Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1806
When a person who studied computers in the late 70s and early 80s started a business in his 20s, he would catch up with the Internet bubble in China at the beginning of the century. He has a lot of opportunities to choose from: from social networking, games to mobile applications, the first product can be made by only a few people in these fields, and the legend of tens of billions of companies in a garage or an apartment has been staged several times.
Even if he chooses a direction that is more difficult and has a longer cycle, such as consumer electronics hardware, he still has more room for trial and error. Established in 2006, DJI experienced turmoil and twists and turns in its early years, and gradually stabilized after launching the first-generation Phantom drone seven years later.
However, the young founders born in the 90s face a completely different situation: from 2015 to 2020, when they started to concentrate on entrepreneurship, there is nothing that others have not done, and there is no need that has not been touched by the predecessors. There are already giants in the mainstream big track, and the new technology has not been converted into commercial dividends so quickly. How to start at this time, how to survive, how to succeed?
Liu Jingkang presents a possible answer. He was born in 1991 and founded Shadowstone Innovation (Shadowstone Insta360) at the age of 24. Three years later, Shadowstone became the world’s largest panoramic camera shipment in 2018, defeating South Korea’s Samsung, which has accumulated a long history of imaging products. and Ricoh Japan. If the scope is expanded to sports cameras, Shadowstone is also putting a lot of pressure on the global pioneer in this field, GoPro, which has been established for 20 years and has an annual revenue of 1 billion US dollars. The sales of Shadowstone exceeded 2 billion yuan last year. , Reaching about 1/3 of GoPro, the share temporarily ranks second in the world of action cameras, and is still rising.
In this success story, the more told part is the labels that often accompany young founders: creativity, adventure, love, and imagination. Liu Jingkang does have this side: he once “cracked” the mobile phone number of Zhou Hongyi, the godfather of network security, by listening to the sound of keys. He was almost expelled from Nanjing University because he hacked into the mailbox system of the teaching staff and published the test answers online in advance. He didn’t need to take the test, which was more like a self-proof. His favorite cartoon character is Hello Kitty, for which he made a joint camera with Kitty cat. Over the past five years, he’s given out 16 cars, including Porsches, to employees at annual meetings. The most important users of Shadowstone, extreme sports enthusiasts such as skiing and diving, and various content creators also have similar traits of daring to imagine and love to toss. For example, some users will bite the small waterproof camera of the shadow stone with their mouths to shoot the scene of the coffee entrance.
But that’s not the whole story. Due to the later departure, it is not enough to discover needs and create products only driven by love. GoPro founder Nick Woodman got the idea for an action camera while battling the waves in Australia, just after the turn of the millennium. Liu Jingkang neither surfs, skydives, nor skis, and even “has no great interest” in photography. He said that his greatest passion is creating tools, “creating tools that more people can use.”
He chose to start with imaging products because he was “born 20 years late” and must slowly accumulate core competencies in some relatively vertical markets. barrier. After the panoramic motion camera, Shadowstone has entered multiple video vertical markets, including the extremely small “thumb camera” GO series, mobile phone gimbals, and video conferencing cameras.
“It’s like a hunter looking for prey.” Liu Jingkang said that Yingshi will continue to enter the vertical Red Sea market with good gross profit and suitable market space, discover needs that others have not discovered, or solve problems that others cannot solve, and destroy existing heads .
This cannot rely on inspiration, but requires cumbersome and professional user demand research, engineering and technical reserves, coupled with supply chain management and marketing capabilities, and there must be no shortcomings in every link. Therefore, it does not depend on individual whimsy and ingenuity, but requires the cooperation of the team as a whole. Liu Jingkang spent a lot of energy to sort out these methods, especially to solve management and organizational problems. This is the other side of him and Yingshi: steady progress and hard work.
