Chương 55: Book 3 - Chapter 3 B

When Monday arrived, I left LA with Matt and headed to Oakhurst, California. We took a plane to Fresno, where we met Jennifer at the airport. Then Matt drove us in a rental car up the winding curves of Highway 41 into the mountains. After being introduced to Ken and Roberta Williams I sat down with the company owners privately. After a few minutes of talking about software development and getting comfortable with each other I brought up the reason for the visit.

"I want to know how interested you are in a possible three-way merger."

"With who?" Ken asked.

"Brøderbund, and Heartland."

"Why would we do that?" Roberta asked.

"All three companies would benefit from centralizing production, shipping and marketing. The three companies are about equal in size and in sales and don't have competing products."

"We all make games—what do you mean we don't have competing products?" Roberta said.

"They are different kinds of games. Brøderbund does educational games. You do action adventure and Heartland does strategy games and software development tools."

"Are we really similar in size?" Ken asked.

"Nationwide the three companies rank number ten, eleven and twelve."

"Okay, so who gets to be in charge of the new company, you?" Roberta asked.

"I'm not even in charge at Heartland. I own twenty-five percent of Heartland. I bought that with cash then licensed my software to them to produce it."

"Then why are you the one here?" Ken asked.

"It's my idea. My plan is to purchase twenty-five percent of your company, and twenty-five percent of Brøderbund. If a merger happens, then I'll still own twenty-five percent of the new company."

"And then we have twenty-five percent of a new company instead of the one-hundred percent of what we have now," Roberta responded.

"I'm just not seeing the advantage, Dr Cook."

"The advantage is the other software that Heartland produces," I explained.

"Object Pascal? We use our own development engine," Ken said.

"The new company will give everyone access to the newest updates of Object Pascal. Usually more than six months before anyone else. That's a significant advantage. It also allows one set of code to run on Apple, Mac, and IBM DOS machines with minimal adjustments," I explained.

"One set of code for all three platforms? That would save us months. We've had a struggle adapting King's Quest to the new PC/AT," Ken said.

"I agree, that's a massive advantage," Roberta added.

"I don't know if it's enough."

"But that's not all," I explained.

"Additionally, I have new software that optimizes the graphics rendering for full animation sequences in games. It's specific for each machine, or graphics card, and integrates seamlessly with code written in Object Pascal." Roberta couldn't help her response.

"Optimizing graphics for full animation? How hard would it be to convert GAL to use Object Pascal?"

"I could probably finish it over a long weekend. That would include any upgrades you wanted at the same time," I said and set three disks on the table.

"I already started." Roberta grabbed the disks and put the first one into a nearby computer.

"How did you do this?" she asked, her voice filled with surprise. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I got a copy of King's Quest and reverse engineered your scripting system."

"Can I keep this?" she asked.

"Sure. It's not complete," I said.

"For the sake of argument, let's say we are agreeable to work with you. How do you ensure that we each get twenty-five percent of the new company?" Ken asked.

"I buy the difference."

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"It means if your company is worth five percent more, then I buy the difference, so the merger happens between exact equals."

"Who controls the new company?" Roberta asked again.

"You two, Blake at Heartland, the brothers at Brøderbund and I all sit on the board. We hire somebody to run the new company. They do the marketing, sales, production, and shipping. They also start a computer software magazine that focuses on games and programming for every platform out there. You guys get to go back to concentrating on creating new games."

"Do you have a name for this new company?"

"BHS Software sounds nice to me."

"Why are we last?" Roberta asked.

"It's alphabetical. I don't care what it's called, because your name doesn't go away. The brand Sierra On-Line stays attached to all the games and other software you continue to develop."

"We'll consider it, and get back to you," Ken said.

"That's fine," I said handing him a business card.

"That number goes to my lawyer who you met earlier. She handles sitting on the board of the companies I invest in." We met back up with Matt and Jennifer for a full tour of the company. As we were leaving, I told the couple, "I have one last gift for you."

"What is it?"

"It's the newest Object Pascal with full EGA support. It won't be officially released for a few more months," I told her, handing her a box with six 5. 25-inch floppies.

"Thank you, we'll check it out, and get back to you." We spent the night up the hill at the Shilo Inn in Oakhurst, and headed back to Fresno the next morning. The flight from Fresno to San Francisco was short and the drive over the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time to San Rafael was exciting. The discussion went about the same. The three Carlston siblings, Doug, Gary and Cathy were concerned about having to move or change their company culture.

"No one will make you move if you're happiest here, or object even if you want to move back to Oregon," I assured them.

"The goal isn't to change your company. This isn't an acquisition by some big monolithic industrial group that's going to force everyone to wear suits and talk like a robot. It's three similarly sized companies coming together to use each other's advantages and grow market share. You'll set the corporate culture and structure together."

"We need funds for our copyright suit. We've been looking for an investor because of that."

"You'll have my support. It's an important legal precedent and you are in the right trying to protect your IP."

"We do have an investor that has been wanting out. He thought that we would be going public soon but we can't do that until the lawsuit finishes."

"That sounds like an excellent way for me to buy in. Even if the merger fails for some reason, I'm still interested in owning a piece of Brøderbund." After we drove back to San Francisco, Jennifer got a message when she called her office from our room at the Sheraton-Palace Hotel.

"John, good news," she said as he hung up.

"Sierra had decided they wanted to discuss the merger in more detail."

"That's great. I've got to fly back to Tulsa soon with Grandpa. Do you think you can handle bringing everybody together here?" Her eyes widened in surprise.

"I can handle that. Are you sure you want me doing this? I've never done M/A before."

"Get help from Dallas if you need it, but you're going to be my voice on the board, so it's good you get to know them all now."

"I do understand the plan," she said.

"Good. I'll pay for everyone to come here to meet and discuss things. This will be a great location, the hotel can handle everything you might need."

"Any limit on how long the talks go?" she asked.

"I trust you to not drag it out. I think everybody likes the idea of being something bigger without losing what they are. I don't expect it to be too difficult for them to agree to the basics."

"Alright, John. I'll handle it. Are you still flying back to LA tomorrow?"

"I am. Mom will kill Grandpa if he comes home without me and I'll get grounded for life." It took until the day after I got back for Grandpa to finish his work in LA. I spent the time getting thoroughly tanned in the California sun at the big LA Ambassador pool. We had returned just in time to witness the testing of the fire tornado at the quarry. It was fantastic. The Fire Chief reluctantly gave us a permit but only for only one night of use.