In fact, there is another company in Silicon Valley that Barron is very interested in, and that is Google.
Unfortunately, since 1999, when Sequoia Capital and KPCB, two of the most well-known venture capital firms in the United States, jointly invested a record-breaking $25 million in Google, the company has not raised any more funds until its IPO.
It is worth mentioning that after participating in Google's financing, KPCB's Doerr once complained:
"I have never invested so much money in a startup and only got such a small stake."
However, Google's performance after its listing made all his previous dissatisfaction disappear.
Barron also asked Google through Sequoia Capital whether it was possible for the company to raise funds, and he also hoped to participate in it...
However, Morris still said that this possibility is not great, because Sequoia Capital is also very concerned about this, but according to the information obtained from the two founders of Google, the next time Google raises funds, it is estimated that it will be an IPO.
And this time may very well be next year.
Therefore, in theory, if Barron wants to invest in Google, he can only participate in the subscription of their publicly issued shares at that time...
Even so, Barron did not give up. He set his sights on investors who owned shares in Google at the time.
Of course, Sequoia Capital and KPCB are out of the question, but there are still other early investors who own shares in Google.
For example, Andy, the teacher of the two Google investors who first invested $100,000 in Google and is also the co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
Also on board is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who was also an early investor in Google.
However, all of these people refused to sell their Google shares at this time, even though the price offered by Barron seemed very tempting at this time.
You know, last year, Yahoo, which was still at its peak, wanted to acquire Google. They offered $3 billion, and Google countered with $5 billion. Then, Yahoo gave up the acquisition...
At this time, Baron gave a company valuation of $6 billion to acquire Google's shares, which was twice what Yahoo offered last year.
However, DS Capital gained something from Yahoo.
Since 2000, Yahoo has been cooperating with Google, which provides search services for Yahoo.
In the process, Yahoo invested $10 million in Google and held approximately 5% of its shares.
After the failed acquisition of Google last year, the competition between Yahoo and Google has become increasingly obvious. Therefore, when DS Capital proposed to acquire the shares of Google they held, Yahoo showed interest.
Baron was not surprised that Yahoo responded to his proposal to acquire its shares in Google. After all, Yahoo has made many bold moves in this regard.
We won't talk about the fact that he gave up on the $5 billion acquisition of Google, and later wanted to acquire Facebook for $1 billion, but lowered the price to $850 million before signing the contract, only for Zuckerberg to angrily refuse the offer.
Even the Google shares they currently hold were mostly sold out before its IPO...
Well, the most outrageous thing is that during Google's IPO, they sold their Google shares at $82 per share, which was lower than the issue price of $85...
In this case, Barron no longer has any psychological burden in buying their Google shares in advance.
However, for Yahoo's approximately 5% stake in Google, DS Capital offered $300 million. Yahoo thought the price was a little low, so it countered with a $350 million offer...
Then DS Capital agreed.
Of course, the team sent to negotiate with the other party put on a show of asking for instructions back and forth, making a gesture of "making friends", and finally agreed reluctantly.
The two parties then reached an agreement, and DS Capital acquired 12.6 million shares of Google held by Google for US$350 million, accounting for approximately 5% of its current total share capital.
In addition to Yahoo, DS Capital has also reached an agreement with AOL.
Last year, when Google was cooperating with America Online (AOL), it had an agreement with them, that is, they granted AOL the right to purchase its shares at a price of US$3 per share. AOL could purchase up to 7.4 million shares of Google at this price.
In the original time and space, when Google went public, Time Warner Group, to which AOL belonged, exercised this authorization. At that time, the issue price of Google's stock was US$85, which means that this agreement earned AOL at least US$600 million in additional profits.
But this will not happen now, because after the merger of Time Warner and AOL, their business conditions were not ideal. Therefore, after DS Capital proposed to buy out their agreement for US$185 million, AOL readily agreed.
After all, AOL's revenue from its partnership with Google last year was only $35 million.
DS Capital's bid means that they can only make a profit after Google's stock price exceeds US$28 per share. This price corresponds to a market value of Google of more than US$7 billion.
AOL believes that Google's market value may exceed $7 billion in the future, but how long will it take? Compared with waiting for this, it is too uncertain to get this money now and make a big profit for the company.
After all, the CEOs of such listed companies have a term of office, and the most important thing is to achieve more profits for the company within this period and thus obtain more bonuses and shares.
The equity transfer agreement signed between DS Capital and AOL stipulates that AOL's equity interest in purchasing Google shares will be owned by DS Capital.
In this way, DS Capital will need to spend $535 million to purchase Google shares in Yahoo and AOL alone. Taking into account the purchase fee of $3 per share required to exercise AOL's options, the total amount will reach $557 million.
In this way, after DS Capital executes AOL's agreement to purchase Google shares, they will hold approximately 20 million shares of Google, accounting for 7.7% of Google's total share capital at that time!
Of course, Barron's first problem now is to solve the funding issue.
By late August, thanks to the significant growth in revenue from its SMS and gaming businesses, NetEase's stock price continued to rise, reaching a high of $50.
Baron knew that NetEase's stock price would then reach a record price of $55.85 and would subsequently exceed $70—of course, that didn't last long.
However, in addition to the NetEase shares acquired through the last additional issuance, DS Capital also held 4.3 million NetEase shares earlier, accounting for about 14% of their total share capital. Therefore, it is impossible for them to sell all the shares when the stock price was at its highest.
By this time, Daisy had already started selling NetEase Cloud Music's shares in the secondary market.
It is worth mentioning that even before Barron's DS Capital purchased NetEase's shares, BBK's founder Duan Yongping had already started buying NetEase's shares.
At that time, he bought about $2 million worth of NetEase stocks at a low price of less than $1 per share. However, he did not keep these stocks until now. He sold them out one after another after the NetEase stock price exceeded $30...