In the history of entrepreneurship in which many heroes have emerged in the past, companies with small markets like this are not in the center of the stage, but at this moment when opportunities are scarce, this may be a more suitable path for young entrepreneurs to fight monsters and upgrade: use what you can use Resources, balance gains and risks, continue to accumulate profits and capabilities in some vertical markets, and not rashly get involved in the cruelest competition.
Six years ago, Liu Jingkang came up with the idea of tying Shadowstone’s panoramic camera to an eagle to record the scenery the eagle sees when it is flying, and it flies once a year.
When looking at the world from a different perspective and way, where there seems to be no way, there will be a way forward.
Find prey like a hunter
“Later”: Shadowstone is now the world’s number one panoramic camera company. This is not a new market. You released your product in 2016, and by 2018, you surpassed the previous head companies Japan Ricoh and South Korea Samsung. How did you do it?
Liu Jingkang: I think there are two things. In terms of time, the first event happens first, but logically, the second event is the basis of the first event.
The first thing to sum up now is that we found and solved the pain points of the panoramic camera at that time. When we developed the first product Nano in 2016, the transmission and stitching of the panoramic camera were very slow. If you shoot 10 minutes of content, it takes 10 minutes to transfer it to the mobile phone, and it takes another 10 minutes to stitch it to see it. Compared with the instant experience of ordinary cameras, this process is very painful.
Nano did not use the Wi-Fi transmission routes of most companies such as Samsung and Ricoh at that time, but was directly plugged into the mobile phone; with software optimization, we can also cut the file into many parts, transfer a bit, spell a bit, Play a little bit instead of waiting for all the pictures to be transmitted before processing and splicing, which greatly saves time. That’s why our company is called Insta360. Insta means instant, and this is our starting point.
Nano is the first product launched by Insta360, and won the 2017 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Innovation Award.
But doing this first thing is not a necessary and sufficient condition for our share to increase, but a necessary condition. In fact, we, Ricoh and Samsung did not study a problem thoroughly: when do customers need panoramic cameras the most, that is to say, what is the target group and target scene?
As a result, although the Nano experience was very good and the volume quickly increased, after the goods were sold to the dealers, they could not be sold to consumers quickly. In the summer of 2016 when we just launched Nano, our revenue reached RMB 20 million a month, but soon fell to several million a month. The core reason is that consumers have no concept of panoramic cameras.
So the second thing we did was to find the target customers and scenes of the panoramic camera. Through our Facebook fan base, we found that quite a few people would take a panorama while skiing, mountain biking, or downhill. We started to switch from panorama to action camera, which is the later Insta360 ONE and other series of products.
This is actually picking the fruit of GoPro. The founder of GoPro played surfing by himself, and the sports camera was originally to solve his own needs. The time cost and expense of surfing are very high, so people who go surfing have a great need to record and share this moment. The success of GoPro is also related to the rapid development of social media at that time. The cycle of the rise of the two is almost around 2013 and 2014. So when we came to cut sports cameras in 2017, GoPro had already popularized what sports cameras are to many extreme sports enthusiasts, and we just picked the fruit.
“Later”: It is equivalent to that you later created the market segment of “panoramic motion camera”.
Liu Jingkang: Yes, we were really the only ones back then. GoPro was an action camera, but it didn’t have a panoramic view; Samsung and Ricoh had a panoramic camera, but it didn’t move.
However, this is an afterthought summary, and the process is not so clear. To be more precise, what we did at the time was: adapt and optimize for sports groups and scenes. The next-generation product after the Nano has added a selfie stick, which can be used for handheld shooting and anti-shake, but still retains the interface plugged into the phone; it is not waterproof, and the battery cannot be replaced, which is very important for sports cameras. For example, if I go out to play today, one battery can’t last for a day, and there is no condition for halfway charging outdoors. We were starting the transition, but it didn’t come out as a full-blown action camera right away.
So in a more complete summary, the second thing is a PMF (product market fit) problem: find target customers and scenarios, and design products in a targeted manner. This is our forte.
