Entrepreneurial story of Wang Tao, founder of DJI _ Entrepreneurial story about Wang Tao of DJI
He is the industry leader of consumer drones, accounting for 70% of the global market share; He is a 1 billionaire in the global drone industry. He found it in the dormitory? DJI innovation? Is quietly leading the global drone revolution. 35-year-old Wang Tao, as a dark horse, became the richest self-made rich man after 1980s with a net worth of 30 billion yuan.
Rejected studying abroad, no goal, starting a business from the dormitory.
Wang Tao, 1980, a native of Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Because of his good family, he liked model airplanes since he was a child. He once got a remote-controlled helicopter from his father. In his imagination, the helicopter is like an elf that can be manipulated at will. It can hover in the air and fly wherever it wants, but in fact it is not the case at all. The uncontrollable helicopter crashed shortly after taking off, and the rapidly rotating propeller left a scar on his hand.
? At that time, I wanted to make something that could automatically control the flight of helicopters? After finishing high school in Hangzhou, Wang Tao was admitted to the Electronic Department of East China Normal University. In his junior year, Wang Tao, unwilling to be mediocre, dropped out of East China Normal University and applied for a world-class university. His goals were Stanford and MIT, but both were rejected. In the end, only the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology issued an admission notice, where he studied in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering.
In 2005, at the age of 25, I began to study the flight control system of a remote-controlled helicopter without a goal in life. Wang Tao, who started preparing his graduation project, decided to take the flight control system of the remote-controlled helicopter as his graduation project. He found two classmates to persuade the teacher to agree with their research direction. The core problem he wants to solve still stems from his childhood dream of letting the model airplane fly freely.
With the funding of HK$ 6.5438+0.8 million from the school, Wang Tao and others have been busy for half a year. However, in the final demonstration stage, the plane that should have hovered in the air fell down, and the failed graduation project got a C. This poor performance even made him lose the opportunity to go to a famous European Union school for further study.
Fortunately, Wang Tao's dedication was recognized by a professor and he was able to continue his postgraduate studies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. During his study, he took two students who worked together on graduation design and founded DJI Innovation Technology Company in Shenzhen, and began to focus on the research and development of helicopter flight control system.
? I think there is something childish in my character. What I like since I was a child is that I hope it can become a reality? .
From three people in the residential building to 4000+ employees.
In order to do research, Wang Tao gave everything, even skipping classes and staying up until 5 am. Finally, he made a prototype of the flight controller in the dormitory. In 2006, he and two classmates came to Shenzhen, the manufacturing center of China, and in a residential building, they officially started the road of changing the world.
At the end of 2006, the company was in crisis. Lu Di, an old friend of Wang Tao's family, generously donated $90,000 (Wang Tao said this was the only time in DJI's history that external funds were needed) to help DJI tide over the difficulties. Later, Lu Di went to DJI to take charge of financial work, and today he has become one of DJI's largest shareholders. Forbes calculated that his 65,438+06% shares will soon be worth $6,543,806 billion.
In 2008, the first mature product interview. The first mature helicopter flight control system XP3. 1 developed by him came out.
20 10, an important figure Xie Jia joined DJI. Xie Jia is Wang Tao's middle school classmate. After joining, she played an important role in the development of DJI. She is in charge of marketing and an important assistant of Wang Tao. He once sold his house and invested in DJI. Today, his 14% share is estimated to be worth 1400 million USD.
20 1 1, DJI north America branch was established. Quinn, an American, ran a start-up company engaged in aerial photography at that time, and later helped DJI set up a DJI North American branch in Texas, aiming to introduce drones to the mass market. At that time, he proposed a new slogan for the company:? The future is everything? (possible future)
At the end of 20 12, before dawn. DJI already has all the elements needed for a complete UAV: software, propeller, bracket, balance ring and remote control.
20 13 1 month, released? DJI elves? . This is the first pre-assembled quadrotor aircraft that can take off at any time: it can fly within one hour after unpacking, and the first fall will not cause disintegration. Because of its simplicity and ease of use, DJI elves? Incited the non-professional drone market.
Non-standardized CEO
In DJI, Wang Tao has two identities, one is CEO and the other is CTO.
It is difficult to define whether he is a qualified CEO. He rarely faces the media directly, rarely participates in public activities, and even misses the press conference. But for products and technology, Wang Tao is almost paranoid to pursue? Perfect? This word.
Two years ago, Wang Tao said in an interview: I am a product manufacturer. I just want to make the product well and let more people use it. ?
In the early days of DJI, Wang Tao made a wish list. According to the characteristics of UAV, the three problems of stability, clarity and transmission distance were solved, and the later product line of DJI was launched according to this list.
