"What a business model. This is brilliant."
After finishing the document, Tim George could not help saying it out loud.
Bruce leaned back slightly and began walking him through it.
"There are three revenue streams here: recruiting solutions, marketing solutions, and premium users. The recruiting and marketing products are for companies. The premium tier is for individuals."
He tapped the first section.
"For recruiting solutions, we charge employers a placement fee based on the level of the role they're hiring for. Anywhere from one hundred dollars to ninety-nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars per search. For each opening, we recommend twenty candidates. If they want more, they pay again."
Then the second.
"For marketing solutions, companies can run ads on their profile pages. That gets billed on a pay-per-click basis. One dollar for every ten clicks."
Finally, the third.
"And then there's the premium user model for individuals. That's subscription-based. Nineteen dollars a month or one hundred ninety-nine a year. If they choose recurring monthly billing, we can offer a discounted rate of nine dollars per month."
He paused.
"As for free users, they can follow teachers, classmates, friends, colleagues, and so on, but they can't connect with people beyond three degrees."
That "three degrees" concept came from the theory of six degrees of separation.
According to the theory, no two strangers in the world are separated by more than six people. In other words, with at most six intermediaries, you could connect to anyone, even the President of the United States.
Bruce continued.
"Free users can add no more than fifteen friends. And they don't get access to premium content in the discussion sections. That's the basic framework. Take the file, go over it carefully, and send me any feedback by email. In three days, we roll it out on a trial basis."
"Yes, Boss."
"One more thing," Bruce said. "Nasdaq is still falling, and the whole Valley, honestly the whole country, is full of layoffs. We need to use that. We undercut traditional recruiters on cost and take market share while everyone else is panicking."
He looked straight at Tim.
"And don't worry about the funding. Within two months, I'll bring in at least twenty million dollars in venture capital for the company."
Tim nodded hard.
The ambition in Bruce's voice was impossible to miss.
"Tim, once LinkedIn passes one hundred million registered users and turns profitable, we can start thinking about an IPO. And when that day comes, I won't forget the people who were here from the beginning."
"Thank you, Boss," Tim said, clearly moved.
Nothing won loyalty faster than real upside.
"Get back to work."
Bruce waved him off, very satisfied with the effect his carefully delivered "big picture" had produced.
After Tim left, Bruce glanced at the desk calendar.
It was already May 5.
That meant there were only nineteen days left until the UEFA Champions League Final on May 24 at the Stade de France in Paris.
The reason he had gone through so much trouble to secure that eighty million in liquidity was simple:
he planned to use what he knew about the future to make a killing on football betting.
Outside of writing, this was the only truly explosive money-making opportunity he could think of in the year 2000.
He leaned back and shook his head with a faint smile.
"All those years getting scolded for wasting time on games, football, and web novels... and now it finally pays off."
Like most football fans in China, he had really fallen in love with the sport only after the 2002 World Cup, when China qualified for the tournament. That was when he started following it seriously.
Back then, his favorite clubs had been Real Madrid and Manchester United. Both were packed with stars, and both had done a strong job building their brands in China. Compared to them, Barcelona had been less dominant in that market.
Still, it had all been a long time ago.
Outside of the Champions League and the World Cup, he barely remembered who had won the European Championship before 2010, and except for the Premier League, he could not reliably recall the winners of the other major European leagues.
But he did not need to remember everything.
He only needed enough certainty to build capital.
A few years from now, this amount of money might not even register for him anymore.
He pressed the intercom.
"Wendy, come in for a second."
A short while later, Wendy Soro stepped into the office.
"Boss, you wanted to see me?"
"Yes. How's the research on the U.S. gaming industry going?"
"Just getting started."
Bruce nodded.
"Go to Tim and request two additional staff. I want a small executive office reporting directly to the Chairman. You'll lead it."
"Yes."
"And one more thing. Register a new company for me. The name is Matrix Pictures. Business scope: media and entertainment."
In his previous life, he had listened to plenty of songs, but aside from a few that were useful for showing off, most of them had blurred together. Movies and TV, though, were different. He remembered most of them clearly. Images stuck in the mind much better than lyrics ever did.
And with that kind of memory bank, there was no way he was going to ignore the enormous margins in entertainment.
"Matrix Pictures?"
Wendy looked genuinely surprised. It had nothing to do with LinkedIn's internet business.
"Is there a problem?"
"No."
She shook her head immediately.
As his assistant, it was not her role to question strategic decisions.
"Then get started."
Once Wendy left, Bruce looked at the hundred-plus folders in My Documents and let his eyes settle on the three completed ones:
Pirates of the Caribbean
Fifty Shades of Grey
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry
But Fifty Shades of Grey still left him conflicted.
Before his rebirth, the book had been ripped apart critically. The reviews had been overwhelmingly negative. But commercially? It had been unstoppable. At its peak, a copy sold every two seconds. Total sales topped one hundred million across the trilogy, even surpassing Harry Potter in combined volume.
That made it impossible to ignore.
And right now, what he needed most was cash.
Fifty Shades of Grey was the most suitable option.
A billionaire romance, written with the prose control he had now, stood a very real chance of blowing up.
After thinking it over for a while, he sighed.
"Forget it. I won't change it. I'm just getting started anyway. It actually makes sense for my first breakout to be a little rough around the edges."
If he went that route, though, then The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry could not be published right now.
On the literary side, A. J. Fikry was in a completely different class. The gap between it and Fifty Shades was too obvious. Anyone paying attention might start wondering whether the two books had even been written by the same person.
But without A. J. Fikry, and with Fifty Shades set aside as its own kind of gamble, Bruce did not feel confident that Pirates of the Caribbean alone, still untested in the publishing market, would be enough to persuade sharp literary agents.
After thinking it over for a long time, his eyes moved to another manuscript, one he had only half finished.
The Da Vinci Code?
In the future, both the novel and the film had been massive successes. The story's dense structure, surprise turns, and puzzle-driven suspense had made it a phenomenon. The book had sold millions in the U.S., topped The New York Times list for seventy-six weeks, been translated into dozens of languages, and reached a global sales figure of over sixty-five million copies.
But after considering it for a few seconds, he rejected it.
Even though he had read the novel multiple times and watched the movie more than once, it was still too dense. Religion, mathematics, history, philosophy, cryptography. There was no way he could finish writing it in the next two weeks. And just like A. J. Fikry, it was far above Fifty Shades in craft and complexity. The gap would be too suspicious.
"So after all that... it's still the best fit."
He made up his mind.
"That's the one."
Bruce moved the mouse and clicked.
A nearby printer immediately sprang to life.
A few seconds later, a sheet of A4 paper slid out.
Across the top, in bold black English letters, was the title:
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them