“Later”: Later, Shadowstone launched the thumb camera GO series, mobile phone gimbal Flow, video conferencing camera Link and other products. What is the logic of category expansion?
Liu Jingkang: We have been copying the two things mentioned above: one is to find and solve the pain points of a category, and the other is to find target customers and scenarios, and do a good job of PMF; and we no longer do the second thing directly, Instead, enter an existing category.
It’s a bit like “hunters looking for prey”: if a category has already existed stably, and even has a head company, it means that it must have a stable target scene and customer base. Let’s start from here to see what unresolved problems in this category, and this is back to the first thing: find and solve the pain points.
“Later”: What is your criteria for selecting the category “prey”?
Liu Jingkang: In order of importance, first, there are obvious unresolved pain points or needs in this category; second, the gross profit of leading companies in this market is not bad, with about 50%; million yuan level.
Unresolved pain points or needs represent opportunities, and if you can solve them, you will be competitive. The good gross profit of the head company reflects that this industry has a certain threshold, and customer needs are more complicated, it is not so easy to understand, or it is more difficult to satisfy, so it is not easy to lower the price. The annual sales of tens of billions is that it will not be particularly small, and you can finish it casually; at the same time, it is not particularly large, so big companies look down on it. Action cameras, mobile phone gimbals and video conferencing cameras all meet these characteristics.
“Later”: How did you come up with this “hunter” development path?
Liu Jingkang: In 2019, we visited some Japanese and Chinese Taiwanese companies, including Sony, etc. They are all companies that have been in business for decades and have gone through multiple cycles.
I found that no business has supported them from their establishment to the present. The core business is changed every 5 or 6 years, but these businesses are interrelated and can inherit core capabilities. I see two keys here:
- The first is to be relatively focused. It will not be very detailed or general. You can’t do this today and do real estate tomorrow.
- The second is that there are changes in concentration, not one thing to the end. Because every business has a life cycle, in the last cycle, it is necessary to continuously capture the changes in demand and the extension of capacity supply.
I also want to be such a company. In the second year, we began to transition to a “matrix” organization, that is, on the basis of the original division of functions such as R&D and marketing, we set up virtual projects for different products and connected them horizontally and vertically to form a network, which can better support Multiple product development.
Now it has also been initially verified. We will start making video conferencing cameras in 2022, and the first product will be the top three in Amazon’s North American sales. This is a market where the average price is only 30 dollars, and we sell 300 dollars, the second only to our unit price may be 200 dollars, the top three in this case. This proves that the technologies and methods we have reserved can also achieve good results when they are released in other fields.
Discover the unspoken needs of users
“Later”: The success of the “hunter” strategy depends on whether you can do better than your opponent in “finding and solving unresolved pain points”. How can this be achieved?
Liu Jingkang: The first is that you can discover needs that others cannot see, and the second is that you can solve them.
Let me talk about mining needs first. Different from the mobile phones that solve the common needs of most people, the current panoramic motion cameras, including the various imaging products we will enter, are all aimed at vertical niche groups. So product managers and users are often not a group of people. Users may be skiing and skydiving enthusiasts, and our product manager may neither ski nor skydive, and these needs are in his blind spot.
How to see the problem in the blind spot? One way to do this is by doing detailed user research. We will divide users into many categories, such as different extreme sports enthusiasts, people who have bought different products, etc. For different groups of people, the information we collect and the questions we ask are different; we also conduct a lot of in-depth interviews, and the in-depth interviews are also conducted by category.
“Later”: In the survey questionnaire, did you design any unique questions?
Liu Jingkang: There are no special problems here, they are all routine problems. I think product insight is a professional issue, especially for vertical products. When the product manager itself is not the target user, it just reflects the professionalism of the product manager.
“Later”: We can talk about specific examples. For example, you pioneered the invisible selfie stick function. How did you come up with it?
The “Invisible Selfie Stick” function can automatically hide the selfie stick in the captured video, as if a third person is following the shot.