The three problems in this list correspond to the three technologies of DJI: pan/tilt, aerial photography and transmission system.
? In the past, there were many inconveniences in the operation experience of drones, which blocked a large number of ordinary consumers from the door. We believe that with the technical accumulation of DJI, we can launch a highly integrated product to solve this pain point and create value in one fell swoop. The success of Phantom Series proves that our decision is correct. ? Wang Wei said.
? What does he emphasize most in the company? Smell? Two words. ? In our father's generation, China has always lacked products that can impress the world, and China manufacturing has always been unable to get rid of the situation of gaining market by cost-effective advantage. In this era, successful enterprises should have different ideas and values, and is DJI willing to focus on making really good products to reverse this less proud status quo? .
This is more reflected in the simple style of products and the company as a whole.
The grasp of taste permeates the company. Company employees sometimes supply fruits every afternoon, and the pictures of these fruits are processed by the administrative staff to ensure the quality of the pictures.
Michael, a partner of Sequoia Capital? MichaelMoritz once wrote on his Linkedin:? DJI's Elf 2Vision is basically equivalent to a flying AppleII. ?
DJI also relies on products to enter the American market and become a brand comparable to Apple.
Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, is one of the few people that Wang Tao appreciates. He compared himself to Jobs? Great minds think alike? . ? He has many excellent qualities, and his practices and ideas have also brought me a lot of inspiration. Naturally, I will love my house and my dog. ? Wang Wei told reporters.
Unlike most CEOs, Wang Tao rarely appears in public to talk about products. He and DJI's public relations team controlled the public's access to this information because they were afraid that the public would pay too much attention to Wang Tao personally, thus distracting them from the product.
This taboo even goes far beyond the average CEO. He even missed the launch of DJI products, from Elf series to Osmo with pan-tilt camera, and then to agricultural and forestry plant protection drones. At every epoch-making press conference, Wang Tao often only lives in press releases.
For Wang Tao, the product contains everything he has to say. Whether the public accepts it or likes it, he is not prepared to defend his story and mental journey during research and development.
Today, DJI's sales have exceeded 6 billion yuan, and Wang Tao was rated by Forbes as the richest man in drones worth more than $ 1 billion last year. However, he still maintains his original dress habits: he usually wears a shirt and a sweater when it is cold, and only wears a suit when receiving important visitors or attending formal occasions, and the iconic cap is always with him.
Choose an accomplice
? Now some companies are keen on self-hype, and they also regard themselves as role models for the public. They rely on business skills, but rarely pursue business ethics. ? When the reporter asked about the current financing situation of DJI, Wang Tao said this.
According to the data of American database website CrunchBase, DJI completed two rounds of financing in May 20 14 and May 20 15 respectively. The latest round of financing is $75 million, led by AccelPartner, a famous American venture capital institution.
Unlike other entrepreneurs, Wang Tao has basically done nothing since he first founded DJI. Money? What I've been worried about. For investors, Wang Tao has only one requirement: to understand DJI and his products.
Wang Tao's first supporter was his teacher Li Zexiang in HKUST. He was an early consultant and investor of DJI innovation, and now he is the chairman of the board of directors of the company. Last year, he also held 65,438+00% shares.
In the initial stage of the company, Wang Tao earned his first pot of gold by relying on the helicopter autonomous hovering system model developed in his student days. Because of the scarcity of technology, a model can be sold for tens of thousands of yuan at that time, while a single product of DJI can be sold for more than 200 thousand yuan. At that time, the product had not yet reached the practical stage, and its main function was to let the leaders of large state-owned enterprises show their functions.
In this deformed business model, Wang Tao can't see the development prospect.
From the mouth of the New Zealand agent, I learned that some individual enthusiasts installed the system on multi-rotor aircraft. Seeing the new market potential, Wang Tao decided to change the research and development direction and put the autonomous hovering system on the multi-rotor aircraft to enhance its practicality.
The other two major shareholders of DJI are closely related to Wang Tao. They joined DJI when they needed funds most in the early days and held important positions in the company. The DJI shares held by the two men rose with the valuation of DJI. According to Forbes, their shares have exceeded $654.38 billion.
Perhaps Wang Tao himself is not good at the operation of the capital market, or perhaps he wants to give DJI to someone he trusts. Since its establishment, DJI has not accepted many institutional investors.
Wang Tao doesn't want investors to control the pace of DJI marketization. After Sequoia leads the DJI A round, DJI will launch the overseas listing plan? DJI responded that he has been focusing on products for at least five years and has no plans to go public.
