America's Road To Fame Chapter 198

Knowing that William Chen was coming, Li Ying directly brought the company's car to pick them up.

After sending Yang Mi home, Li Ying reported to him the progress during this period, mainly contacting Youku and Tudou for financing.

Previously, after checking the current situation of video websites in Huaguo, Chen William found that up to now, the relatively well-known private video platforms include Ku6, Youku, Tudou, LeTV and other websites. However, at the end of November last year, Ku6 was blocked. Chen Tianqiao's acquisition of Shanda Network, and he knows that LeTV is destined to be a big hole, so the only options left are Youku and Tudou.

William Chen knows that in this industry, the Netflix company he invested in is destined to be difficult to enter the Chinese market, just like Twitter has lost the Chinese market and needs to invest in Weibo in this track. Now the best way is to pass Invest in Huaguo's video site to enter the field of video platforms.

Besides, he remembered that Tudou did not have a successful IPO because of the founder's divorce case, and eventually merged with Youku to become Youku Tudou. So now the best strategy is to invest in both sites at the same time.

There is another website, iQiyi, which has developed well in the back, but this website has not yet been established.

So William Chen instructed Li Ying to contact these two companies and talk about investment.

Li Ying said that at present, the two companies have responded very positively to the financing requirements of Huaxia Future Capital, which has Chen William Meta Investment Company behind it. This is normal, because Chen William currently has a lot of resources in film and television. , he owns Future Pictures, Marvel, MGM, and the largest shareholder of Netflix; in China, he is also the largest shareholder of Huayi.

If he can invest in Tudou or Youku, then for these two video sites, there is a great opportunity to obtain content authorization from these film and television companies, thereby enhancing their competitiveness.

And these two companies both intend to go to the United States for IPO this year. William Chen, who has an American background, can also help a lot in this regard. Therefore, they responded positively to William Chen's olive branch, which is a normal thing. .

So after arriving at the Yanjing office of Meta Investment Company, William Chen asked:

"What is the valuation of the two companies now?"

“In terms of Tudou, they recently conducted a D round of financing in 2008. At that time, the financing scale was 56.8 million US dollars. At that time, the pre-investment valuation was around 400 million US dollars. If the financing is started now, then the pre-investment valuation will at least be $500-550 million."

It seems that Li Ying has done a lot of homework. After Chen William asked, she quickly said the data:

"As for Youku.com, their last financing was in 2008, but because they were not as developed as Tudou at that time, the financing amount was only US$30 million, and the valuation at that time was about US$300 million. One hundred million U.S. dollars."

At the same time, Chen William also learned that since 2008, the competition of video websites has become fierce, and various websites have started the mode of burning money to promote marketing. In addition, the national team began to end last year. National network TV stations have begun to invest resources into the online video industry, so the competition in this field is very fierce, and the corresponding burning of money is also increasing.

Therefore, at this time, all video websites have a great demand for funds. Doing online video not only has a great demand for bandwidth, servers and even technology, but also needs to start buying content in the environment where the country attaches great importance to copyright. Copyright, so the cost of funds is very huge, and now whoever can get more funds will gain a greater market share.

Therefore, while accelerating the frequency of financing, online video platforms including Tudou and Youku have begun to set their sights on IPO listing. Although the subprime mortgage crisis has intensified since this year, it seems that it is not a good time to go public. However, it has been burning money and losing money all the time. It is difficult to continue only by financing, and those early investors are also looking forward to earning returns after the listing.

After thinking for a while, Chen William said to Li Ying, "The main focus is on contacting Youku."

"what?"

Hearing Chen William's words, Li Ying showed a puzzled look, and said somewhat puzzled:

"But now it's clear that Tudou is developing better, has a higher market share, and has always been ahead of Youku."

It's no wonder that Li Ying doesn't understand why William Chen made such a decision. Although in the current video website market, Tudou and Youku are slightly ahead of other websites, such as Ku6.com, after being acquired by Shanda Network. , the development is not smooth, the market share has been declining.

But among the two websites, Tudou and Youku, Tudou still has a leading edge. Not only does Tudou have a slightly higher market share, but Tudou has always had the highest valuation, which is higher than that of Youku in their previous financings. A lot can be seen.

Even everyone in the industry is generally optimistic that Tudou can lead Youku and become the first video website with a successful IPO. If it achieves this achievement, it can even be called the first video website in the world to successfully list in the United States - although the birth of YouTube It was earlier and more famous, but in 2006, Google acquired YouTube for a sky-high price of $1.65 billion, and it has not listed its IPO at present.

Therefore, if you can take the lead in listing successfully, you will not only get a large amount of valuable development funds, but also as the world's first online video website to be successfully listed, it will definitely attract the attention of the world and increase its popularity. far ahead.

However, William Chen knew that although Tudou submitted its listing application to the SEC earlier—more than a month earlier than Youku, but because of the dispute over the division of marital property in the divorce of Wang Wei, the founder of this website, his The ex-wife filed a lawsuit during the listing of Tudou, demanding 38% of the shares of the core operating platform of Tudou, Moduquan Tudou, and filed a preservation application for this part of the shares. Therefore, the court froze this part of the equity, resulting in Tudou The listing failed this time.

From this, a "potato clause" was born, that is, investors require that the marital status of the founder or the main manager of the invested company must be changed only after the board of directors, especially most investors, agree. This is also the request made by investors for a similar situation to occur again after the failure of Tudou's IPO.

In the end, Youku's successful IPO became the first online video company in the world to be listed in the United States. It not only obtained funds to increase the progress of promotion and technological change, but also gained great popularity, leaving Tudou behind. .

After Wang Wei, the founder of Tudou, finally reached a compensation agreement with his ex-wife, and resolved the divorce storm, the IPO succeeded again half a year later, but the situation of the entire market had changed at that time, and Huajian shares suffered a cold reception from the market. Tudou's IPO was not successful, and even broke on the same day, which is in stark contrast to the stock price of Youku, which soared more than 110% on the day of its listing.

In addition, in the past six months, Youku has seized the opportunity to catch up, so the market value of Tudou is less than a quarter of Youku. In 2012, it was acquired by Youku. 160% of the acquisition of Tudou ~ www.mtlnovel.com~ with stock, but the ratio of the two parties in the new company was 3:1, which shows how miserable Tudou was at that time.

So since this is the case, and the current valuation of Tudou is higher than that of Youku, why didn't William Chen directly invest in Youku?

Some people would say that it is possible to invest in Tudou at the same time and resolve the divorce storm of founder Wang Wei in advance. But if this is the case, Tudou is the first to successfully go public, then the future development may not be worse than that of Youku, then there is a high probability that subsequent mergers and acquisitions will not be achieved, then William Chen invests in two competing companies at the same time. The significance of doing so Where is it?

Besides, he knows that although online video sites seem to be very lively now, in the end, these sites still have to rely on giants to develop, because this industry burns too much money.

Just like later, LeTV collapsed, and the three BAT giants are one by one - Baidu's iQiyi, Ali's Youku Tudou, Penguin's Penguin Video...

In this case, it is impossible for him to support two websites at the same time, so it is better to follow the normal circumstances, after Youku acquires Tudou, fully support Youku to compete with other giants.

Since it was decided, Chen William directly said to Li Ying:

"Personally, I am more optimistic about the development of Youku.com, so you can talk to them. I can accept the valuation of 400 million US dollars. I hope to invest at least 100 million US dollars, accounting for 20% of the shares."

Well, since the boss has already made a decision, Li Ying will go ahead and execute it, so she followed William Chen's instructions and went to contact Gu Yongqiang, the CEO of Youku.com.

Chapter end

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