Liu Jingkang: The needs in vertical scenarios can be roughly divided into two types: one is ubiquitous, and the user can say it himself; the other is ubiquitous, but the user does not realize it until you give him the solution .
The invisible selfie stick belongs to the second type. Before our function, no one would complain about the selfie stick, but when we come up with this solution, the user finds that the whole picture is very refreshing, as if someone is following you, and he is very satisfied. And once he uses this function, he can’t go back.
There is a similar classic case in history, which is the Retina screen (retina screen with a pixel density of 326 pixels/inch) that was first used on the iPhone4. Before this, users of iPhone 3GS may not complain that the screen is not clear enough, but when Apple comes out with Retina, users will find that it is indeed different, and their habits cannot go back.
“Later”: The pain points that users can shout out can be discovered through research. How do you discover the pain points and needs that they are not aware of?
Liu Jingkang: First of all, new possibilities will emerge in the supply chain. The supply chain of imaging technology is very long, including mechanical structure, software, image processing, AI… The fields where these links are located often have new technologies, which may enable products to have some new functions.
Of course, not every function is what users need, and the method is not difficult, just try: find a nail with a hammer. This is not blind knocking. You can roughly analyze some directions by going back to the entire process of users using the product.
For example, when we were working on the editing function at the beginning, we also surveyed GoPro users. Their process is to download the entire video to the mobile phone before editing after shooting. The experience is very cumbersome. We can now edit directly after shooting without downloading to the mobile phone. This is achieved by some software engineering, which does not take up space on the mobile phone and saves users a lot of time.
It’s strange that when you asked GoPro users before, they wouldn’t complain about this point, but you can analyze it from the process. When we have this function, we will investigate users who bought both GoPro and Insta360 at the same time. They will think that this is one of the places where we are significantly better than GoPro.
Including Retina Why is it worth Apple’s investment? One of the reasons is that looking at the screen is a high-frequency operation when using a mobile phone. Except for listening to songs and making calls, you rarely use your mobile phone without the screen.
“A good product should be just right in every place”
“Later”: After discovering the demand, how can you meet the demand?
Liu Jingkang: One is that we know the clear needs of some users, and we also know feasible solutions, which will generally be solved in the next generation of products.
Another is that you know the direction of the demand, but the solution path is not so clear, so you need to reserve in advance. For example, the camera itself is not a complete solution for consumers’ needs. Assuming that a boy has a perfect camera, he probably still doesn’t know how to take a good picture of his girlfriend; if it’s a video, he still has the problem of not being able to edit and color the film, and not expressing it with the lens.
In other words, if a user is rich enough, he does not need a camera, but should find a follow-up photographer. The gap between a camera and a professional photographer is the direction of our technical reserves.
So since 2018, we have been working on automatic editing. An important part of editing is “picture selection”. Our editing software can now automatically identify many highlight moments, such as capturing the moment when the skateboard jumps, falls and flips, such as tracking a goal in a basketball game.
The AI automatic editing function can be realized in the Shadowstone App.
The mobile gimbal Flow’s basketball mode can automatically track and capture goals.
ML (machine learning) and AI are used here, which can capture some features that cannot be captured by code written in rules. In the past, we used small models to add various strategies, and later switched to larger models.
We hope that one day we can provide such an experience: After shooting, users don’t need to worry about editing, just like a professional editor directly helps you cut, this is the completion of the user’s entire process requirements for images. This is also the kind of demand that users will not take the initiative to mention, but from the process point of view, it is important and necessary. If it’s not ready sooner, it probably won’t come sooner.
“Later”: The automatic editing ability you mentioned is also being developed by Adobe and other companies that specialize in editing software. What is your difference? Is it necessary to do it yourself?
Liu Jingkang: Very different. There are actually three main needs behind the image: record, share and create. Adobe services professional creation and expression, it will help you improve efficiency, but it will not help you do everything. Our focus is on recording and sharing, and the scope of automation will be wider. Our company mission is to “Help people better record and share their lives”.
