Real Man

A few moments later, Joe Gebbia approached Yoo-hyun, who was sitting on a bench behind the Stanford auditorium.

He looked apologetic.

“Sorry, Steve. Did you wait long?”

“Sorry? I’m honored that the star CEO is giving me such attention.”

“Star CEO? What are you talking about?”

“Look. Your face is on this textbook too.”

Yoo-hyun opened the MBA casebook he took out of his bag.

It was a casebook of the success stories of Silicon Valley companies, and Airbnb was also included.

Joe Gebbia chuckled as he checked the content.

“I see you went through a lot of hardships that I didn’t know about. You even clashed with the local authorities.”

“It’s nothing. The cases are exaggerated, you know.”

Joe Gebbia waved his hand, but Yoo-hyun thought it was not an exaggeration.

Rather, the Airbnb friends had suffered more than what was written in the book.

Yoo-hyun recalled the past.

“It’s not nothing. Remember when Emma stormed into the office?”

“Haha. We thought we were all going to die then. If you hadn’t persuaded Emma, we would have been in big trouble.”

“See? This kind of thing happened more than once.”

“Now that I think about it, you’re right. When you gave me advice over the phone…”

“The reason I did that was…”

Yoo-hyun and Joe Gebbia naturally brought up their common ground.

It contained the history of Airbnb.

Yoo-hyun had watched how the Airbnb friends had overcome the challenges and grown from the beginning to the present.

They went from barely paying the rent to becoming global billionaires.

They didn’t just make a lot of money.

As they had originally believed, Airbnb was changing the world.

Yoo-hyun thought they were amazing.

Joe Gebbia suddenly asked.

“Steve, do you remember?”

“What?”

“When you first stayed with us, you left $1,000. Along with a handwritten letter.”

“It wasn’t a handwritten letter.”

Yoo-hyun had only left a few lines of notes.

He left $1,000 to repay the favor he had received in the past.

Regardless of Yoo-hyun’s thoughts, Joe Gebbia’s expression became serious.

“Anyway, the kindness you showed us was the start of Airbnb.”

“Come on. I only added a spoonful.”

“You may think so, but it meant a lot to me. Our motto of spreading kindness and trust, and using that power to make a better world, came to me then.”

“That’s quite grand for the price of $1,000.”

Yoo-hyun was dumbfounded, but Joe Gebbia was sincere.

“If it weren’t for your $1,000, there would be no Airbnb today.”

“No. There would be. Definitely.”

“Maybe it would have worked out by chance, but it would have been more shaky than now. If that had happened, many of our hosts would have suffered.”

Yoo-hyun didn’t know how much trouble Airbnb had gone through in the past.

He only guessed that they had more trial and error based on their growth rate.

Yoo-hyun asked.

“Do you really think so?”

“Sure. Your $1,000 gave us the foundation to move forward.”

“Really?”

“Seriously. Airbnb today is thanks to you. So don’t feel sorry for us for selling your shares. You’re always one of us.”

“…”

Yoo-hyun swallowed his words at Joe Gebbia’s serious expression.

He had sold 5% of his shares and only kept 0.1% of them.

He felt sorry for the sudden decision, so he tried to give some helpful advice to the Airbnb friends.

But what?

He felt like he had received more.

‘The value of $1,000.’

Yoo-hyun repeated Joe Gebbia’s words in his mind.

It wasn’t important how much or how little money he had.

Even if it was a small amount of money, depending on how he used it, it had the power to change a person’s life.

That realization penetrated everything he had seen and learned.

Zzzz.

He felt like his head was clear.

Yoo-hyun looked at Joe Gebbia with a lighter expression.

“This is not something to talk about sober.”

“Let’s get up. Brian and Nathan must be preparing for the party.”

“What party?”

“You never know when you’ll go back to Korea, right?”

“Typical me. I hate doing anything with just guys.”

Yoo-hyun got up from his seat and mentioned Brian Chesky’s words.

Joe Gebbia, who got up with him, snickered.

“You know Brian only talks about girls, girls.”

“I know, he’s all talk. Anyway. Tsk tsk.”

Yoo-hyun clicked his tongue and stopped as he saw the long shadow of a tree stretched out in the sunset.

Yoo-hyun turned his gaze along the direction of the shadow.

Not far away, there was a memorial stone for Steve Jobs.

-Don’t you want to contribute to the advancement of humanity, as you told me? Don’t you want to pursue something in the great flow of changing the world? ṘÀƝỔ𝐁Еś

The voice of Steve Jobs that suddenly came to his mind ignited a flame in Yoo-hyun’s heart.

Yoo-hyun felt like he could answer that question now.

At that moment, Yoo-hyun realized.

He had nothing left to do here.

A few days later, in the office of the CEO of Y Combinator.

Paul Graham and his fierce secretary Serena Lian asked.

“Paul, what did Steve write on his answer sheet?”

“The one where he had to decide which company to invest in?”

“Yes. You gave him a test question, remember?”

“If you’re curious, take a look.”

Swish.

Serena Lian was shocked as she took the paper.

“What? It’s blank?”

“What, no place to invest?”

“Didn’t we look around some decent companies together?”

“Investing is about looking at the person’s life. It doesn’t make sense to write down without confidence.”

Serena Lian was dumbfounded by Paul Graham’s firm response.

“You told him to come up with the answer for the test. Don’t be coy and just admit that you like Steve.”

