Volume 3: My days in a college fraternity Chapter 143 There Just Happened to Be a Company in Need of Help
"All great companies started in garages, including MicroPort, Microsoft, Lotus and Actor." Microsoft Vice President Roland Hansen looked at Garage No. 9 with the Actor sign hanging not far away and praised Tommy Hawke next to him with a smile.
Tommy shook his head. "Actor is far from qualified to be compared with the three software companies you mentioned."
"I heard from Benjamin that Actor seems to have moved to a new office space, so what team is left here?" Roland Hansen asked curiously as he looked at the dozen or so employees who were busy answering the phone in the garage.
Tommy looked at the now crowded garage. Once upon a time, there were only three people here, himself, Jason, and Holly, three college students, who imagined the future of Actor here.
Now, Holly has taken a leave of absence from school and is flying around as Actor's vice president in charge of external relations, dealing with various external matters, such as interviews and public relations.
Jason also chose to take a leave of absence from school and is currently coaching training work at various universities, cooperating with Holly on some appearances and interviews.
If the two of them were here at this moment, they would probably feel the same as I do, and miss those years that belonged only to three rookie entrepreneurs.
After coming to his senses, Tommy introduced Roland Hansen, "This is the company's customer service and technical support department. We currently have 30 part-time employees, all of whom are Stanford University students. They come here to earn some money after school. If the workplace is too far from the school, it will be difficult for them to rush to class. In addition, the labor cost of full-time customer service is too high, so I finally decided to keep the customer service department in Garage No. 9 to provide jobs for students on campus."
"You don't look like a traditional developer." After hearing Tommy's introduction, Roland Hansen nodded slightly and said, "Entrepreneurs who are programmers themselves often improve the treatment and office environment of their employees as soon as they get the money."
Tommy asked with a smile: "Mr. Hansen, when you say traditional developers, do you mean Mr. Paul Allen who retired from Microsoft's management due to illness?"
Last year, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen discovered during a physical examination that he had Hodgkin's lymphoma, which was in the early stages. As a result, he handed over all his power and only retained the position of vice chairman of Microsoft's board of directors, but no longer participated in any decision-making of the company.
This is Microsoft's external statement. In fact, early-stage Hodgkin's lymphoma does not affect work, and the cure rate is very high. The real reason why Paul Allen left Microsoft was the various irreconcilable conflicts between him and Bill Gates.
When Paul Allen was involved in Microsoft's decision-making, Microsoft still retained some geeky temperament, but after Paul Allen was eliminated and Microsoft became Bill Gates' company alone, the entire company's style changed, becoming more ambitious and greedy than before.
For example, although the company has good revenue, Microsoft still chooses to hire a large number of temporary employees, and then adds complex and secretive non-compete agreements and confidentiality agreement clauses to these employees' contracts. This allows Microsoft to save a lot of employee benefits, such as medical insurance costs. And because of the existence of non-compete agreements and confidentiality agreements, these temporary employees are dissatisfied with Microsoft and dare not resign easily, because once they resign and join other companies in the same industry with better benefits, Microsoft's legal department will sue them immediately and give them a big resignation package.
Countless computer software developers have criticized Microsoft for unscrupulously exploiting its employees, but to no avail.
Even after Paul Allen knew what Bill Gates had done, he called and scolded him, saying that he was not worthy of being called a computer practitioner, but was just a vampire who had infiltrated the computer industry.
"Yes, many programmers think that if a company makes money, it should improve the company's treatment and everyone should get paid, but Bill doesn't think so. I don't think so, so he poached me from the cosmetics industry to sell software." Roland Hansen turned his body and looked at Tommy Hawke: "I'm glad that you don't think of yourself as a developer. By the way, guess why I asked Benjamin for your contact information and wanted to talk to you?"
"I guess I'm one step ahead of you?" Tommy asked without hesitation, looking at the other person's face.
"Yes, I asked Benjamin before. Could it be that this guy named Tommy Hawke from Actor Company also started out as a cosmetics seller like me?" Roland Hansen looked at this guy named Tommy Hawke with complicated eyes and said in a serious tone:
"I spent so much time designing the promotion plan for Microsoft Word, but now most of it has been abandoned because of you. Otherwise, the name that would appear at the top of the sales charts of those computer magazines would be Microsoft Word, not OSS."
Tommy shrugged. “OSS’s sales are so exaggerated because it’s free, not because it’s more professional than Microsoft Word.”
"I always feel that you are mocking me with this." Roland laughed.
With Paul Allen out, Bill Gates immediately replaced the vice president in charge of promotion and sales according to his own wishes, and then recruited Roland Hansen, the former vice president of marketing at the American cosmetics company Neutrogena.
The first thing Roland Hansen did when he took office was to announce that Microsoft's own document processing software Multi File would be renamed Microsoft Word, and that it would be compatible with documents of WordStar, the world's best-selling document processing software.
Just like Actor's compatibility with Lotus' documents, Microsoft has no interest in obtaining authorization from Wicresoft and is directly and crudely pursuing unauthorized compatibility.
When MicroPort asked Microsoft in confusion why it wanted to be compatible with its own software documents without authorization, Microsoft responded by saying that this is what we did, and if you are unhappy, you can sue us in court.
However, Seymour Rubinstein, the boss of MicroPort, is an old hand and has been friends with Bill Gates for many years. The two have loved and hated each other for many years and have known each other well. He can guess what Microsoft wants to do without even thinking about it.
