Zhang Hu, CEO of Kechuang Research Institute·Weizhiyun: From CTO to founder, the key is to expand the field of vision

Early experience: Huawei, Oracle
Accumulate the underlying technical strength
My first job after graduation was to do embedded R&D at a POS manufacturer. At that time, there was no operating system. I basically started with bare chips. The hardware devices were still 8-bit systems.

After that, he moved to Huawei to participate in the research and development of chip drivers for communication equipment. The business value is the chips built into the modem of the operator. This time it is based on the upper layer of the operating system.

Later, I entered Oracle and participated in the research and development of Oracle Linux and virtualization solutions. It is that which will have a more systematic grasp of virtualization.

Through the first few work experiences, I have trained my comprehensive software system capabilities from the bottom to the application layer, and provided great basic strength for later entrepreneurship.

In 2007, the origin of entrepreneurship

idea is cheap

At the beginning of 2007, the iPhone first released the iOS system. A friend went to the United States for a business trip and brought back a few. At that time, very few people in China used the iPhone. Everyone thought it was novel. I think there should be an open market in the future.

Soon Android also released a review version based on the simulator, and will be open source in the future. In contrast, the Huaqiangbei copycat machine, which was rampant in the market at that time, had the defects of single function, system-level support, few open technical documents, and high price.

The bottom layer uses Linux, the Framework layer uses Java, the technology is open source, and Google’s blessing has created a natural software supporting low-cost gene for the Android machine. Adding improvements to the mature ecosystem of the bottom layer of Linux means that this set of things led by Google will be in the future. There is a large audience. I bought my first Android phone around 2008. The system is still version 1.5, which is very stuck, but I believe that performance problems after hardware improvements are not a problem.

Facts have proved that our judgment is correct. Around 2010, feature phones were basically abandoned by the young market, and Android phones soon came from behind.

Since then, more and more signs have emerged that mobile apps have huge opportunities, not only the Android version of the software development contest officially launched by Google, but also the opportunity to win bonuses after being selected, and more and more Hardware manufacturers need system technical support, hoping to port the Android system to hardware and run it.

After communicating with colleagues and classmates, I decided that I would like to try it out. Although the idea was rough back then, I don’t know what to do with financing. One is to try some APPs in my spare time, and the other is to find a friend to trust the relationship. Cannot contact hardware vendors who need technical support.

I tried a lot of things. For example, I found that the car navigation system only supported offline use, and the upgrade must rely on the data cable. So I tried to make a map APP, which users can download and use directly on the Android machine. Looking at it now, these ideas are too immature. After the APP is developed, how to promote the installed capacity, how to do a good job in technical support, how to draw investment and build a team... These problems are not thoughtful, the ideas are too rough, and the promotion is extremely difficult. .

In the end, we realized that: Ideas are cheap, and the real value and challenge is in project landing and implementation. No matter how good an idea is, it must have supporting implementation scenarios and market feedback.

Around 2010, I joined a mobile phone transformation manufacturer responsible for product development. It was transformed from an MTK feature phone to an Android phone, and wanted to be an APP or server based on the Android platform. I have planned several directions. On the one hand, it is to provide push services; on the other hand, it is to do basic service apps, such as phone book backup, browser navigation, application market entry, etc. We provide traffic access to receive other people’s application content. The mode of charging advertising space service fees.

At the same time, I saw that some of my friends had already raised funds for entrepreneurial financing, and I judged that the time for entrepreneurship was ripe.

The first entrepreneurial project: Jiguang Push

Insufficient experience, sowing hidden dangers of equity
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In a chat with a friend, I learned that a former colleague of Oracle was doing APP entrepreneurship, but encountered a lot of difficult challenges in the process, and invited me to the company to help. It turns out that this project is not difficult from a technical point of view, but because of the low evaluation of the actual difficulty, many functional imperfect problems are left, and the financing amount is not large, and it is facing survival risks at any time.

After careful research, I put forward a pertinent suggestion to my friend to continue the team advantage and change to basic services. After Google Push ceased to use, mobile phone manufacturers have not had a solution, and the push service market just has a gap, which gives us an excellent opportunity to become a third-party push service.

The cooperation was quickly reached. We encapsulated the service into an SDK package to provide developers with a unified interface. Developers can improve development efficiency by calling the SDK. At that time, the APP made by the friend company contained IM functions, some of which could be reused, and soon we made a test product.

With the help of the developer resources accumulated in the early stage, the technical test and market verification can be quickly completed, and it will soon reach the daily activity level of one million and hundreds of thousands of online at the same time. After the service product was officially launched, the user growth rate was rapid, with a single scale growth of 500 megabytes of bandwidth and 10 servers.

Until today, almost every app developer who has used push services in China should be familiar with Jiguang Push. This experience has gone from idea to project implementation to product launch, and received good user feedback. Generally speaking, it is considered a relatively successful one. Entrepreneurship.

From the formation of ideas in 2007 to the implementation and launch of Aurora push products in 2009, the bigger driving factor is still from environmental changes. Many success factors have been pushed into my life circle, which has provided favorable conditions for the implementation of the product.

