He is the industry leader of consumer drones, accounting for 70% of the global market; he is the first billionaire in the global drone industry, with a fortune of $28 billion; Xinjiang Innovation†is leading the global drone revolution in a low-key manner; he is only 37 years old this year, and according to the “2017 Hurun Global Young Zhuang Self-made Rich List†released by the Hurun Research Institute recently, the 40-year-old and below and self-made rich list Only 47 billionaires are found in the world. He is Wang Tao.
To a certain extent, in the process of exploring the upgrading of China's manufacturing industry from low-end to high-end and from manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing during the 40 years of reform and opening up, "DJI Innovation" is undoubtedly a microcosm.
How the dark horse is raised
"Starting a business in a warehouse of less than 20 square meters, during which I experienced the shortage of funds, the difficulties of a small workshop, the disintegration of the entrepreneurial team, and the bottleneck of the main product sales..."
This is what Wang Tao experienced in 2006 when he founded Shenzhen DJI Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "DJI") for two or three years. It is also the self-portrait of most entrepreneurs. The future is uncertain, and every little thing may make the company Closed down.
But it is such a small company, from the initial 20 people to the current 12,000 people; from the warehouse startup to 17 offices in 7 countries around the world, and a sales network in more than 100 countries around the world; in 11 years, It has completed the journey of sales from 0 yuan to 18 billion yuan, and has become a unicorn that occupies 70% of the global market share of consumer drones. "Products capable of leading the trend of global science and technology" label, which has attached the labels of "high-end" and "taste" to China's intelligent manufacturing in the world.
Most of the grassroots entrepreneurial teams have a similar self-portrait, but the endings are very different.
In an interview with the media, Lu Zhihui, one of the former entrepreneurial partners, talked about the success of DJI, "I always thought that because of Wang Tao's wealthy family background, he could concentrate on research and development without making a profit for a year. If you are not satisfied, you won’t sell it, so you can have today’s technical reserves.†Later, retracing the growth path of DJI, Lu Zhihui felt that Wang Tao's vision is very important for the success of DJI. "Wang Tao knows how to make things, and he knows how to use resources to keep doing the right things. He is the kind of person who never gives up in order to figure out something, no matter how troublesome it is."
In 2006, Wang Tao started the business process of "commercialization of flight control system" in a warehouse of less than 20 square meters in Shenzhen with the flight control system research that won the award in the RoboCon Asia-Pacific Robot Competition for College Students.
For almost a whole year, Wang Tao and his entrepreneurial team have been immersed in product research, no marketing, and a few people huddled in a room to study the flight control system together. "DJI didn't have any business model at that time, it was to make products and sell them in forums of model aircraft enthusiasts at home and abroad such as 'I Love Models'," recalled Wang Tao. In 2006, DJI's first product sold for 50,000 yuan, and the cost was only 15,000 yuan. For more than two years, DJI has operated like a small workshop.
It has to be said that "devoting ourselves to products and pursuing excellence and perfection for products and technologies" also made the company's funds in trouble at a certain stage, but it never changed Wang Tao's almost paranoid pursuit of product perfection. When the outside world asked about the secret of DJI's success, Wang Tao's answer was to always pursue excellence, no matter how much output, never make second-class products.
"I am the person who makes the product, I just want to make the product well and let more people use it." Wang Tao, a paranoid who pursues perfection and excellence in products, also brings this value and culture to the company. In 2015, Wang Tao took the eight words of "extremely ambitious, seeking truth and sincerity" as DJI's motto, and regarded it as the core of corporate culture.
Wang Tao used to have two roles in DJI, CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and CTO (Chief Technology Officer). Some people think that he is not a qualified CEO. He rarely faces the media, rarely participates in public activities, or even absent from product launches. After 2016, he was almost too low-key.
In 2015, Wang Tao said in an interview with Forbes: "Now I do more management work, as for my favorite products. , I had to rely on my colleagues."
However, between the CEO and CTO, Wang Tao still chose to be his favorite CTO. Luo Zhenhua, who joined DJI in 2015, became the president in August 2017. "Wang Tao can concentrate on what he loves and is very good at, and we help him deal with many other things." Luo Zhenhua said in an interview with the media.
Do dozens of multiple-choice questions correctly
"Whether Wang Tao is smarter than others, I don't know," said Li Zexiang, his graduate tutor. "However, people with excellent academic performance are not necessarily outstanding at work."
When Wang Tao was a child, he read a comic book, "Grandpa with Brains," in which a red helicopter was drawn. Wang Tao, who was less than 10 years old, was deeply attracted. He wishes he could make an identical helicopter and travel with him.
