Gao Yuguang, CEO of Kechuang, Cyclone: From RPA to hyperautomation, build strategic depth based on customer needs

Yu Guang Founder and CEO of Shanghai Hongji Cyclone
He once served as the general manager of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Data Services and Business Development Greater China, led the team to formulate a variety of innovative growth strategies, and provided professional consulting and implementation services for many global and domestic well-known corporate customers.
Founded Shanghai Hongji Cyclone in 2015, it has become China's leading provider of artificial intelligence Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software and platform. Its customers are in China's local and overseas financial institutions, including the government, central enterprises, state-owned enterprises, and large and medium-sized enterprises.
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In November 2021, Hongji Cyclone received US$150 million in Series C financing, setting a record for a single financing in China's RPA industry.
At the beginning of 2022, I was fortunate to invite Gao Yuguang, founder and CEO of Hongji Cyclone, to give a brief talk. During the communication process, he corrected the details of the expression from time to time, and carefully selected words and sentences, but it did not hinder the smoothness and thoroughness of the entire communication. Just like the development of Cyclone, he did not make mistakes or talk about All In, but he created a three-year continuous Super fast development.

Practicing the leap growth of HP's way
In 2005, Yuguang Gao graduated from the National University of Singapore with a master's degree in computer science.
At that time, entrepreneurship was still a rare word, and the common name was "doing business"; looking at the world, the world is constantly flattening, and the life strategies of a generation of young people are all related to globalization: study abroad, overseas gold digging, multinational companies.
Gao Yuguang chose the third path, easily wading through the fierce screening competition, and he became a management trainee of Hewlett-Packard China.
In an era full of possibilities, many stereotypes that are now deeply rooted in the hearts of the people have not yet been formed. For example, "technical people are the opposite of sales people". Gao Yuguang, a computer major, started his 13-year HP life from the sales department. Many of my senior colleagues are computer professionals, and everyone has done well.”
In the sales position, Gao Yuguang started low and walked high all the way. After the adaptation period, he repeatedly achieved good sales results. When his personal sales exceeded 100 million yuan in a single year, it was a matter of course for him to enter the management team.
Everyone knows that the spirit of Silicon Valley originates from "the HP way - as long as the company provides a suitable environment, I believe that employees will go all out", and Gao Yuguang's growth has benefited from this. With comprehensive and in-depth experience, from sales, products to consulting services, he has gradually accumulated a complete set of business thinking skills.
The fire of entrepreneurship burns naturally.

Six years of long-term exams, from the beginning of the heart to the finalization of the track
Gao Yuguang loves the sea, "Don't talk about getting on the boat, I'll be happy if you throw it on the shore for me to dry." After playing in the sea for many years, there are two episodes that I remember the most. One is climbing the mast for the first time. "It is not high when you go up, and you will know that it is not only high but also swaying violently." There is nothing between the sea and the sky, only friends walking together. When he entered the state of flow, he felt the insurmountable gap between individual heroism and collective synergy.
The second moment may be the seed of Gao Yuguang's entrepreneurial ambition. Time has passed through the first decade of the century, and the entrepreneurial boom has roared in the hearts of all aspiring young people. Gao Yuguang has also received "bewitchment" from friends from all walks of life from time to time. Most of the initial intentions came from the To C-type Internet project, and it was difficult to arouse his inner aspirations that he was imperative and who gave up. Around 2012, the rumor of To B started, and it happened that Gao Yuguang was in charge of Enterprise Service at Hewlett-Packard, and his desire to start a business was officially put into his left chest.
Everything is ready, just need to choose a suitable track, I didn't expect that this selection will be six years. "Like the development of the Internet industry, at the beginning of the To B industry, everyone was benchmarking the American market. Everyone thought that some software services in the United States would definitely exist in China, but I am more concerned about the second half of the sentence - How many of these Chinese version companies can really take root and grow?"
He has been deeply involved in the field of enterprise services for many years, and has personally handled many overseas advanced To B software projects introduced into China. Gao Yuguang knows that the key is not "is there", but the word landing.
In the end, it was RPA that moved Gao Yuguang. In 2015, HP China introduced a British RPA product, which was the world's leading product at that time. The customized service and implementation service tasks of this product were handled by Gao Yuguang's team.
In the process of communicating and delivering with customers, Gao Yuguang noticed a feature of RPA products, "To B new products are generally difficult to communicate with customers, and the same is true of RPA. You said that this is the process automation of software robots. , the customer is in a fog, you are not in charge of HR, nor is CRM in charge of sales, nor is ERP in charge of production process, what are you? Things are automatically invoiced and submitted by the production process... As long as it enters the business scenario, RPA will reflect a huge sense of value. Customers will not only get started quickly, but also actively put forward various needs. This is other A rare scene when To B products are launched."
Looking back now, when it comes to To B entrepreneurship alone, Gao Yuguang can be regarded as an open hand. What others can grasp is only "I can" and "I have", and he not only has access to a large number of overseas mature and even the world's leading To B products, but also directly Verify how well these products fit the Chinese market. From this point of view, it is not difficult to understand why he invested many years in the selection stage.
The emergence of RPA has allowed him to truly find a track that meets his inner standards.

