As Lee Hyun-woo mentioned, Jungle recently hired 187 new and experienced employees.
In the past, when there wasn’t even a proper office, they paid on an hourly basis in a part-time format. When they secured a small office, they paid slightly more compared to civil servant salaries, but it wasn’t at the level of large corporations, so they didn’t have to worry much about labor costs.
However, Jungle is now the top company in the information and communication industry.
To match the appropriate salary, they need to consider at least 25 to 30 million won.
Now, with over 400 employees and frequent recruitments, it’s only a matter of time before Jungle surpasses 500 employees.
This means that with an average annual salary of 30 million won per person, they would be spending 15 billion won a year on labor costs.
In addition, there are fixed costs such as monthly utility bills and building rent, as well as new business ventures like data centers that cannot be ignored.
It’s also time to lease a new building and push for the Jeju Island headquarters.
If they plan to acquire the Internet Goblin Market mentioned earlier, they will definitely need a significant amount of money.
This is why Lee Hyun-woo mentioned investment.
In response, Woo Sang-won asked,
“Investment? How much…”
“How much we’ll receive, we have to calculate from now. But personally, I hope to raise funds by selling a certain share to investors. By the way, this is called Pre-IPO.”
Currently, Jungle’s public listing has been decided, and Team Leader Shin Dong-woon is already proceeding with it.
While pushing for the listing, Lee Hyun-woo mentioned the Pre-IPO method of raising funds by selling shares.
“I’ll handle this with Team Leader Shin.”
Most people looked at him with expressions and eyes asking if that was possible, but he smiled bitterly and said he’d take care of it.
It seemed like the six of them didn’t understand what he was saying due to lack of experience.
In fact, how many people in this era truly understand that concept?
Fortunately, Team Leader Shin Dong-woon, who joined the company after working on Wall Street, understood Lee Hyun-woo’s words well.
“You mean you plan to raise funds before the listing.”
“Yes, that’s correct. There are quite a few places to spend money.”
Shin Dong-woon nodded.
“In fact, our Jungle is a unique company that has grown by skipping several stages. I was continually amazed even while preparing for the listing. How did you grow the company like this without a proper investment even once? It’s truly impressive.”
“It’s now at its limit. Even though we’re earning a lot, the expenditures are also quite significant.”
“So how much funding do you need?”
“We have to calculate that from now. There are some variables.”
The variables referred to here were the acquisition funds for the Internet Goblin Market, new building leases, and the construction funds for Jeju Island’s Jungle World.
Altogether, it would inevitably be billions of won.
However, the immediate expenditure would be for the Internet Goblin Market, and even that needs to be discussed with CEO Goo Man-hoi.
In other words, if things go wrong, the acquisition itself might not be easy.
‘But even if it’s not for the acquisition, we still need to have funds.’
The reason is simple.
To match the expanding Jungle, they needed to hire more people.
If you hire people, you also need space, so the money required increases exponentially.
When Lee Hyun-woo initially founded Jungle, he didn’t expect it to grow this much.
Yet, the small snowball called Jungle expanded as its area grew, becoming a large snowball that grew unpredictably with each roll.
Moreover, since he wanted even greater growth for his early retirement, it was quite natural that more workforce and space were needed.
“I plan to proceed with several tasks simultaneously. That is, the data center, recruitment, and even acquiring other companies to fill the gaps in Jungle. For this, we need to decide on the timely input of funds, so Team Leader Shin, please help me estimate the final required amount.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Then, first, calculate the fixed costs. I’ll check the remaining costs for the data center.”
The data center, which will be completed next year, was incurring intermediate costs monthly.
But the remaining amount was much larger.
After checking the intermediate costs and the remaining amount, it turned out to be a whopping 94 billion won.
Somehow, this news reached Kim Tae-hyun, and he contacted Lee Hyun-woo immediately, eventually deciding to visit in person.
‘I need to ask him to give us a slight discount.’
Lee Hyun-woo gladly accepted Kim Tae-hyun’s visit.
“I heard you were asking about the amount due?”
“Yes, but how do you know so well what I asked others? Are the news from Jungle also reaching the other affiliates of Guseong Group?”
“I don’t know about other things, but I told them to inform me about anything from Jungle.”
“Should I thank you for your interest?”
“Oh, come on… We’ll soon be family, haha.”
Kim Tae-hyun laughed heartily, pretending to be magnanimous.
Lee Hyun-woo quickly said,
“Since you mentioned family, can I ask for a favor? Is there any chance for a discount?”
“What?”
“Isn’t it so? There’s even an employee discount, so it wouldn’t make sense not to have a family discount. During the data center contract, I didn’t ask for a price reduction because I didn’t know we’d have this relationship.”
“Wow… You’re bolder than I thought?”