Wang Tao is very disdainful of the practice of speculating on the concept to gain capital attention. ? These practices are nothing more than trying to get some benefits from the blind influx of capital. Isn't DJI a family? B2VC？ 、? B2 shareholders? Company. ? Wang Wei said.
In May last year, DJI announced the completion of $75 million Series B financing, which was led by AccelPartner, a famous American venture capital institution.
Subsequently, DJI announced the launch of SkyFund, the world's first UAV fund, in conjunction with Accel***, to provide all-round support including capital, technology and other resources to leading start-ups including robot software and hardware, computer vision and navigation, multimedia tools and communities, especially to entrepreneurs who use DJISDK(DJI Software Development Toolkit) to develop applications such as survey, imaging, agriculture and detection.
In the book "Hard Ball: That's how politics is played", the author Chris? For ChrisMatthews? Hard ball? This word describes the pragmatic and bold means used by politicians for power and achievement.
This word also applies to Wang Tao, who is not an easy opponent in the competition with his peers.
Like Apple, DJI's fame is largely due to Wang Tao's accurate grasp of the personal consumption market demand, which is also the key for DJI to occupy the market. Let DJI present a development trend that is different from the flying and zero degree that later entered the drone market, and quickly get rid of competitors and quickly occupy a leading share in the field of personal consumption.
Jobs once said:? The market doesn't need research, because customers don't know what they want until you give them what they want. ?
October, DJI? Elves? Drones officially entered the mass consumer market.
? The success of DJI lies in that it has created the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) market, and everyone is catching up with DJI. Before DJI, UAVs were all used in professional fields, with high degree of specialization, high operating threshold and expensive products, which made UAVs unable to be popularized. DJI expanded drones to the level of ordinary consumers and quickly created a brand-new market. ? Dr. Wang Xin, global partner of yost Sullivan and president of Greater China, told China Business News.
Are you online? Elves? Previously, DJI's main products were aimed at the professional aerial photography market, which was difficult to operate and relatively expensive.
Wang Tao soon realized that he might not have an advantage in the contest in the professional field. Elves? The original intention is to prevent competitors from launching price wars. ? We want to make a cost-effective product that can take off at any time without the player's own assembly. At that time, the main consideration was that this product could enter the low-end machine market before our competitors and did not want to make money. ? Wang Tao said in an interview with the media earlier.
This move expands the market space of consumer-grade drones, and will soon be entry-level? Elves? In terms of sales volume, it surpassed other professional equipment of DJI and became a star product.
The taste of the product needs to be polished repeatedly, and the polishing process is bound to be very painful. In the internal WeChat working group, Wang Tao once shared a sentence in Jobs's Lost Interview:? The real magic is to polish a product with 5000 ideas. It takes a lot of processing to turn a good idea into a good product? .
? Elves? The emergence of "aerial photography market" has also prompted the re-integration of personnel distribution.
In the past, the threshold of aerial photography was high and needed to be completed by professionals. ? In the past, aerial photography had to be divided into at least three people: flight, pan-tilt hand and ground support. Was it introduced by DJI? Elves? After that, many people can do aerial photography by buying a GoPro, and the market entry threshold is reduced. ? Zhu Qiuyang, founder of Tian Xiang Aviation Technology, told reporters. The impact on the professional aerial photography team forced many aerial photographers to seek technological transformation.
Besides the airplane, the camera is an important part of the whole assembly. In this link, DJI's competitor is GoPro, which is famous for its sports cameras. At first, Wang Tao hoped to cooperate with GoPro to develop a product and put it on the market, but the two brands could not reach an understanding on the final cooperation.
? They (GoPro) regard us as an equipment supplier, but DJI is not an ordinary original equipment manufacturer. ? In an interview with Forbes, Wang Tao said that it was impossible to reach an agreement on profit sharing, and more importantly, it was not treated equally in the process of cooperation. So, in? Elf 2? After that, DJI gave up using the GoPro camera.
Subsequently, Wang Tao won the same quality chips used by GoPro among chip suppliers. Elf 3? At first, DJI used his own photographic equipment in this series. Soon? Elf 2? Was eliminated by DJI and is currently in Tmall flagship store? Elves? Only the third and fourth generation products are on sale.
Workaholics like Steve Jobs.
He works more than 80 hours a week, and there is only a single bed at his desk.
There are two Chinese characters written on the door of Wang Tao's office? Only brains? (People with brains only) What else? Without feelings? Don't bring feelings in.
He abides by principles, and his words are fierce and quite rational. Now, as the head of DJI with 4,000 employees, he dare not slack off, and his work attitude is as meticulous as when he founded DJI in HKUST's dormitory in 2006.
