Chereads / American Tycoon Reborn / Chapter 42 - Netscape Conversation

Chapter 42 - Netscape Conversation

The next day, David took off his coat and left it on his desk before sitting down on his chair.

Not long after, someone brought him some food, and he ate leisurely under the bright sun in the morning, grabbing a newspaper and giving it a quick scan.

Suddenly the trading door burst open, with a triumphant smile on his face, and his footsteps light and fluttering, shaking his fat body, Allen immediately declared to everyone that he had arrived.

David almost let go of his coffee cup, and the traders looked up simultaneously and had dumbfounded expressions on their faces showing a slight surprise.

Allen went beside David before shamelessly taking the other slice of his sandwich on the table and chomping on it before giving him a cheerful smile, laughing.

"Haha, David, we did it. We are now very, very rich. We are overflowing with money! Haha, this is all because of Netscape. We really should thank them for giving us all this money.

Hey, what do you think they will do if they knew that we earned more money than most of their shareholders in this IPO?

Hahaha, actually, let's not tell them. It's too much trouble. We can be secret rich men, go to parties, and hit on many ladies for some fun or maybe travel around the world and conquer women!"

Allen laughed as he chatted non-stop about everything in his mind. It can be seen that he is a very easygoing person, with not many complicated thoughts in his head.

David only stayed silent, watching him chatter around, biting his delicious freshly sandwich that only had a half slice left. Luckily, he has two sandwiches with him, so he can still afford to give half a slice away.

Looking around the trading room, everyone soon ignored Allen, whose presence they had long been used to, and the room quickly transformed into a marketplace. Everyone was coordinating with each other. At the screen in front, boards full of data charts were being presented.

The traders were all focusing on their current task, sell all the Netscape stocks at the highest price possible. This time they are on a time limit as Microsoft was close to releasing Internet Explorer, which will have some impact on the Netscape price.

Alexander was going around communicating with others, implementing special ways to complete their main purpose. Overall, it was an extremely busy scene.

This continued until noon as David and Allen decided to go out to play around for a while and maybe grab more food for lunch at the persuasion of Allen.

Such a good day should be celebrated with much more delicious food. Let's spend some money on some luxurious, high-quality meal today.

...

On someplace far away at a large office, two people were frowning, recalling the news they had received today.

James Clark and Marc Andreessen just heard that a formidable competitor was releasing a browser to fight against them.

Usually, they will just beat them out of competition since they are the leader of this market, but this time, it is from their opponent, Microsoft.

You have to know that Microsoft and their company Netscape didn't have a very good relationship. Both sides are taking action towards the other, but in the end, Netscape was still the undisputed leader of the browser market.

They were very proud of their achievements, and they think they will also surpass Bill Gates. He only had the time advantage over them, but in the future, this won't matter anymore.

You know, in the past few days, they have been blown up by media all over the world. Many things had occurred.

Their company's market value ballooned to over $4 billion in a very short time. Many companies took years to accomplish this after their IPO, but they only took days.

They received overwhelming praise from everyone, legendary investor, innovator, future billionaire, and so on.

In the past, when they walk down the street outside their company, no one knew their identities. They are just one of many company startups on the block. But now, whenever they come out, everyone would recognize them, gazing at them with admiration and being especially respectful.

After all, they are considered very successful now, and the pursuit of wealth is in everyone's hearts.

Unknowingly, they have become celebrities. People worship them or their money. They were invited into interviews and had several photoshoots for financial magazines.

Marc Andreessen, one of the founders, was featured on the front page of Time Magazine titled 'The Golden Geeks.'

However, many people don't know that Marc Andreessen doesn't have many shares in Netscape. At this time, his shares are worth about $60 million, much less than what David earned in a week.

But Marc Andreessen doesn't know this. He was very confident in himself. He is young and already successful.

"Is this a problem?"

James Clark looked at the sunny sky outside while taking out a cigarette. Marc Andreessen furrowed his brows before answering with slight hesitation,

"Our company has a lot of understanding towards browsers, and we gathered that Internet Explorer could not compete with us when it's released. But-"

"Microsoft?"

"Yes, you know their relationship with us. It's hard to fix it at this point. They should have prepared some plan, but we don't know what it is yet."

James Clark turned his head and looked at Marc Andreessen before seriously asking,

"Then we have no choice but to beat them. What are we gonna do next?"

"Well, our Navigator 2 is getting released next month. There are a lot of new functions that will attract users to our browser."

"Oh?"

Seeing the curious eyes of James, Marc Andreessen made an effort to explain further,

"Well, there is this new company Yahoo that has been gaining popularity recently, their user interface is clean, and they are a lot of useful functions, we have taken some inspiration from them."

"Hmm? Will there be any trouble?"

"No, there won't be. They have very secure designs and patents. We have tried acquiring some, but they immediately declined our offers with no hesitation, so we can only take inspiration. We can't do anything more than that."

"That's good. Tomorrow let's look at this Internet Explorer that they have been talking about and do some tests."

Marc Andreessen nodding in understanding. Their company has been getting so much popularity. The atmosphere everywhere was filled with happiness.

Internet Explorer or other emerging browsers can't stop them from showing up and competing, but since they are already here, they will just have to defeat them.

...

David did not stay in the trading room for a long time. After coming back and chatting with Alexander for a while, he immediately went home.

Everyone they had to do has successfully been completed, and now it's time to rest. Because they went out early, they now have nothing to do with what's going to happen next.

In addition, it seems that he will have to invest some more in Netscape in the future. From his memory, the highest point of the stock price was $174, and this is at the end of the year.

The reason for this increase was that the first version of Internet Explorer was weaker than Netscape, but after the subsequent updates, they quickly caught up, and by the next year, they are already slowly eating Netscape alive.

Unfortunately, Netscape was never able to return to this peak in its entire history. Next year, they will initiate a 2-for-1 stock split, and because of a company named Microsoft, it went downhill from that.

Obviously, he will ride the wave upwards to at least $170 until he can finally say goodbye to this company forever.

After that, he has some companies in mind that will balloon exponentially by ten, twenty, fifty times until the dot-com bubble.

Many companies might not have the ability to survive at that time, but this is not his concern.