Industry Vision | ONES CEO Wang Yingqi talks to Zhang Peng from Geek Park

In the past six months, ONES has completed three consecutive rounds of financing totaling US$100 million, becoming the company that has received the most financing in the domestic R&D management field, and also set a record for the fastest financing rate in this field.

How did ONES become a leader in the domestic R&D management field within a few years of its establishment? How does it drive entrepreneurship to stage success by creating cognitive barriers? What is your deep knowledge and understanding of software industrialization, SaaS industry trends, and the characteristics of the digital age?

On October 26, ONES founder and CEO Wang Yingqi was a guest in the live broadcast room of Geek Park's "Entrepreneurship Reality Show" and chatted with Mr. Zhang Peng, President of Geek Park, about the entrepreneurial story of ONES.

Just be the first

Big enough for any industry

Zhang Peng: Today, R&D management in the To B field has become a trend. Ying Qi is an entrepreneur with rich experience and experience. For the audience of our "Entrepreneurship Reality Show" and those with entrepreneurial hearts, his sharing I believe it will help everyone. Let's hear "R&D management" changed from a field that no one paid attention to in the past to suddenly become a . How will it develop in the future?

Wang Yingqi: Hello everyone, my name is Yingqi. Geek Park and I are also old friends. The earliest origin is that we cooperated to open a channel in 2019 called "Dialogue CTO". We interviewed CTOs of a dozen or 20 companies, because at that time we felt that the power of software can promote the progress of the industry, and the CTO is a very important leader in the power of software. And I came from a software research and development background. I have some business experience in the middle, and there are many perspectives to talk about. Geek Park gave me some opportunities at that time, thank you very much.

Zhang Peng: Yes, Geek Park is the base camp for innovative entrepreneurs. You see, "R&D management" was not so hot in 2018, and it has not been as optimistic as it is today. Objectively speaking, when it came to "R&D management" at that time, I was at a loss. After all, I was not from a science background, nor an engineer. It still took time to understand.

But at that time, I was very special to buy in, that is, you think that essentially R&D management is to turn the seemingly mysterious system of software development engineers into a more effective system, so that it can develop towards a more industrialized system, This big trend is what it takes to go digital. And ONES has really had its own position and role in the industry after several years.

Going back to the earlier days, before deciding to do this, the question that all entrepreneurs face is What business do I want to start? What is the problem to be solved? Do you want to follow the market trend? about your past experience, how did ONES become what you want to do?

Wang Yingqi: The things we do today, including the results I have today, are actually the seeds of the past ten or twenty years. Let me tell you about my background. After graduating from university in 2004, I stayed at Kingsoft for 7 years. I am an engineer, working on office software, security software, WPS, Office and Kingsoft Internet Security. Kingsoft is a company that attaches great importance to software R&D management. Its system is very sound, and there are many good engineers and industry practitioners.

In 2011, I came out of Jinshan and founded my first company. At that time, the mobile Internet was relatively hot, so I made a mobile app called "Punctual Alarm Clock". At that time, when making ToC products, more energy was placed on the product itself. The difficulty of research and development was actually relatively small, and it was a stage of focusing on products and experience.

Later, because the commercialization of the company was not very good, after I came out, I went to a very good US dollar fund in China called Morningside Capital (now "Wuyuan Capital"), and I was also a very good investor in Chinese technology start-up companies. , invested in many excellent companies, such as YY, Huya, WPS, Xiaomi, etc. Their boss Liu Qin is a very innovative and creative investor. Later, I went to Morningside as a resident entrepreneur to learn some knowledge related to investment and business. I stayed there for more than a year, and saw a lot of commercial companies and a lot of things that we might do in the future. Son, some chance.

Zhang Peng: Many people are actually very interested. What does it feel like to be an in the fund? What is the specific process of ? How did you become such an entrepreneur-in-residence? Tell us about your thinking during this process.

Wang Yingqi: My past life experience is divided into two stages. Before settled in as an entrepreneur, whether it was working in Jinshan or starting a business, in essence, he still looked at the company and the world from the perspective of a product manager or an engineer. did not have much understanding of business.

The second stage is after entering the entrepreneur. The boss of Morningside is Liu Qin, who is a very good elder brother. He said, "You are a good engineer, but not a particularly qualified young man with business knowledge, but you still have wisdom. I will take you with me." There were very few people at Morningside at that time, and there was no sound plan for entering entrepreneurs, such as recruiting a few every year, but in fact there was and only me.

Zhang Peng: You are considered a closed disciple.

Wang Yingqi: It's a shame to say that it's closed, haha. When I was an entrepreneur in residence, I got a very high level of authority. I was able to hear many entrepreneurs talk about their cases, how good investors ask questions, and how good entrepreneurs answer. Every day I enjoy watching how a good teacher composes a question and how a master solves it. In the year of , I finally knew how the money came from, where it passed through, where it went, and there might be a secondary cycle in it. This is a very important understanding.

Because I worked in Jinshan back then, and even when I first started a business, I didn’t know how the money came from. At that time, Morningside put an alarm clock on time, and I said whether Morningside's money was theirs. Later I found out that no, they also have their bosses and LPs to help them manage their money, and they also have some requirements for returns. This is a subversive business cognition for an engineer and entrepreneur, and it is very to me.

During this period, I also gradually participated in the investment of some early-stage companies, and experienced some companies opening and closing their doors, disbanding teams, changing managers, including financing, or funding problems. After experiencing a lot of "life and death", I realized that company is not an ideal thing, and most companies have to go through untold hardships before it is possible to move forward.