Perhaps for the sake of ideals, Wang Tao is used to coming to the office at eleven or twelve in the evening to start work. When inspired, he will pick up the phone and communicate with employees. This habit has been retained, and many DJI executives still often receive midnight calls from their bosses.
Of course, the departing employees don't like being woken up in the middle of the night, and Wang Tao can hardly trust them. A former DJI employee named Hou Zhigang claimed that Wang Tao asked employees to write "The Times" reporting what they did every hour. And Wang Tao admitted in an interview with Forbes in 2015 that he is a perfectionist, so it causes a lot of friction when communicating with other people.
The second batch of three or four employees who joined DJI left the company around 2008. Although they all expressed no regrets, objectively, they lost an opportunity for financial freedom.
In 2010, DJI learned from the agent in New Zealand that some personal enthusiasts put the system on the multi-rotor aircraft, but the multi-rotor UAV products on the market found that none of them were perfect enough. At this time, Wang Tao helped DJI make an important choice - jumping out of the comfort zone of model aircraft products, marching into finished aircraft for commercial use, and developing multi-rotor UAVs.
Wang Fan, director of public relations at DJI, said that at that time, the company made two multiple-choice questions. The first is that DJI will continue to sell accessories - the flight controller is also an accessory - or will it be a complete machine? The second multiple-choice question is: If the whole machine is made, is it a fixed wing, a helicopter, or a multi-axis? There is a debate within the team on these two multiple-choice questions. "Because there is no reference sample, you don't know what the whole machine will look like. To be honest, you can't see the prospect at all when you do multi-axis, and it is very risky without any reference."
At this time, Wang Tao made a decision: do multi-axis.
Because of the mature technology accumulated in the past few years, a few months after the decision was made, DJI produced the finished product and quickly occupied 70% of the market share. The plane took off.
This is an important moment in the development of DJI. The key to making the right choice is, of course, Wang Tao. This is not the first time Wang Tao has reversed course for DJI. In the previous small workshop stage, DJI’s products were mainly sold to some state-owned enterprises, and the latter’s demand for purchasing products was mainly for demonstrations to leaders. "They bought a machine, we sent a group of people to show it to him, and then the leaders put it on the shelf after reading it, and they gave us 200,000 yuan." Although the money is easy to make, Wang Tao realizes that the company's hope of expanding cannot rely on this simple way of making money, "This is not in line with my direction. I am a product maker, I just want to make the product well, so that more multiple people to use."
This is reminiscent of Wang Shi's proposal that "more than 25% of the profit is not profitable". After that, DJI did dozens of multiple-choice questions. Wang Fan said, "These dozens of multiple-choice questions are basically done right, and DJI has come to this point."
Start a business like a "hard ball"
In Hardball: This is How Politics Works, author Chris Matthews uses the term "hardball" to describe the pragmatic, daring tactics used by politicians for power and achievement.
This term also applies to Wang Tao. In the competition with its peers, it is not an easy opponent to deal with.
Like Apple, DJI's fame is largely due to Wang Tao's accurate grasp of the needs of the personal consumer market. This is also the key to DJI's ability to occupy the market, and it is also the extremely flying and zero-degree presentation that allows DJI and its subsequent entry into the drone market. Different development trends, and quickly get rid of competitors, quickly occupy a dominant share in the field of personal consumption.
Jobs once said, "Markets don't need research because customers don't know what they want until you give them what they want."
In January 2013, the DJI "Genie" drone officially entered the mass consumer market.
Before "Genie", DJI's main products were aimed at the professional aerial photography market, and the products were difficult to operate and relatively expensive.
Wang Tao soon realized that he may not have an advantage in the competition in the professional field. The original intention of launching the "Genie" was to prevent competitors from launching price wars. "We wanted to make a cost-effective product that could take off at any time without the need for players to assemble themselves. The main consideration at the time was that this product could enter the low-end market before our competitors, and we didn't want to make money." Wang Tao said in an earlier interview with the media.
This move expanded the market space for consumer drones, and soon the entry-level “Genie†surpassed other professional-level equipment from DJI and became a star product.
The grade of the product needs to be polished repeatedly, and the polishing process is bound to be very painful. In the internal WeChat work group, Wang Tao once shared a sentence from Jobs' "Lost Interviews": "The real magic is to use 5,000 ideas to grind out a product. To turn a good idea into a good product, it takes a lot of processing.â€
The emergence of "elves" also prompted the re-integration of personnel distribution in the aerial photography market.
In the past, the threshold for aerial photography was relatively high and required professionals to complete it. "In the past, aerial photography had to have at least three divisions of labor: flight, gimbal operator, and ground support. After DJI launched the 'Genie', many people can do aerial photography by buying a GoPro, and the market entry threshold is lowered." Zhu Qiuyang, founder of Tianxiang Aviation Technology, told reporters that the impact of the professional aerial photography team forced many aerial photographers to seek technical transformation.
