American History 1988
Chapter 311 - 301: The Advancing Byte

Chapter 311: Chapter 301: The Advancing Byte

"Sorry, Baram, Byte does not intend to drain Apple’s talent pool."

"I think there might be some misunderstanding... Yes, I promise."

Dean hung up the Motorola in his hand and sighed helplessly; he had already received several calls like this.

All of them, without exception, were asking Dean what exactly Byte Company was up to.

Well, it started when Valentine recruited John Chambers from us.

At that time, Dean had agreed to let Chambers go, but only if Valentine helped find his replacement.

By the way, Byte was in the process of setting up a consumer division, and Valentine was entrusted with finding its senior management as well.

Then, in the few months Dean was on the East Coast, Valentine started poaching all over the place.

It was bad enough that he was headhunting, but he particularly targeted the backbone forces of Silicon Valley.

HP, Intel, Apple... he had poached from them all, and acted very quickly too.

It wasn’t that people hadn’t protested to Valentine, but he’d brushed them off with Byte Company’s name.

Now everyone was unhappy and started calling Dean directly.

Caught off guard, Dean, who was still not fully aware of what had happened, kept apologizing.

Though California has no non-compete agreements, Valentine’s approach was a bit too direct.

Relying on Byte’s recent market cap surpassing ten billion US dollars and the stock options that would become available with the new consumer division.

Valentine found it almost effortless to poach using these terms; Byte was thriving.

For Silicon Valley’s talent, a young company with rapid market value growth held great attraction.

But as much as poaching was satisfying, it also greatly annoyed his peers.

Even the local newspapers covered the story, with Intel’s Andy Grove giving an interview to a reporter.

"These venture capitalists play the role of dark knights, luring innocent young engineers and managers into their trap—this is the dark side of venture capital."

Valentine, however, had a plausible explanation, "It’s not like we bagged their heads and dragged them out of their companies.

Everything was done willingly; you can’t blame Byte for offering too good of a deal."

Seeing this in the newspaper handed to him by Caitlin, Dean immediately felt a headache coming on.

It turns out this guy managed to offend others while still flying the flag of Byte Company.

Having no other choice, Dean had to take out his phone and call Valentine, telling him to be careful.

However, regarding the new division’s setup, after Dean returned to the company, he made a point of checking on its progress.

Thanks to Valentine’s swift actions, the middle and senior management backbone of the consumer division were almost in place.

Byte just needed to hire some programmers, and the framework would essentially be set up.

Considering it was already October, if he wanted to complete the "Toktok" project by next year, planning could start now.

Thinking of this, Dean took a document from the drawer of his office desk and handed it to Anna.

"This is the design requirement of the new project; hand it to Thomas and have him draft a development plan.

I will call the first meeting of the consumer division next week, and we’ll discuss it in detail then."

"Okay, Boss," Anna took the document and hurried out.

Dean was concerned that Byte’s employees would develop the "Toktok" project as a simplified version of Teams.

He had already written down what he wanted; the difference between Toktok and Teams is that the former does not need to be so serious.

While the text transmission capabilities of the two and their core technology are not significantly different,

they are still two distinct applications aimed at different user demographics.

Teams is about a sleek and professional UI design that fits office aesthetics.

For instance, the interface colors are predominantly deep blue and light grey, and the layout of functional modules is squared off, giving a sense of "business style."

But Toktok is different; its user base is the more lively consumer.

So the features can be simple, but the UI must be attractive and dynamic.

Replace the cold shades of deep blue and light grey with warm or muted colors that are more likely to put people in a good mood.

Moreover, to draw in users, the avatars and IDs that represent individuals can be creative.

Thinking of a cool username? Toktok allows for that.

And as for avatars, whereas Teams has only a generic human silhouette to barely distinguish gender,

with Toktok, it can become a stage for individual showcases, and whether there are any value-added services in this...

Well, that will be decided once the market is cultivated.

In short, the functionality can be simple, but the content surrounding personal presentation must be rich.

After all, its positioning is as a social app, so how could it lack decorative elements?

Dean, drawing from his experience, included all these details in the development requirements for Toktok.

Even more, for a clearer vision, he had sketched a few rough UI interface diagrams himself.

Just wondering if Byte’s employees, accustomed to designing office software, could grasp the essence of it all.

Dean did not worry about these details; having just structured the consumer division, he had turned his attention back to the planning for the Byte headquarters.

In the past months, Byte had publicly opened the bidding to collect design proposals for the headquarters in Mountain View.

There were several concept designs on Dean’s desk right now; frankly, all of them looked quite artistic.

But after some consideration, Dean favored the work of Norman Foster.

On his blueprints, the future headquarters of Byte would consist of crystal-like skyscrapers.

They would vary in height, but harmoniously arranged, much like a series of pulsating notes.

Looking at them, Dean felt something akin to reading code, except that it was also filled with artistic taste.

