Free Web NovelI heard the café door open.
“Hey! You’re late.”
Elon Musk raised a hand toward the person coming in, putting on an irritated tone.
“There are still ten minutes left until the meeting time.”
When I turned my head, a typical white man was walking in.
‘Jeffrey Brian Straubel.......’
As expected, Tesla had already entered Elon Musk’s sights.
Straubel looked our way and immediately asked,
“James Han?”
“Yes, nice to meet you. I’m James Han.”
“It’s an honor. I didn’t expect to meet Wall Street’s genius in a place like this. I’m Straubel.”
Straubel’s gaze shifted to me.
“Then this gentleman is......?”
I casually extended my hand first.
“I’m Charlie.”
“I’m J.B. Straubel.”
Elon Musk introduced me.
“He’s the one investing two hundred million dollars into SpaceX.”
“Two hundred million dollars?”
Straubel’s eyes, already big, widened even more.
“Yeah. Two hundred million.”
“That’s no joke.”
Straubel whistled, then sat down beside Elon Musk.
Elon Musk went on at length about what a genius Straubel was.
Of course, I already knew.
Tesla’s success—no, the success of electric cars—couldn’t be explained without the name Straubel.
The moment Musk invested 6.5 million dollars and entered Tesla, taking the chairman’s seat, the person he recruited immediately was this man.
“I considered bringing him to SpaceX, but Straubel said he wanted to do something else. So I called him here to introduce him to Charlie and James.”
“Is that so?”
I nodded, pretending to remain calm.
Musk had just finished speaking when the lawyers returned to our table after finishing their review of the contract.
“You can sign the investment agreement now.”
The signatures were completed in an instant, and the contracts were exchanged. That was it.
“Hyung, tell them to wire it.”
Han Kyungyeong got up immediately, phone in hand, and walked outside.
The lawyers, too, took the contracts, exchanged greetings, and followed Han Kyungyeong out.
“Now we’re comrades riding in the same boat.”
Elon Musk smiled and offered his hand.
I took it easily and said,
“Of course. Naturally. There’s a company I’d like you to invest in together with me.”
“Invest? Together with me?”
I placed the materials I’d prepared on the table.
“Read it. You’ll find it interesting.” free𝑤ebnovel.com
Still looking confused, Elon Musk picked up the documents. And the moment he flipped the first page, he startled and looked up at me.
“Tesla?”
“Yes. It hasn’t even been a year since it was founded. But I think its prospects are bright.”
Elon Musk skimmed through the pages quickly. He read in silence for a long while, then set the papers down and laughed.
“Tesla is a company I’m watching as well. I was going to say that today. To ask if you had any intention of investing in Tesla.”
I smiled as if I didn’t know and replied,
“Really?”
“Yes. That’s why I introduced this guy today. He’s someone who can advance the battery, which is the core of electric cars.”
I turned my gaze toward Straubel. He only wore a faint smile, saying nothing.
“Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning are capable engineers. But batteries are a completely different domain.”
Right now, if you talked about transportation running on electricity, at best you meant something like a golf cart. Because of battery limitations, it was difficult to apply to cars.
Of course, it wasn’t as if there were none. But with a single charge, you could only travel about 100 kilometers. Charging took a long time, and the prevailing opinion was that it still couldn’t replace internal combustion engines.
Even though people had been trying to develop electric cars for quite a long time.
“Batteries are this guy’s specialty. He’s a genius who can turn my ideas into reality.”
Straubel would abandon the industry standard hydrogen battery and develop lithium batteries for electric vehicles.
How important batteries were to electric cars—there was no need to say it out loud. Everyone already knew.
“So I was going to propose today that we invest in Tesla together, but I never imagined I’d receive the proposal from you first, Charlie.”
Elon Musk kept laughing as if he found it fascinating.
“Not long ago, Eberhard came to see me. He asked me to invest in his company. It’s a lofty story, but his ability as an engineer is real. Marc Tarpenning is the same.”
I nodded and listened to Musk.
“They have a dream, but they don’t have money. They came looking for me after watching me sell PayPal, establish SpaceX, and invest in it. Their plan stimulated me.”
“Stimulated you?”
“I also believe internal combustion engines will disappear soon, and that electric—or hydrogen-fueled—transportation will take its place.”
“I see.”
“Tesla’s proposal was a major opportunity for me. If Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, and Straubel here, come together, it’s no longer a dream.”
Tesla would reveal an electric car completed just three years after its founding.
Commercialization would take more time, but......
“They said they planned to raise about ten million dollars.”
Ten million dollars was an amount Musk could easily invest alone, even with his current personal wealth.
“Ten million dollars?”
“Yes. How about you invest five million, and Dreamhigh invests five million?”
Even so, the reason he wanted to invest together with me would be only one thing.
“Do you need Dreamhigh’s name?”
“Hahaha. Yes, that’s right. The fact that a company is invested in by Dreamhigh is a great tool for promotion. Even with the same business, the way you package it changes everything.”
I returned a smile to Musk as he laughed in an easygoing manner.
“You can’t complete an electric car with ten million dollars. You’re not unaware of that.”
“This is the first round. They said they don’t even have funds to start development right now.”
