The launch event ended, and the two major features of the Ygritte portal, the app store and online payments, officially went live.
Simon's afternoon work schedule focused mainly on e-commerce.
Even so, the software and game content resources currently available on Ystore still felt somewhat thin.
To boost adoption of the Ypay tool, Ygritte Company had partnered with Compaq to launch a special online computer purchase promotion.
This was also the reason the Compaq executive had taken the stage during the event to introduce their custom "Internet PCs."
Users who applied for a dedicated credit card or activated their Ypay account with a prepaid card and then placed an order for one of several specially configured Compaq models could receive discounts of up to three hundred dollars.
Of course, even though the order was placed online, customers still had to pick up the machine at a physical Compaq store.
In addition, America Online had integrated the Ypay payment channel. Users could now pay their AOL account fees directly online, and doing so also earned them a certain level of discount.
These two major supplements outside of Ystore would greatly encourage users to start using the Ypay tool.
But it still wasn't enough.
Therefore, Ygritte Company decided to launch another e-commerce initiative ahead of schedule. For this purpose, the company had already registered a subsidiary brand in advance: Amazon.
Because coordination of supply sources, warehousing, logistics, and other aspects still required time, and Ypay also needed a period of testing, the Amazon online mall was not released alongside the two new products. Instead, it was scheduled to open for business in January of next year.
Although the Westeros system held a very strong advantage in film, television, and entertainment.
This time, the Amazon online mall would still focus on book sales during its early development phase. This was a decision Simon had made after careful consideration and by referencing a great deal of information from his memories.
E-commerce was still in its seeding stage right now, not even at the sprouting phase. Apart from Simon, no one else had any similar operational cases to reference. Therefore it was necessary to follow a steady and reliable development path.
Selling books online offered enormous advantages compared to other categories of goods.
On one hand, most users currently accessing the internet belonged to the upper-middle social elite. These people possessed higher levels of education and were more inclined to purchase books for daily reading, providing a solid consumer base.
On the other hand, an online mall could offer book selections far exceeding those of any physical bookstore. Even the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores typically carried only tens of thousands of titles, while an online mall could provide hundreds of thousands of choices for users.
The discussion about the Amazon online mall plan continued until five o'clock in the afternoon.
Inside a conference room at Ygritte Company headquarters, the other executives gradually left. In the end Simon called back Tim Berners-Lee, Jeff Bezos, and Carol Bartz, the three of them.
Simon did not sit back down at the conference table. Instead he leaned against its edge, looked at the projection screen inside the room, and addressed the three of them. "There are still some matters I need to discuss with you. I'm afraid you'll have to stay a little later tonight."
Even if Simon had not called them back, the three of them would have found it hard to leave on time during this period anyway.
The female assistant operated the computer connected to the projector for a moment, and a tree diagram of Ygritte Company's current business products appeared on the screen.
Tim Berners-Lee and the other two looked over together.
This tree diagram differed from the one the three of them normally envisioned. Internally at Ygritte, if divided according to the "fiefdoms" of Jeff Bezos and Carol Bartz, the second level of the tree should have contained only two branches.
In the diagram before them, the second level had three branches: web services, portal website, and e-commerce.
Each of those three sub-branches then extended further, with the portal website alone containing six items: email, news and information, online games, internet forums, search engine, and social blogs. The other two second-level branches also sprouted multiple sub-branches.
Seeing Simon suddenly show them this tree diagram, the first thing Tim Berners-Lee, Jeff Bezos, and Carol Bartz thought of was Simon's cool and elegant female housekeeper, Alice Ferguson.
The development of the Ystore system had always been personally overseen by the housekeeper.
Alice Ferguson had actually been in San Francisco for the past few days and had of course attended today's launch event. However, this time she had not stepped onto the stage to personally present the project she was responsible for. Instead, Jeff Bezos had taken the lead.