However, there are not many entrepreneurs in Chinese funds, and there should be quite a few entrepreneurs in the United States. This is a very good opportunity for CEOs.

Zhang Peng: From a "professional" person to a "entrepreneurship" person, the change of a word actually contains a lot of things. Sometimes I am very professional, but entrepreneurship is a more complex system, including understanding the flow of money in business. There are even many pits you see in others that you have not experienced before, but if you experience it again, you will overturn the car. So I fully understand that during that time you had a process of looking closely and thinking about it.

So you have seen so much in investment institutions, and eventually you have to end up. Why did choose the field of R&D management? Because at that time it was not about how hot the track was, you must have faced some "non-consensus", what kind of thinking process was this?

Wang Yingqi: At that time, I was studying for nearly two years. The core purpose of my study was to find an opportunity for myself to start a second business. At that time, I really saw a lot of industries. In 2014-2015, everyone knew that mutual funds, blockchains, and new-generation social products might be popular...

Zhang Peng: There are many temptations.

Wang Yingqi: Yes, what is the biggest temptation? It was hardware. At that time, the most popular was actually makers, who saw a lot of opportunities. In fact, I also tried some projects in the middle to understand the business model.

In addition, because I have never lived or studied overseas, my knowledge of many overseas products or companies is only on paper or news. Then I went to the United States to study many times in 2014-2015 to see if there are any good opportunities. . During this process, I saw a lot of good American software companies or ToB companies. On the one hand, we did a lot of research in other industries, and on the other hand, we looked at some opportunities in the software industry. In the end, we found that many things are really not as simple as we imagined. We still need to our past experience and abilities, so in the end We chose "software", which we are good at.

software is actually a good business , it is essentially a product made through some innovative ideas and engineering, its marginal cost is very low, it can be relatively easily scaled expansion. We later made it clear that we must first have demand, which is the most important, and then we are good at, and there are no particularly good products in the industry, which are several major criteria for us to find a direction.
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So why choose R&D management? In fact, we have also looked at a lot of directions in ToB software, such as finance, HR, documentation, project management, etc. What do we find here? That is, the technical threshold for to be a product is relatively high. Because we are good at software, we are not very good at the sales market. Of course, many colleagues have joined to make up for this part, but we were actually quite afraid at the time, and still felt that the product technology should have a very deep threshold. , in this direction.

In addition, I have been doing project management for the past ten years. I have a very important and clear understanding: When a software R&D team reaches a certain size, professional management methods and management tools are required. As for whether this thing is a paid product, I don't know, but everyone needs tools. There are only four or five people in our early entrepreneurial team, all of whom are old brothers who started their businesses together with the same background, which is very understandable.

When it comes to the so-called "non-consensus", we talked to everyone at the time, and everyone didn't know what we were doing. What are software development management tools? Can OA do this, can Dingding do it too? There were still some small collaboration software at that time, so why not use it directly? I said no, this requires professional tools.

Then I also saw some relatively good companies in the industry, including the Atlassian company you just mentioned. But at that time, people in all industries in China only talked about Salesforce, and there was no second one. I thought it was quite painful.

Zhang Peng: The biggest problem is that only you can see it, and no one else can see it. In fact, this is "non-consensus".

Wang Yingqi: Yes, I was also forced into a corner, looking for a thing that I can do and have business opportunities, and the existing products do not meet (customer needs). So after going around, we finally confirmed to do R&D management at the end of 2015. I found Morningside again, and Liu Qin was still very supportive of me.

He said that I voted for you three times, and the first time I voted, this is your second time. " is a software business, you must be good at it, ToB I think there is a chance, I believe you in this direction, I will support you if you want to do it", so Morningside gave us the A round. In the early days, we also had two angel investors, Chen Rui and He Xiaopeng, two big brothers. I actually had a lot of noble people to help me along the way.

Zhang Peng: Everyone has the will to start a business, and you have to choose a track for starting a business. There are actually some very process methods. I have to be good at it and like it. Then how is the competition in this field? If we want to make it truly technical Do it well, is it within my ability? What does its model look like? These things may be a little more important than vents. Because in fact, the hot air outlet may not be suitable for you.

On the contrary, you started to enter in 2015. After five or six years, everyone may not understand what R&D management is and why R&D management is needed. It has actually become something that everyone recognizes.

When you really started your second business and used up your second credit from Liu Qin, did you feel any pressure? What mental process is there? entrepreneurs have the heart to start a business, but when it to starting a business, especially if not everyone around is very excited, In fact, they have to think and make up their , the closer they are to deciding to start a business The more it is in that moment, the more it is human nature. He Xiaopeng has told me that when he devoted himself to making smart electric vehicles, he had difficulties in his heart. How did you overcome your difficulties?

Wang Yingqi: Let me first report the financing situation of ONES this year. If the cycle is extended a little, ONES has completed three rounds of financing this year. In the past 6 months, we have actually raised 100 million US dollars and returned . In the past six months, the industry's evaluation of us has far exceeded our own thoughts. The main reason is that our underwater affairs have finally emerged slowly. Everyone is willing to support us. It is very important to have very sufficient development funds.

Then I talked about the hurdles when we started our business. There were indeed some. In fact, we were quite flustered, even more flustered than the first time.

Zhang Peng: The first time was ignorance and fearlessness, right?

Wang Yingqi: Really ignorant and fearless. second business, he also saw a lot of people going up and down, so it was very difficult to find a direction. During that time, there were many big brothers who asked me to help me, asking if they could help me with this project and become a Co-Founder. But I haven't made up my mind to do anything. I asked this big brother if you could give me more opportunities, and asked that big brother if you could give me more shares. I keep asking about it every day.

