At the beginning of the new year, while two acquisitions were finalized, the Westeros System formally began to exert its influence in the internet field.
After careful preliminary preparations, America Online launched its internet free trial program on January 1, 1991.
As long as they were users under the three telecom operators; Bell Pacific, Bell Atlantic, and NYNEX, on the East and West Coasts of the United States, they could, through an appointment, install and access the world wide web platform for free and receive a one-month free trial with three hours of usage per day.
As of December 31, 1990, America Online's final user count stood at 820,000, and the total number of internet users in North America accessing the world wide web platform reached 1.16 million.
Based on the growth rate of world wide web users in the previous months, the America Online team predicted that with the launch of the free trial program, America Online would welcome at least 1 million free trial users per month on average over the next three months.
Based on a trial budget of $100 per user for access equipment and web browsing, America Online would invest an average of $100 million per month, not including its investments in human resources and infrastructure to support the growth in user numbers.
All told, for the three-month free trial program, America Online would burn through at least $400 million in capital.
In comparison, for the entire year of 1990, America Online's annual revenue had barely broken $100 million.
Therefore, the most critical aspect of this risky and aggressive business plan was actually the funding issue.
Simon had already agreed to the IPO plans for America Online and Cisco last year. However, because the outbreak of war in the Gulf region in the second half of last year caused the US stock market to remain sluggish, the IPO plans for both companies were continuously delayed. This free trial could be described as America Online's last push before its IPO.
Other minority shareholders holding 25% of America Online were unwilling to have their shares diluted by Westeros Company again, and Simon did not force the issue. The funds for this initiative were obtained in the form of a loan from Citibank through Westeros Company's connections.
After the three-month free trial program, regardless of the results of the plan's implementation or the macroeconomic environment, America Online would formally launch its IPO.
The other shareholders and management of America Online were under great pressure because of this, but Simon was full of confidence in this plan and the trend of the US economy.
One million trial users per month, three million in three months, this figure was actually very conservative.
One should know that in the just-passed year of 1990, mainstream PC manufacturers like IBM, Apple, and Commodore had total personal computer shipments exceeding 20 million units, of which IBM-compatible shipments alone reached 16.8 million units. At the same time, the global PC user base successfully surpassed 100 million units in 1990.
As the world's most developed economy, the US market share for both PC shipments and user base exceeded 50%.
Although personal computers in this era were mainly used for office work, with office PCs making up a large portion, given such a huge personal computer user base and the fact that America Online operated in the most economically developed states on the East and West Coasts, a figure of 3 million trial users in three months was definitely not high.
If 20% to 30% of the expected 3 million trial users could be converted into formal users, America Online's free trial program would be considered a success.
After the first quarter, as long as user growth met expectations, America Online could ensure at least $500 million in annual revenue. With user growth in the subsequent three quarters, the actual revenue figure would definitely be higher. Compared to last year's performance growth of over 500%, such a development speed would be enough for America Online to obtain an excellent IPO valuation.
After the IPO, America Online could more flexibly continue to raise funds from the public market by issuing securities or additional shares.
On the other hand, Ygritte also began to exert its influence in the content field.
Just one week after Peter Butler officially joined Ygritte after the New Year, he personally rushed to the Middle East to oversee comprehensive reporting on the Gulf War.
Ygritte also launched a prize-winning creative activity called 'Everyone is a Novelist' in its column blog section.
Web novels, a literary genre familiar to later generations, actually appeared much earlier than many people imagine. Like online games, Ygritte's predecessor, Quantum Online, had operated an 'Online Novel' service as early as the 1980s.
In the end, there has never been a shortage of creative ideas.
However, the 'Everyone is a Novelist' activity launched by Ygritte was still inclined toward traditional literary creation, and its duration was also three months.
After registered users of the Ygritte portal applied to the blog operations team, they could participate in this activity to engage in online creation. The subject matter was limited to novels, but there were no restrictions on genres; science fiction, horror, suspense, and so on were all allowed. The rule was to submit at least one update per week, and the final winners would be selected by Ygritte website users through online voting.
The activity would eventually select one first-prize winner with a prize of $500,000, ten second-prize winners with $100,000 each, and one hundred third-prize winners with $10,000 each. At the same time, the works created by these users also had the potential to be published in physical form and signed by Daenerys Entertainment for adaptation into films or TV series.