Founded Hongji, it has been a blockbuster for three years
In 2015, Gao Yuguang founded Shanghai Hongji Cyclone, but the company did not start operations at the first time. From the decision to enter the game to the official road, he observed and planned for three years.
In 2018, Hongji Cyclone officially launched the product, and the Lianchuang team made its first product in the fourth quarter of that year.
At the beginning of 2019, in order to "avoid opinions at home", financing became the focus of Gao Yuguang's work in stages. For most investors of that year, RPA was still a rare concept. Even if the principles were understood, there were not enough empirical cases. Gao Yuguang suffered a lot from this.
Maxima often has it, and Bole often has it. Hongji Cyclone's Bole is a DCM who has a good understanding of UiPath, the global benchmark for RPA. It was very fast from initial contact to the arrival of funds. In June 2019, DCM, as the lead investor, completed the A round of financing for Hongji Cyclone.
Until this time, the team size of Hongji Cyclone was only about 20 people.
After only 2 years and 5 months, the team has grown into a leader in the RPA track with a scale of 600 people and completed the C round of financing. In the "Forrester Wave: RoboticProcess Automation, Q1 2021" report released by Forrester in March 2021, Hongji was rated as "Outstanding Performer". In July of the same year, in the "2021 RPA Magic Quadrant" released by Gartner, Hongji Cyclone became the first Chinese company to be selected, and won the best position of Chinese manufacturers in the Magic Quadrant of the RPA industry so far.
Why is Hongji Cyclone able to achieve amazing growth at the speed of light that is indescribable?

Customer + Product Two Wheel Drive
To B products, copying is not enough

In 2019, Ramon Zeng, the managing partner of DCM, commented on the Hongji Cyclone team when he disclosed the A round of financing: "The combination of technology and business capabilities is good, there is a large business BD team, and the products are correct. The development of RPA On the technical path, Hongji Cyclone has a very good foundation in terms of localization of the technical path, selection of entry points in the market, and the combination with artificial intelligence in the medium and long term, and its ideas are very clear.”
Accurate strategic research and market insights are the core meaning of Hongji Cyclone's explosive growth. Competitors on the RPA track have huge differences in the choice of market entry points. They start with To C and have technology as their king. When facing investors and market customers, most of them emphasize technological advancement, while Hongji Cyclone has always insisted on the two major Power Flywheel: Customers, Products.
From the team building, we can see that Hongji Cyclone is different. Most RPA enterprise resources give priority to technical teams, but Hongji Cyclone has established dozens of expert teams with the background of first-class multinational consulting companies early to firmly promote customer value. accomplish.
At the same time, different from the heavy consulting company, Hongji Cyclone also puts the product at the highest position of the corporate strategy. For this reason, Gao Yuguang visited the cottage and successfully persuaded Dr. Jia Kui, the former global senior R&D director and chief architect of UiPath, to join. "There is a saying in the To B industry, the products are not enough to serve, the service is not enough to sell, and any company has to go through such a stage. It is okay to temporarily gather, and product precipitation and polishing must continue. As an enterprise-level software, product Technology and business need two-wheel drive. When you have a good product, you must also think about how to push it to customers. Therefore, it is not only product and technological innovation, but also insight into customer needs. At the same time, it is also very important to grasp the rhythm. Importantly, a good product needs to be developed at the right time and when the surrounding technology ecosystem is mature.”
Gao Yuguang is not worried about the plagiarism problem that often occurs in the software service industry, "To B products, it is not enough to rely on copying. To C products only need one set at the pixel level, which is basically enough, because the underlying business model for mass consumers is basically Similarly, there are only micro-innovations and optimizations in the details. But this is not the case with To B products. If you cannot accurately understand the underlying business and just copy the interface and functions, it is impossible to make an excellent product.”

