As an important part of daily life for Americans, Los Angeles has never had a lack of parties, nor has it lacked "party animals" who attend one or two hundred parties every year.
Simon Westeros's 23rd birthday party was both special and not so special among all these parties.
Inside the mansion on the hillside of Palisades, the carefully prepared birthday party on the evening of February 22nd saw some expand their network, some gain bragging rights, and Simon himself received gifts that he could unwrap throughout the entire weekend. It was truly a joyous occasion for both hosts and guests.
After the birthday party, the Hollywood awards season's public relations entered its final sprint.
Due to the Gulf War, this year's 61st Academy Awards ceremony was scheduled for a later date, March 25th.
'Dances With Wolves', Daenerys Entertainment's main contender for awards this year, has been unstoppable throughout the awards season since its release on November 2nd last year. After winning a host of major awards at the Golden Globes in January, it has also swept various guild awards and film critics' association awards recently.
Among the already announced Oscar nominations, 'Dances With Wolves' also became the most nominated film at the 61st Academy Awards with a total of 12 nominations.
However, the most eye-catching aspect was still the film's box office performance.
From November 2nd to February 21st, the day before Simon's birthday, 'Dances With Wolves', which showed no signs of being a box office dark horse at its opening, accumulated $113 million in North American box office revenue over 16 weeks, thanks to word of mouth and continuous stimulation from awards season popularity. It became Daenerys Entertainment's third film to gross over $100 million in North America from its year-end releases last year.
Looking back at the entire year of 1990, Daenerys Entertainment produced seven films that grossed over $100 million in North America: 'Pretty Woman', 'Ghost', 'Sleeping With The Enemy', 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles', 'Dances With Wolves', 'A League Of Their Own', and 'Home Alone'.
All seven films ranked among the top ten on the 1990 North American box office chart. Among them, 'Home Alone', 'Ghost', 'Pretty Woman', and 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles', which were solely distributed by Daenerys Entertainment, firmly occupied the top four positions on the annual box office chart.
With the strong box office momentum of 'Dances With Wolves', it is almost certain that this film's total North American box office will surpass Paramount's 'The Hunt For Red October', which is currently ranked fifth, thus ensuring that Danelise Entertainment's films completely dominate the top five positions on the 1990 box office chart.
Additionally, as of December 31, 1990, the cumulative domestic box office total for just these seven films that grossed over $100 million in North America reached $910 million. This accounted for 17% of the total North American box office of $5.26 billion for the entire year of 1991.
Of the other more than ten films related to Daenerys Entertainment, such as 'Children Of The Corn II', 'Hellraiser III', 'The Hand That Rocks The Cradle', and 'Misery', also accumulated a total of $350 million in North American box office, accounting for 6% of the North American box office share in 1991.
Combining both, Daenerys Entertainment's films released last year accounted for 23% of the total North American box office share.
Moreover, this does not yet include the box office portion of films like 'Home Alone' in 1991, and is therefore not entirely precise.
According to this calculation method, the 1990 box office portion of films such as 'Look Who's Talking', 'Batman Begins', and 'Driving Miss Daisy' from the previous year's year-end schedule should actually also be included.
Once this is done, the proportion of box office controlled by Daenerys Entertainment will easily exceed 30%.
With Daenerys Entertainment and MCA shareholders officially completing their equity transfer by the end of February, if Daenerys Entertainment's films can maintain the box office momentum of the previous two years in 1991, the company will definitely be able to control more than 40% of the North American box office share.
This possibility is actually very high.
Because while other film studios were still 'warming up' for their 1991 box office releases, Daenerys Entertainment's first box office dark horse of the year had already emerged.
'Wayne's World', which opened on February 8th, had rapidly accumulated $49.69 million in North American box office revenue in just three weeks by February 28th. Moreover, the film's third-week box office drop was only 16% compared to the second week, indicating a very clear long-term trend.
With cumulative box office revenue approaching $50 million in three weeks and such a clear long-term trend, it is almost a certainty that 'Wayne's World' will gross over $100 million in North America.
Also on February 28th, the Gulf War officially ended after 42 days, as multinational forces officially ceased their offensive against Iraqi troops.
This war allowed many countries to see the significant trend of modern warfare shifting from mechanization to informatization. In future wars, human wave tactics are destined to be ineffective. The almost negligible role played by the Soviet Union in this important regional war further indicated that the collapse of this red empire was drawing closer.
The day after the Gulf War was declared over, on March 1st, North American stock markets surged across the board, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 indices both rising by over 5% at their highest point that day.