A total prize pool of $2.5 million, along with publishing and film adaptation opportunities, caused the activity to attract intense attention from Ygritte users as soon as it was announced.
After all, most ordinary people actually have some creative dreams, but it is just because of various constraints that they find it difficult to implement them.
Ygritte's online activity this time not only provided a platform with a very low threshold but also offered huge prize money sufficient to stimulate user enthusiasm.
For Ygritte, such an activity could achieve the goal of user-generated content that Simon had always emphasized, while also strengthening the interactivity of Ygritte's social network. Furthermore, through title sponsorship from companies like IBM, Ygritte further developed its advertising business, achieving multiple goals at once.
For this activity, the Ygritte team specifically developed a voting system, similar to the 'like' function common on the internet later, where only registered users of the Ygritte portal's email service could vote. Moreover, to avoid vote-rigging through multiple accounts, voting users also needed to bind their America Online accounts and could only cast one vote per day.
On the Hollywood side, an acquisition agreement was successfully reached with MCA, and the first box office week after the New Year passed quickly.
From January 4th to January 10th, the third week of 'Home Alone's release, due to the shift into workdays compared to the New Year's week, the box office drop this week reached 34%, earning another $31.28 million.
The weekly box office fell from $47.99 million to $31.28 million. Although the drop was deep, it was actually very remarkable. In this era, the opening week box office of many hit films might not even exceed $30 million, which also sufficiently demonstrates the phenomenal selling power of home alone.
In three weeks, the cumulative North American box office for home alone reached $111.9 million, easily squeezing into the top ten of the 1990 North American box office charts.
However, such excellent box office momentum had to face the shadow of the approaching war.
As the January 15th deadline set by the United Nations for Iraq drew closer, Saddam showed no sign of withdrawing his troops from Kuwait. It is worth mentioning that the 'tough stance' of the US Government also played a very critical role.
Several conditional withdrawal proposals from the Iraqi side were all rejected by the US Government.
On January 12, the US Senate formally approved the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution.
Dark clouds hung over the city.
At the same time, in the month leading up to the war, the US stock market continued to fall by 6% under the shadow of war, and the Dow jones index once fell back to within 300 points, which was even worse than before the 1987 stock market crash.
After completing the year-end settlement for 1990, Cersei Capital quickly raised a new $3 billion hedge fund, which would maintain the same scale in the future.
The total amount of cash Simon had previously transferred back home exceeded $8 billion, but thanks to the continuous cumulative gains in the second half of last year, the funds belonging to Simon in the Cersei Fund Management Company account still reached $700 million, and the Johnston Family also retained $500 million in the hedge fund.
Before the war broke out, when most investors were generally pessimistic about the prospects of the Gulf War, the team at Cersei Fund Management Company began to bet again in the crude oil futures market and the North American stock index futures market.
The crude oil futures market, having experienced the impact of the Kuwait war last year, has not yet recovered its vitality, so they could only barely establish a few small positions.
The main betting target this time was S&P 500 index futures.
In Simon's memory, under the one-sided, overwhelming force of the US-led multinational coalition in the Gulf War, the S&P 500 index rose by more than 20% in the month after the war broke out.
Moreover, due to the pessimism regarding the war's prospects, most speculators in the actively traded S&P 500 index futures market tended to go short, which allowed the team at Cersei Fund Management Company to very easily establish long positions with a total value of over $100 billion in just a few weeks.
Although he did not expect Cersei Capital's hedge fund to funnel too much capital into the Westeros System in the coming years, this time, because of Simon's different prediction of the war situation from most people, as long as everything followed the historical trajectory in the coming months, Cersei Capital would still obtain very rich gains.
Throughout 1991, Cersei Fund Management Company would definitely be able to easily leave similar Wall Street hedge funds far behind in terms of profitability.
Not seeking to create miracles, but only to surpass peers, this was Simon's performance requirement for Cersei Capital after it entered a regular operating state. This task was not easy for other fund companies on Wall Street, but for Cersei Capital, relying on Simon's advantage of foresight and its own excellent operations team, it was not difficult to achieve.
Time would not pause for the oppressive atmosphere of war.