Therefore, MicroCreation did not initiate a lawsuit at all, but pretended that the whole thing had never happened, giving Microsoft no chance to take advantage of the popularity. As a result, although Microsoft Word was compatible with WordStar files, it did not find any opportunity to make waves and its sales continued to be at the bottom.
Whether individuals or large companies, no one is interested in using this document processing software that requires spending hundreds of dollars to buy a new auxiliary device called a mouse, and then memorizing operating instructions as thick as a book to get a perfect user experience.
Having failed to capitalize on the popularity of minimally invasive surgery, Roland Hansen is preparing to promote Microsoft Word like he promotes branded cosmetics.
Since we cannot beat WordStar in terms of professionalism, we will launch an attack from the perspective of usage rate. For the time being, we will not make it a high-end luxury product, but promote Microsoft Word as civilian cosmetics. For example, we can cooperate with various computer magazines or software dealers. Magazine subscribers and software store users who spend a certain amount can get a personal trial version of Microsoft Word for free.
As a result, just after he had agreed on the entire promotion plan with those magazines and software distributors, and before he had time to pay out the money, Roland Hansen discovered that the software sales charts of major computer magazines had changed their names. WordStar, which had topped the document processing software sales chart for four consecutive years, was replaced by a software called OSS. At the same time, Lotus 1-2-3's position as the number one spreadsheet software was also replaced by OSS.
Roland Hansen got all the information about the software as soon as possible and personally experienced the use of the software. He then found that Microsoft Word was not comparable to OSS in terms of ease of use.
OSS does not cram in as many functions as possible to show its power and professionalism like other software. It is purely practical document processing and spreadsheet processing functions with a clear positioning that meets basic business office requirements. Most importantly, it is very user-friendly and easy to use. The entire instruction manual is compressed to only ten pages.
What's even more frightening is that it is now completely free. As long as you call Actor company, leave your address and phone number, and are willing to pay for the postage, you can receive a copy of the OSS software.
Roland looked at Tommy and said, "Free market capture to cultivate user usage habits and brand impressions, it seems that no company in the computer software industry has used this method. Only the cosmetics industry often does this kind of thing. So when I saw your message, my first reaction was that you had sold cosmetics before."
"I sell everything, Mr. Hansen," Tommy said, winking at the forty-nine-year-old marketing guru.
“How many users does OSS have at present?”
"One hundred thousand sets were sold in the early stage, another hundred thousand sets were given away through the training classroom program, and then there were nearly two hundred thousand people who applied through the free advertisement in the newspaper immediately after my interview." Tommy proudly told Roland about the sales of his own software.
Free sales are also sales, so what Tommy said is justified.
However, Roland immediately burst Tommy's bubble: "This data is a bit exaggerated. From what I know, OSS has a maximum of 300,000 users."
"Three hundred thousand people, that is to say, there are three hundred thousand people sitting in front of their computers eagerly learning the OSS software that they get for free." Tommy remained calm when Roland exposed the inflated data and continued speaking.
The number of 300,000 users is indeed very scary. After Microsoft's own document processing software was renamed Microsoft Word and re-launched, its domestic sales in the United States have not even reached 30,000 sets. Originally, it wanted to increase the number of users by selling consumer products for free, but was overtaken by Actor.
Thinking of this, Roland continued, "Moreover, Actor Company has developed another software for external sales, and these 300,000 people will be potential customers."
"You can remove the word 'potential', Mr. Hansen. I don't know if you've noticed that Mr. Benjamin Rosen of Compaq has used Actor's customer data to sell 20,000 personal computers in one month." Tommy looked at Roland:
"Because our SSD headquarters has launched a training classroom program, which has designed a reward mechanism for trainees, allowing trainees who get an A and do not have a personal computer to buy a computer in installments with a credit card. If they do not get a computer-related job after the training, SSD will help them repay the loan in installments. Many trainees who did not get an A could not control their desire to spend and bought the Compaq computers we recommended. However, our activity currently only supports Compaq computers."
"So how will Benjamin repay you? You will push up Compaq's market value a lot." Roland was slightly stunned at first, then he asked.
Tommy looked at Gary Goode, the head of , who was going to "connect" with Jason for the first time, and said with a smile:
"He invited IBM to join the EFF, so when students buy computers in installments, in addition to Compaq, IBM will soon appear. At the same time, our training courses have changed from only OSS at the beginning to considering adding other software, such as Intuit, which was also founded by Stanford alumni. The financial software they developed will free accountants from the mountains of paper documents. There is also Parker, which was also started by Stanford students. They designed and developed a simulation analysis software that can be used by scientists or university laboratories..."
"How can Microsoft join the EFF and provide training on Microsoft mouse in your training classroom?" Roland Hansen asked decisively before Tommy finished speaking.
EFF is obviously using training programs to cultivate user habits. Roland feels that it is necessary to include training on how to use the Microsoft Mouse. It is obviously a faster, epoch-making computer-aided hardware, but people who are used to operating with the keyboard feel that the existence of the mouse is unnecessary.
Since people who have formed the habit think that the mouse is dispensable, let those people who have no computer knowledge get used to the fact that computers have an auxiliary hardware called a mouse.
Tommy said to Rosen: "We welcome all companies that are keen to help peers, have a sense of industry responsibility, and are willing to help each other to join us. For example, there is a company called Actor that needs help right now, and it has encountered some problems."
