Chapter 64: Building the plank road openly, secretly visiting Chencang

Bill Gates' grandfather Maxwell is a shareholder and executive director of the corporate headquarters of First Intercontinental Bank.

At noon the next day, Li Zetian arrived at the bank's headquarters as scheduled.

"Hello, Mr. Maxwell, nice to meet you!"

Li Zetian behaved very humbly and politely.

"Haha, hello, Chronos, I already know about you from Gates! Oh, you are a great young man!!!" Maxwell smiled.

"Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Maxwell."

"Please sit down! What do you want to drink? Coffee? Tea? I heard that Chinese people like to drink tea," Maxwell asked.

"Thank you, a glass of water will do."

"Well," Maxwell waved to his secretary and motioned for her to get a glass of water. Then he turned to look at Li Zetian and said, "Gates has already told me your purpose. Apple wants a loan of US$10 million. …”

"Yes, Mr. Maxwell." Li Zetian nodded.

"Ten million U.S. dollars is not a small amount. If Apple wants a loan, it must pledge its shares!" Apple itself has performed well, and many people around the world are looking forward to the release of the Apple-ll personal computer. Presumably the sales volume will not be high. Poor, coupled with some internal information revealed to Maxwell by Bill Gates, Maxwell believed that this loan was a very profitable business!

"Mr. Maxwell, how many shares do you think need to be pledged?"

"50% of Apple!"

Li Zetian thought for a moment and agreed, "That's no problem."

Maxwell nodded and continued: "How many years does Apple plan to take out the loan?"

"Short-term loan, two years!"

"Okay, then according to First Intercontinental Banking Company's regulations, the annual interest rate is 5.80%, that is, the interest for one year is US$580,000. Do you agree?"

"agree!!!"

Li Zetian readily agreed that as long as Apple-ll became popular, the interest of US$580,000 would be nothing. In addition, Li Zetian already knew about US bank loans before coming.

In 1973, the annual interest rate was as high as 8.74%;

In 1974, the annual interest rate was as high as 10.51%;

This year, it dropped sharply, from 5.61% to 6.24%.

When Li Zetian founded Apple in 1974, bank loan interest rates were so high that he never even thought about taking out a loan. Li Zetian can barely accept the drop in interest rates this year!

"Well, let's start the loan procedures..." Maxwell said.

Next, Li Zetian stayed in the bank for more than half an hour. When he left, there was an extra ten million US dollars in the company's account.

When you have money, you can speed up the development of your company so as to shorten the gap with IBM!

According to relevant statistics, as of 1975, IBM produced four times the number of computers produced by all other companies in the world combined! ! !

This data is simply too scary!

Today's Apple is nothing compared to IBM. Don't look at the fact that Apple is playing a lot in the field of personal computers now. That's because IBM doesn't pay attention to personal computers. Once IBM wakes up and focuses on the development of personal computers, Apple will be in a difficult situation!

As soon as the IBM industry leader took action, most computer companies and software development companies fell on their knees, either making their own hardware compatible with it or developing software for it. Looking at Apple, not many companies are willing to develop software for Apple. This led to Apple's rapid decline, and in the end it almost went bankrupt. If Jobs hadn't returned as the king to turn the tide, Apple would have disappeared into the long river of history.

At present, Apple, Microsoft and Sunbird are all very small and have a serious shortage of talent reserves. When other companies are relying on IBM, Li Zetian must ensure that he has enough talents to develop third-party software for Apple and compete with IBM. Fight against each other! Otherwise, no matter how easy-to-use Apple's computer is, if it does not have rich software support, it will only fail in the end. For example, in 1983, Apple launched the Apple-Lisa computer named after Steve Jobs's daughter. It was the world's first personal computer to combine a graphical user interface and a mouse. It had a 16-bit CPU, mouse, and hard drive, and supported a graphical user interface and multiple functions. Task operating system, let me ask, is such a computer awesome? But so what if it was awesome. Due to the lack of support from software developers, the computer could not be sold, and the remaining products were eventually buried in a landfill in Utah!

Apple is likely to encounter this situation in this life. For example, the Mac computer currently under development is also the world's first personal computer to combine a graphical user interface and a mouse. Li Zetian estimated that when the Mac computer was developed, IBM must have entered the personal computer industry.

Therefore, Li Zetian must take precautions, vigorously produce and promote Apple-ll, sell Apple-ll more popular than in his previous life, make more money, and then take advantage of this overwhelming momentum to go public directly! ! ! After going public and financing, the company will be able to have more money, recruit more talents, rapidly expand the company's scale, and catch IBM by surprise! At worst, it won't be like Apple in the previous life, which was almost bankrupt...

For the development of the company, Li Zetian has to go on a business trip in the afternoon. His daily schedule is full and there is almost no time for leisure and entertainment.

Wanda CEO Wang Jianlin’s schedule is full? Li Zetian laughed after reading it...

…

At around 4:30 p.m., Li Zetian and Tian Shuai took a plane to San Antonio, Texas, where AT\u0026amp;T's headquarters is located.

At 10:15 pm, the plane arrived at San Antonio Airport.

As for having dinner on the plane, it was okay.

After getting off the plane, I directly called a taxi and headed to the hotel.

The two of them were tired from traveling and traveling. After arriving at the hotel, they took a shower and went to bed.

Early the next morning, Li Zetian and Tian Shuai finished breakfast and immediately went to AT\u0026amp;amp;T's headquarters.

Apple is somewhat famous in the industry.

AT\u0026amp;T invited Li Zetian and Tian Shuai to the reception room very kindly and politely.

"Welcome both of you, I am AT\u0026amp;T CEO Carey Occam!" A man about 50 years old, wearing a suit and leather shoes, and gold-rimmed glasses walked into the reception room. He raised his glasses and introduced himself.

"Hello, Mr. Occam, I am Tian Shuai, CEO of Apple, and this is Chronos Li, the chief engineer of our company." Tian Shuai smiled and stepped forward to shake hands with him. Li Zetian also followed him, politely He shook hands with Ockham sexually.

Carey Ockham said: "Please sit down, please. I wonder what cooperation Apple is planning to discuss with AT\u0026amp;T?"

During the phone call, Tian Shuai did not tell AT\u0026amp;T that Apple wanted to buy a permanent license for the Unix operating system. Obviously, it would be too stupid to tell the other party, but instead remind the other party of the importance of Unix!

Tian Shuai said: "That's it, Mr. Occam, maybe you have heard that Apple is developing the next day Apple-ll personal computer. The first reason I came here is to promote Apple-ll to AT\u0026amp; If used by T Company, Apple-ll will be more powerful than Apple-l, and can help enterprises work and improve work efficiency! Secondly, we hope that Apple-ll personal computers can be sold in AT\u0026amp;amp;T stores!"

Founded in 1877, AT\u0026T has long monopolized the U.S. long-distance and local telephone market and has established thousands of business offices across the United States. If Apple-ll can obtain cooperation with AT\u0026amp;amp;T, it will really be a big deal!

Before coming, Li Zetian and Tian Shuai had already discussed the plans to build the plank road openly and secretly to Chencang. It would be great to be able to negotiate these two things well. If the negotiation failed, they finally inadvertently proposed to buy a permanent license for the Unix operating system. Copyright will not make the other party too suspicious.

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PS: There are so few votes. Please vote. In addition, please add this book to the "book list" to promote it. There will be a book list in the upper left corner of the Qidian app when you open it. Please