It goes without saying that Gates had a brilliant life, but what many people may not know is that when Gates was still working on a BASIC interpreter in his basement, Jobs had already become synonymous with personal computers and was worth millions. In 1977, Jobs spent $5,000 to rent an eye-catching booth at the West Coast Computer Show to launch Apple's second-generation product, Apple II. At that time, Gates, as one of the thousands of fans, met his idol, Jobs. This was also the first time Gates and Jobs met.
This meeting also marked the beginning of the love-hate relationship between the two geniuses. At that time, no one would have thought that their first encounter at the computer show would become the prelude to the turbulent changes in the American IT industry over the next 20 years!
The conflict between Microsoft and Apple is well known. The business competition between them is constant. Before the new century, Microsoft was the leader, but after the new century, Apple emerged as a dark horse and suppressed Microsoft. The bosses behind these two companies have always been a pair of old rivals.
In fact, when the two of them just started out, there was no conflict between them. On the contrary, because he was a fan of Boss Qiao, Mr. Gai wanted to cooperate with Boss Qiao. However, the arrogant Boss Qiao rejected the olive branch extended by Mr. Gai, and from then on the curtain was opened for the love-hate relationship between the two.
In the late 1970s, Steve Jobs was temporarily ahead of Bill Gates, but as Bill Gates began to cooperate with IBM in 1980, Bill Gates became an expert in making money at the time. His net worth quickly surpassed that of Jobs and he became the richest man in the world, transforming himself from a small fan into a technology tycoon.
Four years later, Microsoft was thriving, but Gates didn't want to go it alone. In 1984, Bill Gates brought Excel, Word, and Chart to Apple to negotiate with Jobs, but Jobs directly rejected Gates. Gates then turned around and sold the products to IBM, which also meant the failure of the first cooperation between Gates and Jobs.
Since 1984, Microsoft has been rising steadily. With the advent of the Windows operating system, it made Guy the richest man in the world. On the other hand, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs was forced to resign, but the company still insisted on bundling software and hardware, ignored its partners, and did not provide partners with compatibility technical support before the development and launch of new systems, thus driving away all partners. The glorious era is gone forever, and now the company is about to declare bankruptcy.
Moreover, in the past ten years, Apple has never stopped its patent lawsuits against Microsoft. Although all this has nothing to do with Steve Jobs, there is no doubt that Microsoft and Apple have been at loggerheads over the years.
Under such circumstances, at the most critical moment of Apple, Jobs pulled in an investment of up to 150 million US dollars from its arch-rival Apple. Of course, the price was 18.2 million shares of Apple stock with priority!
This money saved Apple, which was on the verge of collapse. In return, Apple gave up the lawsuit against Microsoft for copyright infringement and built-in Internet Explorer and Office on every Macintosh. In a sense, it was the richest man, Guy, who saved Steve Jobs this time.
Of course, this was also the only time that Steve Jobs sold Apple shares on a large scale after returning to Apple.
In fact, Yang Jing was also very envious of these 18.2 million preferred shares. He spent $150 million to buy so many shares, and the price of each share was only $8.25. However, Yang Jing knew very well that these shares did not belong to him, so he could not force them.
One is that it is impossible for Jobs to sell these shares to KY Investment Fund, because in the eyes of Boss Jobs, KY Investment Fund at that time also belongs to the category of vampires on Wall Street.
The second is that if I move these shares, it will inevitably trigger a certain amount of time and space paradox.
Although Yang Jing was very envious of these 18.2 million shares, he did not want to lose a large amount of precious energy because of these shares.
At this time, Apple's stock is not difficult to buy, but no one is buying it. Even if Apple's shareholders want to sell their stocks, no one will take them. It is easy to intervene in Apple at this time, and there is no need to lose a lot of money for those stocks.
However, Yang Jing was a little sad when he mentioned that Mr. Gai spent $150 million to buy these stocks. Mr. Gai is a genius, but his genius is not in investment.
According to U.S. securities laws, the 18.2 million shares purchased by Mr. Gamble in August 1997 can only be unblocked and become common stock after three years.
In August 2000, Steve Ballmer, who had just taken over as Microsoft CEO, decided to start clearing out Microsoft's shares because Apple had not yet launched the iPod, which was only a few months away.
If Apple's iPod had been launched before August 2000, I'm afraid that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer would not have been so anxious to sell out these stocks.
These 18.2 million shares of Apple stock cashed out $182 million for Microsoft at the time, with a return on investment of about 20%. This investment by the richest man cannot be said to be a failure.
But at that time, neither Bill Gates nor Ballmer would have thought that if they had the patience to continue holding these stocks, the market value of these stocks would be as high as 9.1 billion US dollars fifteen years later!
Bill Gates and Ballmer can only pay for their investment vision, because they lost $8.95 billion...
PS: I would like to thank “血杀道人” for the reward of 1,000 and “很懒的鱼” for the reward of 100.
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