Hollywood Hunter

Simon has arranged for the mid-term elections to enjoy a high priority within the Westeros system. He also urged the heads of various companies to cooperate.

Paul Spatz mentioned Amazon’s union issue with Simon today, probably because there was a problem with the communication with Alice, and Simon had to come out in person. Simon also knows that his former housekeeper has a strong and persistent personality, and within the Westeros system, probably only he can suppress it.

As for the union, Simon’s attitude will not change in any way.

However, there are priorities. If you cannot further increase your influence in Washington through this mid-term election, the growing Westeros system will only be targeted and hindered.

It was promised that Paul Spatz would talk to Alice in person. Simon had lunch with each other and took a helicopter on the Hudson River to Greenwich, Connecticut.

There are two meetings here in the afternoon.

The financial information company created by Girl B, which has changed its name from Alphabeta to Alia, will officially release Alia software on October 3.

Prior to this, the scope of Alia's trial has actually been expanding.

Faced with this aggressive latecomer backed by the Westeros system, Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg News finally ceased to be silent, and formally filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York half a month ago, using Alia to infringe on Bloomberg’s terminal. A patent is required to prohibit the distribution and sale of this software.

Not only that, Bloomberg also complained to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Alia had a number of settings that violated the securities trading regulations in the storage of customer information. These vulnerabilities could easily be exploited for untraceable insider trading, so the SEC was also required to intervene. Restrict the use of Alia software in the financial industry.

Commercial competition has never made sense.

Stepping into the business world, if a person feels that success can be achieved by relying solely on hard work and integrity, the result will only be a waste of water.

Especially in the modern business competition, the core is intrigue and deception. As long as it can suppress competitors, economic, legal, political...all methods, as long as they can be used, must be used.

In the end, the winner will lose.

In Simon's memory, the US government's destruction of the French industrial giant Alstom is the most typical case of modern commercial warfare.

The appearance of this incident seems to be that the US government is suppressing French companies, and the core is General Electric's all-round attack on Alstom. The entire incident, because of the deep-rooted influence of US industrial giants in Washington, the US government is just a pawn.

Those large-scale Internet companies that seem to have led the world's technological trend are glamorous. Before the scandal was exposed, all of them were industry models. After the exposure, they probably felt a bit ironic, and could only quietly call themselves'Don\'tbeevil'. The high-sounding corporate motto was quietly removed.

And Facebook.

The public rumor is that Zuckerberg deliberately developed it in order to collect school beauties when he was studying at Harvard. In fact, the idea of ​​Facebook was completely stolen by Xiaozha from several other students. The students had the idea of ​​developing Facebook. Listen Saying that Xiaozha's skills are good, he pulled in and worked together. After Xiaozha understood the general idea of ​​the project, he went straight to work on his own, so he got Facebook.

The litigation regarding this dispute continues until Facebook goes public.

The beginning of the game got a big benefit. Facebook later directly established an "early bird system". The core of the seemingly inspiring system is not the stupid bird to fly first, but to find good ideas from other companies. The stupid bird flies afterwards and copy it directly. .

Michael Bloomberg has packed himself a very typical image of a Jewish businessman with a simple life and a passion for charity.

Others will not be pursued.

At least one thing, this is indeed a very ‘qualified’ businessman.

Then there is Alia software.

Bloomberg’s lawsuit is not groundless and untargeted.

As a latecomer, if you want to enter the financial information field, it is impossible for Aaliyah to bypass Bloomberg, which has been very successful these years.

In fact, there is no bypass.

Before the development of Alia, Alia’s team conducted a very detailed research and analysis on Bloomberg terminals, and many of them used some less compliant methods.

Bloomberg's terminal has been in development for ten years, and there have been hundreds of functions, large and small. However, in practical applications, only less than one-tenth of the functions are frequently called. This rather core confidential data is the basis for Alia to develop Alia.

How the data is obtained is not for outsiders.