“No, it’s just that I’ve become more comfortable since we’ve been dealing with each other often. I’m not originally like this.”
“Hmm…”
Initially, it was agreed upon for 150 billion won.
So, excluding the costs paid monthly so far, the remaining amount was 94 billion won.
“Have you ever thought that the initial 150 billion won was incredibly cheap?”
“I did. I heard that building the mainframe for IMB alone cost billions of won in the banking sector.”
For reference, the mainframe refers to the servers that go into the data center.
“Yes, you know well. It wasn’t because you needed a massive computer network like the banking sector, but because the data center you wanted required more mainframes than the banking sector.”
“Of course. It has to be that much to establish the data infrastructure of Korea. I remember you also shared my thoughts for our country’s information and communication infrastructure at that time?”
“Let’s not stray into infrastructure and ecosystem topics. The essence is that we gave a cheap estimate back then. You know, the new mainframe we’re building now has 70 to 80 CPUs alone.”
“If it requires that many CPUs, the motherboard, memory, and hard disk must be no joke.”
“Of course.”
“Since the memory and hard disk are produced by Guseong Electronics, can’t we do it at cost price? Then we might be able to deduct 4 billion won from the 94 billion.”
“Haha…”
Kim Tae-hyun gave an awkward smile, looking at Lee Hyun-woo who was trying to slash the price.
But he thought he might be able to cut about 4 billion won on his own.
It was a significant amount of money, but considering Lee Hyun-woo’s help so far, it was manageable.
“Alright. Got it.”
“Wow, thank you.”
“But are you short on money? Why are you acting like this?”
“Would I do this to anyone else? I’m only doing this to you.”
“What about Ah-young?”
“Honestly, I can’t look shabby in front of my girlfriend.”
“I guess that’s true. Alright, if there’s anything you can’t discuss with Ah-young, talk to me.”
“In that sense, there’s one more thing I’d like to discuss.”
“Hmm? What is it?”
“You know our company is preparing for a listing, right?”
“Yeah, if it’s fast, it’ll be in the second half of next year, right?”
“Yes, but before that, we plan to raise funds through Pre-IPO. We have a lot of places to spend money, including the data center.”
“……!”
Kim Tae-hyun’s eyes shook rapidly at Lee Hyun-woo’s words.
It was because he recently heard that cash-rich people were selling Guseong Electronics shares and hoarding cash.
It was because a big listing was waiting for them next year.
That was Jungle’s public listing.
Many already predicted the highest subscription competition rate ever.
Especially, unlike the collapsing traditional conglomerate groups, Jungle had no debt, making it an attractive feature.
So he asked.
“Why not get a loan instead?”
“A loan? It’s risky now.”
“Why?”
“You know the current situation. The foreign exchange is unstable, and foreign credit rating agencies are harshly criticizing our banks.”
In Lee Hyun-woo’s view,
It seemed like they had overcome a big wave like the foreign exchange crisis of the past life, but he still felt that some economic crisis was imminent.
No, it was the starting point now.
Therefore, interest rates were bound to rise soon.
In this situation, it didn’t seem like financial institutions would lend money at a fixed interest rate, and if they borrowed at a variable interest rate, the interest burden could become significant.
This was the reason they recently planned to raise funds through Pre-IPO.
And mentioning it now subtly implied that Kim Tae-hyun should prepare to invest.
As expected, Kim Tae-hyun took the bait.
“Hey, then can I invest too?”
“Of course.”
“How much?”
“If you’re interested, you should sit at the negotiation table to properly calculate.”
“We’re family… Why so formal?”
“The only person who invested in me was my father. The money I received initially was a few million won, but I returned tens of billions after accurate calculations later. I even deliberately left 5% so that when Jungle becomes a listed company, he’ll receive proper dividends.”
The reason for saying this was to imply that he wants to handle money matters clearly even among family.
Lee Hyun-woo, who was negotiating a discount for the data center costs just now, suddenly saying this made Kim Tae-hyun feel perplexed.
However, seeing his expression, Lee Hyun-woo quickly added,
“Oh, of course, I’m considering a family discount. Don’t worry about that.”
“Alright. If you hadn’t said that, I would’ve been really disappointed.”
“Family shouldn’t feel disappointed with each other.”
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, how much are you looking to raise?”
“Before that, a question. How much do you value our company?”
Kim Tae-hyun was taken aback by the sudden question from Lee Hyun-woo.
‘Uh… How much should I say?’
Considering he said family shouldn’t feel disappointed, undervaluing Jungle would hurt Lee Hyun-woo’s feelings.
“Well… the market will evaluate it…”
“I’m asking for your opinion.”
“Hmm…”
Kim Tae-hyun looked troubled.
And he thought,
‘Why do I always get swayed by this guy?’
