After dinner, I chatted with Janet's parents about recent events. At more than nine o'clock, Simon and his wife didn't go back to their villa nearby and stayed in the mansion.
In the bedroom upstairs, Simon came out of the bathroom after taking a bath and saw Janet, who had already put on her pajamas, standing by the bed with a pillow in her arms, staring at him and saying, "I'll sleep with my aunt tonight."
Simon stopped a little, and quickly continued to wipe his wet hair with a towel. He nodded with a smile and said, "well, I've been squeezed by you for such a long time, and I just had a night off."
Janet didn't move, still looking at Simon.
As if nothing had happened, Simon pulled the towel slightly forward from his head and kept wiping it in front of his eyes.
Janet wrinkled her nose. Seeing that the man came to her and put his arms around her body, she subconsciously catered to her. Because of the pillow in the middle, she leaned forward and was kissing by him.
"Good night."
"Well, good night."
So promised, the bottom of my heart is more distressed.
Little bastard.
Really let me accompany my aunt.
Even if you cheat me.
Or, just make a fuss and put people on the bed, and I'll take it as if I don't know anything.
After Simon said good night, he released Janet and hung up the towel. Seeing that she hadn't moved, he didn't say anything any more. He just reached for the pillow in the woman's arms and threw it on the big bed. He took Janet's waist and continued to throw the woman on the big bed, and then he jumped on it.
However, after more than an hour, Janet still got out of the man's arms and quietly left their bedroom.
The next day was February 3, Sunday.
Since leaving Los Angeles on January 20, the couple have been off for two weeks.
In the cabin of the Boeing 767, after the plane took off, Simon had been sitting in the study in the front cabin looking at the documents accumulated during this period. Janet was sitting opposite, chin propped, looking at her husband. All kinds of small emotions floated in her bright eyes.
Simon actually knew about Janet's sneaking away last night.
I just don't know what Veronica and Janet said.
Now women don't talk, and Simon doesn't initiate a topic.
I really don't know how to deal with it.
Across the desk, Janet looked at her man for a long time, and finally sighed softly. She didn't understand what had happened.
My aunt was bullied, but she even turned to him.
Just like myself.
Is it just because of last time?
Janet felt her wrist.
Little bastard.
You are a devil.
He made up his mind to come to Melbourne as little as possible, at least not by himself.
With a sigh of relief, Janet picked up a folder on her desk and looked down.
This is the AOL free trial user incremental statistics report in January.
Janet also knows about AOL's free trial program. However, looking at the 2.3 million user bookings in the folder and the actual number of official installations, which is only 810000, Janet can't help but be surprised. She looks up at Simon's folder and asks, "how can it be so different?"
Simon glanced up at the document, which he had just read, and said: "it's mainly about human resources. For this trial, AOL has prepared 5000 formal and temporary installation personnel on the East and west coasts in the early stage. According to the initial expectation, AOL can roughly complete the installation of 1 million users per month. However, in fact, things are more difficult than imagined, and there are many problems. You can take a look at the more specific figures. Of the 810000 installation users, 390000 are from Bell Atlantic's operation area. It is mainly because Bell Atlantic actively cooperates with us to solve the problems of line equipment and so on, and has seconded some employees for this purpose. "
Simon said with emotion.
The move to buy Bell Atlantic in advance has now proved to be completely correct.
AOL just signed a 10-year exclusive agreement with three major regional operators last year, so Bell Atlantic could not set foot in the Internet access service.
A few months later, seeing the sudden outbreak of Internet access users, the number of booking users in a month actually exceeded 2.3 million, and the three major operators obviously began to regret signing the original agreement.
You know, the major telecom operators have actually set foot in the free trial of this activity, but no one has ever experienced such a crazy amount of user appointments. Only one month's number of appointments, if all of them are transferred to official users, will be equivalent to one tenth of the total number of users of the three major operators.
The users of the three major operators have been realized through decades of accumulation.
In the past month, the three major operators even found that in order to get free trial opportunities, some users deliberately transferred from other small telecom operators in the region to their own, which is even more surprising.The U.S. telecommunications industry has a very open competitive environment, a city may have several telecom operators.
Of course, the main thing is to rent the line network of at-t, and then carry out its own telephone business. Bell Atlantic, bell Pacific and Nynex, the regional telecom operators, have always wanted to squeeze these small operators out of the market, just because the other side often has lower charging costs than itself, which is usually difficult to achieve.
Now, it's AOL, which is also attached to them, that unexpectedly promotes this.
The top management of the three major operators probably understand that the expansion of AOL as far as possible will also be conducive to the increase of their own users.
However, the truth is that it is not so easy to really promote it.
No one wants outsiders to build a villa in their own yard that is more beautiful than their own house. Even if they can't stop it, even if they pay for it, even if such a villa in their own yard may attract many tourists to pay for it, it is probably difficult for the householder to persuade himself to cooperate without any obstinacy.
Of course, after the takeover of Bell Atlantic was officially completed in January, the company has become a member of the westero system, but Raymond Smith and other management can do it.
The other two, bell Pacific and Nynex, are not so willing.
It was stated in the original agreement that in addition to developing the line network, AOL would have to pay more for other additional support.
Because of the huge capital investment, AOL's management even implemented the free trial plan with the mentality of success or failure. Naturally, it is impossible to invest more extra budget to these operators.
In the end, the 810000 installation users in the first month and 390000 of them came from Bell Atlantic business area.
After listening to Simon's explanation, Janet continued to look through the information in her hand, and soon asked, "the budget of $100 per household is too low. Can it be realized?"