What many had expected to be a protracted war ended so quickly, and the United States, which had collected large amounts of military funds from European and Middle Eastern countries before the war, undoubtedly became the biggest winner of this conflict.
Not only did the war's overwhelming success cause the US stock market to rebound for over a month, but the direct war profits from the military funds contributed by various countries alone reached $19 billion, which largely alleviated the increasing domestic fiscal deficit in the United States.
The Bush administration gained significant political achievements and tangible benefits through this war, and its domestic approval ratings steadily climbed.
Simon, however, knew that the recovery of the North American stock market did not signify the recovery of the US economy; the federal economic downturn would continue throughout 1991, which also set the stage for the Bush administration's defeat in the 1992 presidential election.
The expansion of the Westeros system, however, was not affected by the sluggish US domestic economy.
For America Online, by the end of February, the free trial periods for Internet access users in January had all gradually ended.
Of the 810,000 free trial users who connected in January, more than 430,000 ultimately converted to official users, a conversion rate of 53%, far exceeding America Online's initial expectation of 20% to 30%.
Throughout February, the number of America Online free trial reservation users, although significantly decreased to 1.6 million compared to 2.3 million in January, the number of trial users who successfully connected increased to 970,000, basically achieving the goal of connecting a million users per month.
The number of users waiting in line for free trials even exceeded 2 million.
Among the major domestic telecom operators in the United States, with the exception of a behemoth like AT&T, which remained massive even after being split, companies such as the Seven Baby Bells generally had user numbers within the tens of millions.
Given the obvious explosive trend of the internet industry, major operators dared not underestimate it any longer.
Besides the three regional telecom operators, including Bell Atlantic, that signed exclusive agreements with America Online, other telecom giants, including AT&T, have rapidly begun to strategize for the internet industry in the past two months. They either directly acquired World Wide Web access service companies authorized by Ygritte in their operating regions, or obtained authorization from Ygritte to establish their own internet access service departments.
Due to the industry trend brought about by the Internet industry's explosion, Simon's foresight in acquiring Bell Atlantic ahead of time became even more apparent.
If the Westeros system had not already controlled Bell Atlantic, the strongest of the three regional operators, driven by the immense profits from the internet industry, even with exclusive agreement constraints, if the three regional operator giants had simultaneously pressured America Online, America Online would certainly have had to make significant compromises.
Now, Bell Atlantic firmly stands with America Online, and the other two companies, conveniently located on the east and west coasts of the United States, are difficult to unite, allowing America Online to continue maintaining its advantage in the exclusive agreement.
In comparison, most service providers in other regions had no choice but to accept the 'pacification' of the giant operators, and quickly fell victim to acquisitions.
Otherwise, they would simply be squeezed out of business by giant operators who wanted to dominate the Internet Service Provider market, cutting off their network resources.
As the internet industry boomed, Ygritte Company's high monopoly on World Wide Web technology gradually caught the attention of major manufacturers.
Of course, for now, it was only attention.
Because Ygritte maintained a very open licensing stance, and considering that Ygritte Company incurred losses exceeding $50 million in January alone, its commercial prospects were far inferior to the ISP business.
Therefore, Ygritte Company's monopoly on graphical web browsers and its various Ygritte Portal services did not yet attract the covetous eyes of other telecom companies.
Indeed, with its relentless expansion, Ygritte Company, in just the first month of 1991, saw its revenue exceed $15 million, but its overall losses surpassed $50 million.
To quickly boost the popularity of its portal website business among the general public, Ygritte invested $20 million in marketing expenses alone over the past month.
The portal website's various information sections recruited a large number of journalists and columnists from traditional print media platforms to build Ygritte's content team, incurring equally massive investments.
Coupled with email services, social networking services, online gaming investments, and Ygritte's continuously increasing R&D and infrastructure expenses, these ultimately led to the company's 'feat' of losing $50 million in just one month.
Of course, in Simon's view, this rate of spending was actually a small matter; he had seen internet companies that burned billions of dollars a year.
The capital Ygritte was spending now would undoubtedly bring a much greater return than the money spent in the internet industry's red ocean market, as Simon remembered.
As the entire new technology sector began to focus on the internet industry, Ygritte, which had already accumulated a large number of technical patents and software products, would see its 1991 revenue growth accelerate with the rapid increase in demand for IE browser software, World Wide Web tools, and portal website advertising from various operators.
As long as the current growth rate could be maintained, Eaglet's total loss for the full year of 1991 was very likely to be kept within $500 million, which was well within Simon's tolerance limit.
