Two days later, Lee Jung-woo and Oh Min-woo, who were about to leave for the United States, were taken to the airport.
“Is there a reason you personally come to the airport with each employee? Is it to impress us?”
“No, it’s just that neither of you have a car.”
Lee Hyun-woo answered with a laugh to Oh Min-woo’s random question.
“That’s a simple answer. Please give us the motivation to buy a car when we get back.”
“Hey, stop talking nonsense and let’s go. Our hyung is a busy person.”
“I’m not that busy, but as Jung-woo said, I don’t want to hear any useless talk. Now go.”
He was always composed.
Naturally, he wasn’t busy after work.
As Lee Hyun-woo turned to leave, Oh Min-woo spoke firmly.
“We will surely make the name of Jungle known in the United States.”
He continued to talk nonsense.
When Lee Jung-woo started to scold him again, Oh Min-woo giggled.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I just imagined your hyung’s surprised face.”
“Crazy guy. Our hyung doesn’t get surprised easily.”
“This time, he might be a bit surprised. We’re going to apply the relationship algorithm I talked about last time to the blog.”
This algorithm was already completed, and he had told the team to run the final simulations and apply it.
After applying it, it would probably be possible to make friends.
“But does our hyung have a blog? He might not notice it right away.”
“You worry too much. Other people will tell him. But it’s strange. Why doesn’t your hyung have a blog?”
They still didn’t know that Lee Hyun-woo was Nostradamus.
Therefore, Lee Hyun-woo didn’t have the leisure to run a separate blog.
“It’s probably a personal preference. It could be bothersome. Think about it. He’s become a complete celebrity. What if he gets friend requests from everywhere?”
“Even without a blog, he can still get requests.”
“Oh, I see. Then it would definitely be bothersome.”
“You are too biased because he’s your hyung. On December 31st last year, he came to Jungle because he had no one to hang out with.”
“Really? Our hyung did?”
“Yeah, he was so desperate to hang out with me. If I hadn’t been busy, I would have spent time with him… Although, nowadays, he’s better because he often meets that chaebol noona he’s almost dating.”
When Oh Min-woo mentioned Kim Ah-young, Lee Jung-woo smirked and thought of her face.
‘She does suit hyung well.’
He hoped it would go well.
He now wanted to support their relationship.
Did she hear about it?
A text arrived from Kim Ah-young.
- Jung-woo, have a safe trip to the United States.
An inexplicable smile spread across Lee Jung-woo’s face.
Two days passed.
Although not exactly as Oh Min-woo predicted, Lee Hyun-woo raised an eyebrow when he received friend request messages from someone.
‘What is this?’
It appeared as soon as he logged into the portal Jungle, which he habitually accessed as soon as he arrived at work.
Following this, messages continued to come in with the signal sounds ‘ding ding ding’.
You have received a friend request from Rainy.
You have received a friend request from Date.
You have received a friend request from Tomato.
You have received a friend request from Anne Pon.
When Lee Hyun-woo quickly clicked the notification window, he moved to the inbox.
He randomly clicked on Anne Pon.
- Hyun-woo, it’s me, Ah-young. I got a notice email saying I could suddenly send friend requests. So, I sent one to you.
After clicking ‘Yes’ to accept the friend request at the bottom, he carefully reviewed this and that.
‘Has Oh Min-woo finally completed this?’
At that curious moment, Yoo Jin-young entered.
“CEO, there’s a call from Team Leader Oh in the United States.”
“Put it through.”
As soon as he picked up the receiver, he could hear Oh Min-woo’s voice.
(CEO, are you at work?)
“What is this?”
(What do you mean? It’s what I said I would make last time. I used the relationship algorithm to enable friend requests on the blog. Oh, you can request even without a blog.)
“Oh, man. Then you should have told me in advance.”
(I wanted to surprise you. Oh, if you get too many friend requests, I set it to hide information externally. Use that if it gets bothersome.)
“Okay, got it.”
(And there’s still a long way to go. Originally, I planned to perfect it before releasing it, but I remembered what you said last time. An excellent plan executed today is better than a perfect plan next week!)
It was a quote from George S. Patton.
He was a soldier who participated in World War II in the United States. The words he once said kept lingering in Lee Hyun-woo’s mind, so he engraved them in his heart.
He had advised Oh Min-woo, who had a strong otaku trait, and it seemed to have sped things up like this.
“Alright, well done.”
(I will do well here too.)
“Hey, don’t try too hard. You’ll burn out.”
(I can’t do that. You got us business class tickets, not first class, though.)
“Why do I feel like you’re asking for first class next time?”
(I will make more money for you and ask proudly.)
He didn’t deny it.
Still, he liked this guy’s personality a lot.
Even after hanging up the phone, a sense of pleasure continued to spread.
‘A blog that allows you to make friends.’
Suddenly, he imagined the expressions of the geniuses in the United States.
In other words, the founders and developers of Single, Face Note, Amazones, Pineapple, etc., would have less and less to do.
‘They are geniuses, so they’ll come up with something else.’