“Later”: Very clear. However, compared to the longer-term demand for “following photographers and editors”, many users have complained about the quality of the panoramic camera, and you have not completely solved it. Why? Is it limited by technology?
Liu Jingkang: Image quality has little to do with engineering and technology, but with the category definition of panoramic cameras and the external environment.
I would compare panoramic cameras to electric cars. The anchor of electric vehicles is to replace fuel vehicles, and the current anchor of panoramic cameras is to replace sports cameras. Many advantages of electric vehicles come from the fact that the power principle is different from that of fuel vehicles, such as fast acceleration and quietness, but the problems also come from this, that is, battery life anxiety and charging trouble.
The picture quality of the panoramic camera is also two sides of the same feature. It can capture 360-degree images and has a unique imaging effect, but it also makes it capture more things in the same size and pixels. Every person and object you photograph is unique. Only takes up a small portion of the screen. Therefore, with the same 4K resolution, the picture of the panoramic camera will look blurrier than the normal photos taken by the mobile phone, because generally only part of it is displayed. In fact, we are now at 5.7K resolution, twice as much as 4K.
The way to improve is to continue to add pixels and enlarge the canvas. We introduced 11K resolution a few years ago in our professional grade products. But on consumer products, enlarging the canvas will bring other problems, such as increased power consumption and processing time of the mobile phone during playback. Now I have enlarged the canvas, and the iPhone 14 may handle it smoothly, but it will get stuck if I change another phone. When you share the video from your mobile phone to platforms such as WeChat, it will be compressed again, and the quality will be discounted again, because most platforms are now optimized for general photos, not for panoramic images. Just like the high-voltage platform and fast charging technology of electric vehicles, it not only depends on the progress of car companies, but also needs the support of enough super charging piles.
Therefore, there are trade-offs between product definition and functional balance, as well as external environment support issues. In fact, we have already prepared relevant plans, the key is the timing of release. According to the current progress of Apple and Qualcomm’s mobile phone chip computing power, this time will be in the next two to three years.
At the same time, before this, we are also dealing with other pain points that can be solved faster. The needs of users are not limited to image quality. Just like electric vehicles, it has not completely solved the anxiety of battery life and energy replenishment, but this does not prevent its penetration rate from reaching 30%. Similarly, if we anchor GoPro action cameras, our penetration rate last year has also reached this level. According to the theory of innovation diffusion, when the penetration rate of a new product reaches about 15%, it is often the critical point for it to enter the explosive period.
“Later”: When the same product needs to meet the needs of multiple users, and the needs conflict with each other, how should the balance be balanced?
Liu Jingkang: Take the thumb camera GO series we made as an example. It is to solve the pain point of sports cameras that are not portable enough. But how small and light does the camera need to be? We didn’t think carefully enough when we were making the first generation, we only pursued the ultimate effect, as small as possible, which sacrificed battery life. In fact, if your size and weight increase by 30%, the battery life will double or even more. Maybe a 30% difference in size is only a difference between 90 points and 95 points for users, and half of the difference in battery life is the difference between 50 points and 90 points.
One of the keys to demand research and product design is to formulate the specifications of each function and the combination of various specifications. The specifications must be quantified. For example, the different sizes and capacities of Starbucks coffee cups are the specifications.
When considering the specifications of a product as a whole, it is necessary to balance and make trade-offs, because some specifications will check and balance each other. A good specification should not only meet the core needs of users, but also make the product competitive, without making the enterprise pay too much for it. It is not good to set low frequency and key requirements, or set high non-critical requirements. In short, a good product should be just right in every place.
Accumulate abilities in the “hell mode” of the Red Sea vertical class
“Later”: Your current strategy is to continuously enter mature categories, and the essence is to do better on the basis of predecessors. Is this a shortcut?
