Silicon Valley, the world-famous high-tech center of the United States, develops at a rate equivalent to seven years for other cities in one year. On average, 11 new companies are formed a day, a company goes public every five days, and an average of 62 billionaires are created every day. The total population is only 600,000 to 700,000, and there are 250,000 billionaires. So it is called "the paradise of successful people".
For half a century, new startup stars have emerged in Silicon Valley. Here are three stars who have been successful in recent years. It is not difficult to find from them that the successful methods, life and work styles of the modern stars in Silicon Valley have both similarities and differences with the old stars 20 or 30 years ago.
Siebel: Before the company goes public, it uses stocks to cover wages. Going
along the 101 highway in Silicon Valley, not far from the world-famous Oracle Corporation, is the headquarters of Siebel Systems.
Tom Sieber, CEO of Siebel Systems, was originally a top salesperson at Oracle. He started out as a salesman in Oracle's Chicago operations department and gradually moved up to Washington's operations headquarters. At this time he completed sales of 280% of the predetermined target. In 1989, he was promoted to the deputy general manager of the direct sales department of the head office, and the turnover achieved by the department was 149% of the predetermined target. For this reason, he was named the sales champion of Oracle's domestic operations department.
At this time, his immediate boss, Oracle's second-in-command Gary Kenneth, resigned due to a conflict with President Larry Ellison. Siebel was a friend of Kaneide. He couldn't stand the atmosphere of Oracle's criticism of Kaneide, so he quit his job.
Three years later, in 1993, he founded Siber Systems, recruiting to develop computer software SFA (Sales Management Automation System) for salespeople. This kind of software is a summary of Siebel's long-term experience in sales work. It can provide product specifications, prices, and sales dynamics of various companies in real time, as well as advice on how to negotiate with customers and how to make documents. It is not only the right-hand man of the salesperson, but also an auxiliary tool for the customer to carry out order forecasting and production management. As soon as SFA came out, it was very popular, and obtained huge economic benefits. In 1996, Siebel Systems went public, and the stock price rose one after another. Siebel and many of the company's employees became millionaires. Today, Siebel Systems has become a well-known enterprise in the United States, and its employees, including the dispatchers, are all billionaires.
The secret to Siebel's success is to use stocks to offset wages before the company goes public. At the beginning of the company's founding, Siebel valued the company's stock at one dollar per share. He agreed with the employees that wages could be paid in cash, or offset by stocks, or each of the cash and stocks accounted for a certain proportion, which was freely chosen by the employees. After the company went public, the settlement was unified. As a result, most employees chose stocks. In other words, before the listing of Siber, most employees did not receive cash wages. In this way, Sibel can not only invest a huge sum of money in research and development, but also take great risks in holding unlisted shares. If the company cannot go public in just a few years, the stock in its hands will become a Pile of waste paper. As a result, those excellent talents who joined Siebel and dreamed of becoming billionaires, driven by a sense of crisis, did not receive wages, regardless of time, united and worked day and night. This creates very favorable conditions for newly created companies to win the competition.
Stock options, high wages, and high status are the necessary conditions for high-tech industries to attract outstanding talents, and stock options are an effective means for Silicon Valley to attract talents and enhance the competitiveness of enterprises. Anyone who goes to Silicon Valley has a beautiful "Silicon Valley Dream". They live in a virtual dream, have a strong sense of adventure, and work hard desperately to become millionaires and billionaires. Sieber understood the psychology of these people and used it to his success.
Sieber said that the success of a high-tech enterprise depends on whether it can develop new products and whether the products can quickly become commodities and occupy the market. This period is generally only one and a half years. In addition to thanking the capitalists who invested in me, I should first of all thank those who believed that I would be successful and were willing to take my stock as salary. They made my dream come true.
He said that an entrepreneur must meet three conditions. One is to understand that those who seek development in Silicon Valley have a "dream", that is, the "gold rush dream" of Silicon Valley; the second is to give them timely "encouragement" that can resonate; the third is to have sufficient funds. With these three, you'll be able to attract a group of talented people who will help you succeed regardless of compensation, sacrifice, and courage. That's the secret to my success in Silicon Valley. Furthermore, it is not enough for the operator to understand the company's goal. It is necessary for all employees to understand the company's goal. In this way, everyone can achieve a common goal and form a huge synergy.
