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Volume 2 Chapter 29 Inventory

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    The Fourth Congress of Chinese Literary and Art Workers will be held on October 30, including literature, drama, music, film and other literary and artistic industries, with a total of more than 800 people participating.  The Film Workers Representative Meeting will be held on November 4 after the Literary Representative Meeting.  The Literary Congress has a very high standard, and all major national leaders will be present. All the attendees are highly respected figures. Shen Chong is not qualified to attend, but he is qualified to attend the Film Workers Conference.  It is absolutely a fantasy to think that you can influence the formulation of film policy with just a few speeches and reports, so Shen Chong plans to stay in Beijing until the end of the film workers' meeting, while writing about the feasibility of "importing Hong Kong films to the mainland"  Report, while making friends with various officials of the film bureau. Even if the wheel of history cannot be turned, it is good to leave a good relationship. Anyway, we will inevitably have to deal with more in the future.  The focus of his activities and communication with people is the film distribution and screening system.  In the 1980s, China Film Corporation's monopoly on purchasing and marketing created a gap between the studios and the film market. The studios were unable to profit from the hot market and made no money. As a result, the production companies were unable to make money.  The studio has no motivation and no ability to make high-quality movies.  Without good movies, the audience's needs cannot be met, and the market will slump. Moreover, with the rapid development of the mainland's economy, televisions have gradually entered thousands of households. As a result, domestic and foreign troubles have caused the film market to hit the bottom in the early 1990s.  , not surprising.  ¡°This is like the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, one is in high spirits, the other is hungry and thirsty, but they are blocked by the Milky Way, watching each other, drooling at each other, but unable to do anything Whether the monopoly of China Film Company can be broken is the key to whether the mainland film market can continue to be active.  The film censorship system has a very strong political overtones, and Shen Chong thinks he is incapable of interfering with it, but he is somewhat sure about the reform of the film distribution and screening system, because this is not a battle fought by one person, but a group of people.  Fighting - All studios across the country have ideas. For example, Wang Yang, director of Beijing Film Studio, once wrote a letter demanding reform of the screening system.  During the Film Workers¡¯ Congress, the main leaders of major studios across the country will come to Beijing to communicate and work, and come up with some tricks, which is likely to have positive results.  "It's a pity that plans don't change as quickly as they do."  The day after making a report on "co-production" at the Film Bureau, Shen Chong received a telegram from Feliton.  The content is very simple, just a few words.  Apple is interested in acquiring VisiCalc.  This surprised Shen Chong.  Historically, before the release of VisiCalc, Festra took the initiative to go to Apple and offered $1 million, but was rejected gracefully And now, Apple is taking the initiative to acquire it?  To be honest, Shen Chong was very moved.  In July, August, and September, VisiCalc sold nearly 130,000 copies at $99 each. After deducting production costs and distribution and publicity expenses, the gross profit exceeded $10 million. It can be described as a perfect money-attracting monster.  If Shen Chong¡¯s main business is the computer industry, he will not give up VisiCalc no matter what. However, his main business is movies, which greatly reduces the value of VisiCalc and makes it useless.  VisiCalc is indeed very profitable, but it is just a spreadsheet software made by two programmers, not an Office suite, and the technical threshold is not high enough. Although the United States has a complete copyright system, piracy will not occur, but there are no patents, so it will soon  There will be copycats Office software is one of the most profitable areas in the computer industry. Before long, many companies will swarm in, and the competition will be as fierce as the smartphone market in later generations.  Although Shen Chong is a mess in computer science, he at least understands one truth - software, like movies, cannot be perfectly plagiarized, let alone something that can be made just by talking.  With the development of computer software and hardware, in a few years, the development of office software systems will become very complicated. Developers will use "hundred" as the unit, code will use "ten thousand lines" as the unit, and the development cycle will  Taking "year" as the unit, by that time, how can Shen Chong have the time and energy to operate and manage?  Historically, VisiCalc was replaced by Lotus after two or three years, and Lotus did not survive for a few years before being replaced by Office. Therefore, if you do not put in all your efforts and work hard, VisiCalc will soon decline and will not be able to attract long-term profits.  ability.  What Shen Chong values ????most about VisiCalc is its spreadsheet patent, because no office software can bypass spreadsheets. As long as you get the patent, you only need to sit at home in the future, and the licensing fees will roll in. It is comfortable and easy.  .  However, it is a pity that although I submitted the application materials early and found the top law firm, before that, there has never been a software patent in the world, so the review process is very slow. After VisiCalc was launched, its function of making a leap in office efficiency, and the huge market that followed, made patent review and approval more and more attractive.  Before Shen Chong came to Beijing, one issue of Time magazine used VisiCalc's floppy disk as its cover. In it, various computer experts criticized Shen Chong's move to apply for a patent.  