American History 1988
Chapter 315 - 305: Short of Money

Chapter 315: Chapter 305: Short of Money

"John, do you have good news for me?"

After stepping into Price’s List office, Dean smiled and spread his hands.

"Uh, Boss, indeed there is one piece of good news," John said, glancing at Simon beside him, but in the end, it was he who spoke first.

"So... what’s the good news?" Dean was in a good mood.

Just recently, after two months of negotiations,

Byte Company had finally taken over MicroPro at the still price of 40 million US dollars—Dean stuck to his bottom line.

Although MicroPro’s best days were behind it, their accumulation in the field of electronic documents could make up for Byte’s current shortcomings.

Perhaps after another half a year of digestion, Byte would have the ability to develop relatively mature collaborative document software.

Holding this acquisition experience in hand, Dean had for the first time tasted the thrill of taking a shortcut.

Byte Company could, of course, start from scratch with electronic document technology.

But when factoring in manpower, material resources, and time, buying out was actually more cost-effective.

Dean was already pondering which small companies on the market were worth acquiring, thinking it made sense to take them over before they had a chance to develop.

Seeing his good spirits, John couldn’t help but feel a little more relaxed.

"Boss, the good news is that the number of registered users on Price’s List has exceeded 1.5 million.

Based on the data recorded on BBS, our Price’s List might be the most popular website in the world."

"Wow~" This good news did indeed give Dean a bit of a shock.

From the beginning of the year to the end, the growth of Price’s List had been rocket-like, surging ahead.

Dean remembered how at the start of the year, there weren’t even a hundred websites online.

But now, that number had exceeded ten thousand.

This was the cumulative effect of the internet, hypertext language, and browsers interacting with each other.

Of course, federal government policies also played a certain catalytic role.

And Price’s List, which had been well prepared from the start, became the biggest beneficiary of this transformation.

Compared to those geek-built websites out of interest, Price’s List had a company standing behind it.

The website’s maintenance, updates, customer support—there was a team on duty 24 hours a day.

Clearly, individual websites could not afford this, and so it was only logical for Price’s List to become the most popular website.

However, despite the 1.5 million registered users, once Dean had gotten over his initial surprise, it no longer seemed so strange.

With Explorer browser, Mosaic, and the AOL client triple binding, Price’s List was almost the first website people encountered online.

Its content was comprehensive, and the headings and sections were clear and straightforward.

This was a guide for those going online for the first time, not knowing what to do, and Price’s List was their navigator into the web.

They lingered on it, and then upon closing out, half of them chose to register an account with Price’s List.

Though 1.5 million didn’t represent the number of active users, if only half of them were active, it would still be a notable achievement.

The internet wave hadn’t even started, and Dean was already imagining to what extent Price’s List could grow.

"This is indeed good news, John, you’ve done well."

"Uh, Boss, although our site is popular, there’s a bit of a problem,"

John wrung his fingers and appeared slightly cautious.

"A problem?" Dean was taken aback, "What’s the problem?"

John and Simon exchanged glances, then shrugged honestly, "We’re running out of money."

"What?" Dean was stunned, then chuckled, "Now that’s an unexpected piece of news."

Price’s List in Ohio had scrimped and saved for a few years, amassing some capital.

It wasn’t a lot, but there were still a few million US dollars.

Dean had barely touched this money; he didn’t need that bit of dividend.

He had assumed that with those funds on the books, Price’s List could at least hold out until the day revenues balanced the expenses.

But judging from John and his colleagues’ news, the reality was far off.

"Alright, let’s hear it, what happened?" Indeed, bad news often follows good news.

"Server costs are too high," John spread his hands helplessly, "All of our profits have been poured into them."

Supporting a user base of 1.5 million, thinking about the massive volume of data that needed to be accessed, makes it clear how demanding that is on servers.

Web pages differ from software; as long as users stay on the page.

Every click, every navigation, requires sending a request to the server.

So when a user is browsing a web page, the channel they occupy is in a state of busy most of the time.

This forces servers providing web service to operate at full capacity all the time, unable to allocate idle resources to other visitors simultaneously.

Put simply, the website needs more server resources because it occupies the "slot" for long periods.

Software doesn’t require such frequent server access, because much of its data is stored locally.

Take, for example, the browser, which opens a window to the internet; it actually demands much less from servers than one might think.

After all, it too is a kind of software, or rather an application tool.

