"Mr. Guo, this is the file Mr. Moritz sent over on MegaChip."
Bruce had barely gotten to the office the next morning when Wendy walked in and placed a thick stack of faxed documents on his desk.
He glanced at it, then nodded.
"Let Moritz know the money is ready. Once he signs the paperwork, I'll wire it to Phoenix Capital."
"Yes, Mr. Guo."
"And have Tim come up in two hours."
After giving the instruction, Bruce waved her off.
Wendy nodded and left the office.
Bruce opened the file and started reading.
The farther he got, the tighter his expression became.
MegaChip was stronger than he had expected.
The company not only had its own wafer fabrication plant, packaging line, and testing facilities in Milpitas, California, it had also built independent affiliates in Japan, Europe, and Canada. It was already operating on a global scale. What had started as a company valued at $135 million when it went public back in 1983 had grown, after more than a decade of expansion, into a Silicon Valley tech company with a market cap close to $800 million.
If Bruce really pushed, buying MegaChip outright was not impossible.
But if the price of getting a foothold in the future mobile chip market was giving up the massive profits waiting on the Enron short, then it was the wrong move.
He tossed the file back onto the desk and started pacing the office.
Do I walk away?
He stood there in silence for a while, but he still could not make himself decide cleanly.
The connection between 3G and 4G was too important. Later, even companies as powerful as Huawei, Samsung, and Apple would still have trouble getting around Qualcomm's patent wall. That alone said everything.
MediaTek, with the CDMA authorization it got through VIA, would go on to build a full line of CDMA-compatible chips and hold down roughly twenty percent of the global mobile chip market. That meant revenue in the tens of billions, profit in the billions, and enormous industry leverage.
Every time Bruce thought about that, his mind started shifting again.
He kept circling the office for another half hour before his eyes drifted back to the MegaChip materials on the desk.
He walked over, picked them up again, and started reading from the beginning, slowly this time, hoping to spot a crack in the structure, some angle, some opportunity he could exploit.
Almost another hour passed.
Then a thought began to take shape.
Maybe there was a way.
Bruce rubbed his chin, thought it through, and then made up his mind.
He reached for the desk phone.
"Send Nicholas to my office."
A little while later, someone knocked.
"Come in."
The glass door opened, and a man in his mid-thirties walked in wearing a dark blue suit. His expression was serious and self-contained.
"Mr. Guo."
Bruce pointed toward the sofa across from the desk.
"Have a seat."
Nicholas had come to the United States in the early nineties to study, earned a doctorate in financial engineering from Princeton, and stayed. Bruce had later hired him away from a corporate M&A department at a substantial premium and put him in charge of his deal team.
Bruce slid the MegaChip file over.
"Take a look."
Nicholas read through it carefully, then looked up, surprised.
"You want to acquire MegaChip Electronics?"
Bruce shook his head.
"Not exactly. What I want is their CDMA R&D division and the CDMA-related patent rights in their hands."
This was the workaround he had come up with.
If buying the whole company made no sense, then buying only the CDMA division and its related IP might still be worth doing. MegaChip's real business focus was ASIC products and semiconductor manufacturing, packaging, and testing. CDMA was not core to the company. That made sense. Qualcomm had licensed MegaChip into the CDMA ecosystem partly to avoid antitrust pressure, but there was no way it would willingly help create a full-scale rival.
Nicholas frowned slightly.
"CDMA?"
"That's right. I want you to make contact and see whether MegaChip has any interest in selling that division and the relevant patents. If they do, you'll lead the acquisition for me. If they don't..."
Bruce paused, then shook his head.
"If they don't, we let it go."
"Understood."
Just then, there was another knock at the door.
"Come in."
Wendy stepped in.
"Mr. Guo, Mr. George is here."
"Send him in."
Nicholas stood at once.
"Then I'll head out."
Bruce nodded, then pointed at the file.
"Take that with you. Read it again."
Nicholas picked up the materials and left. A second later, Tim George walked in right behind him.
"Mr. Guo."
Bruce smiled.
"Tim, last week you gave me a good piece of news. LinkedIn passed seven million registered users, and revenue cleared $1.2 million. That's well above where I expected the business to be by now. You deserve real credit for that."
Tim shook his head.
"The business model was strong from the beginning. Especially the recommendation feature. Once that rolled out, registrations exploded."
Bruce nodded.
"LinkedIn is a professional network. The more users we have and the richer the content becomes, the stronger the platform gets. So keep building out the blogs and forums. At the same time, stay disciplined on moderation. LinkedIn has to keep its professional identity. Anything that drifts into general entertainment or unrelated personal content needs to be removed. If it's not connected to careers, work, or industry, it doesn't belong."
"I understand."
Bruce nodded once.
"Good. I also have a product plan for you. Give it to Martin and have the development team build it out as fast as possible."
He opened a drawer, took out a prepared document, and slid it across.
Tim looked at the cover page and blinked.
"LinkedIn News?"
"That's right. I want a two-by-three-inch pop-up module on the lower right side of LinkedIn's homepage. It should cycle through the most important news of the day by time block."
Tim frowned.
"Wouldn't that hurt the user experience?"
"It could, if it's done badly. So we keep the friction low. Limit it to once every two hours. Each pop-up stays visible for ten seconds, then hides automatically. If a user cares about the story, they click it and jump to the article page."
Tim nodded slowly.
"So is the idea to turn LinkedIn into something like Yahoo, a portal?"
Bruce shook his head.
"No. We are not building a portal. We're building news, and only news."
Portals were too bloated. Too cluttered. Too noisy. Bruce had always preferred sharper, more curated news products over the all-purpose mess that most portals became.
He continued.
"And because this is still LinkedIn, the reporting has to lean toward professional topics. Career trends, industries, companies, markets, hiring, technology, management. Lifestyle and entertainment can exist, but it cannot go over thirty percent of the mix. Also, leave room on the homepage for two or three digital ad placements. We need revenue too."
"Understood."
Bruce leaned back.
"Do we have enough cash?"
Tim thought for a second.
"If you include operating revenue, we can probably make it through next year. But if we launch international expansion, that changes."
Then, after a short pause, he added, "A VC firm reached out."
Bruce looked at him with interest.
"Oh? Who, and when?"
"Three days ago. DFJ."
Bruce nodded. He knew the firm well. One of the top names in venture capital.
"What did they offer?"
"Twenty million for twenty percent."
Bruce considered it.
"In this market, that's not a bad opening. But we don't need the money. Pass."
Tim nodded. The answer did not surprise him. Bruce was one of the hottest young authors in the country, and with books like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Pirates of the Caribbean selling the way they were, cash was not a current problem.
Bruce tapped the plan on the desk.
"That's everything from me. Take the LinkedIn News proposal with you. And move on it fast."
Tim stood.
"Then I'll get out of your way, Mr. Guo."
Bruce nodded and walked him to the door.
Once Tim was gone, Bruce checked the time, grabbed the coat hanging on the stand, put it on, and stepped out of the office.
"Wendy, I'm heading out for a bit. No need to come with me. If anything comes up, call."
Wendy started to say something, then stopped herself as Bruce kept walking.
She watched him go, a small crease forming between her brows.
Sometimes she honestly felt like she had no effect on him at all.
Bruce, meanwhile, was completely unaware of what was running through her mind. He left the building, got in the car himself, and drove into downtown San Francisco.
A little later, he pulled over in front of a storefront with a large sign that read PARIS.
He got out, stood there for a moment, looked the place over, and then walked inside.