Later, a very good brother said, "Yingqi, I think you are calculating this, which means you haven't figured it out yet. These things must not be what you want to do. If you really want to do it, you won't be calculating. Because You always feel like you should be able to do something bigger, or you want to do something that you can do on your own.” This is a very good awakening for me, If you want to start a business and do it yourself, you join others, no matter how much you give, you will feel uncomfortable.

At that time, everyone was worried that R&D management was a small industry. Everyone gave me such feedback, and I felt annoyed. Then I went to Chen Rui and told him what I was going to do. In fact, Mr. Rui was the same in his early years as station B. That thing was neither small nor small, and no one saw it at all.

Zhang Peng: He is more niche than you, and he is more non-consensus than you.

Wang Yingqi: It's too small. He said that in a market as big as China, or a market as big as the world, you must find an industry that can be No. 1, not those big industries. As long as it can be the first, any industry is big enough. This is what totally woke me up and made me make up my mind to do this. To this day, I think that any industry has opportunities, and we see that venture capital is the leader of the investment subdivision track. In fact, that is the sentence, don't care about the size, do it first. ONES is in China today, no matter in terms of product integrity, customer list, technical foundation, and financing scale, I have the confidence to say that we are number one.

Zhang Peng: I think this is a relatively complete idea. To put it bluntly, you have to convince yourself to take the step of starting a business. In fact, the process of finding the direction ahead is also quite important. It is not a slap in the head. It has rational thinking. Through such thinking, I found a thing that I have the opportunity to become the first. At that time, you will not be counted, and you will not hesitate. So your time between two startups is really not a waste. Many people may not have a thinking process between consecutive startups.

Someone asked what is the biggest difference between the first and second entrepreneurship? I think there is a difference in the thinking process. The first time you start a business, you do it without thinking. The second time you need to think carefully, and then make up your mind to do it, even if it is a non-consensus, even if it seems to be a small industry. .

Wang Yingqi: I think people still have inertia. As an engineer, I feel that software engineering or making software tools is my usual path and something I am good at. But for the first time, more from the origin. I felt what I wanted to do and the customers had needs. The second entrepreneurship is more about what the customers want and what we do. This is completely reversed. Because when you look at what I want to do, it is difficult to receive money from customers, and it is difficult to find commercial value. They always do traffic first and then pay. Back then, everyone was influenced by Boss Zhou's concept of "free".

Zhang Peng: Zhou Hongyi was suddenly cued, so funny.

Wang Yingqi: From the core point of view, as long as what you do can serve customers and help customers, it actually has commercial value. So I have a very big change in my second startup, starting from personal hobbies to starting from customer needs. A very important result is that you are closer to business because you are closer to customers.

Why is it a good thing to be closer to business? Because we see the entire entrepreneurial environment or capital environment today, many companies still need the power of capital to help boost early. If you don't have a particularly clear business value, it is actually difficult to attract particularly good investors. This is a big cycle.

So "Business is the greatest public welfare" , I have always believed in this, you have to serve the society, serve customers, and give good returns to employees or your partners. This is an entrepreneur or a business venture. The most basic thing to do.

Zhang Peng: The second time, it is obvious that some new elements have been added to the starting point of your thinking. Take some time to gossip among us, As an entrepreneur, how do you usually decompress?

Wang My pressure doesn't come from doing less work, there is a very good team of executives in the company, and they basically do all my work. And the way I do things is that I have to do anything that I haven't done before, but I only do it once and hand it over immediately. This may be my method of management.

As for how to solve it, I have been doing a lot of outdoor sports in recent years, and I went to the mountains and rivers to . For example, we are also in some business schools, and we will take everyone to the Gobi. I have been to the Gobi three or four times in recent years, and I have also taken our executives to the Gobi to think about problems from a different angle in the mountains and rivers.

I am sailing this year. When we sail forward, we all want to have a tailwind, smooth sailing, and we can go with the wind. But I have a question I want to ask you, For example, from point A to point B, we passed the tailwind, how can we get back from the headwind from point B to point A? Can you come back?

Of course, it can come back, because the sailboat itself does not rely only on the downwind. In fact, it is the same as the plane. It is called the Bernoulli effect. It relies on the difference in wind speed and pressure between the front and back of the sailboat to push the boat forward. There is a word called Bamenlaifeng, which means that I can drive the boat to the place I want by using the wind from all directions. This is a very interesting thing. Everyone said that starting a business is looking for an outlet. You always wait for the downwind and others will run away. You have to use various cutting angles and various methods to find the wind that can push you a little bit. As long as the boat is speeding up, any wind can push me. B go up.

Zhang Peng: This sentence is profound, and the metaphor is particularly good. You just took the wind and the boat to interpret entrepreneurship. In fact, it is not a problem that is completely solved by the wind. Therefore, the is only a reference value and cannot be waited for. So you can see that entrepreneurs are like this, sailing to decompress, you have to think in the process, and you can realize something from this. There is really no time to rest.

R&D management is not the goal

Serving customers well is the goal

Zhang Peng: Then, as a CEO, especially from a technical background, and you are a software , how do you understand what R&D management should focus on? Why do you need better tools?

Wang Yingqi: To go a little further, let's look at the development of the software industry. In the early 1990s, people who could program were called "scientists" , or those who wanted to be scientists had to write programs. My university was in 2000. At that time, I had changed from a scientist to a " software engineer" . Slowly we worked, and in 2008-2010, it was called "Code Farmer" . This process is actually turning a so-called mysterious technological power into a skill that most people can master. This is a very important change in the software industry. There are also development languages, we used C and C++ in our early years. Now everyone uses Python. As long as you can speak, you can basically write in Python. is a higher-level language, so the entry threshold is lower.