Simon said: "100 dollars, 20 dollars for labor costs, 30 dollars for network costs, and the last 50 dollars for equipment and software costs. However, this is made according to the expectation of eventually becoming an official user."
In this free trial program, AOL mainly hired and trained 3000 part-time temporary installation workers from some university campuses. According to the piecework charge standard, the installation cost for one household is $20.
The home phone penetration rate in the United States is more than 90%. This trial plan is also selective. It must be the users of the three major operators. There is no need to set up additional lines. Only install equipment in the user's home phone terminal to connect to the computer.
In terms of equipment and software, it mainly includes modem, interface network card inserted into motherboard, network card driver and browser software.
This set of equipment and software is actually very expensive, and the total cost is about $200. Once the trial user does not become a regular, AOL will withdraw these devices. Even those who have been removed after becoming a regular will do the same in the future.
Because the recovered equipment can be reused, AOL gives an average budget of $50 at a conversion rate of 25%.
To be careful, this is actually a bit of a game.
In the final analysis, AOL is facing too much financial pressure.
For the same reason, AOL management has no intention of increasing the number of workers despite the 2.3 million terror booking users. On the one hand, it is not easy to achieve, even those temporary employees are trained, on the other hand, it is because of the cost.
Moreover, we should also consider whether the heat is only temporary.
Rashly increase the team of workers, once the user's enthusiasm for free trial cools down, it is also a trouble.
Next, AOL plans to achieve the expected monthly installation volume of 1 million users through more reasonable screening and deployment of reserved users. Then, three months after the IPO, the market will give AOL a very excellent valuation.
On the other hand, feeling the difficulty of queuing up for trial opportunities can also promote trial users to become regular to a great extent.
After all, people don't cherish things that are too easy to get.
If you have been waiting in line for more than a month and finally become a trial user, after the expiration of one month, you may find that some people around you are still waiting, and the desire to give up will definitely fade.
Carefully speaking, this is actually a kind of alternative hunger marketing.
After 17 hours of flight, when I arrived in Los Angeles, due to jet lag, it was still Sunday morning, February 3.
Continuing to rest until the next day, Simon flew back to San Francisco early Monday morning.
This time it's for work.
The housekeeper, Alice Ferguson, has been squeezing Simon constantly during this period of time. At last, she has come up with two business plans, two business plans that igritte, AOL and even Bell Atlantic attach great importance to.Two commercial solutions, one is online payment system, the other is online software store.
The former is actually similar to the later PayPal, and the latter is equivalent to Simon's memory of Apple's app store.
Moreover, the two business plans actually complement each other.
Igritte has been exploring a reliable business profit model. On the one hand, the world wide web software has achieved initial results under the operation of Carol Bartz in the past year.
Portal, in addition to advertising business, Jeff Bezos has also been considering other ways to make money.
Although the cooperation between the software department and the network department is very smooth under Simon's coercion, it is unrealistic to rely on the software department to feed back the network department in the short term. If the dependence is really formed, the portal is doomed to be unsustainable.
The housekeeper gets inspiration from Simon, and the improved online payment system and online software store give Jeff Bezos hope. Even Raymond Smith of AOL and Bell Atlantic can see the huge business potential.
Igritte headquarters near Stanford University.
In the conference room, Simon, Jeff Bezos, Carol Bartz, Steve case, John Chambers, Raymond Smith and other company executives sat on both sides of the conference table, listening to the housekeeper introduce her business plan in front of the projector and answer all kinds of questions.
“…… If you want to build an online payment system, you can't do without corresponding products. Therefore, we must build a complete online consumption ecosystem. Online software store is the most important part. The market potential of computer application software can be seen from the development of Microsoft and Oracle in the past few years. "
“…… Moreover, there has never been a lack of excellent commercial software in the market, especially some small application software with strong professional nature. The main restriction to their development is the sales channel. The same is true for PC games with growing market size. Many professional software designers can produce a product of no less quality than that of professional game companies by just one or two people in private. However, due to the difficulty of commercialization, they are also unable to distribute and sell the game.... "
“…… Igrit has an unparalleled channel advantage. Using the world wide web platform, we can cross the mainstream Apple's Macintosh system, Microsoft's windows system, traditional DOS system and other operating system platforms. With this online advantage, we can easily distribute and sell application software, PC games and other products to users of these platforms at a very low cost It can be divided into... "
“…… In addition, after the completion of the online payment system, we can further promote online payment, online retail and other businesses by using this system... "
The housekeeper kept switching PPT for 20 minutes and finally stopped.
People waited patiently for the delicate short haired girl to take a drink from the water glass on her desk. Raymond Smith was the first to ask, "Alice, you just said that the user account of online payment system is bound with the physical credit card. Have you thought about the difficulty of achieving this goal? Over the years, commercial banks have racked their brains to enter the American Express payment system, but they have not succeeded. Similarly, how do you ensure that commercial banks will open payment interfaces to us? "
When Alice Ferguson heard this question, she swept around the conference room and finally fell on Simon for a moment, saying: "the whole westrow system, including Bell Atlantic and MCA, which have just completed the acquisition, has tens of billions of dollars of cash flow every year, and the demand for commercial loans is also very considerable. I believe this is what any commercial bank needs to strive for Households. I don't think it's too difficult for such a customer to ask them to open an online payment interface. "
Everyone was stunned when they heard the answer, and then they all laughed.
I didn't expect that the answer would be so simple and direct.
It's even a little rough.
Indeed, if a small company with no roots and no bottom wants to build such an online payment system, only in the aspect of banking, it is enough to make the business plans of these small companies die.
Igrit is different.
Relying on the whole westrow system as the backing, it is really very easy for banks to let go.