Reborn Capital Madman

The young man is really full of enthusiasm. According to reports from the subordinates following the project to Gao Xian, Gates really dropped out of Harvard University and started Microsoft with Allen sincerely.

As for what happened to the Gates family because of this, outsiders don’t know.

Gao Xian only cares about whether Gates and Allen are working hard, and other things are not within his scope of consideration.

After all, with Gates's family conditions, even if he drops out of school, the sky will not fall. He will definitely have a way out. His dropping out of school to start a business is not something ordinary students can imitate.

What Gao Xian is a little worried about is that Gates' father is a very capable lawyer after all, so don't really find anything to mess with when it comes to investing in his son's business.

To be fair, Gao Xian's conditions for agreeing to Gates and Allen were quite generous. As long as their BASIC language compiler meets the requirements, it will become part of the Universal Electronics personal computer system.

The specific content is that the license fee for the BASIC language compiler is US$100,000 for a three-year period. As for how many Universal Electronics personal computers it is installed on, it has nothing to do with Gates and Allen. The two of them only need to ensure that they do a good job for three years.

Relevant software maintenance and upgrades are enough.

Gates and Allen, two geniuses, only sold for 100,000 US dollars in three years. At first glance, it seems that they are not as good as they honestly went to study in the world's famous universities and worked in the world's largest companies, but the accounts cannot be so simple.

Calculation.

Because, as long as Gates and Allen developed the BASIC language compiler well enough and attracted the interest of other personal computer manufacturers, they could sell it to them. Gao Xian did not impose exclusive restrictions.

In addition, Gao Xian invested US$50,000 in Gates and Allen's Microsoft company, which only accounted for one-third of the shares that were not allowed to be diluted without consent.

In short, Gao Xian reached the final cooperation with Gates and Allen based on the principle of fully mobilizing the enthusiasm of Gates and Allen.

It can be said that Gao Xian has a clear conscience. I believe that most people in the outside world can see the importance of integrity in cooperation, and Gates' father should not be an exception.

Seeing that Gao Xianting valued Gates and Allen, two young men, Zhou Wenyao personally supervised all related work and mentioned in the report: "Gates and Allen are full of confidence in the prospects of the BASIC language compiler.

It sounds like they are forgetting sleep and eating, and they must have long planned to promote their BASIC language compiler to many personal computer platforms, including ours."

Gao Xian heard the implication that Zhou Wenyao felt that Gates and Allen had taken advantage. He smiled slightly and said, "Gates and Allen are both smart people. They want to sign clear terms that control them on a black and white document."

, can only fall behind, and even affect the mobilization of enthusiasm."

"Fortunately, the intrigues in the business world cannot be imagined by two technical geniuses. Gates and Allen will definitely suffer losses. When the time comes, they will understand our good intentions from the bottom of their hearts."

Guessing that Gao Xian had another way to control Gates and Allen, Zhou Wenyao didn't say anything more. Anyway, compared to this attention, the money invested was quite limited.

So Zhou Wenyao began to report another important thing, "The spreadsheet patent we applied for is indeed not possible. The patent office insists that the novelty of the product does not make the mathematical algorithm patentable."

"That's it..." Gao Xian shook his head with regret.

Anyone who has had a little exposure to office automation will have the impression that word processing, spreadsheets, and slideshows are the three standard applications of office software.

At this stage, the technical foundation of graphical user interfaces is not available, and slides are useless; there are many and mature market solutions for word processing, and there is no need to fight for them; spreadsheets can only be used in IBM, General Electric, and Honeyway

It runs on Seoul's mainframe computers and is only used by a handful of large enterprises such as AT&T and General Motors.

In other words, spreadsheets are still a very unfamiliar product to the mass market for ordinary users.

Seeing this, Gao Xian planned to make a dedicated spreadsheet product based on personal computer technology to test the entry-level commercial market.

In the "old script", spreadsheet software for personal computer platforms first appeared on the Apple computer Apple II in 1979. At that time, the two most important indicators of hardware configuration were that the CPU was an eight-bit microprocessor MOS 6502 and

64KB of memory.

Now, two classic eight-bit microprocessors such as Intel 8080 and Motorola MC6800 have been matured and mass-produced and widely adopted. The "lightweight" eight-bit microprocessors Z80 and MOS 6502 derived from them respectively,

It will also be launched on the market before the end of this year.

In terms of dynamic random access memory, apart from the fact that the price is not affordable enough, it is not a problem to cobble together a memory capacity of 64KB.

Therefore, it was natural for Gao Xian to use existing personal computer technology to develop a product specifically designed to implement spreadsheet functions.

Of course, this kind of spreadsheet machine is definitely different from a personal computer. For example, it uses three Intel 8080 microprocessors. One performs general personal computer functions, the other accelerates the mathematical operations involved in the spreadsheet, and the last one

This ensures the synchronization of printing operations.

It is necessary to point out that the spreadsheet machine implemented by Gao Xian using personal computer technology is very different from the spreadsheet software running on a large computer in terms of functional implementation; as for the price, it does not exceed fifteen thousand US dollars, which is very affordable for the people.

.

Gao Xian is very optimistic about the market prospects of spreadsheet machines and has successful experience for reference, namely word processors, which are currently very popular.

According to market research results, about seven percent of American company employees are engaged in secretarial work. This shows the importance of copywriting work, which in turn provides a broad market for word processors, attracting fierce competition from companies such as IBM and Wangan Computer.

How easy is a word processor to use? It was originally designed to assist secretarial work, but the demand for this position has dropped significantly, resulting in many secretaries becoming unemployed.

This is the power of technological progress. How could corporate executives not like it?

By analogy, the first target group of employees that the spreadsheet machine will assist is accountants, and judging from the experience of the "old script", it will definitely become an instant success, and it can be called the best stepping stone to test the commercial computer market.

With such a product that promises to make a lot of money, Gao Xian, who doesn't care about patent application fees, certainly wants to build a patent fortress.

But the results reported by Zhou Wenyao made Gao Xian a little disappointed.

Seeing Gao Xian thinking for a long time, Zhou Wenyao tentatively said: "There will be a large-scale industrial products exhibition in Las Vegas in the next few days, which meets the requirements for the initial trial of our spreadsheet machine, but there is a gap in the patent.

…”

"If we can't build a patent fortress, forget it and seize the market first," Gao Xian said immediately.

Just now, Gao Xian figured out another truth from the word processor.

In a few years, the performance of personal computer hardware further improved, and the functions of word processing software became more powerful, surpassing single-function word processors, and eventually word processors were eliminated.

The rise and fall of this type of word processor must also apply to the spreadsheet machine spawned by Gao Xian.

Since you can’t make money with spreadsheets once and for all, let’s make a first move!

After hearing this, Zhou Wenyao, who was afraid of being overly ambitious, breathed a sigh of relief. He eagerly said, "I will immediately arrange a special exhibition location for the spreadsheet machine."