American History 1988
Chapter 124 - 118: Big Sale

Chapter 124: Chapter 118: Big Sale

"Dean, is what you’re saying really true?" Macy’s expression turned serious; if there truly was a multi-party collusion, he had to take this matter seriously.

"Perhaps time will tell." Dean didn’t disclose the details of the list he had, he only gave a rough and vague piece of news.

It was clear from the information received from Professor Donald Knuth that America Online was intentionally being excluded. The companies on the list were all from the East and West Coasts; a Rust Belt state like Ohio simply wasn’t within the scope of consideration.

Thinking about it, it was obvious—if the internet were to be privatized, the future internet service providers would be embryonic forms of today’s telephone companies.

The American telephone market is incredibly large, and if the internet reached the same scale, the profits within would be enough to sustain many unicorn companies.

Everyone wanted to be one of the unicorns of the future; capturing a market share at the budding stage meant a greater chance of success in the future.

Therefore, the fewer competitors, the better, and the Midwest, including Ohio, was selectively ignored. This place was already lagging behind, and looking at the entire history of technology, no invention was born in the Midwest.

Thus, those new East and West Coast internet operators all had capital backing them, both openly and covertly. But America Online had already gone public, and taking control of it was both difficult and costly, so Dean wasn’t surprised that it was not favored.

Macy took a moment to digest the news before he slowly began to speak, "Dean, thanks for the heads-up. There are some things we need to verify first, and as for the pay search, we’ll consider making a special adjustment for Price’s List."

"Mr. Macy, what kind of special adjustments will CompuServe make for Price’s List?" the Chief Operating Officer, John, immediately followed up.

Macy glanced at them before explaining with implied meaning, "For instance, users won’t have to pay anymore to search for names on Price’s List."

Dean and John exchanged glances, and they could accept this change reluctantly; at least the traffic to Price’s List wouldn’t slump noticeably anymore.

But in fact, this measure was barely a temporary fix, as long as searching incurred an extra fee, there wouldn’t be a significant increase in new registrations for Price’s List.

Because once people realize that searching requires payment, they will subconsciously reduce the frequency of using the search feature. Even though the keyword ’Price’s List’ is free of charge, once a habit is formed, it’s hard to change.

However, as they were dependent on others, Dean and his team didn’t have many better options. Securing such conditions was already good news.

Frankly, witnessing the arrogance of America Online, at that moment Dean even hoped that the startup companies of the East and West Coasts would hurry up and grow, then replace the stubborn, old-fashioned company.

"Mr. Macy, I think we’ll meet again." Upon standing to take leave, Dean said something profound.

Robert Macy might not understand now, but he would in the future.

When America Online inquired from multiple sources yet never received a response, they would remember Dean, the first to learn of this insider information.

Of course, even if situations changed, the end result wouldn’t. After all, Dean had control over the drafting of the communication protocols, and America Online’s compatibility with communication protocols would ultimately depend on him.

Having nearly finished with his business in Ohio, Dean had intended to discuss yoga skills with Susie, but suddenly his phone began to ring insistently with one call after another.

All these calls were from California, Byte Software’s Teams product was about to explode in sales!

"Anna, what’s going on?" Having just hung up the phone with Kevin, Dean received another call from Byte Software’s assistant Anna.

"Boss, I don’t know what happened?! But suddenly a lot of companies are placing orders with us!" Anna was talking on the phone while her hand was still continuously taking notes.

Being a native of California, Anna was already at work on time while others were on winter break. "Boss, I think you need to come back early, or I can’t handle all of these?!"

"OK! I’ll book the earliest flight and fly to California straight away! By the way, call Marcus and David now, tell them if they want to become the next millionaires! Then they should fly back to California as fast as they can!"

Click! Dean hung up the phone, too excited to nearly jump for joy. Sure enough, his ’Global Overview’ magazine trajectory must have been the right bet.

"Looks like good news?" Susie, half-dressed, languidly propped herself up to ask.

"My software might be a big hit, dear~" An excited Dean pulled her into his arms and gave her a couple of kisses. "Oh and by the way, I have to return to California now, forgive my sudden departure."

"But it’s already evening, are you planning to take the red-eye?" Yawning Susie, reluctantly standing up to pack his luggage, she had just enjoyed a comfortable massage.

"Believe me, even if I don’t take the red-eye, I won’t be able to sleep tonight," Dean’s expectation for Byte Software even surpassed that for Price’s List and higher rents.

"Alright, Godspeed, my warrior." Having packed his luggage, Susie gave him a reluctant hug.

"I’ll be back after a while." The matter with America Online wasn’t over yet, Dean had that premonition.

...