They had originally assumed Simon intended to officially elevate Alice Ferguson to a higher position. Yet what Simon asked about was something else entirely. "Tim, Jeff, and Carly, if you had to give up part of the business shown in this diagram, how would you choose?"
After more than a year of rapid expansion, compared to most internet companies in the same industry that were just getting started, Ygritte could already be described as a "behemoth."
In Simon's memory, Yahoo had only about one hundred and fifty employees around the time of its 1995 IPO.
By contrast, Ygritte Company already employed more than two thousand three hundred people at this stage. Not only in San Francisco, but also in Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Boston, Chicago, and other cities, Ygritte had established branch offices. In addition, the company had already begun laying groundwork in overseas markets such as Britain, Japan, and Australia.
On the tree diagram on the projection screen, the three major branches and all their lower-level sub-branches were each being handled by specific project teams drawn from Ygritte's workforce of more than two thousand people.
Because of the Ygritte team's ambition, even these two thousand three hundred plus employees were still insufficient to meet the company's expansion needs, so the company continued to recruit relevant talent nonstop.
Hearing Simon's question, all three of them were momentarily stunned.
Could it be that Simon felt Ygritte's scale had already become too bloated?
After considering for a moment, Jeff Bezos spoke first. "Simon, I believe every current business line at Ygritte possesses great development potential. There is no need to streamline anything."
Simon nodded directly as well. "Of course. In the short term Ygritte will only continue to expand, because the internet industry is completely untilled virgin land. We can plant whatever seeds we can think of freely across this vast territory. However, you should all know that spreading our energy too thin usually means we end up doing nothing well. Therefore I hope we begin now to place deliberate emphasis on certain areas."
After he finished speaking, Simon indicated toward the projection screen again. "Think it over carefully."
Another brief silence followed. This time Tim Berners-Lee spoke. "Simon, I feel that even in the future it will be very difficult to abandon any of the current business lines. Even splitting them apart would not be easy. There is only one point: all three major business segments under the company are covered by a single account system. Through their email accounts, users can access almost every service: web hosting, email, online games, internet forums, online payments, the app store, and so on. At the same time, according to the market team's analysis, every one of these services possesses very promising commercial prospects."
Carol Bartz added at this point, "Even if we really cannot handle everything, we still have the confidence to make most of the services the best in their fields."
"All right, I'll tell you my decision directly. You can consider it seriously among yourselves later," Simon straightened up from the edge of the conference table and took two steps forward, gazing at the projection screen. "I remember I once said that Ygritte's positioning should be that of a technology company, never a media company that produces content. Because given the expected user scale of the internet industry, no single company can satisfy everyone's differentiated content needs on its own."
All three nodded slightly. They remembered this exact statement from the memo Simon had written, and they found it very reasonable.
However, because of the highly visible portal website, many media outlets now positioned Ygritte as an internet media company, and the concept of internet media was gradually being hyped up.
Simon knew what the three of them were thinking. "The Ygritte portal is merely a guide website that helps users find content in the early stage of the industry. Once users become familiar with the internet, they will no longer rely on the portal. They may even resist the fixed content the portal recommends to them. Therefore what we should do is build the corresponding platforms and let other people produce the content users actually need on those platforms. We earn service fees through the platform channels. YWS can provide hosting platforms for enterprise users. Online payments can provide a payment platform for the entire internet e-commerce ecosystem. Search engines can provide content retrieval platforms for the exploding number of websites. The online mall can provide a trading platform for physical goods such as books, clothing, daily necessities, and electronics. Social blogs can provide a platform for internet users to express themselves. So these five major areas are the fields we should concentrate on."
Once Simon finished speaking, the three of them looked back at the tree diagram in front of them and realized that, following Simon's line of thinking, many of Ygritte's current business lines would be marginalized or even abandoned.
For example, the news and information section that currently accounted for the largest share of traffic on the Ygritte portal.
The highly active internet forums.
Even the extremely popular email service under the Ygritte Company.
A moment later Jeff Bezos asked, "Simon, what about the app store?"
