American History 1988
Chapter 257 - 250 Trouble

Chapter 257: Chapter 250 Trouble

Financial professionals on Wall Street had a hard time providing convincing analyses or predictions about the soaring stock price of Byte Company.

Because in just a few short months, its stock price had experienced multiple peaks and changes.

Critics commented, "Those bankers who arranged for the company to go public at 18 US Dollars per share,

followed by the concentrated release of bullish analyst reports. This is stock manipulation right before your eyes.

Otherwise, how could they have said that Byte was worth 18 US Dollars per share nine weeks ago, but now say, ’Oh, we made a mistake, it’s worth 60 US Dollars per share.’"

Seeing this, Dean couldn’t help but laugh, taking these critiques as jokes.

However, the changes over these past two months indeed were dizzying.

Previously, Forbes 400 had valued his assets at 1.5 billion US Dollars, but now that number had already surpassed 2 billion.

Even a slight tremor in the stock market meant a change of several hundred million; truth be told, Dean had grown accustomed to the ups and downs of his net worth.

Of course, the current hype around Byte Company was related to its recently released quarterly financial report and the launch of "Work title."

Now, nearing year-end and based on Byte Company’s financial reports for the first three quarters, its sales had already broken through 300 million US Dollars.

And the last quarter was destined to welcome a new round of sales surge, as "Work title" was only released in mid-September.

This software had received a lot of positive reviews as soon as it hit the market.

It was not only the finance firms on Wall Street that favored it; even our neighbors here in Silicon Valley had nothing but praise for it.

Because he knew what mature collaborative software looked like in later generations, Dean avoided many pitfalls during the early development phase of Byte Company.

He strived to make "Work title" simple and easy to use, ensuring that the initial version just needed to guarantee that core functions ran smoothly.

Accessory functions could be added slowly later on, and as it turned out, this strategy was successful.

The linear workflow design adapted very well to the current office requirements, visibly enhancing work efficiency.

Another highlight was the e-mail system ending in @bit.com, which was extremely popular.

On the current market, there were many commercial email services, like Lotus Company’s notes and MCI’s email service.

They were all operated as commercial ventures, that is to say, these email services were charged for.

Not only were they charged, but the fees were also quite expensive, because they involved various components of costs.

For example, Byte Company sending an email to AOL on the East Coast.

It had to pay a service fee to the domain name owning company, and then pay another fee to the network service provider for data exchange.

Yes, in an era when the network hadn’t been completely liberalized, sending an email was not cheap.

But now Byte Company’s email service was embedded into the "Work title" software, being sold as an integral product.

If the email function were assessed independently, then it would be free.

Not just free, Byte Company even provided matching server support, which further reduced the cost of communication between them.

When different companies used "Work title" to send emails to each other, they didn’t need to pay email service fees or data exchange fees.

Byte Company’s "Work title" eliminated all intermediary costs, which was why it was so popular.

As more and more corporate users used the "Work title" software, it began to experience a network effect.

This was because Byte Company’s users could use Teams to communicate with each other and also send emails very conveniently.

They didn’t generate any cost, and over time, this naturally attracted more users to join, all while being highly exclusive.

Wall Street may have already realized this, hence the steady rise in Byte Company’s share price.

After all, a "Work title" software had sold over 300,000 copies in just two or three months on the market, amounting to over 80 million US Dollars in sales revenue.

A rough estimate, Byte Company’s financial record for the last quarter needed to be refreshed.

So the bullish market view was a matter of course, after all, market value reflects to some extent the company’s earnings over the next few years.

As a result, of course, Dean’s net worth rose along with it.

After going through the documents at hand, Dean finally regained that sense of assurance in his mind.

"So, let’s talk about Intuit now, what do they say?" This was the reason Dean was in such a rush to get back to the West Coast.

Byte Company was negotiating its first acquisition, but it seemed that things weren’t going smoothly.

"Pruks wants to sell, but Cook will only accept an investment, and our offer has already reached its limit,"

Jimmy was helpless in the face of Cook’s stubbornness; he had tried all kinds of persuasion techniques.

"Alright, I’ll talk to them. If it really doesn’t work out, then we’ll just invest in Intuit,"

Dean was interested in this company not because it was so crucial to Byte Company,

but because Intuit had stepped into a niche market with virtually no competitors: financial software.

America is a country with a system of withholding taxes, and usually, after filing taxes, the federal government tends to issue refunds more often than not.

This created a strong incentive for individuals to file taxes, which in turn gave rise to a specialized tax accounting market.

Intuit targeted this area, Cook had realized early on that the traditional methods of bookkeeping using pen and paper would eventually be replaced by personal computers.

And people’s willingness to file taxes was sufficient to support this segment of the market, so Intuit’s first bookkeeping software Quicken was developed with personal users in mind.