“Really? Is the funding pressure that severe?”
“How many companies like that are there? Silicon Valley is full of them. Companies that were founded on good ideas but die off because they can’t meet investors—there are at least ten a day.”
“In that regard, we agree.”
“To think we were both watching the same company—what a coincidence. Investor perspectives really are similar.”
At that moment, Han Kyungyeong opened the door and came back in.
“It’s wired.”
“Oh, I’ll go confirm it for a moment.”
Elon Musk moved to a corner and started making a call somewhere. freeweɓnovel.cѳm
In the meantime, I spoke to Han Kyungyeong.
“Elon Musk was watching Tesla too. When I showed him the documents, he got startled.”
“Really? That’s unexpected.”
“We agreed to invest five million each. Handle the details.”
“Don’t worry.”
A moment later, Elon Musk finished his call and returned to the table.
“For anything related to the Tesla investment, discuss it with James. I have to return to Korea now, so I’ll be on my way.”
“It was a pleasure, Charlie. Let’s meet again next time.”
Elon Musk smiled and greeted me first. It seemed the Tesla matter had left him with quite a good impression.
It wasn’t a planned meeting, but it was still a gain—we had secured a good opportunity to invest in the future.
Smiling, I returned the greeting and left the café. It was time to go back to Korea.
* * *
The joint address for the ROK–U.S. summit drew a lot of debate in Korea as well.
Since the U.S. had officially declared Dokdo to be Korean territory, most citizens welcomed the results of the visit.
But the biggest problem was the issue of dispatching troops to Iraq.
The opposition attacked the government nonstop, saying they could not agree, and even within the ruling party, perhaps because of the upcoming general election, voices of concern appeared under the cover of anonymity.
Because of the negotiations between Korea and the U.S., they still couldn’t disclose that they had agreed to take custody of the people involved in the middle school girls’ crushing incident.
They had agreed to reveal it when the first trial was held.
But President Yoon Changho pushed it through forcefully.
— Our government has decided to dispatch troops to Iraq. The purpose of our forces is to maintain security in southern Iraq and support peace.
They did not disclose the mercenary contract.
The mercenary contract was handled through the National Intelligence Service, and mercenaries were paid using the NIS budget.
The National Assembly passed the motion to approve the deployment of the armed forces to the Iraq War. At the same time, the military accelerated the creation of units for the Iraq deployment.
Protest groups strongly resisted and filed a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court.
I stepped back and watched everything from a distance.
It was around then that Eva came to see me in Pyeongchang-dong.
“Boss, it’s been a while.”
“Have you been well?”
Eva, her face looking tired, hugged me briefly, then sat down.
“It’s finally over. Ilseong Group’s dismantling.”
“Really? You finished fast?”
“The Korean government helped a lot. Ilseong was a group without labor unions, remember? So there wasn’t any union opposition.”
Ilseong Group never allowed unions. That had been their management stance from the day it was founded, all the way until now.
Instead, their treatment of employees tended to be better than other companies.
They used both carrot and stick at the same time.
“That part, I like.”
Even when selling a single company, you had to watch the unions’ reactions, and there were plenty of cases where acquisitions were abandoned because of unions.
When I took over Joongwoo Group, the first thing I put forward was the dismantling of unions—so of course.
Eva pulled out the documents she had prepared and handed them to me. They detailed which Ilseong affiliates had been sold to which groups.
As promised, most of the companies were sold off to the chaebol.
“Ilseong Life and Ilseong Card were acquired by Taesan?”
“Because of the separation of industrial and financial capital law, there’s no chaebol that can acquire those. So I handed them over to Taesan Finance.”
I nodded and set the papers down.
“And you handed the department stores and distribution side to Seo Heekyung too?”
“Yeah. A promise is a promise. But what’s bigger is that most of the sale proceeds went into Seo Heekyung’s hands. Technically it’s divided according to shares, but Seo Yonggeon and Seo Jaehun are in that condition. If they die, Seo Heekyung becomes the sole heir. What should we do?”
“Let it be. In Korea, Seo Heekyung without the Ilseong name tag is just a rich nouveau-riche.”
Ilseong Group had once ranked second in Korea’s corporate hierarchy.
Originally, by now, they should have surpassed Daehyeon Group and become number one—but because of me, they had fallen to fifth.
Even so, it wasn’t a small ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) group by any means.
It was a job of smashing it to pieces and dismantling it, so without the Korean government’s tacit approval and Eva’s efforts, it would have been impossible.
“You really worked hard. Now get some rest. You can rest for about a year.”
“That long?”
I nodded, smiling.
“For a while, there’s nothing to do in Korea. You should rest too, Eva. Go to an island in Greece, or travel around Europe. Do whatever you want.”
Eva, too, had never truly rested until now.
“I still have some work left, but once I wrap that up, I’m going to step away from everything for a while and rest too.”
“Good thinking, boss. You need to rest too.”
Eva’s expression, which had been hesitant, brightened all at once.
* * *
Time flew. Autumn passed, and around the time people’s clothes began to grow thicker, Jang Songthaek contacted me.
— All preparations have been completed, President Kim Muhyuk.