"The app store will eventually be merged into the physical goods mall. Moreover, because of the thirty percent commission rate on the app store, although we currently hold the advantage, competitors of the same type will definitely appear in the future. Large software or game publishers may also prefer to sell their products on their own official websites to avoid our cut. A physical goods mall is different. Very few brands would build their own online mall just to sell their own products, and most merchants lack the capability anyway. The integrated sales platform we provide, from payment to logistics, possesses a very strong moat advantage."
"Payment systems are a big problem," Carol Bartz said. "Simon, ordinary software or game publishers cannot support a payment system on their own. They must find a universal payment tool. Our Ypay can do exactly that, and we can leverage this advantage to force them toward the app store."
Simon shook his head. "Doing that would only lead to the emergence of a second payment tool. You definitely know about the AIM Alliance that Apple, IBM, and Motorola recently established."
Tim Berners-Lee said, "Simon, didn't you express skepticism about the AIM Alliance at the luncheon today?"
"I certainly am skeptical, but that does not mean our future competitors will be as lacking in prospects as the AIM Alliance."
Jeff Bezos studied the tree diagram on the projection screen again for a moment and asked, "Simon, what should we do next?"
Simon gave Bezos an appreciative look, very much liking this executive's pragmatic attitude. "Emphasis. Since we have decided to make these several services the focus of Ygritte's future development, we must place deliberate emphasis on them. Moreover, I can state one thing right now. Because Ygritte is involved in too many internet businesses, this company will need to be split apart in the future, whether actively or passively. Since that is the case, I prefer to carry out a planned, proactive split."
Upon hearing this, Tim Berners-Lee could not help glancing at Jeff Bezos and Carol Bartz.
If Ygritte were to be split, the first departments to be removed would obviously be the two they were responsible for.
The businesses the two of them managed, because they served different customer groups, were also the most easily separable parts of Ygritte.
Simon smiled and followed Tim's gaze to look at each of them in turn. "Correct. The first step is to complete the separation of basic services and web services. This will be carried out before Ygritte's IPO."
All three were somewhat surprised. Carol Bartz asked instinctively, "Before the IPO?"
"Yes," Simon nodded and continued, "but rest assured, unless you choose otherwise, your contracts will not change. Even after Ygritte is split, according to the original agreement you will still receive the appropriate equity rewards from both companies."
As Ygritte continued to expand, especially after Cisco and America Online had gone public one after another and each broken through the ten-billion-dollar market cap, the three of them had grown increasingly certain that the five-year reward agreement Simon had redrawn for them last year, which was projected to give each of them five percent of Ygritte's equity, would likely translate into an enormous fortune in the future.
Based on the scale of Cisco and America Online alone, five percent equity would already be worth five hundred million dollars.
In this era, the number of people who could become Centi-Millionaire[1] purely in executive positions was still very small.
Moreover, all three firmly believed that Ygritte's potential was likely far greater than a mere ten billion dollars.
Simon knew Ygritte's future prospects even more clearly. With only five percent equity in Ygritte, it would be easy for the three of them to become one-billion-dollar billionaires at the peak of the new technology wave.
Of course, Simon was more than happy to see this happen.
As the Westeros system continued to grow stronger, Simon was even beginning to lean toward personally creating a large group of billionaires and Centi-Millionaire.
In fact, throughout the entire Westeros system, the treatment received by its employees should far exceed that of other companies in the same industry.
Doing so would not only cultivate a sense of superiority and cohesion among Westeros employees, but the superior treatment would also greatly enhance the execution power of the Westeros corporate teams, ultimately forging a truly powerful super business empire.
The three of them continued discussing for nearly another hour. In the end Simon said, "Jennifer will leave a set of materials with you later. Starting now, I hope everyone will begin making adjustments inside Ygritte according to the plan I just outlined. During this period, if you have any thoughts, you can contact me at any time by phone or email."
[1] Hundreds of million of dollars