Chapter 171 SUPERCELL’s Olive Branch (Part 2)

Although even talking about 80 million euros compared to more than 100 million euros after 5 years of operation, it still looks like Lin Hui is losing money on the books.

But you can’t look at the problem this way. If it involves long-term management, it will take a lot of energy from Lin Hui.

The game is just a way to save the country through curves, or it is just a temporary compromise when the career takes a roundabout way.

Anyway, Lin Hui feels that there is no need to spend too much time on games in the early stages of starting a career.

If 80 million euros can really be received at once, it will undoubtedly be very helpful to Lin Hui's career.

But things are obviously a bit unrealistic.

Can Super Cell directly take out 80 million euros in one go? This is a big question.

Although Super Cell is now gaining momentum, its valuation is around US$3.5 billion.

But the valuation of US$3.5 billion is the corresponding market value, which does not mean that it can come up with so much cash.

Perhaps the revenue generated by Super Cell through the game "Clash of Clans" in the past two years is very gratifying, but these revenues do not mean that they can be squandered at will.

If a company wants to maintain high output over the long term, it is essential to invest in various R&D projects.

If the funds allocated rashly exceed the budget, the capital chain may be broken, which is very dangerous for an enterprise.

If it were to take out nearly 100 million euros in cash casually, it would have to be a company with a market value of over 10 billion US dollars.

As expected, Super Cell did not hide in the email that they were unable to pay the corresponding fees in one lump sum.

When it comes to settlement of specific transaction amounts, Super Cell provides several such solutions:

One is installment settlement, in which 40% of the transaction amount is paid in one lump sum, and the remaining 60% is settled gradually within 12 months. The interest on the balance is settled in accordance with the standards of mainstream banks in the market.

On the surface, there is nothing wrong with this settlement method. Many companies use this method when making acquisitions.

But when it comes to cross-border transactions, if it is settled in euros, this settlement method will have big problems.

As a reborn person, Lin Hui knows that from the second half of 2014 to April 9, 2015, the euro depreciated by more than 10%.

Even if it comes with some interest, Lin Hui will still suffer a huge loss.

Moreover, the settlement cycle is too long, which goes against Lin Hui’s original intention of making quick money.

Speaking of which, knowing that the euro is depreciating, it seems that something can be done.

Another solution proposed by Super Cell is.

40% of the funds involved will be paid in one lump sum, and the other 60% will be settled in the form of stocks.

Compared to the former method, Lin Hui prefers the second option.

Assume a transaction for 65 million euros.

This also means that Lin Hui can harvest 26 million euros in one go, which will greatly enrich Lin Hui's cash.

As for the remaining 39 million euros, if it is settled in the form of stocks.

For Super Cell, which is valued at US$3.49 billion, 39 million euros in shares means that Lin Hui will get more than 1% of the shares.

Although it is only 1% of the shares, it is still a lot.

According to some information Lin Hui learned.

In 2013, when Super Cell was valued at US$3 billion, SoftBank acquired 51% of Super Cell for US$1.53 billion.

In December 2013, SoftBank increased their stake from 51% to 73%

In this case, the total shares held by the other various parties are only 27%.

In this way, if Lin Hui can obtain more than 1% of the shares in Super Cell, it seems that if Lin Hui chooses option 2 to settle, it will not be as simple as just holding shares.

It seems like Super Cell is recruiting me?

Sure enough, Lin Hui saw Super Cell and sent him a solicitation email.

The solicitation email was signed by Pananin.

Lin Hui remembered that this person seemed to be the president of the company Super Cell.

In the email, this person introduced the company Super Cell to Lin Hui.

According to this person's introduction, within the company Super Cell, there are groups or small teams called "Cells" one after another.

Each team has the freedom to choose the direction of production.

With novel ideas, simple communication among members can be implemented directly without complicated requests for instructions.

Super Cell’s internal data is fully open to all employees.

Every day, Super Cell publishes all the data of the company's games via email, so that everyone in the company can know whether a certain team's game has reached the KPI, so that they can decide whether to ax a certain project.

In fact, this person did not need to introduce it. Lin Hui had seen various reports related to the company Super Cell before.

