Investor That Can See The Future

Chapter 38

A small man with blonde curly hair and glasses and a fat young man with a thick brown beard. Both were far from being handsome.

To put it bluntly, do you feel like Western otakus?

Two young men who had crossed the Pacific Ocean in search of investors looked at us and greeted us.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Tobey Strong.”

“Glad to meet you, too. I’m Gerard Bacon.”

Hyunjoo’s sister and Eli got up from their seats and shook hands with them.

“Nice to meet you. I am Jessica Oh from GoldenGate.”

“I am Ellie Kim. Thank you for coming all the way here.”

Next, Hyunjoo noona introduced us. The conversation was, of course, in English.

I saw two It’s hard to tell their age because they’re foreigners, but they’re both in their 20s as they’ve only been graduating from Stanford for a few years.

Not only these, but most of the founders are in their 20s or 30s. Although he lacks experience yet, he is boldly challenging new industries with passion and ambition.

While overseas 20s are starting their own businesses, Koreans in their 20s gather in Gosichon to take the civil service exam.

This is not because Korean young people lack the spirit of challenge, but because if they fail after starting a business, they will be in disgrace.

Well, my goal was to get a stable job in the financial sector.

After saying goodbye, we sat down. Then we started talking about business.

Toby coughed nervously, and he took a few sips of water.

Successful companies must be able to summarize the core of their business in one single line.

For example, Face Note has no untouched areas such as SNS services, games, advertisements, messengers, and VR, but the core of the business is simple. It is “connecting the world as one”.

If you can’t summarize the main points and keep repeating it, it should be seen that the parties running the company do not know what to do.

Fortunately, Toby kept the crux of the business simple.

“The goal of Faceit is to be the Netplay in the pornography industry.”

“Fuck!”

Ellie coughed her up as if she had heard Sare.

Taek-gyu is equally surprised. You seem to understand the word ‘pornography’. Fortunately, Hyun-joo noona had read the plan, so there was no change in her expression.

Unlike the proud two, I bowed my head.

Why is the shame my share?

“·················ogue.”

That’s probably because I’m the one who decided to invest in this company. Hyeon-joo noona, what would a woman she met a few hours ago think of this situation?

I thought so and glanced at her side. Ellie, professionally, stopped her coughing quickly and focused on her story.

Toby began to explain in earnest.

To understand Faceit’s business, you must first know about NetPlay.

NetPlay is an American company that produces and streams videos. In the early days, DVD rental was the main business. Then, in 2006, it expanded into a streaming service.

From then on, Netplay began to grow rapidly.

After people rush to watch a movie or drama they want to see, they start thinking about what to watch next.

So, Netplay recommended content that consumers wanted. In the early days, it was a simple way to recommend melodies if you like melodies and comedies if you like comedy.

However, as the number of subscribers increased and data accumulated, the system became more sophisticated. The content viewed by consumers became data and stored on the server, and various contents such as favorite actors, favorite directors, and favorite genres were analyzed to recommend other content that suits their preferences.

Consumers are very satisfied with this system.

Then, Netplay came up with the following thoughts. Can we not just recommend content that consumers want, but also create our own?

So, Netplay reached out to its own production. By using the big data accumulated over the years, the genre that a large number of consumers like and actors and directors suitable for them were selected, and the contents produced in this way were a hit.

Currently, NetPlay has 80 million subscribers and a market capitalization of over $50 billion.

“Currently, the size of the global porn industry is estimated at billion in the United States and tens of billions of dollars worldwide. If you include illegal files, it will be ten times that number. In short, porn is a huge market.”

Taek-gyu showed great interest in the word “porn” that he kept hearing over and over.

“What are you saying?”

I only briefly translated the main content.

Toby continued his explanation confidently.

“In the past, pornography grew by driving technological development, but today’s porn companies are lagging behind in the past, following their past businesses. Just as Netplay dominated the over-the-top (OTT) market with high-level digitalization, artificial intelligence and machine learning, pornography must now be launched in a new form of distribution and production.”

Hyunjoo’s older sister and Ellie both looked excited. He seemed to be confused as to whether this was serious or a joke.

Ellie asked me.

“Is this true?

“Well, it is true.”

It’s just a joke and it’s not something to laugh at.

In fact, pornography is closely related to technological advancement. In particular, pornography played a major role in the distribution of home video.

At that time, VHS and Sony’s Betamax competed for the videotape standard. Betamax was superior to VHS in terms of size and picture quality.

