American History 1988
Chapter 361 - 350 Surfing Night

Chapter 361: Chapter 350 Surfing Night

UUNET was going public, and as one of its major shareholders, Dean had every reason to be present in the trading hall.

It was worth it, if nothing else, just to show support and then watch the stock price lift a little.

When Dean arrived, as expected, Times Square was already crowded with reporters.

"We’re old friends now, Mr. Price." A financial reporter approached him as he got out of the car.

"I’m delighted to see you all again," Dean said with a smile, waving to the crowd.

The crowd laughed along. To be honest, they were more excited to see Dean there than they were about UUNET’s IPO performance.

"Mr. Price, do you know?!" a reporter shouted toward him.

"What?" Dean turned sideway, perking up his ears.

"You haven’t shown up at Nasdaq for a whole year."

"Haha~" Laughter rippled through the crowd.

"I’ll come twice more this year, to make up for last year," he answered.

"Yo~" His humor made everyone laugh even louder.

Of course, along with the laughter were the frequent bursts of camera flashes.

"So, can we talk about UUNET?" Finally, a reporter remembered the topic of the day.

"Regarding UUNET, there’s not much need for an introduction.

I believe everyone here has used the internet, right?"

Facing Dean’s inquiring gaze, everyone nodded.

Nonsense, he dared to ask because the reporters present were all elite.

They always enjoyed the conveniences of technology before the general public did.

"Look, this is what UUNET is doing.

It’s bringing the wondrous Internet into every household that is willing to connect.

Kids can learn all sorts of things, and parents can catch up on yesterday’s news they missed."

This was the third ISP operator to go public in Times Square, and clearly the public had embraced the Internet concept.

Dean just had to sing a little praise, and the atmosphere at the scene became very lively.

Of course, as much as he praised UUNET, it wasn’t as influential as him being there in person.

Some viewers in front of the TV decided to learn about UUNET only after seeing Dean.

After handling a few questions, Dean made his way back to find Adams and the others in the trading hall.

"God, you finally made it!" Adams’ anxious heart quietly calmed down.

"Buddy, you look nervous. Come on, Wall Street is very optimistic about the internet."

Dean’s visits to Nasdaq were as laid back as if he were going to a bar.

"Of course I have confidence in UUNET, but they all say that if you appear at the bell ringing ceremony, our stock might rise a bit more."

Adams had already realized what was going to happen next until he stood in the trading hall.

It was there he could feel the reality that the company he founded was about to go public.

That meant a lot of wealth, and if the stock could be driven even higher, it could imply fluctuations of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

No one could be indifferent to it, not even the bookish Adams.

Dean, who had been sizing up his surroundings, was taken aback by the remark, "Who said that?"

"There~" Adams nodded toward a spot not far off.

Following his gaze, Dean saw Axel’s people nodding and smiling in their direction.

Alright, it was an old acquaintance from Silicon Valley.

"OK, what’s the opening price?" Dean greeted them and then turned his attention back.

"I thought you’d forgotten about that~" Adams joked and then gave him the answer.

"11 dollars, a bit better than we expected."

"Not bad, UUNET’s IPO won’t have any problems then."

With the opening price, UUNET’s valuation was already approaching 900 million dollars.

After the opening, exceeding 1 billion dollars was almost a given, nearly double the previous acquisition price of Metropolitan Fiber.

Adams was now exceedingly grateful that he had listened to Dean’s advice.

Otherwise, he might have missed out on a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Alright buddy, it’s time to ring the bell." Dean noticed that people from Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs were approaching.

Ringing the bell was an exciting moment for any founder.

As the founder, Adams was rightfully placed center stage.

Next to him was Dean, and one hand was also on the electronic button.

This was a collective request from Adams himself, Axel, and Wall Street.

At Nasdaq’s bell ringing, Dean’s halo was more effective than profitable financial reports.

As the familiar bell sounded, the trading hall immediately buzzed with excitement.

Some clapped, some took photos, and of course, many eyes turned to the giant electronic screen.

Dean glanced at it briefly, then confidently began to chit-chat with the Wall Street folks.

Just as he predicted, with AOL’s example before them, UUNET’s stock price was on a constant rise.

In just half an hour, the market value had surpassed 1.5 billion dollars.

Of course, before the market closed at noon, as a large volume of transactions took place, the stock price might experience some decline.