Kechuang people: What principles are Hongji Cyclone’s strategic decisions based on, and why are they always able to make decisions that are ultimately proven correct?
Gao Yuguang: In fact, the answer to the mystery lies in the mystery. To B software service has only two key elements. First, you must have a good product. Second, you need someone to help customers solve the problem. The global To B market is developing like this. of. If the product does not pass the test, it will be sold by the relationship, and even the relationship will be destroyed; if the service is not passable, the experts will not help the customer to land, and it is impossible to repurchase or increase the purchase.
As for the initial stage, the process automation of the entire enterprise is a long chain. We cannot do everything, which requires product portfolio management, and the priority ordering of management can actually learn from the examples of successful enterprises, do what you do first, do it later anything, you can refer to. Of course, products must be repeatedly polished and precipitated based on in-depth understanding of Chinese customers.

The epidemic is not difficult, the difficulty lies in "people"
At the end of 2019, the partner team of Hongji Cyclone reached a consensus in the interleaving of gongs and chips: in 2020, step on the accelerator and step into the fuel tank, "rush!"
However, an epidemic at the beginning of the year caught everyone off guard.
On February 12, 2020, Xiaoxue in the capital, Hongji Cyclone resumed work after a holiday. Gao Yuguang felt a rare sadness in his life when he watched Wangjing Pohang Building, which was supposed to be crowded, with the snow falling in front of him.
"No one knows what the future is going to be like, and the attitude of the board of directors is also divided. Some friends think that they should step on the brakes. But in the end, everyone decided to speed up the development. ."
In the first half of the year, the turmoil brought about by the epidemic was safely passed. In the second half of the year, Hongji Cyclone resumed its surging growth trend, which has continued to this day.
Although the epidemic has brought some shocks, in Gao Yuguang's view, the epidemic is not the most difficult to overcome among the many problems since starting a business, and even the deviation of strategic decision-making is not a big problem - "The team is small and in the early stage of development, tossing is wrong. It’s not that big of a problem”—the real problem is people, “We haven’t made any big mistakes over the years, but the problem of people is long-term and persistent.”

Gao Yuguang's Talent View
1. Share vision: Firmly develop the space and opportunities for the industry, and do valuable things with the right people. "We respect and tolerate differences in personal values. Mature people have their own values, as long as the goals are the same."
2. Tolerance and openness: Create a first-class talent ecosystem, so that every member of the team can contribute their own value; the senior management should not be limited to their own team, but must understand the business logic of brother departments and cultivate the perspective of the CEO; production and research teams cannot Working behind closed doors, we must be close to customers and the market.
3. Charisma and leadership: Integrate your optimism, courage, focus, curiosity and sincerity into your hunger for talents.
4. Entrepreneurial spirit: The core team and key positions are essential. "If you choose to join the core team of an entrepreneurial enterprise, you must start an entrepreneurial model that goes all out."
5. Equal responsibility and power: precision production enterprises, all links must be responsible and controlled, and any link should be held responsible, including managers - Hongji Cyclone executives have received up to 3 Monthly salary fines; and even front-line employees, as long as they make valuable contributions to the business, the company does not hesitate to reward them.

Run small steps and be a "half-baked" enterprise
Kechuang people: After the C round of financing, what changes will Hongji Cyclone's development strategy have?
Gao Yuguang: The biggest change is that we need to make the company more stable. We are growing a little faster (author's note: Versailles), and we need to enhance stability. Stability is not slow, we do not intend to control the growth rate, but to strengthen some capabilities that match the current team size. For example, we need to transform ourselves from a nascent enterprise into a half-baked enterprise, not to be fully-fledged, but to have a stable foundation to support long-term development.

