During the one-on-one communication with the entrepreneurial team members to determine the equity allocation, Jared discovered that the big head is an optional role, which obviously violates Peter Gregory's requirement to cut costs. Everyone's spearhead was directed at the big end.
Unfortunately, all this was heard by the big head.
Sad and frustrated, the head is ready to leave Silicon Valley.
When I returned to Hooli to pack up his things, there was a pie in the sky, which was both a promotion and a raise.
On the other hand, Richard, who has experienced all kinds of hardships in the battle between heaven and humans, finally made up his mind to keep the big head and let all opponents go out.
But the irony is that Richard turned his face for the big head and everyone else. All this is no better than Gavin's annual salary of 600,000 dollars for promotion. The big head declined Richard's kindness and happily prepared to take office.
In this episode, Richard, who just started his own business, made a mistake that entrepreneurs can easily make: using emotions. Doing business is not about making friends, and you can't just distribute equity. There is a saying in the play that is very good, no one will pay a salary to the best friend.
Therefore, separating your personal feelings from your career is the first step in starting a business in Silicon Valley. Just as Erlich said to Richard, once you start a business, you must become a complete bastard.
In fact, it is not enough to separate personal feelings from career. When necessary, it is not
a small number of people who have started a business with them. For example, Facebook’s Xiaozha, kicked away his little friend Eduardo Savelin, who
encouraged Zuckerberg to drop out of school, and Sean Parker, three entrepreneurial ventures
Tesla founder Martin Eberhard
, who succeeded, was kicked out three times, and was taken away by Tesla’s father Musk. Today, let’s pick up two sad stories and take a look at these awesome Silicon Valley How did madmen drive away their entrepreneurial partners.
The first story is related to Facebook. There are three key figures, Zuckerberg, Eduardo Savelin and Sean Parker.
Are these three people a god-horse relationship? Those who have watched the movie "Social Network" probably know their love, hatred, and hatred. Here, the reason is simple.
Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin are both Harvard students, and Saverin is one term higher than Zha Jr. He founded Facebook with Zha and his roommate Moskowitz. Unlike the last two programmers who can only write code, Savelin, who studied economics at Harvard, was pulled into the entrepreneurial team by Xiao Zha relying on his business acumen. It is said that Xiaozha praised Saverin like a flower in a text message to a friend at the time, thinking that this senior was "the main force of the Institute of Investment." In April 2004, when several people set up a company in Florida, Saverin served as CFO. Therefore, they used to be close entrepreneurial partners.
Who is Sean Parker?
Remember Russ, the spoiler in the second season? This is the prototype of Sean Parker.
Sean Parker is a serial entrepreneur. Before he met Zuckerberg, he had two successful entrepreneurial ventures: when he was 19 years old, he founded the earliest pirated music website Napster with his friends, which overturned the entire recording industry and sent CDs into it. To the grave. At the age of 21, he seized the potential of digital communication and founded Plaxo, an address book service company.
However, these two successful ventures ended in him being driven away. Let us relive these two happy stories.
Napster, the first pirated music website founded, mainly converts CD music into MP3 format for users to listen to and download at will. The good guy suddenly attracted 80 million registered users. This time the record company couldn't stand it anymore, and a complaint took Napster to court. Then the Napster defendant fell and was acquired by Best Buy, and Sean Parker rolled the bag.
Sean Parker's second entrepreneurial project is an online address book service software called Plaxo, which can provide very convenient address book import and mutual notification functions between contacts. And most importantly, it uses viral marketing techniques. After users download Plaxo, the program will analyze the user's address book and send a message to all contacts to encourage them to use Plaxo. This practice was generally used for reference by later social networking sites.
Soon, Plaxo soon had millions of users. However, Sean Parker's unreliable behavior and his changeable and irritable temperament angered the investors. As the company gradually got on track, Sequoia and other investors joined hands to drive Parker out of the company.
With two investment experiences, when he met Zuckerberg, although Sean Parker was only 24 years old, he was an old entrepreneurial driver. He fell in love with Facebook at first sight. After meeting Zuckerberg and Savelin in a restaurant, he decided to join the Facebook startup team and stayed in the room of another co-founder Moskowitz. Then, he became the first CEO of Facebook.
Next, he helped several founders establish contacts around Silicon Valley, set up routers, and established a company structure. Zuckerberg can thus fully control the company without worrying about being kicked out.
