Chapter 4: Establishing the Business

After deciding on starting with a Technology company Brandon knew he needed to first register the business and then look for a place for the business to be run. He wasn't sure yet where to have the headquarters for the business. He knew he would need something with enough space to house the relevant personnel as well as something which could eventually be used for more than just one business since he didn't want to focus only on technology.

After thinking that far he couldn't really find anything that would work for what he had in mind, so he decided he would just purchase a plot of land and have it built himself and while he waited for it to be completed he would just rent a space that had enough room for him to do the basics in the technology industry for now. The plot of land he chose was 1.74 million square feet or 531,100 square meters, It cost him just over $4 million for the land alone. After he purchase the land he had to find a development company that would be able to build the facility he wanted. He wanted to have more than 30 floors so that he would have enough space for everyone. The total cost without the land came out to nearly $200 million.

He decided to transfer the rest of the money from the group which was $190 million, to his bank account so that he could pay for it. This would only leave him with $135 million total for anything else he wanted to do. He knew he would need at least a portion of that for his company to start basic operations.

He also knew he would need to have a bank account for his company. He decided that the next day he would tell his mom what he wanted to do and ask her to take him to get the legal paperwork taken care of so that he could do everything without having to bother her all the time.

After having done everything he needed to do for the day he took a shower and before going to bed checked the group to see if anything interesting had happened.

He noticed that Elon Musk still had not said anything in the group so he assumed that he was busy, especially since he was so close to bankruptcy currently that he was living on loans from friends and family. He also noticed that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos had uploaded their own stock market analysis however because it wasn't as accurate as his, it was only half the price and only gave half the points. After looking through the group chat he went to bed since their was nothing important going on.

After waking up the next morning he went to his mom and she took him to have the proper documentation filed that would allow him to operate his business without having a parent be present for everything.

Once this was done he went back home with his mom and decided he would purchase a car for himself and hire someone to drive him around. He already knew what car he wanted for now, which was the newest Range Rover. It was one of the best luxury cars out that were within an acceptable price range for the time being.

Once that was decided he also hired a driver, John Hughes. John Hughes was a former Navy Seal who retired earlier in the year, Brandon hired him to be both his driver and Body Guard and offered him a starting salary of $100,000 per year which was more than the national average if he were to hire someone to perform the jobs separately since the average wage for a driver was $30,000 and for a security guard was just over $40,000.

Now that everything was basically ready he had John take him to the bank to register an account for the business and then to the county tax office to register the business itself. He decided to name it Michaels Conglomerate, he also set up another one under the conglomerate called Michaels Technologies. The reason he set up the conglomerate because he knew that he would be running more than 1 type of business in the near future.

Once the two businesses were set up he transferred the land he purchased over to Michaels Technologies. He registered the location for the conglomerate as a rented office space that was just down the road from the purchased land. He had John take him to the rented office so he could get an idea on how to decorate it. He rented the top 2 floors of the building, and once he was there he was satisfied with the size for the time being. He needed to get a computer, and some simple furniture for the offices, he also wanted to set up the first floor of the rented space as a lobby area. After he finished thinking about how he wanted to design the office spaces he went to order the office furniture as well as computers.

He was not going to use the Basic AI until he was able to build his own computer, then he would install the AI on the computer that his company built. He had the blueprints and everything except the materials needed to build the computer in the basic technology package he recieved from the lucky draw.

When he arrived at the store to purchase the office furniture and computers he only purchased the furniture for his own office, but he purchased computers for all of the offices. He wanted to give the employees the freedom to decorate their own offices within a certain price range. He had already spent $500,000 on the furniture for his office and computers for everyone else. He set aside another $1 million for furniture for the employees when he hired them.

He was going to hire people who focused on technology, specifically computers, since he wanted to have the computers built first so that he could utilize the AI sooner. He needed to look for people who knew how to produce the parts needed for a computer, as well as those who knew how to program them. Overall he needed to hire at least 1,000 people, all but 100 of them would be focused on the actual manufacturing of the parts needed for the computer, while the other 100 would be the ones programing the computers.

He first consulted with John about hiring a person to run the Human Resources department of the company as he wanted to have someone who could filter through applicants and discard those who knew nothing about computers or other technology. He also decided he didn't want to hire an assistant for the time being and the Human Resources person would function as his assistant until they managed to get the first computers built, after that the basic AI should be able to function as his assistant.

John recommended one of the people who he used to work with who had been what the Navy calls a Yeoman, which specializes in clerical and administrative work, This persons name was Cameron Wright. After Brandon heard about this person and knew what they did he decided to go ahead and hire him, he offered him a salary of $85,000 per year to start and said that should he do well he would receive a $15,000 raise on his salary.

Once he hired Cameron, Brandon no longer needed to worry to much about the hiring process as he could leave that to this new Head of the HR department. That being done he wrote down the jobs he needed filled and passed it along to Cameron. He needed someone to manage the finances, as well as the personnel to develop the computer he wanted to build.

After passing this information to Cameron, it was getting late so he had John take him back home so that he could rest. It would be a while before everyone was hired and they could start with manufacturing the computers he wanted.

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Status as of this chapter:

Personal Net worth: $6 million cash, $145 million stocks

Investments: Amazon, Apple, Starbucks, Microsoft

Business net worth: $131.5 million liquid funds, $204 million estimated non-liquid assets