However, in order to avoid potential legal risks, Alia's software development process has also made considerable preparations. First of all, in the most basic software program development, Alia uses a completely different design language from the Bloomberg terminal. Others such as software interface , Analysis models, etc., as far as possible to distinguish from the Bloomberg terminal, the Alia team even set up a new set of professional terms in order to show their groundbreaking.

Now, since the battle begins, the two sides need to compete in all aspects of comprehensive strength.

If it is other shallow-rooted startups of the same type, it is basically difficult to withstand Bloomberg’s lawsuit bombing and other encirclement and suppression, and it may eventually go bankrupt or be annexed by Bloomberg.

Bloomberg has been established for ten years and has become more and more successful, but there is no rise of competitors of the same type. This is part of the reason.

After a decade of smooth sailing, Michael Bloomberg has a hard bone this time.

Very hard kind.

If you want to use the usual litigation bombing again, Aaliyah, backed by the Westeros system, is able to contend in terms of legal resources and financial support, or even exceed it.

If you want to use political means, the results are even more difficult to predict.

Of course, there is the most direct commercial confrontation.

Bloomberg wants to kill Aaliyah in the early stages of development. In fact, it is not impossible. It is a good feasibility to launch a simplified version of the cheap Bloomberg terminal and quickly occupy the low-end market.

However, it seems simple, and it is even more difficult to implement.

Established financial information companies such as Dow Jones have been aware of Bloomberg’s threats over the years. Why did they fail to launch the same type of products? The key lies in being constrained by the already mature core business model. Although the service models provided by these established financial information companies are not as advanced as Bloomberg , But also has a very large user base. The development of products similar to Bloomberg terminals is likely to affect the interests of its core business model.

Bloomberg may be far from reaching the peak in Simon's memory, but the company has begun to be limited by its own business model.

Dive into the low end, seems to be a very feasible idea, a little carelessness may cause the entire Bloomberg to fall apart.

The reason is also very simple.

At this stage, the Bloomberg terminal charges up to $15,000 per year, and Alia directly sets the annual fee at one-tenth of the Bloomberg terminal’s $1,500.

The more and more complex and diverse functions of Bloomberg Terminals are inherently redundant for most customers. If a cheap version is launched, if you want to gain the market, you will inevitably need to move closer to the one-tenth that you often use. , Once it is discovered by users that the purchase price is only one-tenth of the cheap version, it seems that it is barely enough to use. To replace the professional $15,000 version with the cheap $1,500 version is a devastating disaster for Bloomberg.

Therefore, ideas that seem feasible are actually the least feasible.

In contrast, Aaliyah, which operates with relatively low operating costs, can continue to accumulate and sprint to high-end customers.

Aaliyah's current product layout has already shown this ambition.

In addition to a relatively wide range of ordinary users, Alia has begun to provide Alia software to the grassroots employees of the major Wall Street giants.

Everyone knows that the basic level of an enterprise will inevitably penetrate the upper level of a company's pyramid step by step in the future.

When these grassroots employees have gradually grown into management, they have become accustomed to Alia's software ecology. After some years of growth, this software is perfect enough. So, even if they are able to pay in the future, those Wall Street elites will only habitually continue to use Alia instead of spending extra time and energy to adapt to another unfamiliar financial information terminal.

In general, Simon will not take the Bloomberg lawsuit lightly, otherwise he will not take a few hours to attend Aaliyah’s internal meetings this afternoon. However, he is not particularly worried, as long as he deals with it properly, it is nothing more than a protracted litigation.

Just like Apple and Samsung.

The lawsuit lasted for a few years, even if it really lost and some infringing patents could not be used, Alia must have developed an alternative.

Other investigations, such as the SEC, are nothing more than tricks.

Greenwich, the headquarters of Aaliyah.

Regarding the end of the meeting to deal with Bloomberg’s troubles, Simon did not let everyone abandon the meeting immediately, but put forward an idea he had recently produced: “Everyone should see that Bloomberg cannot dive into the low-end to compete with us, so it can only use unconventional Competitive means, but have you ever wondered whether you can really successfully hit the high-end in the future?"