With Sean Parker, a mentor on the entrepreneurial road, Savelin’s business acumen is not enough, and he doesn’t seem to take this entrepreneurial project too seriously. Just when Zuckerberg, Moskowitz and Sean Parker were looking for investment and testing products, Savelin, who went to New York to intern at Lehman Brothers, not only failed to complete the three tasks Zuckerberg entrusted to him. (Respectively to build a company, obtain financing, create a business model), and bypassed other partners to advertise another entrepreneurial project on Facebook, and Zuckerberg believes that Savelin’s entrepreneurial project on the job search website is also in the future One of Facebook's businesses, isn't this Nima openly digging a wall?
Xiaozha became angry and sent an email to denounce Saverin's behavior, which was the beginning of the deterioration of the relationship between the two.
Facebook's development is better than Zuckerberg imagined. Silicon Valley venture capital leaders including Mark Pincus, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel are all lining up to invest in Facebook. Savelin, who was busy with his own affairs, obviously failed to find any decent investment. At this time, Saverin is no longer necessary for Xiaozha. He can completely invest and control the company by himself. Why should he count a person who has not done much for the company as a core member?
Zach Burke then drew up a plan: reorganize a new company on the east coast of Delaware, acquire the former Facebook company (Florida Co., Ltd. established in April 2004), redistribute the company’s shares, and take the opportunity to dilute Saverin’s shares. .
Savelin will never do such an arrangement. But Zuckerberg’s determination to kick him out at this time is determined. The message sent to Moskowitz by Zha says:
“Saverin obviously refuses to cooperate. We just want him to sign and then we start operating this new company. . I just want him to get out of the game and settle with him. Then he will get something, but he is procrastinating, and I can’t stand the procrastination.”
Xiaozha has his killer feature—that is, his absolute control over the company. In other words, whether Savelin agrees or not, Zuckerberg's plan will be implemented. Subsequently, Zuckerberg diluted Savelin's equity three times:
On July 29, 2004, TheFacebook.com was reorganized in Delaware and acquired the limited company established in Florida. The company’s equity distribution has also changed: before: Zuckerberg 65%, Saverin 30%, Moskowitz 5%; after the reorganization: Zuckerberg 40%, Saverin 24%, Moskowitz accounted for 16%, investor Thiel accounted for 9%, and the remaining 20% was for future employees.
On October 31, 2004, Saverin signed a shareholder agreement. The intellectual property rights were transferred to Zuckerberg, and since then Zuckerberg has become the only leader of Facebook.
On January 7, 2005, Zach Burke issued 9 million shares of common stock. He owns 3.3 million shares and Moskowitz 2 million shares. Saverin’s share of the company’s stock was diluted from 24% to 10%.
So far, Zuckerberg's plan has succeeded, and all of this is inseparable from the company structure designed for him by Sean Parker. No wonder some people say that Saverin was driven out of the company by Zuckerberg and Sean Parker.
And Sean Parker himself failed to sit in the CEO position of Facebook for long. In August 2005, North Carolina police found cocaine in a beach house rented in his name. This scandal caused a split between Facebook founders and investors. Parker decided to resign and immediately moved to New York, which he said was the most beneficial option for the company.
The second story is about Iron Man Musk.
This Silicon Valley madman, who has always regarded himself as the father of Tesla, tried his best to make the public forget the fact that he was not the founder and true innovator of Tesla. The founder who really set the milestone of lithium-ion electric vehicles was kicked out of the company early by him, and was gradually forgotten by people.
This person's name is Martin Eberhard, and he is the true founder of Tesla.
Before founding Tesla, Eberhard was an electrical engineer, worked in a large company, and later started a business with a good friend. In the process of starting a business, he noticed the biggest bottleneck restricting the development of mobile devices at that time-lithium battery technology. He believes that mobile devices represent the future, and lithium battery technology must be broken.
Although he loved cars since he was a child, Martin Eberhard didn't think of making electric cars in the first place. Until 1990, California promulgated the "Vehicles Zero Emissions Act", stipulating that by 2003, the sales of California zero-emission vehicles should reach 10% of total car sales. This allowed GM, Toyota and other large car companies to step up the research and development of new energy vehicles. In 1996, GM EV1 made its debut with sci-fi styling and design.