Kechuang people: After the enterprise has developed to a certain scale, it is necessary to strengthen its internal strength. What methods has Hongji Cyclone adopted to achieve this goal?

Gao Yuguang: First of all, management needs to be strengthened. In HP's management positions, there are many ready-made management frameworks that can be used for reference, but when it comes to starting a company by yourself, you have to build a complete management system from scratch. I have read a lot of books and talked to a lot of Friends have asked for advice and have taken classes, but each company and team are different and do different things. You can only keep on iterating quickly, gradually improving and improving management maturity.
Second, adhere to the decision-making power of not afraid of making mistakes, and make mistakes immediately.
Third, at this stage, we basically do not make very big decisions at the operation and management level, but constantly make adjustments on a quarterly basis, keep running in small steps, and adjust the direction in time if something goes wrong.
Business management is not a slogan. We want to be "a world-class enterprise software company rooted in China". This sentence is a very grand vision. We need to move in this direction rationally and solidly. And then continue to achieve, to break through.

Hyperautomation is the inevitable direction
Choose your entry point calmly
An industry buzzword extended by RPA, Hyperautomation, has become the recognized development direction of the RPA industry, and Hongji Cyclone has become the leader of this road.

Kechuangren: What is the biggest known obstacle in the process of realizing the goal of hyperautomation?

Gao Yuguang: The direction of hyperautomation is worthy of firm pursuit, but the methods, means and rhythms of the pursuit require serious consideration. For example, hyperautomation requires AI engineering, and it is unrealistic to do AI with our volume; but the link of intelligent process mining is the strength of Hongji Cyclone.
The product capabilities and technical ecology of the Chinese enterprise service sector still need time to develop and are relatively immature. In the Chinese market, the difficulty of hyperautomation may lie in "how to truly understand what hyperautomation can do for customers", that is, the real way of landing in the Chinese market. After thinking about this level clearly, we can manage the product form and product portfolio well.
The reason why the Chinese market is emphasized is that when Hongji Cyclone developed into the deep water area, it became more and more aware of the characteristics of the Chinese market. For example, the COE product of the Center of Excellence, the initial design of the product is relatively international, but domestic customers generally understand it. For RPA Zhongtai, Zhongtai itself is a concept unique to the Chinese market. In our COE Center of Excellence, the actual product functions are more complicated than those of overseas competitors. When you log in, you will see different interfaces in different application scenarios. It is based on customers in different industries and combined with a series of different product needs. .
Today's domestic market is a very good soil, and Chinese startups can provide customers with some relatively advanced enterprise software. Some customers have said, "I used to like to use foreign software, but today we prefer to choose a Chinese software." Hongji was selected into Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave at the same time, which reflects the market's recognition of the quality of our products.
In addition, the cognitive ability of B-end customers has improved very quickly, and many ideas have already reflected the advanced nature.
Therefore, whether it is the future trend of the RPA industry or the future development of ultra-automation, Hongji Cyclone must accurately and soberly keep an eye on the customer needs of the Chinese market and understand customer thinking.

Conclusion:
In the field of To B, long-termism is political correctness in a certain sense, but it is easier said than done, and there are not many business leaders who truly have a global perspective, are willing to invest in the future, and constantly self-feedback and self-correction.
A stereotype of long-termism: Long-termism = slow growth + conservative strategic decisions + lack of energy in the team. Gao Yuguang, who has been at the helm of Hongji Cyclone and has achieved rapid development for three years, is enough to prove that this view is a thousand miles away: when the strategic value anchored by a company is deep enough and thick enough, as long as it moves forward firmly and avoids mistakes, every inch it walks out is the first step. Speed from a three-way perspective.
The dimensions of thinking are different, and the scale of achievement will be very different.
Since To B is a marathon, grasp the rhythm of each stage, strictly implement tactical discipline, avoid stumbling and detours, and the final result is naturally the highest speed.