Chapter 172: Cooperation with Sun Zhengyi

William Chen stayed in Japan for two days and did not make many appearances. He mainly came to see Nozomi Sasaki, and by the way, to understand the current short-selling operation of Goldman Sachs in Japan.

However, he still visited SoftBank's headquarters the next day, knowing that after William Chen came to Tokyo, SoftBank's boss Sun Zhengyi warmly invited him.

SoftBank's headquarters is in Tokyo Bay, and the building still looks very imposing.

In the other party's office on the 12th floor, William Chen met Sun Zhengyi, the president of SoftBank Group.

He is not tall, with a round face, an old man with a friendly smile. Although Sun Zhengyi is a Japanese ancestor, he came to Japan from North Korea. According to him, their family first went to North Korea from China, and later came to Japan from North Korea.

By his generation, he is already the third generation in Japan, so he has always insisted that his surname "Sun" is different from the Korean surname Sun, and it is a surname derived from China.

When I came to SoftBank Group this time, William Chen brought Nozomi Sasaki along. As soon as they met, Sun Zhengyi was amazed that William Chen's Japanese was very authentic.

"That should be because I have a good teacher, Kiko taught me Japanese at that time."

William Chen said with a smile.

At this time, the SoftBank Group was very famous in Japan, and Nozomi Sasaki was also very interested in it. After meeting with Sun Zhengyi, the two entered his office and had a private conversation, while Nozomi Sasaki was accompanied by female employees of SoftBank Group to visit the company.

After the chat, Chen William and Sun Zhengyi first talked about Ali. After all, both of them are major shareholders of Ali, and their shares together account for nearly 70%. Therefore, Sun Zhengyi is very concerned about how Chen William thinks of Ali. care.

"Mr. Sun knew Ali's Boss Ma earlier, and may know this person better than me, but what I want to say is that I have no less confidence in him than you, so I will firmly support Boss Ma in Ali company. The management of the company. You should also know that the voting rights of the shares I hold will always be on the side of Boss Ma, which also shows my confidence in him. "

Although Sun Zhengyi already knew about this in the previous communication with Boss Ma, but now after talking with Chen William face to face, and observing the other party's expression, Sun Zhengyi finally felt relieved. Is what Chen William said really thinking in his heart? He believed he could still see a thing or two.

"I admire Mr. William's investment vision very much, not only in the matter of Ali company, but also in his investment in the Internet, whether it is Twitter company or technology, I think it is a company with great potential, if it accepts financing, We at SoftBank are willing to join at any time.”

From the conversation, William Chen can feel that Sun Zhengyi attaches great importance to these two companies. In particular, he has always praised this app as amazing.

"I hope we can cooperate to promote it in the Japanese market, and we will provide the greatest resources to allow this APP to be installed on everyone's mobile phone here."

"Like Yahoo Japan?"

William Chen asked.

"I think it's a good way to work together, Mr. William, as you can see, Yahoo Japan has been successful, and at the moment, Yahoo Japan is the best development compared to the development of Yahoo in other countries, I think It also benefits from this collaborative approach of having local people manage.”

Why is Yahoo Japan mentioned here? Yahoo Japan has always been the most visited and active website in Japan, and it is not limited to the search field, but has developed into a comprehensive website in many fields.

Yahoo Japan is not owned by Yahoo, but operated by SoftBank Group. To be precise, not entirely owned by Yahoo.

stupid

In April 1996, Sun Zhengyi's SoftBank Corporation invested 72 million US dollars to establish Yahoo Japan together with Yahoo Global, which was only two years old at the time, of which SoftBank accounted for 51% and Yahoo Global accounted for 35%.

"In principle, I am not opposed to this kind of cooperation, but I can't completely replicate the way of Yahoo Japan, because Mr. Sun, you must know that, unlike information websites like Yahoo, it is a chat software, such as Yahoo Japan, which can Only do local information content, but all users need to communicate with each other, so it is difficult to make Japan and the United States are different versions, you should understand this, if the versions are different, there will be a lot of mutual information communication. question."

Sun Zhengyi heard Chen William say this, and after thinking about it, he also admitted that what he said was indeed reasonable. This kind of chat software, which is completely applied to Yahoo Japan's partners, is impractical.

So he asked directly: "So what does Mr. William think is the most appropriate way to cooperate?"

"I think the core that needs to stay the same, but we can provide a port to our joint venture that allows you to improve the appearance and some of the features, such as default emoticons for chat, local personalized services. Also, At present, it is free to use, and profit is not considered at this stage, which is also a measure adopted to occupy users as soon as possible, but we will add the function of Moments in the updated new version soon..."

So William Chen explained the function of Moments to Sun Zhengyi in general, that is, users can express through text or pictures, and share them in Moments for friends to see.

"After adding this function, we will try to publish personalized advertisements through the circle of friends after we develop to a certain scale, so as to make profits. Then after we cooperate, these operations in Japan will be handed over to joint venture companies, and local ones will be selected. Features and ad placement.”

Regarding Chen William's method, Sun Zhengyi also agreed after thinking about it. As for the specific follow-up rules, it will be discussed in detail later, and SoftBank Group will need to send a special team to go to Silicon Valley to decide with the CEO of Technology.

The reason why Chen William agreed to Sun Zhengyi's request to promote cooperation in Japan is because he knew that in his previous life, the most popular chat software in Japan in the future would not be WhatsApp or WeChat, but the LINEAPP launched by a company in South Korea.

It sounds like an unbelievable thing, but it's normal. It has something to do with the nationality of Japanese people. LINE targets their preference for privacy, and they don't like to share their life status or mood with those around them, such as WhatsApp and WeChat are more about socializing with acquaintances, and their sharing is between acquaintances, but Japanese people are not very interested in this.

Moreover, LINE's wide variety of emojis are also very popular among Japanese people who often don't know how to greet strangers, so it is logical that LINE is popular in Japan.

Since it is unlikely that it will be popular in Japan, why not let Sun Zhengyi try it? Like the core functions, these chat software are similar, just like in the early days, WeChat also imitated LINE, but then WeChat has more and more independent functions Instead, it became the one who copied homework.

So let the locals run the Japanese version. Anyway, all the users belong to it, but a part of the advertising revenue here has to be divided, but if it really becomes popular, it can be regarded as a gain in the market, so William Chen doesn't mind trying this in Japan. Cooperation in the local dialect.

If it can be successful, it might be possible to try it in other non-English speaking regions. As for the English-speaking region, it must be the technology's own territory.

At this time, Japan is still the second largest economy in the world, and the market of their country is also not ignored by any company. If it can become popular in Japan, it can also help Siri enter this market, so it may make more money for SoftBank Group to share some local interests.

After basically reaching this cooperation consensus, Sun Zhengyi was also very happy, and the chat atmosphere between the two became better.

At the end of the chat, William Chen asked:

"I wonder if Mr. Sun is familiar with people from Sony?"

"What? You want to talk business with them?"

Chen William didn't have to hide from Sun Zhengyi about this matter. He said directly: "I have some ideas. I hope to talk to Sony about taking back Sony Pictures' Spider-Man related copyrights."

At this time, Sun Zhengyi remembered that Chen William had already acquired Marvel and is now the boss of Marvel, so he wanted to take back the copyright of Spider-Man, so he really had to talk to Sony. Compared with Sony Pictures It is more convenient to talk directly with the parent company Sony, otherwise, Sony Pictures will still have to ask the headquarters for instructions on this matter.
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