In addition, from the perspective of the demand side, all industries need to undergo digital transformation. To serve customers, you need to be on e-commerce, and you need to have traffic. Then internal management must have some IT capabilities of ERP and CRM. Therefore, for an enterprise, it needs software power both internally and externally. And software has to be done by humans, so a lot of engineers are needed. The demand for increased and the entry threshold has become lower, so there is a very intuitive result that the number of practitioners has risen , but the practitioners' cognition of the industry is relatively less than in the past.

we need some larger-scale management methods and concepts to integrate . Because after there are more people, a single function is actually very subdivided. I only manage my side, and there will be more needs for integrated management or collaboration. This is what we have seen in the past 20 or 30 years. A big change on stage. Our perception at the time was that a software engineering team had more than 30 people, it had to use management tools, otherwise mass production would not be possible.

Take, for example, a car production line. In the past, car-making was a handicraft industry, and it could be made by patchwork and jingling sugar nut. But now, take a steel plate or aluminum plate, stamp it first, press it into a car shell, then install glass, paint, install a sofa, install wheels, install a motor or an engine, and finally make it, this is already completely industrialized production.

ONES' R&D management is actually "the assembly line of the software industry". This is when we wanted to do this in 2015, and we knew very clearly that the software was to be industrialized, and the industrial production in industrialization required an assembly line.

Zhang Peng: To put it bluntly, all software development in those days was still a small team, and in a situation that did not require too much coordination and management, things could already be created. However, we have a judgment on the process of digitalization and its penetration in the whole society and business, that is, in the future, it must not be done by a small team. the future, all things related to digitalization must have a certain scale and density, and then there must be better coordination and management.

So I think the most important judgment you made back then was that when you saw that digitalization was going to develop massively, the scale of research and development would definitely be enlarged, and there would be tools. If we review it, it may be the most valuable at this point. It does not necessarily mean that I can predict the demand for R&D management tools in a few years. In fact, the demand was very small at that time.

After you started to do it, what kind of process was it when you first received the money and got the approval of the first customer? When will be convinced that what I am doing is right?

Wang Yingqi: We now seem to have opportunities in this industry, with a little success, but in fact it was quite difficult back then. At that time, we thought we could sell it after one year, but there were no customers for two years, and from the outside, it seemed that we did nothing.

I was mainly a ToC before, and this is my first time doing a ToB. In ToB, we have a saying, CEO must sell the product. If the CEO can't sell it himself, the sales you recruit won't sell either. I have never sold anything before. As an engineer and product manager, how can I talk about money with others? It is impossible. But then basically our company's first 2 million revenue customers were all mine. I brought a brother, I did sales, he did pre-sales service, and the two of us went to talk.

Where did these customers come from, that is, face brushing. Brushing face does not mean that he buys it when he finds a person. Brushing face is to give me the opportunity to talk to you first. Among the 2 million revenue, I have at least seen customers with almost 10 million revenue, and finally there is such a little bit. Because it is true that the product is more complicated, and then the attention is not high. Later, these companies are willing to buy it really not because it gives you face. Let me tell you a very real example, I am looking for a buddy who is also starting a business. According to our price at that time, he would give me about 50,000 to 60,000 yuan. He took a look, and then asked his brothers below him to watch, and finally he gave me a feedback and said, "Yingqi, I can treat you to a meal, let's go on a tour, I can give you a few thousand dollars, it doesn't matter. Problem. But I buy something that costs tens of thousands of dollars, and the employees can't use it, so I can't do it." This was a very big blow for me.

Zhang Peng: It’s not as good as a stranger saying sorry, I think this thing is useless, so I’ll turn it over anyway. It's sad to have an acquaintance say this to you.

Wang Yingqi: Yes. There is also a very big feedback that others think that your product has 1, 2, and 3 functions that are not good, 4, 5, and 6 functions are not satisfactory, and then 7, 8, and 9 do not.

Zhang Peng: Isn't that just useless?

Wang Yingqi: But there is a perception that it is not that there is no demand for enterprises, but that we have not done a good job. This is a very good signal. Because you're not good, it's not that I don't want it, it's different. so we have continued to invest in functions. In fact, we have made a very big breakthrough. It took a long period of three years to slowly grind the product out of .

Zhang Peng: This may indeed be an inevitable process, because after all, it is not like you make a clear product of ToC, and there is even a benchmark. You only need to grasp a few points, whether it is cost performance or a certain design function, you can solve this. But ToB products are different for every company and decision maker, you have to find something reasonable and grind with them.

Today we are going to talk about R&D management in depth. Research and development management 10 years ago, and today, or the future trend, we need to understand what fundamental changes it has?

Wang Yingqi: I think for any company, research and development management itself is not the purpose, the purpose is to serve its customers . Although we enjoy the dividends of the rising number of software R&D practitioners today, there is a need for management tools. But in fact, I think that software should be done with fewer people. This is the normal direction for an industry to move forward. For example, what kind of robotic arms are our current pipelines, relying on more intelligence and AI to do this, this may be a direction. With the development of the entire software industry, there may be more advanced languages, better tools, and better infrastructure to make industrialization faster and more efficient. This is definitely a trend. management approach will actually be updated iteratively as the entire infrastructure changes.