Under this situation, Shen Chong felt that there was a high probability that VisiCalc's patent would not be obtained, because the lawyer responsible for the patent called in September and vaguely reminded him that if he could naturalize in the United States, he would not be able to obtain the patent.  Very beneficial.  However, Shen Chong has no interest in naturalizing the United States If he could not get the patent, he originally planned to integrate VisiCalc into Microsoft at the right time in exchange for a certain amount of shares. Anyway, Microsoft will be the overlord of office software in the future, Bill Gates  The management ability is extremely strong. If you follow it, you can get huge dividends every year without having to work hard.  But since Apple is interested, selling to it is also a good choice.  In June, Apple conducted a round of external private equity financing. A total of 16 investors, including Xerox, Rothschild and other capital companies, as well as some individual investors, subscribed for Apple at a price of US$10.5 per share.  shares, raising a total of US$7.27 million.  Shen Chong was in the mainland at the time. By the time he went to the United States, the financing had been completed and he had made nothing. He had to hire two stockbrokers to buy some leftovers from the outside world to comfort himself.  In 1979, Apple's annual sales were only 70 to 80 million. It would definitely not be able to come up with enough cash to acquire VisiCalc. It would definitely exchange shares for shares. This is a good opportunity.  Shen Chong is not a fruit fan. He is interested in Apple's stock because Apple will be listed next year. Before the listing, the current shares will be split again, and one share will be converted into ten shares. After the listing, the stock price soared to 29 US dollars that day.  That is to say, if you invest US$10.5 now, you will get back at least US$290 next year, which is an amazing rate of return.  (Note 1) Faced with such a huge business opportunity, after much hesitation, Shen Chong decided to return to Hong Kong.  Because he was very poor and needed money After replenishing production funds, the sales of Tetris soared. By mid-September, 400,000 copies had been sold in more than two months. He could have sold more, but unfortunately the cassette company's production capacity  If you can¡¯t keep up, the market is still hungry.  Each cassette is priced at US$49.99, and the ex-factory price is around US$18. However, large-scale distribution and marketing cost a lot. A rough calculation shows that the gross profit is 8 million. With the increase in production capacity, Tetris  Its ability to attract money will be further enhanced, and as a game that has been popular around the world for thirty years, its durability is worth looking forward to.  But these money are not wages, you can't spend them as you like Unlike office software, video games and the film industry are closely related. Shen Chong will not give up this field. Activision has been expanding, poaching people everywhere, Tetris  Production and marketing also require a large amount of reserves, so although they make a lot of money, they are just numbers on the books and cannot be moved.  The situation of the Rubik's Cube is a bit subtle. On the one hand, the sales volume is huge, more than 800,000 per month. However, under the siege of many copycats and piracy, the sales momentum has dropped significantly, and the growth is weak. In the past few months, advertising has been launched again.  , and holding competitions has increased a lot of marketing costs, so profits are not as good as before. Shen Chong's monthly dividends are only more than 2 million, and most of them cannot be moved. First, because Li Kaiyuan's factory in Shenzhen was completed  After it is put into production, before Christmas, a large amount of funds will be needed to market the new product, and secondly, to save money to do something big.  What he can freely use is part of VisiCalc¡¯s profits and the Rubik¡¯s Cube patent licensing fee of about US$800,000 per month.  It is indeed a lot of money, but also a lot of money spent With the popularity of VisiCalc and Tetris, the distribution chain responsible for Festra is also expanding rapidly and blooming everywhere. Even with the introduction of two strategic investment partners, each  It still costs millions of dollars every month.  Kurosawa Akira's "Kagemusha" seemed like a bottomless pit. In May, he invested 2 million US dollars. However, at the end of August, news came from Japan that he needed to raise funds again, so Shen Chong invested another 2 million (Note 2) Rolling Stone split up  , Shen Chong invested US$400,000 in Wu Chuchu's new company Shen Chong allocated a budget of US$1 million to Zhang Aijia for the establishment of Oriental Charm Taiwan Branch Shen Chong invested in Jin Shijie and others to establish the Lanling Theater Workshop, and Shen Chong was generous  With a swipe, he spent more than 500,000 US dollars to buy a movie theater in Taipei and planned to convert it into a theater The three magazines under it are all losing money, and they have to fill in 200,000 to 300,000 US dollars every month Various expenses  Come down, Shen Chong can use?It was very limited, so when I joined Hutchison Whampoa's business at the end of September, I still used all the Rubik's Cube patents as collateral and got a loan, which finally raised US$8 million.  And these 8 million have now all entered the gold futures market. If you can exchange VisiCalc for some cash and Apple shares, it will be a very good business.  Shen Chong was in Beijing, but he felt that his influence was not enough and he was not important enough. Those big-headed people basically regarded him as a promising young expert. When they talked to him, although they listened carefully, they did not take it into their hearts Shen Chong  I need to make a big move and tell them that I am not a frivolous expert, I am a rich man, a shining and heavy rich man!  ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª Note 1: See ¡°Apple¡¯s Capital Ups and Downs¡± Note 2: The final investment in ¡°Shadow Warrior¡± was nearly US$10 million.
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