American History 1988
Chapter 129 - 123 Attention from Venture Capital

Chapter 129: Chapter 123 Attention from Venture Capital

"Brown Wyles, a Master’s student in Physics at Stanford, whose specialty is acoustics," Adam said in the school’s physics lab, introducing another member of PBK to Dean.

"Hi~ Brown"

"Hi~ Dean"

Wearing thick glasses, Brown returned the greeting with a smile and a mutual pat on the back. His curly hair and shy smile made it obvious that he was research-oriented.

"Adam, how many more of these top students are there in PBK? Standing in front of them, I feel like an ignorant punk..." Dean said in a low voice to Adam after greeting Brown.

"You have a good eye~" Adam chuckled mischievously, "Among all the members of PBK in the science and engineering fields, you are the only one who hasn’t published a paper in an academic journal."

"F*ck~" Dean hadn’t expected to experience a day when his achievements would be looked down upon, "I should have never joined PBK; it just turns me into a complete rookie."

"Don’t lose heart, buddy~" Adam said, patting his shoulder with a teasing look, "At least you’re the one who makes the most money among the PBK members."

"Oh~ I suppose I should be proud of that..." Dean shrugged his shoulders as if that were some sort of skill.

"Come on, now is your time to shine." After whispering words of encouragement to Dean, Adam went over to chat with Brown.

"Brown, we came here today because we need a small favor," Adam said, pointing at Dean, "He has developed a software that provides high-definition voice service, but now we’re encountering a little problem..."

Under Adam’s gestural cues, Dean explained the problem with the Teams software, which was also the most frequent customer complaint.

"Our audio sampling rate is 64 kbit/s, ensuring the quality of calls, but this also leads to another issue.

That is, when the hardware network is constrained by transmission rates, or when multiple people use voice calls on the same line concurrently, the data processing speed drops significantly.

This can cause server lag, software crashes, and a host of other issues, and in severe cases, it might even impact the operation of the entire internal network.

We are troubled by customer complaints, so I am considering sacrificing some audio quality to enhance the smoothness of the software."

To be honest, Dean hadn’t expected the Teams software to receive user complaints so quickly, especially in the area of call quality that he had initially prided himself on.

When developing Teams, Dean had envisioned its use within company intranets. Normally, the bandwidth occupied by a voice call is around 100kb.

In Silicon Valley, most companies’ gateway devices can support a bandwidth of 5M and above, which means they can accommodate 50 employees using Teams’ voice calling feature at the same time.

And those larger companies often have more than one gateway device, with bandwidths reaching to 10M or even 20M and above.

Teams supports group meetings of up to 100 people, which is definitely not a problem for these large companies.

But Dean overlooked the existence of small companies and individual users whose network hardware is limited and who struggle to achieve even 1M bandwidth most of the time.

If they use the multi-person conference mode, server outages are likely. Hence, most of the complaints about Teams in recent times come from these users.

Although small companies and individual users only contribute around 30% of Teams’ sales, Dean does not intend to neglect this demographic.

He wants to optimize the voice calling feature, offering not just a high-definition mode but also a lower-spec option.

"So you’re thinking of lowering the audio sampling rate and, while downsampling, ensuring basic call functionality?" Brown asked after listening to Dean’s explanation, grasping the idea.

"Yeah~ Downsampling, that’s the perfect analogy." It figures he would catch the crucial point immediately, even offering a solution, true to his research nature.

"Theoretically, all we need to do is resample the voice data packets, reducing the scan rate to around 32 kbit/s to achieve a similar effect.

I need to write a new extraction and expansion plan, and the voice encoding may need to be tweaked as well," Brown assessed internally before suggesting a rough plan for improvement.

"Good~" Adam warmly hugged Brown’s shoulder, "So does that mean the problem is solved?"

"Adam, I still haven’t completed my research tasks..." Brown shrugged helplessly, as it would take additional time.

"I know you’ve been working on a personal research project on noise reduction, right?" Adam winked at him, and Brown, without responding, implicitly agreed.

"Private research requires extra investment—experimental materials, data search, auxiliary manpower, all of which need one thing for support~" Adam shifted his gaze toward Dean, indicating that it was time for him to use his superpowers.

"Adam, you..." Brown seemed to realize something.

Dean, catching the signal, didn’t waste words. He pulled out his checkbook and scribbled down a number.

"Brown," Dean handed over the check, "This isn’t payment, this is my support for your research. I’m also very interested in active noise cancellation technology, right, Adam?"

"Yeah~" Adam nodded approvingly, explaining to Brown, "This guy is a music buff; he hopes to use better noise-cancelling headphones soon."