However, when Sony opposed the entry of adult content into Betamax, the porn industry poured porn videos on VHS, and Betamax was eventually removed from the market and incorporated into VHS.

Pornography had a major impact on the spread of high-speed Internet and the increase in hard drive capacity.

The Internet is getting faster to download porn, and the hard drive has increased in capacity to store porn.

It is not an exaggeration to say that when humans develop technology, they use it in the sex industry, and develop technology to use it in the sex industry.

Taek-gyu, who was quietly listening to the conversation, said something.

“The Seagate CEO had a great line about that.”

Seagate is a leading hard disk manufacturer.

Ellie asked.

“What did you say?”

Perhaps he understood the word “Seagate CEO,” Toby exclaimed, reflecting.

“Let’s face it, We’re not changing the world. We’re building a product that helps people buy more crap and watch porn!”

Taehyung nodded his head.

“You must have said something like that.”

Roughly translated, ‘to be honest, we are not changing the world. It just makes things that help people buy more useless software and watch more porn.”

It’s a bit surprising that the CEO himself said that, but it’s so true.

The operating system and essential programs are less than 100 gigabytes, so why did the hard drive capacity go up to several terabytes? (Someone will clean up the hard drive periodically because that’s not enough.)

Toby said.

“I was so impressed with those words that I named the company Faceit.”

Taek-gyu nodded his head as he heard the interpretation.

“Five! The company name must have had such a deep meaning.”

This time it was Gerrard. It seems that Toby is in control of the whole business, and Gerard is in charge of the technical part.

“Currently, on our website, users enter their age, taste, favorite actors, etc., and they automatically recommend recent works and link them to the purchase site.”

The site is currently running free of charge, and the number of subscribers is about 800,000.

The number of subscribers, which had increased rapidly, gradually stagnated, but those who signed up once continued to visit the site. More than 10 percent of those who visit every day, and more than 40 percent visit again within a week.

This meant that the recommendation system was working to some extent.

“Our primary goal is to recommend works that fit consumers’ preferences like Netplay, and to provide streaming and download services ourselves.”

Hmmm, I picked it up, but there are really all kinds of startups.

Even if it sounds absurd, work is work anyway.

Hyun-joo’s older sister asked Gerard with a serious expression and a business-like tone.

“Is a porn recommendation service a good enough incentive? They say they plan to switch to a paid service in the future. How many consumers are likely to pay for that service?”

Gerrard replied as if waiting.(Read more @ wuxiax.com)

“As you know, most porn content is being consumed illegally. However, among the illegally downloaded content, only a few are actually viewed. Most of them just take up hard disk space. The reason is that it is so difficult to find what you want to see in the abundance of content. Consumers are more afraid of wasting time consuming useless content than paying for content.”

So people are willing to pay a monthly fee to join Netplay. As more people sign up, NetPlay can lower the price of content delivery and collect more data. And that becomes an incentive to attract more subscribers.

Hyunjoo noona asked the question again.

“Netplay has various contents such as movies, dramas, documentaries, and entertainment shows. By the way, the only content on Faceit is porn, what do you think about that?”

“Porn is content that can be produced by one person. The amount of porn produced worldwide in one day is not enough to look at over a lifetime. There are also several genres within porn. The content for subscribers to enjoy is diverse enough.”

Hyunjoo noona and Ellie looked at me.

“Is that convincing? How much do people watch porn? Can’t we just look for it if we need it?”

“Well······.”

Women would be surprised to learn how much time men wasted searching for porn. But it’s a little bit hard to say that with my mouth here.

Unlike me, who could not speak at all, Taek-gyu spoke confidently.

“What do you mean? How hard is it to find something worth seeing in the daily pornography? That’s a service the world needs.”

“I’m kidding?”

“What joke? If it’s just as I said, there’s no need to keep a hard drive full of porn, right? Then you will be able to enjoy porn on your smartphone or tablet anytime, anywhere.”

Hyunjoo’s older sister had an expression that she didn’t understand.

“People can’t see it that much…….”

Taek-gyu said as if frustrated.

“What does your sister know about pornography?”

“·················ogue.”

Hyunjoo’s older sister could not object. Because I don’t really know anything about pornography.

This is the first time I’ve seen Hyun-joo’s sister so embarrassed. She probably did not know that the day would come when she would be ignored by her brother for not knowing.

Gerard said confidently that he didn’t even care that there were women in front of him.

“Porn for everyone to enjoy anytime, anywhere! That is the future Faceit envisions.”

Okay, so stop talking, Western otakus!