Thinking comfortably, he turned his gaze back to the computer monitor.
Now it was time to play with the changed blog for a while.
Around the time he was about to leave work that day, he received a call from Woo Sang-won, who had visited the second research institute after the first one.
(CEO, everything went well. They didn’t demand excessive royalties.)
“Does not demanding excessive royalties mean they might be considering researching MP3?”
(Yes, probably. So, they said they would come to Korea next time. It looks like they will stamp the contract after negotiating with you.)
“Got it. You’ve worked hard.”
Lee Hyun-woo smiled brightly as he listened to Woo Sang-won’s voice.
Of course, people’s minds could change at any moment, so there could be differences between verbal agreements and actual written contracts.
However, since they had announced it so confidently and were about to enter negotiations, he didn’t think they would use it against them and cause legal issues later.
(Ah, have the two left?)
“Yes, yesterday.”
The two people Woo Sang-won mentioned were his brother Lee Jung-woo and Oh Min-woo.
“By now, they should be visiting AltaVist to discuss in-depth about business cooperation.”
(Then they will feel the same as I did.)
“What kind of feeling did you have, Team Leader Woo?”
(The feeling that the world, is watching Korea and Jungle?)
Was this person also becoming full of national pride, or ‘Jungle pride’?
Lee Hyun-woo smirked and said,
“I don’t know about that, but I was also surprised today by a new update on the blog.”
(Oh? Really? The internet here is too slow, so I couldn’t check.)
“Enjoy it when you come back. It might be difficult now.”
(Yes, I understand.)
“By the way, what time is it there?”
(It’s almost ten o’clock. Phew, it’s time to attend another forum.)
“Do you not like forums? The guys who went to the United States are attending forums at Stanford University on a similar topic to Germany.”
(I thought I was going to die listening to the forum. Even with interpreter next to me, communication was not easy.)
“I see.”
(Thankfully, it was conducted in English, but it was still hard to understand each other’s German and Korean accents.)
“Ha ha, you had a hard time.”
It seemed like he was envious of Lee Jung-woo and Oh Min-woo.
Woo Sang-won could communicate to some extent in English, but it was not easy to understand English spoken by Germans unless one is already used to Enlish spoken by American.
Lee Hyun-woo had experienced it in his past life, so he could feel the hardship in his voice.
He once again encouraged and complimented him generously before hanging up the phone.
Meanwhile, the two people who had officially entered into a business agreement with AltaVist in the United States.
To be precise, it was a field operation.
How to apply and how much they can apply Jungle’s search engine to AltaVist’s webpage.
“Why are they gathering like this?”
“I don’t know. They must be curious about us.”
The two reviewing it on the computer were surrounded by AltaVist’s developers.
“By the way, this work won’t be easy, right?”
“Did you think we could do everything in the United States?”
“Absolutely not. We’ll have to send developers back.”
“This is getting out of hand. Korean developers are spreading all over the world.”
Lee Jung-woo nodded at Oh Min-woo’s words.
Starting with some developers who left for Japan last year, they were now planning to dispatch to the United States, so the words he had said to his brother before, ‘Jungle to the world,’ were on the verge of coming true.
Should he say seeing is believing?
Upon arriving here, it was clear that Jungle’s level was much higher.
‘Was I overestimating Silicon Valley and the United States all this time?’
Feeling proud, he said to Oh Min-woo.
“If we had started our business in the United States, Yaho would be just a meal.”
“Of course.”
“But will Stanford be like this too?”
“It won’t be much different. So, the disappointment might be bigger if it falls short of expectations.”
“That’s true. I hope at least one or two geniuses exist.”
The two were conversing in a way that might sound absurd to others.
They were treating Yaho, which had gone public last year and whose market cap had already exceeded several trillion won, like a neighborhood store and hoping that Stanford’s bookworms would meet their expectations.
If Lee Hyun-woo were here, he would have sharply criticized their floating arrogance…
- The United States is not a small country.
Fortunately, shortly after arriving at Stanford, they met proper rivals.
They were Ray Burrin and Michael Pace, who had founded Single in their previous life.
It was clear that the two were studying the concept of the search engine that Lee Jung-woo and Oh Min-woo had designed and evolved.
“We’ve hypothesized focusing on the similarity and relationship of web pages.”
“Yes, we plan to apply the algorithm after publishing the paper next month.”
Listening to them openly talking about their research, Oh Min-woo surprised Lee Hyun-woo.
Immediately, Oh Min-woo responded in fluent English,
“I’m sorry, but Jungle is already applying your hypothesis.”
“……!”
“……!”
Their pupils shook as if there was an earthquake.
Then, in disbelief, they looked at Oh Min-woo,
“Jungle plans to enter the American portal market this year. You can check it then. Or, you can go to Jungle’s homepage in Korea and search for any keyword. AltaVist recently provided some web pages. I believe you’ll be able to confirm the algorithm of ‘relationship’ and ‘similarity.’”
Since he confidently provided evidence, they began to fall into a state of mental breakdown.