We talked about the past, more about the research and development management of waterfall model , because a lot of demand is constant, and fixed demand takes one year to make it, this is called traditional waterfall flow. Later, with the development of the Internet, everyone was closer to customers, and customers were giving feedback every day, so it was necessary to iterate quickly, so that agile R&D was possible. Then we see today Mass Agile , what does that mean? Large-scale software also needs to respond quickly to customer needs. You need 1,000 people to make the software very agile. This may require new management methods to be implemented, so the entire industry is moving forward.

I think we, as a company that makes software industry assembly lines, are like a company that makes gasoline car assembly lines. You can't complain that I was abandoned because of electric vehicles. This is not acceptable. But how to make it more suitable for today's assembly line in the era of electric vehicles, because it must be much simpler, and there may be more automation in it. we must keep up with the needs of the industry and move forward with the needs of customers. We must pay attention to the industry and cannot stand still.

Zhang Peng: What you just said is actually quite important. From the development of waterfall flow to agile to large-scale agility, every change is a huge adjustment, and it is still in the process of continuous change.

Someone asked a very pragmatic question. You really started to confirm the demand. After someone paid the bill, is the strategy adopted by to capture major customers, or surround the city from the countryside, or directly understand it from a certain field? This is also a different form that is often discussed in the ToB field. Did you ever think about this at the time?

Wang Yingqi: Yes, whether it is a small customer, a medium customer or a large customer, if we only divide customers into three categories, we do not see the essence. essential question is, what kind of customers need you. commercial value of being a business is to serve customers. What customers are just in need, what products can you provide to customers, and what is your business model? What kind of customers need you and what you can give customers, this is a matter of pros and cons.

ONES is a standard product, we do not want to be an outsourcing company , we sell software, not custom, this is very important, this is what I can give. So what kind of customers need me? Must be on a certain size team. A small team of a dozen or 20 people really doesn’t need to be so complicated, and it can’t let you serve the tool. The tool serves you. So it must be that the customer scale has reached a certain size, and we do not want us to do outsourcing, and we do not want us to customize it. needs of customers and our service capabilities are matched together. The team of more than 100 people is our key customers, and they are just in need. So down to thirty or fifty people are also in need, and they can also use it. At the core, I think it is still necessary to serve customers who just need it.

Zhang Peng: I think this is quite right. If it is really a very big company, it is estimated that the more you appreciate you, the more you want you to customize it, and even just accept you, right? Just talking about this, you must have experienced all kinds of stories along the way. Has anyone in the middle said that this guy's products are doing well, and the team is very good. I also have this demand, and I will accept you. How do you think when you encounter this scene?

Wang Yingqi: Probably in 2016, there was a relatively large party A in China, they had a good demand for project management, and then they came to me and said that I would give you 3 million, help us customize, and say you are making your own products. Can also receive money. I said no, we didn’t earn a penny at that time, and I didn’t know where the confidence came from. I said I wanted to make my own product. Then the assistant brought by the eldest brother may not be able to stand it any longer. I refuse him face to face, and I may feel that I have no face. The assistant said that if I bought your company, forget it. I said, although we do not make money now, but I have seen money. We still want to do our own . This is what really happened back then.

Zhang Peng: I refused without hesitation for a second.

Wang Yingqi: There is no hesitation at all, and I don't know where the courage comes from. It is blind confidence.

Zhang Peng: I think the core is that the thing you want to do is not a matter of money. It does not mean that it will be realized today because there are millions of dollars. It is too far from your goal, so You really don't have to think about it, right?

Wang Yingqi: In fact, there is a background here. I have seen many companies in the past saying that we do outsourcing first, and we do projects first to polish products. I've never seen it so successful. It's still a matter of probability, I think the probability is actually very small, because you do it for someone else, it's impossible to do something like that.

Zhang Peng: So don't give yourself this logic: anyway, we can earn this money first, and in the process we have the ability to turn it into a better standardized product. You see this as conflicting and mutually exclusive.

Wang Yingqi: Not at all. I think that in the process of doing many things, don't make excuses for yourself, or pursue surprises. It is a probability problem, the probability is too small.

Zhang Peng: It makes sense. Recently, it has been said that this track is hot, but in fact, many people still may not understand why the R&D management can be a company with hundreds of billions of dollars in the world. The contrast is too great. A few years ago, everyone thought that this was a very vertical tool? Of course, in reverse, when Salesforce came out, maybe everyone didn't expect it. In recent years, the value of these fields has continued to rise. Let us analyze why can give such a high valuation in the field of R&D management, and what is the logic of everyone's judgment on the future?

Wang Yingqi: I think today may not only focus on R&D management, but the entire software is sought after by the secondary market or primary market. There are several reasons for . The first reason for is that software is really a good business. Compared with many industries, has a long-term return on a single investment, and now software is talking about subscription models, and subscriptions make cash income. It is predictable, and there are very good models to measure future returns.

Also, why are there so many categories of software? software is actually a binary map of the physical world, a more efficient map. Our sales management approach maps to CRM and our project management approach becomes a project management tool. In fact, it is because of these traditional physical cognitions, whether it is spread or paid, these businesses make its marginal cost very high. For example, I am doing project management training today and teach everyone the method of project management. They give me money, and it is difficult to grow rapidly.

However, the binary distribution of software is very fast, instant distribution, and now there are models such as cloud and SaaS, so that the binary mapping of these physical worlds can be efficiently delivered, and the commercial return is basically fast. What we see today, , whether it is the field of ONES or many other fields, as long as it is software, as long as it can provide customers with good services, as long as it can map many good management methods or workflows in the physical world into a software systems have enormous commercial value.

