wedding ended, Bonnie and her friends returned to London on a Gulfstream G450, while Barron stayed in America temporarily.
At this time, Google had already started the IPO process.
According to the prospectus they have disclosed so far, Google will sell 25.7 million shares publicly, of which the company's original shareholders (shareholders before the IPO) will sell 11.6 million shares; Google will issue 14.1 million new shares for financing.
Currently, Google has set the stock offering price in the range of $108 to $135.
If calculated based on the highest issue price of US$135, Google's financing scale this time will be close to US$3.5 billion, and its market value will be as high as US$36.5 billion, exceeding General Motors' market value of US$23.7 billion.
In fact, this time Google's IPO process was very "unconventional"...
It can even be said that it broke the rules of the game on Wall Street for a century.
In the traditional IPO process, the investment banks responsible for issuance and underwriting are the undisputed protagonists because they have the most systematic expertise and the most extensive network of contacts.
The Morgan Consortium was the largest investment bank at that time. Among the top 100 large companies in the United States in the 20th century, 96 were clients of the Morgan Consortium, and two of the other four were considered by old Morgan to be unqualified to be served.
Therefore, century-old investment banks like these are of very high standard, and ordinary companies have to visit them one by one if they want to find an investment bank.
But not Google...
At the very beginning of its preparations for listing, it completely went against tradition and chose its investment bank in an "emperor choosing his concubine" manner.
Initially, Google convened more than a dozen investment banks at one time and asked them to sign a confidentiality agreement and fill out a detailed questionnaire.
In this questionnaire, Google asked these investment banks about their underwriting history like an examiner, for example, how the stocks they underwrote performed, how they underwrote the stocks, what opinions they had on the timing and pricing of Google's IPO, etc.
Throughout this entire process, investment banks have completely become supporting roles, and many arrogant Wall Street people even think that such a questionnaire is a humiliation.
But in the end they tolerated this behavior...
The reason is simple——
First, Google paid a high fee for this underwriting - a high financing service fee of US$100 million.
Second, and more importantly, no one wanted to miss out on a company like Google at the time.
So, although the investment banks were full of complaints, they still filled out the questionnaires obediently, hoping to get the favor of Google.
In the end, Google selected a series of large investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup for interviews.
Google's chief financial officer and general counsel grilled them and eventually picked Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters.
But when it came to the roadshow, Google was very different.
Normally, when a company goes public, the company's executives and investment banks will spend a lot of time, such as two weeks, traveling from one city to another to promote its stocks to institutional investors, and answering investors' inquiries very carefully, seriously and diligently.
However, the founders of Google were very different. During roadshows, they kept telling jokes and often refused to answer investors' questions.
More importantly, in traditional issuance and underwriting, investment banks are generally responsible for inquiring and then pricing the IPO.
Google, on the other hand, is just the opposite. It holds the pricing power firmly in its own hands!
For example, in its IPO application, Google claimed that it hoped to raise $2.718281828 billion...
Many people find this number funny, but it is actually the first ten digits of the irrational number e. This kind of "cute" technological aura is very obvious throughout Google's IPO process.
In response, Google refused to make any changes, even though it was very complicated, but I was willful and I wanted to raise so much money.
Then, in early July, Google revised its expected IPO price range to between $108 and $135.
This caused a huge uproar!
Why?
Because this means that Google's offering price is seven times the price of other comparable companies in the market at that time!
Then, such a high price and such a strong attitude immediately aroused great disgust from Wall Street and mainstream media.
The most extreme case is Merrill Lynch, one of the mainstays of the investment banking industry. They publicly announced their withdrawal from Google's IPO project and advised their clients to be cautious about this stock.
Other investment banks also began to discredit Google at this time and warned their clients to stay away from Google because it was a huge mess.
Then the New York Times will join the fray, criticizing Google's IPO plan as a return to the false prosperity of the 1990s, with too many Internet companies in the bubble, etc...
Rich23 Capital will definitely participate in Google's IPO this time...
After all, Baron knew that although the pricing of Google's own shares was criticized by many media and investment banks as too outrageous and far higher than other "benchmark companies" - after all, it was only a company founded six years ago, and its market value was about to exceed that of General Motors...
But even with their current offering price range of $108 to $135, compared to Google's future market value, it can still be considered extremely cheap.
And he knew that within three months of Google's IPO, its stock price had risen to $201.
What's more, in the original time and space, due to the overwhelming public opinion against it, Google moderately lowered the range of the issue price.
…
Another thing worth mentioning is that up to now, Barron has not seen the emergence of Facebook in the United States, especially at Harvard University.
In the original time and space, Facebook was launched in February of this year.
Therefore, as early as February, Barron had sent people to pay attention to this matter, and even found Zuckerberg himself at Harvard University to monitor his every move.
The main reason is that in the previous life, the development process of Facebook was too impressive, especially after being described in the movie "The Social Network", I'm afraid most people have some understanding of this process.
And it is also the winner of global SNS type social networking sites.
So although Woaw is currently the leading website of this type, competitors including MySpace are constantly emerging and have a certain user scale, but they are still far from shaking Woaw's leading position...
But Barron still needs to pay attention to Zuckerberg and Facebook.
At present, it seems that Zuckerberg gave up the idea of starting a business in this field because there is already a giant in this field, Woaw Technology, which has more than 20 million users worldwide, and there are already many similar websites in the North American market, including MySpace...
Anyway, judging from the results of the investigation on Zuckerberg, he is not starting a business yet and seems to be just an ordinary college student.
As for MySpace, which seems to be Woaw Technology's biggest competitor in North America at the moment and is invested by Ivanta's IC Capital, its number of users has approached 3 million by the beginning of July, and is expected to reach 5 million by the end of the year...
This is still a huge gap compared to Woaw Technology's user base in the North American market, which has exceeded 10 million.
But this already ranks second among social networks in the North American market.
After receiving investment from IC Capital, MySpace carried out a series of publicity and marketing.
This includes using the marketing promotion method that its parent company eUniverse is best at - spam bombing...
I have to say, although this method is disgusting, it is indeed effective.
Just like the "rogue software" and similar plug-ins from companies like Huaxia 3721...
A considerable number of MySpace users are brought here as a result.
Another part of MySpace users are music lovers. Since the beginning of this year, musicians have been allowed to create their own profile pages on MySpace and upload their MP3 songs to build a larger fan base.
This attracted many independent musicians, and some bands even allowed their songs to be downloaded, and this concept also attracted their fan base.
In terms of differentiation from Woaw, MySpace has gained personalized users by allowing users to make their homepages more "fancy" and by providing interest groups including music.
However, Woaw's simple and convenient interface is relatively more popular among mainstream users.