Under the trend of high user growth for two consecutive months, and facing the constant IPO rumours from America Online, Wall Street investment banks valued this new technology company all above $1 billion, with Morgan Stanley analysts even giving a valuation of $2 billion.
It is conceivable that after the completion of the three-month free trial program, America Online's IPO valuation would certainly rise again.
Beyond the general direction, Westeros Company also continued to lay out plans in some seemingly minor new technology industry sectors.
C-girl Claire, after showing Simon her business plan, quickly teamed up with the senior engineer who had left Kodak to establish a card camera company.
At the same time, Claire also contacted a graphics processing software company that had been founded just over a year ago.
The software's developer, Thomas Knoll, first developed a graphics editing software for processing black and white images using an Apple computer in 1987, naming it Display.
After two years of continuous research and improvement, the software's name was changed to Photoshop, and it began to be applied in scanner and digital typesetting fields.
Upon receiving the news, Simon directly instructed James Raybould to acquire the software.
However, the Knoll brothers did not agree to sell the software but hoped to cooperate with Westeros Company.
After several negotiations, Westeros Company invested $800,000 to acquire a 50% stake in the company founded by the Knoll brothers.
At the same time, the Knoll brothers would continue to control the research and development of Photoshop software.
Simon did not want the professional-grade image processing software he remembered to become something like Paint, so he instructed the Knoll brothers to develop two pieces of software simultaneously.
One would continue to deepen Photoshop's professional-grade features and would be sold through the Ygritte online software store in the future.
The other would be a simplified, free version of Photoshop, specifically provided to Claire's card camera company as a Supporting facilities software.
San Francisco.
Inside the mountain mansion in Woodside.
The date was March 5th; Simon had arrived in Silicon Valley yesterday again to attend the monthly meetings of Ygritte's various companies.
His female assistant hadn't squeezed him dry last night, so Simon woke up early and, as usual, went for a morning run in the Woodside hills.
At eight o'clock, returning to the villa, Jennifer had already prepared breakfast.
The two sat down in the dining room, and Jennifer, eating breakfast, casually brought up work matters: "I think if Ygritte continues to develop like this, it will eventually encounter antitrust obstacles. Now you want to build a hardware ecosystem, which will directly touch the interests of traditional tech giants like Intel and IBM".
Simon glanced at the newspaper beside him, picked up his cutlery, and said with a smile, "Think carefully about my personnel arrangements for Ygritte".
Jennifer, puzzled, tilted her head slightly in thought for a moment, then quickly grasped something and said, "Bartz is in charge of software business, Bezos is in charge of network business. Also, next, Ferguson might take charge of e-commerce. Hmm, did you plan to split Ygritte from the very beginning?"
"If it can avoid being split, of course, not splitting is best", Simon nodded and said, "However, this possibility is very low. Major North American operators are now beginning to enter the ISP business, which means the expansion of the internet industry will further accelerate.
Ygritte has only avoided major obstacles because it is still incurring large-scale losses, many people don't see the commercial potential within it, and coupled with the fact that this company is involved in a completely emerging technology industry that won't encroach on the interests of traditional giants. However, when the industry expands to a sufficient scale of output value, we cannot expect this situation to continue indefinitely".
Splitting Ygritte was indeed an idea Simon had from the very beginning, because the industrial value contained in the areas Ygritte was involved in was simply too immense.
Moreover, Simon did this primarily for Ygritte's own development; he did not want Ygritte to suffer from severe 'big company syndrome' too early due to controlling too many resources.
The internet era had just begun, and there were still too many challenges ahead.
If it became complacent and stuck in its ways, even with abundant resources, it would only face the fate of being eliminated in the future.
As the two were chatting, Simon's private handheld phone suddenly rang.
He answered casually, and before he could speak, a series of high-pitched squeals came from the other end: "Ah ah ah..."
It was Janette's voice.
Simon showed a helpless expression, 'Here we go again'.
Just as he was about to say a few comforting words, Janette excitedly continued on the other end of the phone: "Darling, it happened, it happened, I'm pregnant! Come back quickly!"
Simon froze for a moment, confirmed he hadn't misheard, and instinctively stood up.
Jennifer looked over curiously.
Simon stood across the dining table and chatted gently with Janette for a while, promising to rush back to Los Angeles immediately, before hanging up the phone.
Jennifer understood after hearing Simon's conversation with Janette.
Knowing that Simon had been put through quite a lot by Janette over the child recently, and now Janette had finally gotten her wish before her 31st birthday, Jennifer, though inevitably a little jealous, put down her cutlery and said, "In that case, let's go back now".