Zhang Peng: So it is not just a tool value, it is actually a productivity improvement value , it condenses many better methods than the original, and then it will bring some inevitable performance improvements. General business is like this, how much problem you solve and how much value you help others create, you take part of it accordingly, this is your value. Every company has its own customers, and it is because the customers are successful, so I am successful.

In fact, the reverse is also the case, not because the concept has become popular recently, or because there is no chance for involution on the Internet, and there is no need to vote. Behind this, the productivity improvement of the next stage of is an important trend.

The audience also asked some questions, what about the ratio of SaaS and customization? It seems that there is no customization just now?

Wang Yingqi: We do not customize, yes, this is what we insist on doing, this must be adhered to, standardized, one version.

Entrepreneurship is to build

Deeper and stronger cognitive barriers

Zhang Peng: Compared with the overseas benchmark Atlassian, what is the advantage of ONES? I am very interested in this. What are its barriers in the future? You are No.1 in a relatively vertical field, but you may also face some big platforms and other competitors. So what are the barriers you can build in this field?

Wang Yingqi: Startups have different methods of building barriers at different stages, or different definitions of barriers. There must be no one bullet that can kill everyone, and no one trick can be eaten all over the world. As the industry changes or the stage of the company changes, the barriers will also change.

A company will always go through this process from seed stage to growth stage to plateau stage to decline stage. The problem here is, in different stages, your cognition or your ability model will become your barrier.

We did this in China for the past five years, and a very big barrier was cognition. Maybe there are other people in this industry who also want to do all kinds of things, but many people may be like me when I first started a business, and they are habitual thinking. I think I can do this thing and I will do it. However, we believe that there are customer needs and commercial value in this. I hope to introduce more partners, whether they are venture capitalists or capital partners. It was our perception at the time that software development requires good management tools, which was our barrier for the first 5 years.

Why we have achieved what we are today in the past 5 years depends on this sentence, and we insist on this sentence to boil the product from 0-1. Of course, there are many opportunities in the future. For example, our biggest competitor, Atlassian, will not sell the Server version in China. Because of the epidemic, everyone works remotely, because of digital transformation, and for various reasons, the latter is from 1-10. -20-30, this is something we can't stop, that's our lucky point, but the first 5 years depend on cognition.

Also the software industry is actually going to mysticism. A large-scale software needs a lot of talent density and talent quantity. ONES has actually built a very good product technology base in the past 5 years. is above this, it can be done faster and better by building a lot of human and material resources. Therefore, in the next ten years, we will continue to invest and put the money we have raised, including the money we earn. Over the past 5 years, we have basically capitalized all the money we raised into binary code.

Zhang Peng: That is, the capital is finally converted into this asset, which becomes binary code.

Wang Yingqi: From a financial point of view, basically all the money we spent in the past was binary converted into software. we have not changed direction in the past 5 or 6 years. All investments are in one direction, and this is the threshold for building up. the next 5 years, I will use more investment, of course, how do you invest, how can you more efficiently turn money into software engineers, and then into useful code for customers, this is what we have to think about of. But I think in the next five years, our threshold is to make more investment in this.

There is also a threshold here, because we already have good products in , and we have the opportunity to be closer to customers, which is a very large threshold. customer can't give money or not, but at least I can deliver the customer's demand, which is a very good threshold. In the future, we will re-establish a new understanding.

Zhang Peng: I think your interpretation is very clear. thresholds and barriers are divided into stages. It is impossible to understand the barriers and competitiveness that are separated from the stage of entrepreneurial development. may be a cognitive dividend in the early stage, and then in the mid-term, you are more efficient than others. Once the direction is roughly set, it will depend on you to do things more efficiently and better. Then you enter a stage where mercury can be poured into the ground, you have to fight for resources, you have to be more determined and able to put this thing all-in, and convert it into code assets more efficiently. The right to contact customers is actually word of mouth, brand, and everyone's recognition of you in this industry. These things are all things that need to be fought during the high-speed development stage. Therefore, there is no such thing as saying that I will be bored and finish the product. This sentence sounds very simple, but in fact it is a barrier and a challenge to be completed in stages.

**The software industry is going to mysticism
Defining products is the core competence**

Zhang Peng: There is another question. We are talking about programming languages just now, and I agree. Python has now become a language that more people can learn. It is no longer the same as it used to be, only scientists master binary code, it is actually not that difficult today. Conversely, will the code also evolve, and will the form of the code evolve?

Wang Yingqi: Of course it will become more advanced. The core is the entire software programming ability. You can see that there are many programming training for teenagers and software programming training in vocational education.

I think the mastery of programming ability is actually a lot like a field, that is, the driver. In the early days of the automobile industry, the driver was a profession, only the driver could drive, and he could earn a living by driving. But when the automobile business develops slowly, a large number of families need cars, and they need to go from A to B quickly, and the car enters the family, because it is impossible for everyone to hire a driver, and I need to master the driving skills myself. Of course, the car also drives better. A typical example of the development of the automobile industry, from manual transmission to automatic transmission to automatic driving, there are many changes. Driving has changed from a professional skill to a must-have skill for ordinary people. I think programming has already had this trend. It has changed from a scientist, engineer, and code farmer to a skill that everyone can do. I think this is a very important development in the future. direction.

But after democratizing it to everyone, it will be divided into racing drivers, special car drivers and family car drivers. Similarly, there are architects in software development, and there are very good people who do kernel development and do the underlying construction. Also, I am a professional driver, and a daily driver; I am a professional architect, engineer, and can write programs in my daily work life. I think there may be such a change in the industry, maybe our next generation will be like this.