But the big trend won’t change, and in the long term, there is no shortage of people willing to invest in its stock.

However, as a pure communication service provider, UUNET may not be able to grow to the size of AOL.

That’s because it lacks content services, which is a hot business in the current internet boom.

Adams wasn’t without thought of making up for this shortcoming, but UUNET simply didn’t have that kind of corporate DNA.

Moreover, it was too late. In this area, AOL was almost entirely dominant.

Additionally, the newly rising Yahoo was also eagerly preparing itself.

According to the rule of 6:2:1:1, UUNET might invest a huge cost but only gain an insignificant market share.

It wasn’t worth it, and Adams’s ambition wasn’t enough to support him in challenging these two powerful competitors.

In fact, UUNET’s thinking wasn’t wrong, it just had the order reversed.

Yahoo wasn’t just content with being second best; its operating model was destined to be disruptive.

It’s just that this point hadn’t become apparent yet.

...

In May, just as Dean was enjoying another moment in the spotlight on Nasdaq,

Seattle was hosting a rather unusual party.

Ever since Brad Hillberg acquired the rights to Mosaic from Spyglass,

he had reiterated to Gates more than once the fact that browsers were becoming increasingly important.

The entire Skunkworks had done a lot to change Gates’s attitude.

One of these efforts was a memo with the theme of the internet economy, entitled "The Web Network is the Next-Generation Platform."

In this public document, team members explained their vision and why the internet was so important.

Because it was widely circulated, the memo eventually landed on Gates’s desk.

He read the memo, and some of the points were very interesting, but others he still found hard to agree with.

So Gates decided to meet with Silverge again—they had argued many times before.

If they were to debate once more, it wasn’t that big a deal.

Brad Silverberg arrived as scheduled, and his style was as direct as ever.

"Bill, if we don’t make a move now, it will be too late.

Netscape’s browser hasn’t been on the market for even a year, but they have already sold millions of copies!"

"Millions of copies?!" Gates was somewhat astonished.

The last he heard about Netscape was that their browser sales were around several million US dollars.

"Yes, millions of copies! They announced this during their roadshow in their financial report."

Silverge, keeping tabs on Netscape’s every move, naturally wouldn’t miss news of their IPO.

Hearing that Netscape was on a roadshow made Gates finally take the matter seriously.

Because even for an ordinary software company, when its sales volume reaches millions of copies,

it signifies that their sales revenue must be at least several hundred million US dollars, which only large software companies can achieve.

Of course, a market of several hundred million US dollars could also attract Microsoft’s attention.

"What’s the market share of Mosaic right now? Do they have similar sales figures?" Gates remembered that Mosaic and Netscape were previously locked in a close battle.

If Mosaic also had such high sales revenue, then this business was surely worth Microsoft’s involvement.

"Mosaic?" Silverge paused, surprised that Gates was focused on this point.

"Bill, you don’t know?"

"What?" Gates lifted his gaze.

"Mosaic is practically nonexistent now; its market share is less than 5%."

Gates was stunned; this was an outcome he had not anticipated.

"Honestly, Bill, how long has it been since you last went online?" Silverge asked somewhat helplessly.

He guessed the answer to this question was not optimistic.

"I can’t remember; I have too many things to do every day," Gates responded innocently with a shrug.

"Well, it’s time to experience this gold rush," Silverge stood up and clapped his hands, "Bill, I’ve prepared an ’Internet Surfing Party’ just for you."

"A party?" Gates hadn’t expected this to have anything to do with a party.

What followed proved that it indeed was a party.

The Skunkworks team went all out decorating the office.

A computer dressed up in a bikini was made the absolute center of attention.

Gates looked on with amusement as the clothes that should have been on a beach beauty were instead hanging off the computer’s top.

It was comical, but he sat down obediently, following the arrangement of the staff.

Next, Silverge personally showed him what the internet was, demonstrating where to go and what to see.

Until that day, Gates hadn’t fully experienced the internet using a browser.

Ever since Netscape’s Explorer made waves, he hadn’t been online, and that was no exaggeration.

He was unfamiliar with what a browser was capable of and the differences between Explorer 2.0 and Mosaic.

Then Gates had a splendid night surfing the web; he was so surprised that he asked Silverge to pause the demo more than once.

He saw the one-click access model of the internet; he saw comprehensive portal sites; he saw web-based email independent of the client side.

He changed his mind; browsers were not just a mundane application software.

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