The hastily invented reason seemed hardly convincing, but Brown chose to believe it after seeing the number on the check.

$40,000, that’s enough for him to bring to life many of the ideas in his head. "I’m delighted, Dean, that you’re interested in noise reduction research, and if it yields results in the future, you’ll get a share."

"Win-win, right?" Adam clapped his hands happily, "That extraction scheme..."

"Within a month," Brown raised an eyebrow, "just as this month I happen to need to switch my research direction and adjust my thinking."

"Oh~ What a creative way to adjust," Adam nodded exaggeratedly, "so we’ll just..." He pointed towards the door, "not disturb you anymore~"

"OK, goodbye~"

"See you in a month~"

After leaving the physics laboratory, Adam couldn’t help but look Dean up and down.

"Mother F*cker, why do you now look like a fag?" Dean stepped a few paces away from him in disgust.

"Looks like your Teams software really did make you a fortune."

"Hey~ Why do I sound like I just got lucky in your mouth? I put in the effort~" Dean hated the way the guy looked at him as if he were a nouveau riche.

"OK~OK~" Adam wrapped his arm around Dean’s shoulder again, "At least my judgment back then was good, look, you’re nearly meeting the entry requirements for PBK."

"Ah ha~ That is truly exciting," he said extravagantly, but there was no hint of joy on Dean’s face.

"Your acting skills are too poor."

"Thanks for the compliment."

"By the way, because the Teams software has recently become somewhat famous here in Silicon Valley, someone wants to interview you." Just as they were about to part, Adam suddenly told Dean some unexpected news.

"Interview me?" Dean spread his hands in surprise, "Adam, am I about to become the media’s new entrepreneurial star?"

"If you limit it to Stanford, I think so."

"So, is this an invitation from the campus newspaper?" Dean was a bit disappointed; he guessed it was probably just another media organized by the students.

"Don’t underestimate their influence, aren’t you trying to recruit people for your startup company?" Adam handed him a journal, "Maybe just showing up there could get people to contact you."

Dean flipped over the front of the newspaper, "The Stanford Review". "Well, I thought it was ’The Stanford Daily’~"

The name of ’The Stanford Daily’ is known to any student in the Palo Alto area, fervent in reporting scandals involving the higher-ups at Stanford University ever since it clashed with the school administration in the 70s.

This independent newspaper is not only popular at Stanford University but also has many readers in several nearby colleges. Considering the current media climate, each issue of ’The Stanford Daily’ can sell between four to seven thousand copies, wielding significant influence among the student body.

However, with the thin "The Stanford Review" in hand, Dean honestly didn’t remember much about them.

"This is a newspaper founded two years ago by a philosophy student," seeing Dean’s puzzled expression, Adam specifically explained, "The reason I suggested you consider it is that they are willing to feature your Teams as a headline story."

"Wow, sounds good~" A mosquito leg is still meat, "so how should I contact them?"

"Peter Thiel, I think he’ll be calling you soon." With a pat on Dean’s shoulder, Adam and Dean parted ways.

Solving the audio technology problem for the Teams software was Dean’s top priority lately; other bugs could be fixed through coding.

But this one required investment in research and just so happened to be out of Dean’s field of expertise, so he needed outside help.

It must be said, as a research university, Stanford has provided Dean with a lot of assistance in entrepreneurship, which may well be why Silicon Valley continuously sees a stream of successful business ideas.

Of course, getting some publicity for Teams would be even better; Dean was now extremely eager for journalists to come and interview him. How could you do business in America without publicity?

Just as he was considering which magazines to continue advertising in, an unexpected call came one after another.

Well, not so unexpected. Over eight thousand copies of Teams software sold successfully, and most of them had already been put into official use.

As word-of-mouth slowly fermented, Byte software finally caught the eyes of those venture capital firms. A software with no comparable competitors in the market, was undoubtedly an attractive prospect.

...

"Jim, I take back what I said before; the Teams software works flawlessly on SGI." Glenn Miller shed his rough-and-tumble image, following Clark with steps of a servant, as though he were the assistant.

"Oh~ Glenn, am I too forgetful?" Clark stopped walking, looking at him with a scornful gaze, "Who was it again that opposed that procurement order? Perhaps you can remind me?"

"Listen, Jim, I apologize for my previous rashness." As a venture capitalist, Glenn pushed capitalist shamelessness to the extreme, "I need you to introduce me to the founder named Dean Price."

"And then what? Plunder all of his shares and leave him a mere 3% charity?" Clark seemed to see the despicable man raising his evil scythe.

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