Zhang Peng: I went to the Computer Museum in Silicon Valley for the first time. What impressed me was that there was a picture of the evolution of code languages and programming languages on the wall, just like an evolutionary tree. I was very shocked. Languages continue to evolve over time. Until the last few years people started to say that Python is a particularly good language, a great language. evolutionary tree may continue. The ultimate goal is that the language has become a natural language, and the ability to program has become a general ability Programming to build a new world where the digital world is superimposed on the real world.

Therefore, R&D management itself is also moving forward in a big era. No matter how an enterprise's products are today, it often depends on the great changes of an era. For example, we said at the time that enterprise R&D management needs a good tool to deal with changes, and organizations are also changing in the era of digitalization and rapid change. Things happen in the organization, and what happens in the organization in turn affects the organization. You deal with customers every day, Have you observed how so many digital changes are affecting organizations today?

Wang Yingqi: I think there is a very important change. In the past, we said that a company or a business entity has software power and technological power as a leading advantage. This company will use software to acquire and serve customers based on the Internet. This is called a forward-looking company. What has changed in the last two years? Don't live without this ability.

The benefit of software power for an organization is that its management has wider boundaries than before, and you can expand your organization in a borderless manner. Some of the customers we are serving now are FMCG products. They acquire customers on the Internet, which is equivalent to outsourcing Sales on the Internet. In fact, it is a new management method. Sales performance; delivery of products to customers through logistics software, and the real core people in the company don't need to care about these things. This is a very fine social division of labor. So the core of your organization becomes innovative ideas, and even innovative ideas may be distributed. Therefore, on the one hand is to binarize the physical world, and the biggest change is actually that the social division of labor is more clear, and the organization has become . Our current customers actually have such a trend.

Another judgment is that we previously believed that only high-tech companies or Internet companies have software. Today we say that good companies in all industries are technology companies, and the word technology is inseparable from software in many cases. Therefore, we say that good in all industries are software companies and must be driven by software.

Zhang Peng: What you said is very interesting. It is said that the outstanding companies in the future must be software companies, which means that the digital capabilities such as software programming can be mastered. It may not be selling a software, but it must be a company with software capabilities, so as to truly realize digitalization , and to his advantage.

One of your questions just now also triggered another thought, because you have been talking about that future programming languages will evolve into general knowledge. I suddenly thought, 10 years later, programmers, I think they will be very stressed, When I learn programming or I am a programmer, will I not have the same feeling ?

Wang Don't think a lot of innovative ideas, and then we wrap it up as a mystery, it's not like that. I think software engineering will actually become a manufacturing industry, We need a good architect, and we also need a good engineer, let's do this together.

This is actually a good thing for future changes in the industry, because it will allow more people to participate. But here is the layering that I just talked about. Engineers with architect capabilities, or engineers with higher-level design capabilities, will still be sought after for a long time. There is also a very big trend, that is, we regard the coding part of software production as a very core part in the early years, which is a hard power. But in fact, I found an important problem today, In the software industry, it is actually the core competence that you can define the product well. Because as a practitioner, you don't have to write code. You can define a product and implement the product you define through efficient tools. It's good. You don't have to write software. With a higher-level language and a better technical structure, you can quickly spell out the product, and you don't have to be restricted to writing code.

Zhang Peng: Haha makes sense. To put it bluntly, this is actually a liberation. We can't be mystic just because I can read and write code. In the future, I estimate that this trend will not be the case, and the code will be familiar. Jobs may not be the person who writes the best code, but he has his own understanding of user insights, needs and interactions, and his own heights in aesthetics, which is still very powerful.

So in the future, it may indeed be like what you said, , we need to return to the characteristics of this person, that is, what this person is better at, instead of spending a lot of time on mastering a language to communicate with machines. In the future, the communication between machines and us will be simpler, but it will test people's own . This may be a real trend.

Go back to ONES and have a chat, may always have challenges in your heart for the next stage, anxiety to overcome, and things to surpass. So what's the core thing you're going to grab?

Wang Yingqi: There are some basic entrepreneurial logic that can be discussed. three major elements of entrepreneurship are people, money and affairs. thing, I understand that it means the direction of entrepreneurship. We have clearly defined this direction in the past 6 years, and we can stick to it. In the next 5-10 years, we will also stick to the same direction, so the company does not have any problems in the direction.

Then there's cash flow, which is the money you make. Because the company's annual revenue has also increased several times, and the financing through foreign aid has supplemented the cash flow, we have actually solved a lot of cash problems this year.

The remaining element is talent. Whether your organization's strength is able to absorb, accommodate, and retain talent may be what we are going to do now. The company now has a few hundred people, and it will develop to 12,000 people in the future. We also hope to invite software practitioners to communicate, join ONES, and make this thing bigger.

Zhang Peng: Recruiting, the boss started recruiting directly. You can talk about what to expect from talent.

Wang Yingqi: ONES has a relatively clear criteria for selecting talents. For example, we have our own talent values, and there are three key words. The first one is that we hope to find curious people , without curiosity, I think whether it is work or life, life is actually boring.

Zhang Peng: Because your entire company is a culture of curiosity.

Wang Yingqi: It is very important to be curious. There are many people who are curious, he will see new things, but he dare not do it. So our second keyword of is called courage . I saw that sailboat and I was curious, but I had to get on it. We see that many people are curious and courageous. Today, if the blockchain is good, I will do the blockchain. Tomorrow, if the mutual gold is good, I will do the mutual gold. The day after tomorrow, if the e-commerce is good, I will do the e-commerce. The root of the water, see what is good and do it, no matter whether you are good at it or not, and whether it is really helpful to the society and customers. Therefore, the third word of is actually to bring everyone back and call responsibility . You have a sense of responsibility to customers, shareholders, employees, and society.