In the internal management of the company, Wang Tao has always maintained a tough style.
? The boss takes the fine products as a mirror and will directly scold the poorly designed things? What kind of rubbish is this? . ? Tan (pseudonym), a technician who has left DJI, said? This harshness also allows employees to grow rapidly. ?
DJI adheres to the rapid elimination mode. The company encourages employees to work overtime and directly dismisses employees with poor performance. This working mode and admiration? Wolf? The spiritual working atmosphere looks inhuman, but on the other hand, it also cultivates employees' awareness of fierce competition. ? Blx is really hard to survive in DJI. ? Another employee who left the company revealed.
Three years ago, DJI started to host the RoboMasters robot contest. Although this competition has nothing to do with its main business, DJI has invested a lot of money to undertake it. At first, DJI had two plans for RoboMasters: one was to continue to hold it in the form of a small-scale summer camp; The second is to undertake heavy money and push it to the whole country. The final decision is entirely up to Wang Tao.
As the founder, Wang Tao's fierce rhetoric and arbitrary personality also made DJI lose its team in the initial stage, and the first batch of employees left almost two years after the company was established.
? Maybe they have doubts about the future development. I used to be a perfectionist. I didn't know how to express myself when communicating with people, which easily hurt their feelings. ? In an interview with Forbes, Wang Tao once admitted that after the establishment of the company, he encountered many difficulties in distributing equity to three or four team members, and his insistence that equity distribution should be equal to employees' contributions made team members dissatisfied. ? The employees who got a small number of shares could not accept it and left. Some members wanted to transfer some of their shares to others, but I refused. The angry words said at that time hurt their feelings. ?
From product design to internal management, it depends on Wang Tao's decision. His arbitrary character enables DJI to make a decision quickly. This arbitrary management mode also left a group of people who really worked for DJI, which promoted the rapid development of startups.
The whole world is chasing a China company.
His success is a rare case in the history of scientific and technological development.
A company's target audience has changed from amateurs to mainstream users, and it can still occupy a dominant position in the market in this process. This successful case is rare in the history of the development of science and technology industry.
In 20 14, DJI sold about 400,000 drones. From 2009 to 20 14, DJI's sales increased by two or three times every year, and it has become one of the fastest growing companies in the world. Investors believe that DJI can still maintain this dominant position in the next few years.
In 20 15, the innovation net profit of DJI increased from 8 million dollars in 20 12 to 250 million dollars. Today, DJI has a share of 70% in the global consumer drone market.
When Amazon CEO Jeff? When Jeff Bezos promised to deliver drones to your door, skeptics were cynical, but drones are becoming a technology industry? The next big event? Now all the competitors are chasing DJI.
In the first five years, I grew up in a boudoir, unknown; In the past five years, I have won a big name. DJI with a history of 10 years has a valuation of over 10 billion USD.
DJI may become the first China enterprise to lead the development trend of the whole industry. It is precisely because of this dominant position that some media also compare DJI with Apple, but Wang Tao doesn't seem to care much about this praise.
? I appreciate some of Jobs' ideas, but there is no one in the world that I really admire? .
The wall street journal called DJI? The first China enterprise to become a pioneer in the world's major technology consumer goods? .
On DJI's innovative official website, there is such a tearful text:
I often think that the emperor is wearing the so-called most beautiful new clothes, and only children dare to point out the truth. There are so many problems in today's society, but no children dare to criticize loudly.
In fact, there is no success that can be achieved without hard work, no wealth that can be achieved only by PPT, and no high technology that falls from the sky. The pursuit of Excellence requires countless nights of hard thinking, 72 hours of continuous work, and the courage to speak the truth out loud.
Our experience has proved that a fledgling young man will succeed if he does things in a down-to-earth manner instead of pandering and opportunistic. We believe that those who return to common sense and respect the struggle will eventually gain insight into the opportunities of the times and eventually change the world.
There are more than 10000 companies registered in China every day, and 7 companies can be established on average 1 minute. However, we can never have too many entrepreneurial teams like innovation, and we will always welcome entrepreneur Tao, because this is the future and hope of China enterprises.
The following are his two entrepreneurial insights:
Wang Tao said that he waved a 450-year-old Japanese mountain city and cut an unlucky business card. He said that when Shancheng cut the business card into pieces? Japanese craftsmen are constantly pursuing perfection. China people are rich, but their products and services are poor. If you want to make a good product, you must pay a higher price. ?
? I admire Steve, okay? Some of Jobs' ideas, but there is nothing in this world that I really admire. All you have to do is be smarter than others, which requires you to keep your distance from the public. If you can create this distance, you have succeeded. ?