The browser’s sole responsibility is to open web addresses for users, afterward, all web page services are provided by the website itself.

That’s why the same amount of a few million US dollars could support Netscape for a year, but Price’s List couldn’t.

Given such a massive data access, it was fortunate that Byte Company had enough server centers, otherwise their own software services might have gone down.

Additionally, due to Dean’s connections, the server costs Price’s List was paying were actually discounted.

Otherwise, with the rate of user growth that Price’s List was experiencing, it should have burnt through all its funds long ago.

John’s explanation made sense to Dean, but he still had some questions.

"John, with so many users, isn’t there corresponding business cooperation for Price’s List?"

As long as advertisers came knocking, it would create an economic cycle for the website.

"Yes, but currently only here in California can we barely break even," John nodded honestly.

"Why?" Dean asked, puzzled.

"Because those intermediary agencies and advertisers are still taking a wait-and-see approach to something new like Price’s List.

They’ve never advertised on the internet, and many of them don’t even know what a website is."

John’s explanation left Dean stunned; okay, this was an outcome he hadn’t anticipated.

Not everyone lives in Silicon Valley, nor does everyone understand what the internet is.

Especially on the East Coast, the businessmen there are much more conservative than those here in California.

Moreover, the emergence of any new thing has a process of diffusion.

The internet enriches people’s lives, and Price’s List is beginning to get popular.

But to get businessmen who are used to traditional marketing to accept the internet and invest in it

would take some time, meaning there is a certain lag in commercialization compared to the popularity of web pages.

The problem lies here, as Price’s List gains more and more users, the demands on the servers also increase.

If they can’t accelerate the commercialization process, John and his team might soon run out of funds.

"Let’s do this, I’ll think of a way about the funding, but we need to find more monetization channels as soon as possible.

1.5 million users, I believe many advertisers will be interested."

Dean remembered that Price’s List had other shareholders, and now was the time for them to contribute.

"Our business cooperation on the West Coast has been very successful, it’s just that user growth is so rapid that the server expenses are more than the income.

Just give us a few more months, and there will definitely be progress on the East Coast.

At the latest in half a year, Price’s List should be able to balance income and expenses."

To secure the urgently needed funding, John also made a commitment in front of Dean.

"Good, I believe you can do it," Dean was satisfied with John’s attitude.

"So... how much more funding do you need to ensure that Price’s List achieves a positive cycle?"

Considering the current rate of internet spread and the growth rate of netizens, this was not a small number.

After much deliberation, John clenched his teeth, "Ten million! That should keep Price’s List operational for about half a year."

"Honestly, it’s a bit beyond my expectation," Dean admitted, somewhat surprised by the ten million dollars.

However, thinking of the CIX Alliance’s latest report at the end of November, Dean felt somewhat relieved.

The number of internet users in America had exceeded 11 million, more than doubling since the beginning of the year.

With the popularity of browsers, the number of users on Price’s List naturally rose accordingly.

Even the explosive growth had not arrived yet, and Price’s List’s real test of servers was still to come.

"Dean, the reason we need ten million dollars, apart from considering user growth,

is also that the current servers are not suitable for web pages, their utilization rate is too low."

"Hmm? What do you mean?" Dean was somewhat confused.

"Right now, our website is written using hypertext language, hosting mostly HTML documents on the server.

As well as associated resources like images, CSS style sheets, fonts, videos, and so on.

But as you know, Dean, HTML language has not been around long, and there’s no professional server optimized for it.

This leads to web pages occupying much more server resources than usual characters.

Price’s List is already the party that uses the most resources at the Byte server centers."

So that was it, Dean’s face showed sudden understanding; he had almost forgotten about this issue.

Servers are of many types, with general-purpose and specialized being two broad categories.

General-purpose, as the name suggests, can handle most data, and Byte Company has also procured a significant portion of them.

Specialized servers are divided into many kinds, like file servers, database servers, application servers...

In their respective fields, they have stronger and more efficient processing capabilities.

But obviously, there isn’t any server yet specifically for web pages, or Web servers.

This market is almost untapped, Dean’s eyes lit up, he had some ideas.

"I will raise the funds as soon as possible, Byte’s servers are sufficient to support the development of Price’s List.

As for the specialized server, let me think about it some more."

Dean suddenly realized that he seemed to have touched upon a lifeline of the internet.

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