Liu Jingkang: I think it is “hell mode”. Because when you enter a red sea vertical category, you will not be able to enjoy the dividends of the growth of the market in the early stage of the market, and you have to knock down the existing top brands; there is no government subsidy for emerging industries here, and the government subsidy only accounts for less than our income. one percent.
The vertical category also means that it is more difficult to discover demand, product development and marketing. Your competitiveness comes from the fact that you have solved problems that existing top companies have not solved, or that when you solve the same problem, your solution is much more advanced. It has to be useless at all, and cannot support the price and gross profit. This requires breakthrough innovations in technology and solutions. In terms of marketing, the vertical category also needs to do more market education, because most people will not actively search for this category, you must control the accuracy of advertising and ROI (return on investment) well.
“Later”: What “hell moments” have you encountered?
Liu Jingkang: Recently, we have a product that is about to go on the market, but when we learned that it did not have much advantage over competitors’ products, we decided to start over, even though I had already invested 30 million.
The definition of this product project was advanced, but its engineering realization cycle was longer than expected. In this case, the listing must be stopped, because if the product is not competitive, the price can only be lowered, and your subsequent investment in marketing and branding on it will get twice the result with half the effort, so you would rather reinvent the wheel and start over.
“Later”: Although you say this is hell mode, on the other hand, you have not entered the mainstream and mass product market with the most brutal competition.
Liu Jingkang: In the long run, fierce competition is inevitable, but my original intention is that the sooner this matter comes, the better.
If I had been born 20 years earlier, I would definitely not say that. Opportunities were everywhere at that time, but now I am a latecomer in any market. If a latecomer wants to gain a foothold, he needs to continue to invest in core capabilities such as R&D and branding. These investments cannot come from VCs, and generally VCs cannot afford them, but should come from healthy operations. And too fierce competition will drag the company into a space with low gross profit, and there is no money to continue to invest. If a business only has sales and no profit, it means little to us.
“Later”: When will you change your current strategy, enter a more mainstream market, or create a new market?
Liu Jingkang: New opportunities always appear when there are major changes in demand or technology supply.
At present, people’s consumption habits are relatively fixed, but there is a recent change on the supply side, which is the big language model. It also has a great impact on images. For example, combined with visual capabilities, it can tell you where to move the camera, how to shoot, and when to shoot. Combined with automatic editing, it can solve the problem of the entire video process.
If the time limit is further extended to 30 years, we will go through three to four economic cycles, and more changes will occur on the demand side and the supply side.
“Later”: Where does the confidence to continue operating for at least 30 years come from?
Liu Jingkang: Video is a complex industry with a long chain. What we are doing now, in addition to continuously bringing commercial returns, is more important to bring the ability of the entire chain to return.
The basic assumption for a company to survive is that it can provide products and services to more customers and scenarios, and the customers are satisfied and willing to pay. Among them, “customers and scenarios” involve demand mining capabilities; “products and services” are R&D and supply chain capabilities; being able to sell to customers is market and marketing capabilities. We are growing in all core competencies related to this basic assumption, and there are no obvious shortcomings. As long as the ability is in hand, other businesses can also be done.
In other words, many factors that affect the survival of our company are not external, and I can control them myself. We have accumulated capabilities in the “hell mode”, and the natural viability is relatively strong, and the probability of being able to do it in the long run is relatively high.
Learn from “DJIs”
“Later”: You are a very young founder, what is the most effective learning method for you?
Liu Jingkang: Benchmarking, looking for learning objects. A thing has a benchmarking object, which explains two points:
One, the problem has been clearly defined, even quantified.
Second, others have helped you prove to what extent this can be done. This will reduce confusion, because you know what results you will probably get if you invest in it.
Therefore, the key to benchmarking is to dismantle the problem from different dimensions into fine detail, and to disassemble the quantitative indicators. For example, if a company is doing better than us in the market, we need to be optimistic about where it is: channel coverage, brand awareness, research caliber… If you separate these indicators, you will get a series of specific items.
“Later”: How to choose the target?
