality is better than Yahoo's, then..."
He didn't finish speaking, but his meaning was clear.
"Where is the team now?" Lingyun asked.
"They're still in the Stanford lab, but they're preparing to move out. We gave them a seed round of $200,000."
"What's the valuation?"
"Four million after the investment."
Moritz looked up.
"If they succeed," Lingyun said, "it will be worth at least ten thousand times four million."
"That's why we need strategic partners even more," Don Valentine said. "We'd like to invite you to participate in our Series A round. Ten million US dollars for a 20% stake. At the same time, your Star System needs to have this search engine built in as the default option."
Ling Yun did not answer immediately. He looked at the architectural diagram on the screen.
"What's the founder's name?"
"Larry Page and Sergey Brin."
"I need to meet them." Ling Yun instantly understood. This was Google! He didn't know what "BackRub" meant, but he knew Larry Page! He had to vote for them; it was like meat delivered to his door, and he had to swallow it with tears in his eyes.
"It can be arranged. They'll be coming to Silicon Valley next week to meet with another investor."
"No need for next week," Ling Yun said. "I'm going to Stanford tomorrow."
Moritz glanced at Don Valentine, who nodded.
"Okay. Tomorrow morning at 10:00, Stanford Computer Science Building."
"Also," Ling Yun added, "if I want to vote, the conditions need to be changed."
"How should it be changed?"
"Ten million US dollars for a 25% stake. The search engine will operate independently, but IceCloud has a right of first refusal. Within five years, if they wish to sell the company, Star Technology has the right of first refusal to acquire it at 120% of the market price."
Don Valentine laughed; it was the laugh of a businessman.
"25% is too high. We need to raise funds later. 18% is just right."
"23%?"
"20%, that's the bottom line."
"Okay," Ling Yun said, "but let me add one more thing: the Star System's built-in search will be free for the first three years, and search engine promotion will be provided for free. After three years, revenue will be shared based on traffic."
"Profit sharing ratio?"
"We have seven, they have three."
"They want fifty-fifty."
"Then there's nothing to discuss." Ling Yun stood up. "The core of a search engine is data. Without users, there's no data; without data, even the best algorithm is useless. My system can provide them with users, and that's its greatest value."
He walked to the door, then stopped.
"Tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM. I'll go straight to the lab."
As Ling Yun left the Sequoia Capital office and the elevator descended, he glanced at his watch.
2:47 PM.
After getting on the bus, he made a phone call.
"Carly, I need two people who understand search engine technology."
When do you need it?
"Start looking now."
Are there any specific requirements?
"Those with experience in web crawling, indexing systems, and sorting algorithms are preferred, especially those who graduated from Stanford or Berkeley."
"clear."
He hung up the phone and drove back to the company.
In his office, he turned on his computer and searched for "BackRub Stanford".
Information is scarce. There are only a few citations from academic papers, authored by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
He downloaded the paper and printed it out.
First article: "Analysis of Large-Scale Hypertext Web Search Engines" (1996).
The second article: "PageRank Algorithm: Ranking Web Pages Based on Link Analysis" (1997).
He quickly skimmed through the pages; the core idea was clear: view the internet as a giant directed graph, with each webpage as a node and links as edges. Rank the search results by calculating the importance of each node (number of citations and quality).
This is precisely what later became the core of Google.
There was a knock on the door.
Eric walked in, holding a test mouse in his hand.
"The new version on the id website has added automatic noise reduction. Give it a try."
Lingyun took the mouse, plugged it into the computer, opened a recording software, and spoke.
"Test, one, two, three."
The waveform shows that the background keyboard sounds were almost completely filtered out.
"It works well," he said.
"Mike said they're preparing to release the patch next Thursday and asked if we wanted to release a press release together."
"Post it. The title should read: 'Quake Gale has built-in interstellar voice chat, ushering in the era of real-time game communication.'"
"it is good."
After Eric left, Lingyun continued reading the paper.
He watched until 7 p.m.
It was dark outside. He stood up and walked to the window.
The lights of Silicon Valley spread out in the night, with Stanford University visible in the distance.
1997 10 Month 29 Day.
Sequoia Capital gave him a ticket.
A ticket to the next era of the Internet.
He's going to see those two people tomorrow.
Those two people were still in the lab, unaware that their invention would change the world.
He wants to get involved.
Not as an investor.
It is as a key node, as an ecosystem builder, as... someone who knows the future.
He picked up the phone and called Sofia.
"Transfer $20 million to a separate account. We might need it next week."
"Investment projects?"
"Yes. A search engine."
"What's the valuation?"
"The post-investment amount is 50 million. We'll take 20%."
"Understood."