Ken Bass: Non-stop acquisitions and mergers to make full use of the Internet
On the outskirts of Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley, on a flat piece of land opposite the San Francisco Bay, there are 50 skyscrapers, and the weather is quite spectacular. This is the headquarters of San Francisco Systems Corporation.
San Francisco Systems was founded in 1984. When the company went public in 1990, its annual sales were only tens of millions of dollars, and its headquarters had only three buildings. The third president, Joan Kembas, was tall, sturdy, and dressed casually, but he came out on top in terms of business.
One of the secrets of Kebas's success is the continuous acquisition and merger of other companies in order to expand the market share of the company's products. In the past 10 years, the company has grown from 4 companies to 34 companies through mergers and acquisitions, and also holds shares in 55 companies. Kenbas said that in order for their products to enter a new market, they must occupy a large market share there, not the first or second, but at least the third, and definitely not below the fourth. Occupying a market share of 40%-70% is our unswerving goal. The method is to first use our company's technological advantages to jointly develop new products with relevant local companies, or adopt the OEM method to cooperate with relevant local enterprises. If they still can't have an advantage in the market, they will acquire and merge these enterprises.
After mergers and acquisitions, it has occupied 40%-70% of the market share in the region, and has become the leader of this industry in the region. At the same time, it has the ability to control the relevant industry standards in the region, thus ensuring that San Francisco System Corporation obtains high profits. . Profits and gains from stock appreciation have in turn enhanced the ability to carry out larger mergers and acquisitions. San Francisco Systems has entered such a virtuous circle.
The second key to the success of Kebas is to make full use of the Internet for e-commerce activities. San Francisco System Inc. made its fortune by producing Internet products. It is one of the companies that build the Internet. At the same time, it is an active user of the Internet and has obtained huge economic benefits through the Internet. In 1998, the company accounted for more than 70 percent of its orders via the Internet, with sales of $9 billion. Now, 95% of user software updates are done online. Because of the use of the Internet, the company can save 500 million US dollars a year in various expenses. It can be seen that, today, when the Internet has become popular, starting from the production of Internet products and making profits from the Internet has become a way for some companies in Silicon Valley to develop rapidly.
Poleser: A strong woman who likes to dance Among the many successful people
in Silicon Valley, Kim Poleser, president of the Marimba Company headquartered in Mangqianview, can be regarded as a representative figure. She dresses casually and likes to dance.
Poleser studied biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, before transferring to the University of Washington to study computer technology. After graduating from college, he worked as an engineer in a company for a period of time, and then moved to work at Sun.
In 1996, Sun's development team under the leadership of Bill Joy, specialized in the development of new network technology JINI. The 34-year-old Poleser pulled 4 people from here and founded the Marimba Company, using the funds provided by XI'CB to develop software for the JAVA system. In the fall of that year, they successfully developed the Casta network software. In order to use it to automate information management, many companies have snowflakes of orders to Marimba. In 1999, Marimba went public, and Poleser jumped into the ranks of billionaires.
In 1996, Gore, then the vice president of the United States, adopted the suggestion of John Dole of KPCB to set up a technical think tank in Silicon Valley to study the government's guidelines and policies for the development of the Internet industry. Poleser, as a member of the think tank, is often in and out of the White House. The billionaire, who has been in and out of the White House, has nothing to do with the nouveau riche "celebrity". She is modest, modestly dressed, and a standard intellectual. At present, it has become the personal style of successful people in Silicon Valley to be in the high-tech field without talking about clothes. Wearing work clothes, immersed in scientific research work, or visiting their own companies, is the common image of successful Silicon Valley people now. Sun's Scott McNealy is a representative of this group. He famously said: "We dress casually, but we are never casual in spirit."
The blond Poleser has one hobby: dancing. She also opened a dance studio while working on Java language development at Sun. While working on the software development of the Casta network, she inevitably took to the stage to perform a few jazz dances on weekends. She said: "We develop new products and perform creative work, which is not contradictory to engaging in entertainment activities. People like me who like to participate in entertainment activities are not a minority in Silicon Valley. Developing logic software requires a clear head, so participating in entertainment activities is not a minority. It is very necessary to have an active attitude to dry up boring technical work. I think this attitude should also be maintained when doing business activities and other work outside the company in the future.”
In Silicon Valley, where one year is equal to seven years, the strong eat the weak. , In the fierce competition of frequent mergers between companies, to carry out some cultural and recreational activities to add some fun to the hard work, Poleser can be described as a creation. .jpeg)
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