In addition to the aircraft, the camera is an important part of the entire component. In this segment, DJI's competitor is GoPro, known for its action cameras. At first, Wang Tao hoped to cooperate with GoPro to develop a product and put it on GoPro for sale, but the two could not reach a consensus on the final cooperation.
"They (GoPro) treat us as equipment suppliers, but DJI is not an ordinary OEM." In an interview with Forbes, Wang Tao said that the profit sharing could not be agreed upon, and more importantly, that they would not be treated equally during the cooperation process. Therefore, after the "Phantom 2", DJI gave up the use of GoPro cameras.
Subsequently, Wang Tao obtained chips of the same quality as those used by GoPro from chip suppliers. Starting from the "Phantom 3", DJI used its own photography equipment on the series. Soon, "Genie 2" was eliminated by DJI. On the Tmall flagship store, currently only the third and fourth generation products of the "Genie" series are on sale.
The world is chasing a Chinese company
He works more than 80 hours a week and has a single bed next to his desk. On Wang Tao's office door were two lines of Chinese characters - "with only the brain" and "without emotion".
He is principled, fiery, and quite rational. Now, as the head of DJI with 4,000 employees, he does not dare to slack off, and his work attitude is just as meticulous as when he founded DJI in the dormitory of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2006.
In the company's internal management, Wang Tao has always maintained a tough style. "The boss is guided by quality products, and he will directly scold 'what kind of rubbish is this' for things that are not well designed." said Luo Wen, a technician who has left DJI, "This kind of strictness also allows employees to quickly growing up."
DJI insists on a rapid elimination work model. The company encourages employees to work overtime, and directly dismiss employees with poor performance. Such a working mode and a working atmosphere advocating the "wolf spirit" seem to be very inhumane, but on the other hand, it has also fostered a sense of fierce competition among employees. "In DJI, it's really hard for glass hearts to survive." Another ex-employee revealed.
From product design to internal management, it all depends on Wang Tao's decision, and his arbitrary personality allows DJI to make quick decisions. This kind of arbitrary management has also left a group of people who really do things for DJI, which has promoted the rapid development of startup companies.
His success is a rare case in the history of technology development.
A company whose target audience has gone from hobbyist to mainstream user, and has managed to dominate the market in the process, is a rare success story in the history of the tech industry.
In 2014, DJI sold about 400,000 drones. From 2009 to 2014, DJI's sales grew at a rate of two to three times a year, making it one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. Investors believe that DJI can maintain that dominance for years to come.
In 2015, DJI's net profit increased from $8 million in 2012 to $250 million. Today, DJI has a 70% share of the global consumer drone market.
Skeptics scoffed when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos promised to deliver drones to his door, but drones are becoming the "next big thing" in the tech industry. And now all competitors are catching up with DJI.
DJI's next challenge is industrial-grade drone products. According to Luo Zhenhua's recent speech, "Industrial specifications are far more complex than consumer electronics specifications, and we need more reliable design redundancy and performance redundancy. In different environments, we must achieve waterproof and dustproof, high temperature and low temperature resistance, Antimagnetic, etc., as well as customization and integration in specific industrial applications. Only when the level of consumer electronics has been the most stable and mature can we do this kind of challenge.†Luo Zhenhua explained that, in the same way, at the beginning of making industrial-grade products, whether it is the industrial specification requirements of the product itself, or the application of UAV products to industry and agriculture, you will not be able to make money until you fully understand the industry. . The industrial application of drones is a brand new field, and there is absolutely no experience to learn from before. Is this DJI asking for hardships, or is it opening up a new world again? let us wait and see.
Epilogue
DJI may become the first Chinese company to lead the development trend of the whole industry. It is because of this dominance that some media have compared DJI to Apple - but Wang Tao doesn't seem to care much about this praise.
"I appreciate some of Steve's ideas, but there is no one person in the world that I really admire."
The Wall Street Journal called DJI "the first Chinese company to become a pioneer in the world's major technology consumer products."
On the website of DJI, there were words that moved people to tears: "I often think that the emperor wears the so-called most beautiful new clothes, but only children dare to point out the truth. There are so many problems in today's society, But there are no children who dare to criticize loudly."
In fact, there is no success that can be achieved without hard work, no wealth that can be obtained only by PPT, and no high technology that falls from the sky. The pursuit of excellence requires countless late nights of contemplation, 72 hours of continuous work, and the courage to speak the truth out loud.
DJI's experience has proved that a young man who is just starting out does not try to flatter or opportunistically, as long as he works steadily, he will surely achieve success. It is believed that those who return to common sense and respect struggle will eventually see the opportunities of the times and ultimately change the world.
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