Everyone in the conference room heard Simon’s question and looked at each other a few times. Girl B first said: "Simon, in fact, I didn’t think so far. The key to the moment is to do our things well. I remember you used to Remind me so, yes, um, one step at a time."

Simon smiled and nodded, but said: "However, while everyone is here today, we might as well discuss it."

I also thought at first that even if it could not hit the high-end in the end, as long as the low-end market was firmly held, Aaliyah's future scale would not be much worse than Bloomberg. . Just like in the memory of Chinese companies such as Wind and Flush, some people stick to institutional customers, some face the general public, and they compete with each other, but each is also very moist.

However, if you can't beat Bloomberg, you will eventually regret it.

Since Simon said so, everyone expressed their opinions one after another, and sometimes good ideas popped out.

After listening patiently for half an hour, Simon said again: "Everyone's ideas are very good, now I will talk about my ideas. In my opinion, Bloomberg's ecological model is somewhat similar to Apple's Macintosh system. The advantage is It is a self-contained system, quite complete, and its shortcomings are obvious. This is a very closed ecosystem. Frankly speaking, Alia is an imitator of Bloomberg Terminal, just as Microsoft's Windows system comes from Apple Macintosh."

As Microsoft continues to erode the market, Apple's recent decline has been very obvious.

The entire new technology field is enjoying the dividends brought about by the rise of the Internet industry. As a pioneer in the new technology industry, Apple is suffering from the dilemma of declining market share. Even this year, there will be serious losses that have never been seen in many years. The trend of dwindling to the west is almost irreversible.

Simon took Microsoft and Apple analogy to Aaliyah and Bloomberg. While everyone in the conference room was slightly excited, there were also some people who showed some understanding.

Girl B, who is still the most familiar with Simon, spoke first and tentatively said: "Simon, what do you mean, we should choose ‘open’?"

Simon nodded and said: "Bloomberg Terminal tries to take care of all the functions users need, and is unwilling to open up cooperation with other companies. The price of its own products will naturally remain high due to the expensive development and operation costs. Aaliyah is completely unnecessary. Imitate this. Although it will be officially released next month, this software has already had a very good start. Full-scale imitation has no future. Next, you must try to find your own way."

Having said that, Simon paused for a while and gave everyone time to digest, and then continued: "My opinion is that you can refer to Microsoft’s rising ideas and use the Alia platform as the core to attract other partners to develop other relatives for this platform. Few and infrequent functions, users do not need to bear the expensive cost of Bloomberg terminal, only need to purchase services regularly and quantitatively when needed. In this way, Alia can improve its own functions to the greatest extent, while saving money and time as much as possible The cost, even, can transfer a lot of legal risks."

An Aaliyah executive in the conference room waited for Simon to finish and asked: "But, Mr. Westeros, we do this. What if Bloomberg follows suit? Their market appeal is far more than ours."

Simon said: "The business model has never been so easy to imitate. The functions and services of the Bloomberg terminal are already very complete, and its own closed ecosystem has taken shape, and it is impossible to change it rashly. Alia is just a newborn. The plasticity is very strong. Moreover, because of its low-cost advantage, Alia must have a very large user base, which provides a sufficient user base for companies that rely on the Alia platform. The price of Bloomberg terminals is too expensive, which will inevitably limit market capacity, at most With the sales of 100,000 units, most of the profits were taken by Bloomberg itself. It is impossible to leave too much room for cooperators. Why is Apple now failing in front of Microsoft? It’s not because its system is not good enough, the key is Microsoft’s relative openness has ensured that many companies are very willing to develop software for the Windows platform. Then, Apple’s computer sales have plummeted and market share has fallen, which will only further promote this trend."

When everyone nodded, another executive asked again: "So, how do we get income from these dependent companies?"

Simon smiled and glanced at the other party. In the previous introduction, he knew that the other party was a very good software engineer. He was called a genius, but he was not very good at business operations and human sophistication.

I didn’t care about the small gesture of girl B embarrassed to cover her face on the other side. Simon explained patiently: “It’s very simple. They provide services on our platform, and of course they have to pay us a commission. This, you can find out about Iraq after the meeting. The software mall of Great Portal."