“Me? No way. I have no interest in him.”

“Then why are you taking care of Steve behind his back?”

“Hmm. He’s a bit special, you know. Sometimes he seems more experienced than me. His insight is also amazing.”

She had never seen Paul Graham praise someone like this.

But she understood if it was Yoo-hyun.

“Will Steve come back?”

“He might take a break for a while.”

“And then?”

“He’ll come back. He’s the kind of person who can only play in the big leagues.”

Paul Graham looked confident.

At that moment.

Yoo-hyun was on a plane to Korea.

He picked up his ringing phone as he looked at the airport through the window.

As he touched the screen, Paul Graham’s message popped up.

-This test is a fail. Find the answer and come back.

He had confirmed it a while ago, why was he sending this now?

“I was thinking of doing that anyway.”

Yoo-hyun chuckled and sent a reply.

He still didn’t have the eye of an investor like Paul Graham.

But through the process of learning, he felt the power of money.

The size of his funds was not important.

The key was how he used the money.

He had already decided the direction of his inner flame.

The only thing left was a concrete plan on how to proceed.

With some leeway, he intended to find the answer slowly.

Shooong.

The plane took off, and Yoo-hyun looked out the window.

The land of opportunity that had taught him was gradually getting smaller.

When Yoo-hyun returned to Korea, it was a hot summer.

He could tell how long he had been away from Korea by the changed season.

The first person he met was Park Wonseok, who had surgery a while ago.

He scratched his head as they met at a cafe in front of the hospital.

“I feel like I’m still a patient here.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I just came to get a check-up today, there’s nothing wrong with me. The doctor said so. I just need to eat well now.”

In the meantime, the dark circles under Park Wonseok’s eyes had faded a lot.@@novelbin@@

The cheekbones that had popped out also went under the cheek fat.

His body, which had been skinny like a pole, had gained some weight, and the nickname he had as a child came to mind.

Biggie, Yoo-hyun smiled as he looked at Park Wonseok.

“You look good. You seem to have gained some weight.”

“I eat a lot, you know. Even if I don’t want to eat, Wonyoung nags me so much that I can’t help it.”

“Be grateful.”

“I’m grateful, but it’s a bit too much. She sticks to me all the time and it’s hard.”

Park Wonseok’s sister Park Wonyoung was so tough that she paid back the money to her brother’s friends herself.

He could relate to how she would point out his mistakes all the time.

Wasn’t it similar to Han Jaehui nagging him?

“I think I know how you feel.”

“Oh, you have a younger sister too?”

“She might not know, but she’s not weaker than Wonyoung.”

“No way. You don’t know her true self.”

“Maybe we can meet the four of us sometime.”

He was more confident than anyone else about this part.

Yoo-hyun lifted the corners of his mouth, and Park Wonseok chuckled.

He took a sip of his coffee and asked.

“So what are you going to do now, Yoo-hyun?”

“What do you mean?”

“You quit your job. You don’t need to be here, do you?”

“I’m going to go down to my hometown for a while.”

“Did you contact the people at the company? They might be upset that you quit so suddenly.”

Park Wonseok, who had quit his job first, looked worried.

Yoo-hyun’s resignation was so sudden that it was understandable.

Yoo-hyun didn’t bother to explain the long background, he just told the truth.

“They’re busy. I’ll see them when the work is done.”

“Well, Hansung is a busy company. Especially the next-generation smartphone you were in charge of. It seems to be an issue. It’s often on the news, right?”

“Yeah.”

Yoo-hyun answered nonchalantly and put the coffee cup to his mouth.

In fact, there was much more going on behind the scenes than what was on the news.

-The mockup design that was secretly in progress has been leaked and we are investigating the cause. It seems to have been delivered to a competitor and we are preparing a countermeasure.

As Junghoon Jang reported, Seongsoo Shin’s interference was still going on.

Not only the smartphone, but also the acquisition of Shinwha Semiconductor was a problem.

He was under pressure from all sides, using creditors, media, and rating agencies.

Despite this, Yoo-hyun’s colleagues were moving forward one step at a time.

It was greedy to ask him to show his face after taking a long break.

It would be better to see them after the work was settled.

As he was reviewing the situation, Park Wonseok asked out of the blue.

“Yoo-hyun, should I go down to my hometown too?”

“Why? You don’t have any relatives there.”

“Just. Seoul is expensive and I have to find a new job. I wonder if I need to settle here.”

Yoo-hyun knew why he was saying this and stopped him right away.

“Don’t worry about the hospital bills. I have a lot of money even though I’m unemployed.”

“It’s not just because of that. I just feel suffocated in Seoul. I don’t have to go to the hospital until a few months later.”

“But you have Wonyoung.”

“Wonyoung said it first. She wants to live in a place with good air and quiet. I guess she doesn’t have much attachment to Seoul either.”

Park Wonyoung, who had no family but her brother, came up to Seoul after Park Wonseok’s surgery.

She gave up her studies, but reality seemed not so easy.

Yoo-hyun asked casually.

“What does Wonyoung do?”

“She does video editing. She does it as a part-time job, but it doesn’t seem to pay much.”

“Isn’t that okay? The content market has a good outlook these days.”

“But she majored in PR, and I feel sorry that she couldn’t use it properly. I wonder if it’s because of me.”

Park Wonseok looked apologetic.