Reborn multinational giant

"???"

In an instant, the eyes of all the executives, from Richard to Ehrlich to the others, converged on the new executive who spoke.

Seeing everyone looking at him, the new General Manager of Marketing looked even more confident.

"Next, it's your first highlight moment with Reels!" The executive thought to himself, and was about to continue when Ehrlich suddenly applauded.

"bingo, Richard, you told me to stay out of the company's executive appointments, and now well, you've got an idiot for an executive! I look at the position, oh, it's still the General Manager of Marketing, it's got to be $500,000 a year, Richard you're spending $500,000 to hire this kind of product, you might as well give me the $500,000 and let me work part time!"

Ehrlich's sarcasm made Richard look gloomy, and the face of the executive who had just spoken turned liver-colored, while the other executives seemed to have long been used to Ehrlich's character and were silent.

"As far as I know, Sequoia's valuation offer has been given to $4 billion, and you directly rejected Sequoia without even discussing with us. Richard asked in a low tone.

Erlich gave him a scornful look and put his face in front of him and growled.

"If I hadn't supported you, you'd still be working as a coder somewhere.

Are you satisfied with a $4 billion valuation from Sequoia? Even the world's richest man, Mr. Fang Zhe, has said that Reels is a multi-billion dollar project, and selling it to Sequoia is stupid and a crime.

Richard was somewhat cowed by Ehrlich's tirade, and in good conscience, he also felt that the $4 billion offered by Sequoia was a bit low, knowing that half a month ago, Reels' valuation was only $2 billion, which had doubled in less than half a month.

Ehrlich finished counting Richard out and turned to the general manager of marketing who had just threatened to sue tiktok for plagiarism and scolded.

"And you, dumbass, you're fired, now get the hell out of this conference room right now!"

Ehrlich's forcefulness made the executives on the floor panic. If Reels hadn't offered them an attractive enough salary, how could they have succumbed to the lust of a jerk like Ehrlich?

The general manager of the marketing department glanced at the silent Richard and left the conference room, swallowing his resentment and anger.

"Well, now that the average IQ of everyone in this conference room has risen, it's about time we had something useful to discuss!" Ehrlich said.

The executives were silent, many of them preferring to remain silent for fear of repeating the mistakes of their colleague.

"Whoever can come up with an effective strategy, I'll give that idiot the $500,000 he just saved as a reward for being smart!" Ehrlich came up with a monetary enticement.

In the blink of an eye, the executives who had been silent a moment before came forward with their ideas.

There was nothing that money couldn't do, just like Mary was willing to squat under his desk for it.

"tiktok has just started its global rollout, and we Reels have been online for almost a year now, and we're a lot better than it, both in terms of user size and operational experience in non-Chinese regions!"

"If it was just Reels and tiktok competing against each other, we wouldn't care about the competition at all.

"Huizhong is the ruler of the mobile Internet, and it's hard for us to compete with it in terms of resources and traffic!"

"Now, we should join forces with one, or even more companies on the same level as Huixiang against tiktok and Huixiang, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple! Both!"

"Google and Amazon have been unhappy with the rise of Huizhong for a long time, and we should use this opportunity to co-opt them!

Ehrlich had a smile on his face as the executives discussed the situation.

Ehrlich stood up and walked behind Richard, patted him on the shoulder and said, "Okay Richard, don't be upset, Dinesh called me this morning and said that Megan Smith, the Vice President of Google, called me through him and said that Google is interested in investing in our Reels!"

As soon as Ehrlich finished speaking, after a brief silence in the conference room, everyone's face showed joy and Richard's mood instantly improved.

Google! That's Google! If Google is willing to support Reels, what is there to worry about, even if tiktok has the backing of the remitters?

Three days later, in a conference room at Reels, Erlich and Richard, along with Franz, a partner at Google Capital, signed an investment agreement in which Google would invest $1.5 billion in Reels, taking a 20% stake in Reels.

One year, from zero to a $6 billion super-unicorn, both Ehrlich and Richard were in a state of great euphoria and madness.

When Ehrlich held a grand pary for his success in the billion dollar club, the news that Google spent 1.5 billion dollars to invest in Reels also began to spread wildly in Silicon Valley and the global world.

"Fu**, Ehrlich and Richard, those two plagiarists, became billionaires by copying, what an irony!"

"What's so great about Reels, its recommendation algorithm is much worse than tiktok, I've been playing tiktok for two hours and I'm getting more and more excited, but Reels, I'm so sleepy after 5 minutes!"

"Reels was registered by a Southeast Asian brush company that Ehrlich and Richard paid Gu for, for 5 cents a user, and now sells it to Google for over $200 a user!

"Everyone in the circle knows that Reels copied China's Shakespeare, and Google was able to accept it, so it seems that for the sake of money, Google has long abandoned its own trustworthiness!"

"This is going to be a good one, tiktok + Huizhong vs. Reels + Google, I'm curious to see who will win in the end!"

"Mud, I should have known that we copied China Shakespeare last year, whatever, I'll go see what other top apps in the Chinese App Store haven't been copied to the U.S. yet."

The Silicon Valley is scolding and sarcasm, more or less hiding some jealousy.

After reading the news about Google's investment in Reels, he pondered for a moment and made a disturbed call to Huizhong's CEO office.