During the period of Huawei and Oracle, I was fortunate to participate in many major projects, with more ideas and better solutions. However, due to lack of leading ability, the direction of the matter depends entirely on the leadership. When I truly start my own business, my regrets have also changed. Become a firm belief.

The Jiguang push project has a very short transformation window. I have worked crazy overtime for several months. I personally wrote nearly 70% of the code, how to write development documents and how to do marketing strategies. These tasks are all made by me. To do it yourself, the test of people during that period of time can be called hell-level difficulty.

In addition to the test of the project itself, there have also been internal differences in management and systems. Equity distribution, corporate culture, partner beliefs, etc. were not clear at the beginning. As a result, when the equity agreement was supplemented, the risk exposure was even greater. When the investors actually came in, it was difficult for several partners to reach an agreement on the equity allocation, and I finally withdrew.

To be honest, I don't think I have lost much. I do things right at the right time, I can put my ideas into practice and get a lot of good market feedback. The overall gain is still greater than the effort.

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I left Aurora Push in the second half of 2013. At that time, I judged that the APP market will eventually face prosperity and decline. Each APP segment will be occupied by one or two giants or unicorn companies. The demand will be greatly reduced. The APP developers developed during the expansion period cannot survive without core hematopoietic capabilities. In fact, around 2018, the APP development market basically died out.

After leaving Aurora Push, I also thought about integrating the push business with the Internet of Things technology. I just sorted out my thoughts and thoughts, and I went to talk to the capital. Everyone knows that the Internet of Things has entered a period of rapid development in the last two years. It takes too long, infrastructure development is not sound, market education is lacking, and the development path of things is slightly different from what I imagined, so it only stays at the level of ideas.

CEO Zhang Hu reflects on CTO Zhang Hu
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In the early days of entrepreneurship, many of my friends are technical experts. Do technical experts have many inherent advantages in starting a business?

Maybe it is, but first of all, we should see the inherent defects of technical people's entrepreneurship. Technical people are easily trapped in a technological ideal country. They think that there is nothing that technology can't solve. When a problem is encountered, the first thing to think about is what technical solution can be solved. There is no problem with programmers thinking this way, but if they think so as a CTO, it is wrong, because the domestic market judges the success of a company and mainly depends on the development of the business.

CTO usually only focuses on products and technology, and lacks attention to finance, flow, business, and market. These are the big shortcomings of CTO Zhang Hu. To be a CTO, the field of vision must be enlarged.

The second is personnel training. The contribution of outstanding talents to startups is very valuable. We also recruit people according to this standard and train them to help them grow. However, if the company's growth rate lags behind individuals, talents will eventually be lost, so the founders of the company The ability structure of the company is the ceiling of the company's development, and entrepreneurs must quickly make up for their shortcomings.

Q&A

Investors’ questions contain high-value information
Q: In the process of your transition from CTO to CEO, what kind of thinking has fundamentally changed?

A: The biggest change is that in the past, we always pursued the most perfect technology. Now we advocate the pursuit of the most suitable technology.

For example, for push, the C language used in the early server platform took three months to write a module, and the development efficiency was extremely low. We invested a lot of energy to improve the technical efficiency, but did not do enough to meet the value needs of customers. .

From a technical point of view, the code is smoothly written, the technology stack is selected accurately, and the product is well polished. There should be a big market; but from a business point of view, customers may only focus on user experience, business processes, and functional value. It's like someone buys a car just to see if it looks beautiful, and doesn't care about the three-cylinder or the four-cylinder. Commercially, only products that meet the needs of users have the ability to make money.

I hope to give young people a suggestion to establish a "boss mind" as soon as possible. For example, you are currently only responsible for a small part of the company, and there may be many ideas that differ from your boss. Then try to switch perspectives and think about why he does this from the position of the boss. What may seem to you to be very low is something that the boss cares more about, because the best solution is to realize the value and willingness of customers and allow customers to pay.
Q: After starting a business, how do you maintain your acuity and judgment for information?

A: Watching news, social news, industry news, and international news are all covered, and both domestic media and foreign-language media must read it.

To understand the new technology, it is not required to experience every technology, as long as you know what problems it can solve and what application scenarios it has, and keep up with the torrent of technological development.
Q: How do you need financing to make a product prototype?

A: There is no standard method of financing. The general process is: first have a product demo, and then write a product BP. The content can focus on entrepreneurial ideas, product research, market forecasts, etc., and then find friends to recommend investors or participate Entrepreneurship activities, such activities can get some media attention, which can increase the exposure of the project.

You can also find FA companies. They will recommend investors to entrepreneurs based on the project track. It should be noted that you must be calm when you meet with investors. If the other party approves the project, he will pick out some problems with you, and also talk about his views and questions about the project. This is a good phenomenon. It is a good phenomenon to carefully review every issue of the investor and learn high-value experience.

Communicating with investors, you must think clearly about the product's prospects and advantages, and the performance of personal charm is also very good. It is necessary to clarify what points can impress the other party.