It is said that there is no particularly strict superior-subordinate relationship within this company, and every employee's suggestions can be adopted.

The game Clash Royale in the previous life was proposed by an employee responsible for server maintenance.

Compared to the revenue of the game "Boom Island".

"Clash Royale" is even more profitable, with the game's total revenue approaching three billion U.S. dollars.

It’s so outrageous. Although this game has not yet come out, it is not easy to reproduce when it comes to Clash Royale. The IP involved in Clash Royale is in the hands of Super Cell.

The corporate culture of this company is proud of failure. If a project is officially cut off, employees will not be discouraged. Instead, they will open champagne to celebrate the experience and lessons learned from the failure...

This is quite a bit like being alone and seeking defeat.

The fact is that there were not many Super Cell games in the previous life, but all of them seemed to be hits.

Although Super Cell is just a game company, its value lies not only in the game itself. This company also has a great influence on the modern Internet business model.

Lin Hui remembered that the "China-Taiwan fever" that was quite popular among Internet companies in his previous life was inextricably linked to the company Super Cell.

In the previous life of 2015, JACKMA and a group of Ahri executives visited Super Cell, a game development company.

After learning about the operation of the company Super Cell, all the Ari bosses were immediately stunned.

They don't quite understand how this company with less than 200 employees can achieve an annual pre-tax profit of US$1.5 billion.

After analysis, these executives believe that the reason why Super Cell, a game company, is so efficient is because all of Super Cell's game development uses a common development platform.

In this case Super Cell employees of this company were able to disperse their operations.

If operations are decentralized, each small team can quickly test the game, get user feedback, and quickly trial and error, which undoubtedly means a high degree of flexibility for the enterprise.

In addition, sharing a development platform during game development also means that many scenarios of useless work can be avoided in game development. This approach also makes Super Cell more efficient than other game development companies.

The development platform shared by Super Cell in game development is defined by Ahri as "middle platform".

Why such a nondescript name?

Ahri believes that the shared platform of Super Cell is different from both the front office and the back office in the popular sense, so they named this shared platform "middle platform".

Regardless of whether such a name is appropriate or not, the operating model of the company Super Cell in the previous life deeply shocked JACKMA and Ahri executives.

Ali executives believe that the middle office can make the organization lighter and faster.

JACKMA also thinks so.

So after returning from the Super Cell visit, JACKMA was the first in China to propose the concept of China-Taiwanization.

Later, the people who worked on the matter further proposed the strategy of "big middle office, small front office" on this basis.

Under the guidance of this concept, Ali carried out a mid-level transformation.

On the business side, a "Shared Business Division" has been established to communicate between the front-end business department and the back-end cloud platform.

This reform has greatly improved the coordination capabilities among various departments within Ali Papa, and to a large extent promoted the sharing of data, products and other resources among its internal departments.

In addition to business-related actions, in terms of data, Ali also vigorously develops technology middle platforms such as data middle platforms.

Ahri's approach was quickly copied by other companies, giving rise to the "China-Taiwan fever".

In his previous life, Zhang Yiming also integrated the mid-stage architecture into Bytedance's architecture.

Companies such as Gouchang and Goudong have successively followed up on organizational changes and adjustments and introduced "middle platforms".

In Lin Hui's view, China and Taiwan have indeed had a certain positive effect for a period of time.

How to understand China and Taiwan?

To understand the middle office, we must start from the concepts of front office and back office.

It is generally believed that the front desk is the business system, and the e-commerce platform, portal website, mobile APP, WeChat/Information/public account, etc. built by the enterprise all belong to the front desk;

The backend is IT support, including cloud computing platform, database, operation and maintenance system, financial system, product system, customer management system, warehouse logistics management system, etc.

The front desk must innovate and iterate quickly because it must quickly respond to the needs of front-end users;

The backend needs to be stable first, because it faces relatively stable backend resources, and it is often an old and complex system.

The front desk and the back desk are like two gears running at different speeds, so the back desk is often unable to support the needs of the front desk.

In this case, Zhongtai emerged as the times require.
To be continued...