January 15, the final deadline, Saddam Hussein still had not implemented the United Nations withdrawal agreement. The US-led multinational coalition began to authorize military force, and Iraq's million-man army was also prepared to respond.
On January 17, at two o'clock in the morning local time, countless warplanes took off from US aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and military airports in Saudi Arabia, swarming like bees toward key military targets across Iraq that had been pre-locked.
Many people originally thought the Iraqi Air Force would fight back; however, the multinational coalition demonstrated an overwhelming advantage that made the Iraqi army completely lose its ability to resist.
Iraq's air defence system had almost no room to operate in the face of America's high-tech stealth bombers. The dated Scud missiles were equally vulnerable before the US military's latest precision-guided missiles, and the Iraqi Air Force was firmly suppressed by the multinational coalition's warplanes before it could even make much of a response.
After less than a day of intensive air strikes, the first phase of the multinational coalition's strategic goals was quickly achieved, and Iraq's air bases and air defence facilities were pelted with guided missiles, cluster bombs, and fuel-air bombs, leaving them completely destroyed.
The overwhelming nature of this war shocked the entire world.
With the continuous feedback of war news, the international crude oil price, which had been soaring on the eve of the war, only held out for two hours after the war broke out before starting to take a sharp turn downward.
On January 16, the day before the war broke out, the international crude oil price was as high as $26 per barrel; a few hours after the war broke out, the price had already fallen to the low of $20, basically reaching the level before the Kuwait war broke out last year.
Affected by the shadow of war, the North American film market saw a significant decline in the week before the war broke out.
After a 34% drop in its third week, from January 11th to January 17th, the fourth week of 'Home Alone's release, the drop reached 29% again, with weekly box office sliding further to $22.21 million. The cumulative total for four weeks was $142.11 million.
Because the war situation exceeded most people's expectations, although many were still drawn to the smoke drifting over the Gulf region, the North American film market did not cool down further but instead began to rebound in the new week.
Before the war broke out, the organizers of the Golden Globe Awards had been hesitating whether to cancel the new awards ceremony scheduled for January 19. As the war situation finally became clear, the Golden Globe Awards organizers quickly announced that the ceremony would be held as scheduled at the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel.
In this edition of the Golden Globes, Daenerys Entertainment alone had three nominations for Best Picture—Dances with Wolves and 'Short Cuts' in the Best Motion Picture – Drama category, and 'Ghost' in the Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy category.
In fact, in the original timeline, 'Pretty Woman' and 'Home Alone' also received nominations for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
However, if Daenerys Entertainment occupied half of the 10 Best Picture nominations at the Golden Globes, it would have seemed too conspicuous. After weighing it, Daenerys Entertainment eventually only submitted three films, including 'Dances With Wolves', for Best Picture nominations.
Among them, 'Dances With Wolves' was the top priority and could not be lost. For the other two, depending on the attitude of the Golden Globe Awards organizers, whether they were given or not wouldn't have too much of an impact.
The result was that all three films secured their nominations.
Fortunately, all three films were well-deserved, so they did not invite much controversy. On the contrary, some media professionals raised objections to the fact that 'Home Alone' and 'Pretty Woman', produced by Daenerys Entertainment, failed to receive nominations for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
After being busy for several consecutive months and finalizing two acquisitions, Simon did not have any leisure time.
After the wild growth of the Westeros System in 1990, it had unknowingly accumulated too many problems. To avoid them becoming incurable, Simon did not dare to relax in the slightest.
In addition, while continuously delegating more power to the management of various companies, Simon's financial supervision of each company became increasingly strict. At the beginning of the year, as per custom, it was precisely the period for conducting financial audits of the companies.
Despite the heavy daily workload, on the evening of January 19, Simon still appeared on the red carpet outside the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel with a formally dressed Janette.
After all, it wasn't just the Best Picture nominations for the three films including 'Dances With Wolves'; films produced by Daenerys Entertainment like 'Pretty Woman', 'Home Alone', and 'Misery' also reaped plenty of nominations in other categories.
Beyond film awards, reality shows and TV series produced by Daenerys Entertainment also received a large number of nominations in various television categories and had very strong potential to win.
Therefore, before the awards ceremony began, Daenerys Entertainment had already prepared a grand celebration party at Malibu Daenerys Studios.