It wasn’t a girl who liked Jaesung, nor a boy who liked computers, but someone who wanted to meet him anyway.
After a brief moment of consideration, he agreed.
“Is he a friend from the same elementary school?”
“Kind of, but not exactly. He’s a younger boy.”
“I can’t go to an elementary school, so if he has time, tell him to come by the house after school.”
Jaesung found it odd that an elementary school student wanted to see him, especially since his sister had already graduated and was attending the same middle school as him this semester.
Still, it would be easier to just meet and ask directly.
Since they didn’t have contact information, his sister arranged the meeting through acquaintances, and a week later, an Asian boy arrived at their house in his mother’s car.
“Yo! Bro~ Are you James?”
“That’s me, but who are you?”
“I’m Park Daebeom. You can call me K-Park!”
The small Korean boy greeted him with exaggerated swagger and hip-hop gestures.
Coming from the land of quiet scholars of the East, Jaesung felt his blood pressure rise slightly at the sight of the hyperactive kid.
“Jaeeun, what’s with this guy?”
“He went to the same elementary school as me. He came to my graduation and asked me to teach him how to dance. I said I couldn’t since I was going to middle school, and he wouldn’t let it go, so I told him my original choreography was taught by you.”
“Master! Teach me dance!”
True to his age, Daebeom couldn’t stay still for even a second, bouncing around as he begged Jaesung to teach him, his eyes especially narrow and energetic.
“Do you even speak Korean?”
“A little bit.”
“If you want to learn dance, speak Korean, and use honorifics. Then I’ll teach you.”
“Okay.”
The more Jaesung talked with him, the more he felt like he had seen this kid somewhere before, but he couldn’t quite remember where.
After drilling basic manners into K-Park, who flopped around like a fish out of water, and seeing that he was finally ready to learn, Jaesung began instructing him.
“I’m preparing for high school now, so I’ve retired from dancing. I can’t teach you.”
“What!”
“Hey. I told you to use Korean. I’m retired, so you should learn from the next master, Jaeeun. She has outstanding talent for teaching others, so she’s perfect as your instructor. But only if you speak Korean politely.”
“Oppa, I’m in middle school now too, so I can’t really teach…”
“If you want to learn, you have to come seek it out. Get your parents’ permission, and come to our house to learn.”
“I understand.”
At first, Jaesung tried to make excuses to avoid teaching, but the vague sense of familiarity made him think it might be good to form a connection.
He told his sister to teach him instead.
She hesitated at first, but when she heard he’d be coming to their house, she agreed.
“Yes! Jenny is really famous at school! It’s a big deal she graduated!”
Daebeom danced around, expressing his joy with his whole body, and decided to come once a week to learn dance from her.
Jaeeun usually practiced dancing in one corner of the garage while Jaesung worked, so he installed a full-length mirror along the wall for her sake now that she had a student.
“James~ What are you doing?”
“I’m building a logistics management system for books.”
“What? Total nerd.”
“Hey. Do you know how expensive this program is? Go practice your footwork over there. All movement starts from the lower body.”
While Jaesung coded in the noisy environment of his sister and the kid dancing, Jefferson from next door walked in.
“Hello. Jenny, K-Park.”
“What’s up, Jefferson.”
As K-Park learned to dance, Jefferson’s preschool-aged son also came over to play in the garage, dancing together.
After work, Jefferson came to pick up his son and admired the program Jaesung was making.
“Honestly, the number of book titles has exploded, and classification has been a nightmare. You organized it cleanly.”
“I’m the middle schooler who built logistics systems for Costco and Walmart. Compared to Walmart, this is pretty easy.”
As Amazon.com started generating revenue, the business continued expanding, moved offices, and began increasing both book variety and staff.
Because Jefferson and Jaesung had designed the system well from the start, adding books digitally wasn’t a problem.
Physically sorting and finding them, however, was becoming more difficult.
Jaesung was updating the system to make warehouse searches easier.
“At this rate, won’t even the new office warehouse be too small?”
“There’s still some space left for now, but we’ll need to expand soon.”
“You mentioned planning to go public next year, right?”
“It looks like we’ll need to build large-scale logistics centers, so we’ll have to raise capital through an IPO.”
Jefferson Bezos wanted to retain as much of his equity as possible and planned to release only 10% to raise funds.
He was also discussing it continuously with Jaesung, who held the second-largest stake.
After receiving special training from Warren Buffett over the summer, Jaesung—despite being a middle schooler—was now advising Jefferson and setting guidelines.
“It’s good that the company is growing, but we’ll be burning cash for a while.”
“Even if we build a large warehouse in the West now, we’ll need ones in the East and Midwest later, so expenses will exceed revenue for some time.”
“Even if we run deficits, it’s better to expand aggressively and secure the market than to slow down. If we move passively, latecomers will eat us alive.”
“Yes. If we secure the market and complete the logistics system, we’ll create a gap that others can’t easily close.”