Liu Jingkang: The most direct ones are similar companies. We are engaged in sports cameras, mobile phone gimbals, and conference cameras, and there are many similar companies.
The second is a company with similar capabilities and better than you. For example, our editing ability cannot be compared to GoPro, which is far behind us. Who are you looking at? Watch clips. For the same two-minute video, the cutting and splitting is completed in an instant. We used to have to wait for 5 or 6 seconds. We have no direct competition with Jianying, but we are highly correlated in this ability.
“Later”: DJI also makes action cameras and mobile phone gimbals. What have you learned from DJI?
Liu Jingkang: Dajiang, including powerful companies such as Sony and Apple, all have an obvious achievement: they have created categories. They see needs and are brave enough.
The difference is that I think that although Sony has many successful products, its user demand research is relatively weak, and its solutions and technology are relatively strong. Therefore, Sony sometimes uses too much force and exerts force where users do not have real and widespread needs, such as the pile of mobile phone images will be very full.
DJI is more like Apple: the demand side matches the supply side better. They have all made great efforts on key and high-frequency requirements, accumulated corresponding technical capabilities, and made excellent solutions. For example, Apple’s memory is not large, and many Android phones may be twice that of Apple’s, but Apple’s video processing is still the smoothest, because its read and write speeds are very fast.
The difference between the two companies is that Apple focuses on the mainstream needs of mainstream people, while DJI focuses on vertical needs. The length of development and the depth of technology accumulation of the two companies are also different.
“Later”: What have you learned from the failures of others?
Liu Jingkang: An example is the challenge of hardware engineering implementation. You see, this is a GoPro drone. It has been on my desk for two years, just to remind me of a big pit in hardware engineering: “I don’t know that I don’t know.”
GoPro spent 200 to 300 million U.S. dollars to make drones. It was released in 2016, and it was recalled on a large scale later, and the entire business stopped. Because its aircraft is in flight, there is a high probability that it will shake, lose power, and fall completely. This is a very serious safety problem.
I believe that GoPro must have done extensive testing during development. But the difficulty is that even if you exhaust all methods and efforts, abundance still does not mean completeness. The complete problem will only be exposed when the user takes it to the real scene for testing. This belongs to dying in “not knowing that I don’t know”.
“Later”: How to avoid the disaster caused by “I don’t know what I don’t know”?
Liu Jingkang: I have thought about this issue specifically, and the conclusion is that it cannot be completely avoided, but the probability can only be reduced:
One is to buy experience through recruitment, or find experts as consultants, which can help you quickly form cognitive increments.
The second is to increase testing and do as many internal and external tests as possible before releasing the product.
The third is to find benchmarks and specifications. For example, sports cameras also need anti-shake, which is another category that others have made. Then you can buy existing products and put them on the vibration table, adjust the parameters to try, and see if it dies at that frequency, you will know at least To what extent. In other words, you have to fully quantify how good this product is and make it your own goal.
“Later”: You can clearly say “1, 2, 3” to many problems. What other company development issues are you confused about?
Liu Jingkang: The organization is one. In fact, defining the problem clearly is half the problem solved.
In terms of organization, we only see problems now, such as stepping on pits or stepping on them again, problems and experience of the old team, poor succession of the new team, mismatch of talents, etc. Systematic induction and precise definition.
These phenomena have corresponding remedial strategies. But a better approach is to clearly define the complete big problem based on the phenomenon. At this time, your solution will no longer be a pile of N strategies, but a systematic problem-solving idea, and then split down the actions and goals of different stages.
“Later”: How does the method of benchmarking against other companies play a role in helping you clarify organizational issues?
Liu Jingkang: We are indeed looking at the situation of larger companies similar to ours. We are already in the process of transitioning to a “matrix”, but at present, many projects have been virtualized on the original structure. As for Anker and DJI, their physical organizations are still quite different from ours. For example, DJI has an image transmission department, a gimbal department, and a battery department, which are components shared by multiple products. It is a form of organization by modules, a department is like an internal supplier.