EV1 not only has a streamlined design rare in the American car industry, but also supports wireless charging.
The first generation of EV1 uses lead-acid batteries with a single battery life of 100 kilometers, and the second generation is upgraded to nickel-metal hydride batteries with a range of 200 kilometers. Such battery life cannot be put on the private car market, so GM put EV1 on the market as a rental vehicle.
Looks like a bright future, doesn’t it?
Don't forget that the United States has a huge power called an oil tycoon. You promote clean energy, what about my large overseas oil fields?
Later, the EV1 stopped. However, the engineers of EV1 refused to give up. They reorganized the company and developed an electric car with sports car performance. When Eberhard learned of this situation, he was very moved and frequently came to this company and chatted with the engineers.
Eberhard learned that although the newly developed electric car has cool performance, its cruising range is still pitiful. With his experience in designing electronic products, he boldly imagined: using lithium battery packs as the energy source for electric vehicles to improve endurance. Next, I invested $150,000, and it is recommended that the new electric vehicle be powered by lithium batteries.
This proposal has brought a milestone leap in the development of electric vehicles. The improved electric vehicle has a cruising range of 480 kilometers.
He has firmly believed in the development of electric vehicles. In 2003, Eberhard established Tesla in the Silicon Valley occupied by the IT industry, positioning itself to develop high-performance sports cars. If you look at Tesla, which is still burning money today, you know that the first problem Eberhard faces is money. It just so happened that Eberhard, who was looking for investment everywhere, ran into Musk, who had just sold paypal at that time, and he didn't know how to spend a huge sum of money in his hand. When he heard that he wanted to study electric vehicles, Musk's eyes were bright: Isn't Nima the best clean energy application? Apart from anything else, he invested $7.5 million in Tesla.
With this investment, Musk became the chairman of Tesla and has the final right to make all the company's affairs, and Eberhard became the company's CEO as the father of Tesla.
It's easy to do things if you have money. In 2006, Eberhard chose Lotus Motor’s Elise as the basis for the development of a high-end electric car Roadster, and declared to deliver the first Tesla electric car in February 2008.
At the press conference, Eberhard talked freely, and the scenery was boundless. Tesla quickly became a hot spot of media attention, and all the media gave a very high evaluation of Tesla Roadster. For a time, Roadster became the darling of the media, and Eberhard made frequent appearances. In 2007, Eberhard also became the 24th innovator of the year by Fortune magazine.
As the saying goes, one mountain cannot accommodate two tigers unless there is one male and one female. Picked up here, Xiao 8 is already sweating, Brother Ai, you really don't know your partner, Lao Ma. How can a control freak like Musk bear that he, as the chairman, is not the true leader of Tesla?
So, a war to seize power began. As the chairman of the board, Musk began to put pressure on Eberhard in all aspects, including vehicle design exceeding budget, design delay and so on. Think about it and know that Eberhard’s journey is relatively smooth, and he regards cars and love as his two life dreams. It is hard to beat a person like Musk who moved from South Africa to Canada from South Africa and struggled all the way. Niu B dealers squeezed into the United States and even Silicon Valley. Soon, in January 2008, just before the official delivery of the first Tesla electric car, the board of directors decided to fire Eberhard. The reason was not announced at the time.
For most of the next half of the year, Drori served as the company's CEO. Then Musk took over Tesla.
The story does not end here. In June 2009, Martin Eberhard sued Musk and detailed in a complaint that Musk expelled him from the company. Eberhard accused Musk of defamation and breach of contract, and also exposed Musk's lies to the effect: shameless! Tesla was founded by my brother. At that time, you didn't know where it was. You brag about how important you are to the establishment of the company. Bah!
But Musk, who has always been popular, was more moderate this time, and only wrote a blog response, which listed Eberhard’s shortcomings and expressed deep dissatisfaction with Eberhard’s claim that he is not the founder of Tesla.
I thought the two would tear it up again. However, the two reached a settlement shortly afterwards and agreed not to slander each other again.
To this day, the two are still privately despising each other, and Eberhard’s Tesla shares are now very valuable. But he still drove the Roadster, and his wife reportedly drove a Model S.
Whether we want to admit it or not, shopping malls are so cruel, tears are so embarrassing. Faced with partners who used to start a business together, after sharing joys and sorrows, can they only be in the same bed but in different dreams and in the same room?
Maybe this is also a fate.
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