According to the diagrams, these buildings would use a large amount of glass to increase the lighting in the offices.

The entire headquarters would include office buildings, a training center, a tech bar, dining areas, a fitness center, and a Starbuck lounge among various other facilities.

Even its interior includes a park, giving off a fashionable and dynamic feel when looking at the entire blueprint.

Dean really liked this plan and believed that future employees would find working there a visually pleasing experience.

But as beautiful as it was, the budget was frighteningly high.

According to Norman Foster’s team’s assessment, to realize the main content of the blueprints would cost about 500 million US dollars.

This was more than ten times Byte Company’s initial land purchase price, and the construction period would last 5-8 years.

Moreover, this was just the cost of the main structure; adding in the later decoration, the budget was still unknown how high it would go.

Luckily, the entire construction period would be divided into several phases, with the budget provided in installments. Otherwise, it would not necessarily be manageable for Byte at present.

Dean drew a circle on the blueprint, preparing to discuss it again with the board when the time came.

After all, this was a major decision, and it would require that all aspects be agreed upon and approved.

It might be one or two years before that happened, as there was no helping it—200 acres is a big project.

Ding-a-ling-a-ling...

Dean, who was engrossed in reading materials, had his train of thought interrupted by the phone ringing on his desk.

"Hello?"

"Dean, it’s me, Steven."

"Oh~" It took a moment for Dean to realize who the caller was.

"Steven, I’m glad you called. How’s your movie coming along?"

"Haha, nothing could be more exciting.

I rounded up a few friends to wrap it up after returning from France," he replied.

Spielberg sounded very excited, treating this as his first start-up venture.

In fact, this was indeed a startup since they had formed a company for it.

Once Dean told him that Knowledge Exploration Company had already rented an office in Silicon Valley,

Spielberg, upon finishing his current work, couldn’t wait to start tapping into his Hollywood connections.

He enlisted Quentin Tarantino, Catherine Hardwicke, the magician Teller, and Jennifer Aniston, whom Dean had insisted on adding.

All of these stars appeared as a favor, without taking any fees.

They found an abandoned prison off the 110 highway near downtown Los Angeles, where they shot for over a week.

Tarantino was in charge of cinematography, Aniston of acting, and Spielberg of directing.

Since the film had an educational purpose, the script was very simple, and they wrapped up all the shots in less than ten days.

Now Spielberg needed to bring these unedited shots to the Silicon Valley office,

to work with the programmers at Knowledge Exploration Company to incorporate them into the software.

Alright, Dean almost forgot about this, but Spielberg was really invested in it.

This call was from him in San Francisco.

"Steven, I’m surprised by your efficiency, but everything’s ready at Knowledge Exploration. Let’s go to the site and discuss its production tomorrow. I don’t think there should be any particular problems to solve."

"Great! You always bring good news, Dean."

After agreeing on a time, they hung up the call.

What Silicon Valley doesn’t lack is programmers, so Knowledge Exploration Company quickly recruited a full team.

According to the agreement made between Dean and Spielberg, the new company would invest 2 million US dollars.

He put in the lion’s share, about 1.2 million US dollars, and took half of the company’s shares.

Spielberg, responsible for all film production, took 30% of the company’s shares after investing 300,000 US dollars.

As for Jennifer Aniston, she used private funds Dean had given her to secure a 10% stake in the company.

The remaining 10% would be used as an employee stock option pool.

Yes, even for a venture of such modest scale, Knowledge Exploration still established a stock option pool.

That’s how Silicon Valley works—if you don’t offer shares, you can’t recruit any tech talent.

The attraction of stock options played a pivotal role in making it a capital of entrepreneurship and technology.

As for the use of the 2 million US dollars, it would mainly cover employee salaries for the foreseeable future.

After all, this movie-based game had no location costs, and there were no computer-generated special effects.

Everything was primarily based on real scenes, and Spielberg managed to complete it without spending a dime.

The remaining programming work was the only cost.

According to Dean’s financial team’s estimates, 2 million US dollars would be sufficient to complete the production of this game.

Given that even the direction of the story had already been written by Spielberg’s team in advance.

The programmers had to do mostly pure coding work, which made it much simpler.

So the next day, Knowledge Exploration threw itself into the game’s post-production.

Seeing a room full of computers and nameless equipment running, Spielberg couldn’t help but be full of ambition.

"How about we name the project after our initial agreement, ’Steven Spielberg’s Director’s Chair’?"

"I have no problem with that," Spielberg agreed without any hesitation.

Both were businessmen wanting to sell the game, naturally utilizing Spielberg’s fame to its fullest.

Even subsequent marketing and publicity would need to leverage the Hollywood director’s reputation.

Since Dean had invested in the project, he certainly needed to make money to justify his investment.

While the two were touring Knowledge Exploration, Anna hurried over with a phone in her hand.

"Really?" After hearing her whisper, Dean’s eyes lit up.