Some companies also have various technical and product “committees”. The committee mechanism is coordinated with bottom-up technology and product pre-research, and it is a form of collective decision-making. Many budgets and decisions below the scale do not need to go to the boss. Now our main production and research decisions are still made by myself.
There are great risks in mobilizing organizational structures. I have two tasks: one is to study the form of others, but not to copy it, to study clearly how this form was born, what is the background, and what problems are solved. The second is, if we have obtained a new organizational structure that can adapt to the company’s development in the next few years through learning and research, what work do I have to do when I transition from now to there.
“Later”: Many reports in the past will describe you as a product geek with a powerful and unconstrained style. As a founder, you are not a CEO, and you are not responsible for business and daily operations. But you also put a lot of energy into dealing with organization and management.
Liu Jingkang: I actually don’t like management. However, a consumer electronics company or a technology company will inevitably have organizational requirements for its future development, for two reasons:
One is that the product line will expand. There is vertical expansion, which will be the second and third generation in the future; there is also horizontal expansion, which is to create new categories, which involves the inheritance of experience among teams. This depends on organizational and management methods to solve.
Second, a good product and technology company needs to make long-term reserves around key technologies and solutions. This is mainly an engineering issue, but complex engineering also requires management.
“Later”: There is another way to start a business or create: maintain a smaller team, and even create some products individually.
Liu Jingkang: How big a team you need depends on what you want to accomplish. Midjourney has only a dozen people, and there were only a few dozen people when WhatsApp was acquired by Meta for $19 billion. They have a large number of users, but the contact points with users are very narrow and the products are very light. And when we build a camera, there are many people in charge of the product line. This is determined by category.
The key is that you have to figure out how many types and how many people you need at least for the category you are working on.
“Later”: Your ambition is not small. Among the younger group of founders, there is a type that cares more about being driven by enthusiasm and doing what they recognize, rather than the size of the company and the opportunity.
Liu Jingkang: Also enthusiastic. But my passion is not in photography itself, but in making tools that more people need.
“Later”: How many things are you willing to do that you would not do to achieve a greater goal?
Liu Jingkang: As much as you want to accomplish this, your tolerance will be as great.
“Later”: There are more and more things that need to be tolerated. Do you have moments when you lack sense of meaning?
Liu Jingkang: I have adjustment means. The second is to be interviewed. The third is to participate in the monthly new employee Q&A. Answering questions is a process of self-organization, self-strengthening, and iteration in strengthening.
The first is benchmarking, to see my model entrepreneurs and my target companies. From their current appearance, I can roughly infer the pain and toss behind them.
This gives me comfort: others must have come here as well. So I have more peace of mind and I have nothing to complain about. Ultimately it’s the question: do you really want, really want that goal.
Title map source: Jiemian News.
new interview
For a society, why do commercial companies exist? McKinsey, the founder of the consulting industry, concluded in 1937 that “increasing profitability will make the business environment healthier, thereby improving the welfare of the entire country.”
Over the past 30 years, China’s most successful companies have largely achieved this goal. And their paths to success are almost the same: find a good direction, or seek VC financing or bank loans, increase leverage and try to grow as much as possible, even if you take some risks.
Now, the inevitable path to success is not so easy to go: the financing environment has changed, consumer confidence has changed; more importantly, people and governments around the world are not only demanding more from companies.
“LatePost” launched the “New Interview” column, hoping to regularly report on more diverse business company founders and managers, to see how they explore new practices and adapt to the new environment. The social value of commercial companies has not changed, and their healthy development can still promote a healthier business environment, thereby improving the well-being of the entire society. Facing change and facing challenges has always been an important skill for entrepreneurs as a group.
The company reported in this column may be the creator of new categories and new lifestyles, it may have opened up new markets overseas, it may have deeply transformed the supply chain with new technologies, or it may be a mature company that has been established for more than ten years. try.
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