Summary:
Bill Von Meister did not let many of his failures bring him down. If he did he would have never reached any success. One of his earlier projects that he spent a lot of time with was his work with the company CVC (Control Video Cooperation). Before Bill was very interested in creating a way to get data from companies and send it off to their consumers in their homes. He noticed that a lot of money would have to be put in, in order for these companies to first send of the materials, and then the data. So he collaborated with CVC a video game company, since the video game industry was booming. He wanted to be able to allow consumers to download games from the consoles themselves and then pay for them via credit card. It would save them the hassle of going out and buying games at the stores instead, they would be able to do that at home.
Bill, having many connections sought out the partnership with many investors. By having investors pour money into their project it would have a higher success rate. Although the project with CVC was going so well, the gains of the project had a turn for the worst and they started to lose money. They noticed that the video game industry was crashing, and video games were no longer being purchased at the rate they used to be purchased. Mr. Von Meister did not seem to think that it was such a big deal, like always he was already on to the next project, unlike those at CVC who were worried about getting their company back on their feet. To make matters even worse, Bill who about to lose much of his support at CVC was bought a brand new Mercedes sedan. He was off spending his money, while the company was thinking about ways to get money. That was the end at CVC for Bill Von Meiser.
Bill Von Meister did not let many of his failures bring him down. If he did he would have never reached any success. One of his earlier projects that he spent a lot of time with was his work with the company CVC (Control Video Cooperation). Before Bill was very interested in creating a way to get data from companies and send it off to their consumers in their homes. He noticed that a lot of money would have to be put in, in order for these companies to first send of the materials, and then the data. So he collaborated with CVC a video game company, since the video game industry was booming. He wanted to be able to allow consumers to download games from the consoles themselves and then pay for them via credit card. It would save them the hassle of going out and buying games at the stores instead, they would be able to do that at home.
Bill, having many connections sought out the partnership with many investors. By having investors pour money into their project it would have a higher success rate. Although the project with CVC was going so well, the gains of the project had a turn for the worst and they started to lose money. They noticed that the video game industry was crashing, and video games were no longer being purchased at the rate they used to be purchased. Mr. Von Meister did not seem to think that it was such a big deal, like always he was already on to the next project, unlike those at CVC who were worried about getting their company back on their feet. To make matters even worse, Bill who about to lose much of his support at CVC was bought a brand new Mercedes sedan. He was off spending his money, while the company was thinking about ways to get money. That was the end at CVC for Bill Von Meiser.
Unlike CVC, things for AOL were taking a turn for the better. They started to receive more investment deals from very rich people, such as Paul Allen, former vice president of THE Microsoft Company. He wanted to make an investment in this growing company, but to his surprise those at AOL declined his very nice offer. They didn’t want one person to own so much of their still small but growing company. They were also afraid that Paul might be a secret spy sent out to get information about the AOL Company in order for Bill Gates himself, to create an online internet based company like theirs. So either way, they did not want to work with either Paul Allen or Bill gates.
The biggest surprise was in July on 1993, Jan Brandt and employee at AOL called her boss with an interesting advertising suggestion. She wanted to mass produce 250 million disks that had the AOL software and then make them assemble to the consumers by placing them in cereal boxes, letters etc. By the almost end of 1994, AOL had gained close to 1 million users from it’s before close to 7-10 thousand. In that short amount of time, they were able to gain so much achievement and it opened up a new competition between AOL and Bill Gates.
Quote:
“‘I can buy 20 percent of you or I can buy all of you. Or I can go into this business myself and bury you’” (Swisher 77).
Reaction:
This threat from the world richest man, Bill Gates was what opened the company AOL’s eyes into understanding that their company means a lot to them and they were not going to let some rich man buy them and all of their achievements. Although what Gates supposedly meant was that he really wanted to work with this very rapidly increasing company, AOL did not take advantage of his offer because they wanted to continue with their own personal achievement and keep their successes inside the company instead of handing it over to the guy who they are now having competition with. Which leads back to the point of having confidence and self-trust, if this company did not believe that they were going to get somewhere, they would have not have all of the success that they received.
wonder if they should have taken Gates' offer...
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