On January 9, a full two weeks before the start of Stanford University, Dean had returned to Silicon Valley, California, ahead of schedule.

"Anna, can you tell me in detail what happened?" Dean, who had just taken a cab from the airport, didn’t even have time to rest.

"Boss, look, they’re all here," said Anna, with her tawny skin, handing over a stack of documents to him.

"Are these... orders?" Dean saw that these documents listed many company names.

Sun Microsystems, 2024; MITS, 632; Oracle, 1437; 3Com, 844; Cisco, 222...

"Yeah~" Anna panted, hands on her hips, "I briefly counted them, and there should be over five thousand orders. Boss, do we take them all?"

It took Anna a long time just to record this data, and after tallying up the orders, she couldn’t help but doubt whether Byte Software, with only four employees, could handle all these demands.

Then, faced with Anna’s hesitant look, Dean didn’t even think before waving his hand, "Of course! These orders are all ours! Not one should be missed!"

Over five thousand orders, the majority of which were VIP annual subscriptions, Dean himself didn’t understand why Teams became so popular all of a sudden. And how come these companies didn’t ask for a trial, but directly placed orders?

"Anna, tell me in detail what happened during this time," Dean needed to understand the details, which were crucial for him to grasp the market situation.

Next, Anna roughly went through what had happened with Dean, starting with a call from Sun Microsystems.

According to them, it was after a demonstration of Teams software at Silicon Graphics that they made this decision.

Sun Microsystems, originally a hardware company, had its own workers and production bases. With a huge workforce, Sun Microsystems placed an order for over two thousand subscriptions in one go.

This was just the number of office employees at their California headquarters; if including all of North America and worldwide, Sun Microsystems’ staff numbers might exceed ten thousand.

Later, orders from MITS, 3Com, and other companies followed in succession, and upon seeing the situation spiraling beyond expectations, Anna immediately phoned Dean.

Wow~ Dean looked at the orders in his hand in disbelief, was this a booming start to the ’90s?

From the time just before Christmas when "Global Overview" magazine was published till today when Dean returned, not even a month had gone by.

Dean didn’t know how much advertising played a part, but the shipping requests from Kevin should most likely be credited to this magazine.

Yes, aside from the data Anna had recorded. Dean was also being badgered by Kevin for shipments, who mostly requested the physical software.

Putting these matters aside for now, he had more important things to do. "Anna, go post a recruitment ad now, Byte Software needs a large number of customer service personnel.

Loosen the education requirements a bit, the only focus is they must understand computers! We need to hire at least ten employees within a month, go now, quickly!"

The sudden surge in orders also required a large number of hands for technical support. While Dean and his team could quickly handle software installation, subsequent training and maintenance required additional human resources.

After setting Anna off on the most urgent task, Dean sat down at his desk and started making phone calls, he needed to thank a key figure.

"Mr. Clark, I don’t know how to describe my feelings at the moment. But you, Jim Clark, will forever be a friend of Byte Software!"

"Haha~ Dean, how does it feel to taste success for the first time? Is it more enchanting than the ladies?" Jim Clark, sitting in his office, cheerfully spun in his boss chair.

"I heard from Anna about Sun Microsystems, and thanks to your referral, we secured the biggest order to date." Dean had to acknowledge this favor, and it was also a good opportunity to join the network of Silicon Valley.

Sometimes owing a favor isn’t necessarily a bad thing, look, Dean could now openly invite Jim Clark and the founders of Sun Microsystems to dinner.

"The key to success is Teams software being exceptional," Clark said, a smile appearing unconsciously on his face as he thought of that day. "You have no idea how surprised Andy and John were when they saw how convenient Teams was~"

Although the software had been online for less than a week, the employees of Silicon Graphics had already gotten used to using Teams for work communication. It was too convenient, staff no longer needed to walk through numerous offices or make internal calls.

For non-urgent matters, text messages on Teams were sufficient, even offering a degree of privacy. For urgent matters, the voice call feature of Teams even did away with the need to press phone keys.

And file transfer, that was even more of a godsend, often even reducing the use of paper in the office.

Having seen the application of Teams software at Silicon Graphics, the founders of Sun Microsystems and MITS skipped the trial and directly called Byte Software to place their orders.

Especially learning that the developer of Teams, Dean, was also a student from Stanford, they felt an even closer connection.

"Oh, by the way, John is the founder of MITS. He came to the demo with Andy that day," worried that Dean might not know who John was, Clark explained patiently.

"Wow~" Looking at the list in his hand, Dean roughly grasped the extent of Clark’s influence and the enormous help it provided.

"By the way, did you refer Oracle as well?" Apart from these, Oracle had the largest number of orders on the list.

"Oracle?" Clark was initially taken aback, but quickly something came to mind.

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