So we can basically use these three dimensions to judge. Of course, these three words will have different performances in different stages or different states of a person. The team needs to complement each other. There is a curious leader, some courageous helpers to push forward, and some responsible backing, who can do things well, and ultimately rely on team cooperation. Overall, these three keywords are very important criteria for our selection and employment. This is also a life value, the core is what kind of people we hope to walk with.

Zhang Peng: In addition, it seems that in the global market recently, the concept of R&D management is also very popular. Have you started to do overseas now? Or are there any plans for this?

Wang Yingqi: Yes, has a very clear plan.

Zhang Peng: For software companies, what is the relationship between the domestic market and the overseas market? Is there a choice, or is there a sequence, first domestically, then overseas, is there any truth in it?

Wang Yingqi: Looking at the global software industry, there are actually very good payment and consumption habits. On the contrary, in the past period of time in China, more talents may be placed on the ToC Internet, and the ToB Internet may not have too many talents and funds, and the development is relatively lagging behind.

But the software itself actually has many categories suitable for globalization, but translated, is not that all software can be globalized. So in the end which categories, which products, or which teams can do globalization, this is something to think about.

Let’s look at the big picture of the entire industry. We believe that in the global software industry in the past 20 years, many software companies listed in the United States have actually obtained excess market valuations and excess returns. Capital efficiency is not as high as thought. So the software I just said should go to mysticism. software must have very good innovative ideas and technical core , this is what we need to be able to go through, it may be 10% or 20% of the original foundation. it is actually going to be industrialized, is your capital efficiency and management efficiency. So we believe that China must have a large number of good software companies in the next 10 years, and can make products globalized.

Zhang Peng: I agree very much. Because you see such a high valuation this year, it is essentially because this field is relatively thin all the year round, and the power of China has not yet participated. If you look at it from this angle, in theory, you can’t just eat China, because only by participating in the global concept can you prove the value of this matter.

Therefore, software may be viewed from the global market, which is its ultimate height, not necessarily only in China. Even if one vertical field can go global, that's a great company.

Wang Yingqi: So I think in the next 10 years we will definitely see good Chinese technology companies and software companies serving global customers. But I think the core of is , not because the market is big, we do Capital capacity, together to make the product. It is actually very difficult for serve global customers, because the world is not divided into China and overseas, it is not so divided, each country has its own characteristics, so it is very difficult. But I think the big opportunity should be here. software industry becomes a manufacturing industry, I think China's power will be revealed. China's economy is so good now, we have a lot of innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities, and this market can become a very big opportunity for us.

Zhang Peng: Yes, in such a big process, you not only see the significance of R&D management, but also see this matter from a global perspective. It is actually a process that has just started. Even if we see a 100 billion-level product like Salesforce, it may be just the beginning.

Unity of knowledge and action

Entrepreneurship is to serve customers well

Zhang Peng: Finally, it is also a tradition of ours. Can recommend a book to us? You have learned a lot after reading it recently or in history. Tell us why you recommend it.

Wang Yingqi: If I want to recommend, I must recommend the book I am reading. Since the beginning of this year, I have been taking a philosophy class at Fudan University. I think whether we business or life, we have not figured out some basic logic, so we often make . Philosophy itself provides us with a very good way of thinking. A lot of things seem obscure, but if you can map it to something in real life, it's actually very beneficial.

There may be a lot of logic in Western philosophy that we engineering people have had for a long time, and the more we learn, the more introverted we become. But recently I listened to a class by Professor Wang Defeng, he taught Western philosophy, but in turn he said, you have to understand Chinese philosophy.

In Chinese philosophy, there is a person who cannot be avoided by everyone called Wang Yangming. He has a very important proposition called "the unity of knowledge and action" . When I first heard the term "unity of knowledge and action," I thought it was called "cognition." What I recognize must be one with what I do. But this is not the case in reality. Wang Yangming's "knowledge" is called "conscience". Your conscience is the same as your actions. In fact, everything is not that difficult. You can succeed as long as you work hard. This thing touched me very much.

I've been reading Wang Yangming's "The Integration of Knowledge and Action", three volumes. It talks about how Wang Yangming's psychology was established, how he changed from Confucianism to psychology, and how he became a generation of mind masters. A very important point in "Xinxue" is "practice", unlike in "Neo-science", it is enough to just talk about it. So this is a book I've been reading recently that has had an impact on my life and work. I think it is quite inspiring, because we often forget the most original things. Entrepreneurship is the same. Entrepreneurship is to serve customers. No, customer first, nothing else.

Zhang Peng: Let’s review what you shared today. We understand it according to the so-called unity of knowledge and action based on conscience. You can understand that you shouldn’t follow the trend, and you don’t necessarily deny yourself when others don’t understand. Following one's own pursuit of this matter leading to a better direction, doing this matter earnestly in the unity of knowledge and action, doing it continuously, and doing it right may actually be the simplest entrepreneurial axis. If you are on this axis, theoretically you won’t make big mistakes, but can you really do a good job of fighting yourself? So I think maybe may not be tempted in this process, not make big mistakes, combine knowledge and action, and find a simple and effective route, but it is more important to find those flower , those outlet. I also remembered what you said about sailboats. When sailing, you have to use it in all directions, and you can't say that I can only use downwind.

Today, I chatted with Ying Qi with a very large amount of information in a limited time. Thank you Ying Qi and everyone for coming to the "Entrepreneurship Reality Show", and I wish ONES can reach a new level every year.

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