Jefferson, who looked gentle but was an ambitious man, showed a sharp glint in his eyes as his desire to build an online empire surfaced.
For now, Amazon.com only sold books, but as it grew into a logistics company, it would expand into a full online shopping platform.
Eventually, it would become the Walmart of the online world, dominating the market and growing into a true logistics empire, praised and criticized in equal measure.
There’s still a long road ahead, but Amazon will finally go public next year.
Unlike other companies Jaesung invested in, Amazon.com was a company he had been with from its very birth and poured the most effort into.
He had built the website and shopping system together with Jefferson in the early days and even packed deliveries himself in Jefferson’s garage last year.
When space ran out, some slow-moving books were even stored in Jaesung’s garage, making it a company full of memories.
Now that it had its own office, he couldn’t work as closely as before, but he still visited occasionally, acting as an honorary co-founder.
“It’s good that dilution is low, but is releasing only 10% really enough?”
“It’ll be enough to raise capital. And right now, money is flowing into internet companies, so the later we go public, the higher the valuation. If we need funds later, we can always sell more shares then.”
Knowing the future, Jaesung mixed in a bit of “Berkshire Hathaway analysis” to persuade Jefferson.
Having watched Jaesung multiply his money through startup investments, Jefferson trusted him completely and decided to follow the middle schooler’s advice.
“All right. Then before the IPO next year, we’ll focus on growing the company as much as possible.”
“As expected, you understand the core, Jefferson. I’m counting on you.”
Thus, Jaesung spent the fall semester of his third year of middle school watching Amazon.com and his other investments grow day by day.
He also figured out who Daebeom really was, the kid who came once a week to dance with his sister.
And whenever he went to Stanford with his father, he met two people developing a search engine called Google and discussed algorithms with them.
“Hehe. Thanks to my son, I even got to walk a red carpet in Hollywood.”
“I’d like to go too, but it’s restricted to adults, so there’s no helping it. You two enjoy it.”
“I heard it’s a horror movie. Isn’t it too brutal?”
“I read the script, and there are stabbing scenes, but isn’t it strange for a surgeon dad to be scared?”
“Surgery and horror movies are completely different things.”
The premiere date for Scream, a film Jaesung had invested in, was set, and invitations arrived for a Hollywood theater screening.
Unlike Toy Story, it was rated R, so Jaesung and Jaeeun couldn’t attend, and only their parents went.
“You can attend the after-party too if you want. Time shouldn’t be an issue.”
“Are you sure it’s okay to leave just the two of you?”
“You know your son isn’t an ordinary middle schooler. Don’t worry.”
While their parents attended the premiere, Jaesung and Jaeeun went to watch the LA Lakers, who happened to have a home game.
Sitting in the most expensive seats right by the court, they got Kobe Bryant’s autograph again for the first time in a while, and when the game ended, their parents were waiting.
“So, how was the movie?”
“Maybe because it was an American house, I felt more immersed. Being alone at home, I think I’d be scared if the phone rang.”
“There was a twist, so it was fun. I didn’t expect much since it was a low-budget teenage slasher, but it was better than I thought.”
Their parents enjoyed Scream and even brought back a killer mask as a souvenir.
Actors from the film also attended the premiere, including Drew Barrymore, who had been famous as a child actor in Spielberg’s alien movie, fell into drug addiction, and later returned.
“The actors were all so young. We took pictures together, but aside from Drew Barrymore, we didn’t recognize anyone.”
“I was really surprised to hear she was the child lead from E.T..”
Since it was a low-budget horror film, the premiere wasn’t particularly glamorous.
Mom wore a simple, casual dress, and Dad attended in a casual suit rather than a tuxedo.
They were once again the only Asians there, but since Jaesung was an investor, they watched from good seats and were treated as VIPs.
“Next time, let’s go to a premiere with lots of famous actors.”
“I’ve already walked a red carpet in Hollywood. I’m satisfied.”
She said she was fine, but filial Jaesung wanted to invest in a film with lots of Hollywood stars so his mother could see them.
Normally, there was no way to meet movie stars, but investing made it possible.
When we get home, I should contact the film investment broker.
Back in Seattle, Jaesung asked for a list of films currently in production.
“Are you really considering investing in this film?”
“Yes. Is there a problem? Did you already raise all the funds?”
“They’re urgently looking for investors due to budget overruns, but the production cost is extremely high, and it’s unclear if it can break even. The runtime is also three hours.”
“But isn’t it by a director known for making blockbuster hits?”
“That’s true, but his one failure happened to be a submarine film shot in water. In Hollywood, there’s a superstition that water-related movies flop.”
Films involving underwater shooting inevitably balloon in cost and difficulty, and with recent catastrophic failures like Cutthroat Island and Waterworld, water-based films were being avoided.
“That’s perfect. With no competitors, I want to invest as much as possible.”