Early experience: Huawei, Oracle **** accumulated underlying technical strength

My first job after graduation was embedded research and development in POS manufacturer. At that time, there was no operating system, so we started with bare chips, and the hardware devices were all 8-bit systems.

Later, I transferred to Huawei to participate in the research and development of chip drivers for communication equipment. The value of the business is the chip embedded in the carrier end Modem, which is based on the upper layer of the operating system.

Later, I joined Oracle and worked on the development of Oracle Linux and virtualization solutions, where I gained a more systematic grasp of virtualization.

Through the previous several work experiences, I have developed a relatively comprehensive software system ability from the bottom to the application layer, which has provided a great foundation for my later entrepreneurship.

In 2007, I started my business

Idea is cheap

At the beginning of 2007, the iOS system of iPhone was first released. A friend happened to bring back several iphones from a business trip to the United States. At that time, few people in China used iPhone, and everyone thought it was novel.

Soon Android will also release a review version based on emulators, and it will be open source in the future. In contrast, the huaqiangbei shanzhai machine that ran rampant in the market in those days has the defects of single function, system-level support, few open technical documents and high price.

The bottom layer uses Linux, the Framework layer uses Java, and the technology is open source and supported by Google, which has created the natural low-cost gene of Software supporting Android. The improvement in the mature ecosystem of Linux at the bottom layer means that this set of things led by Google will have a large audience in the future. I bought my first Android phone around 2008. The system is still version 1.5, very slow, but I believe that the hardware improved performance issues will not be a problem.

It turned out that we were right. Feature phones were largely abandoned by the youth market around 2010, and Android quickly overtook them.

Since then, more and more signs have emerged that mobile apps contain great opportunities. Not only Google will officially launch the Android version software development competition, but also the chance to get prizes after being selected. There are also more and more hardware manufacturers demand system technical support, hoping to transplant Android system to the hardware to run.

After communicating with colleagues and classmates, I decided that I wanted to have a try. Although my idea was rough at the time and I didn’t know how to get financing, I wanted to make several apps in my spare time to test the water, and I also wanted to contact my friends to see if I could contact hardware manufacturers that needed technical support.

I tried a lot of things. For example, I found that the car navigation in those days only supported offline use and upgrading had to rely on data lines, so I tried to make a map APP that users could download and use directly on Android phones. Now, these ideas are too immature. After the APP is developed, how to promote the installed capacity, how to do a good job in technical support, how to attract investment and build a team…… These issues are not thought through, the idea is too rough, and the difficulty of advancing is great.

In the end, we realized that idea was cheap, and the real value and challenge was in the implementation and implementation of the project. No matter how good the idea was, it had to have supporting implementation scenarios and market feedback.

Around 2010, I joined a mobile phone transformation manufacturer, responsible for product research and development. It transformed from MTK function phone to Android phone, and wanted to make APP or Server based on Android platform. I have planned several directions, one is to do push service; On the other hand, we provide basic service apps, such as phone book backup, browser navigation, and application market entrance. We provide traffic entrance, receive other people’s application content, and charge service fees for advertising space.

At the same time, seeing that some friends around me had already raised start-up financing, I judged that the time was ripe for starting a business.

The first entrepreneurial project: Aurora Push

Lack of experience, buried hidden equity

I learned from a chat with a friend that a former colleague of Oracle was starting an APP business, but he encountered many difficult challenges in the process, so he invited me to the company for help. It was found that the project was not difficult from a technical point of view, but due to the low assessment of the actual difficulty, many functional problems were left over, and the financing amount was not enough, so the project was always facing survival risks. \

After careful study, I put forward a pertinent suggestion to my friend to continue the advantages of the team to do basic services. After Google push stopped being used, mobile phone manufacturers had no solution, and the push service market was just in gap, giving us an excellent opportunity to do third-party push service.

The cooperation was soon reached. We packaged the service into AN SDK package to provide a unified interface for developers, who could improve their development efficiency by invoking SDK. At that time, the APP made by friends company included IM function, part of which could be reused. Soon, we made a test product.

With the help of the accumulated developer resources in the early stage, I quickly completed the technical test and market verification, and soon reached millions of daily live levels and hundreds of thousands of online levels. After the official launch of the service products, the rapid growth of users, with a bandwidth of 500 megabits and 10 servers in a single scale.

Up to now, almost every APP developer in China who has used push service should be familiar with Aurora push. This experience from idea to project landing to product launching has received good user feedback. Generally speaking, it is a relatively successful start-up.

From forming the idea in 2007 to implementing and launching the aurora push product in 2009, the bigger driving factor still comes from the change of environment, which pushes many successful factors into my life circle and provides favorable conditions for the implementation of the product.

During my work in Huawei and Oracle, I was fortunate to participate in many major projects and had more ideas and better plans. However, due to the lack of leadership, the direction of things completely depended on the leadership. When I started my own business, my regret at that time turned into a firm belief.

The transformation window of aurora push project was very short, and I worked crazy overtime for several months. I personally wrote nearly 70% of the code, how to write the development documents and how to handle the marketing strategy. All these work were made by me, and I had to do everything myself.

In addition to the test of the project itself, there were also internal differences in management and system, such as equity allocation, corporate culture, partner beliefs, etc., which were not clear at the beginning. When the investors came in, it was difficult for several partners to reach an agreement on equity allocation. Finally, I quit.

To be honest, I don’t think I have much loss. I do things right at the right time, put my idea into practice and get a lot of good market feedback. The overall gain is more than the effort.

When I left Aurora Push in the second half of 2013, I judged that the APP market would eventually reach its peak and decline, and each APP segment would be occupied by one or two giants or unicorns. Once the situation formed, the market demand for APP developers would be greatly reduced. APP developers in the expansion phase will not survive without a core hematopoietic ability. In fact, around 2018, the APP development market was almost dead.

After leaving the aurora push, I also want to have to do the delivery services and the Internet of things technology integration, only is combed the thought idea, went to the capital to chat, you know that the Internet of things is the most nearly two years to enter the fast development, the early matting takes too long, infrastructure development is not sound, lack of education market, coupled with the development of things path is not the same as I imagine slightly, So it’s just an idea.

CEO Zhang Hu reflects on CTO Zhang Hu

In the early stage of entrepreneurship, many friends are technical bullies. Do technical bullies have many congenital advantages?

Perhaps, but first of all, we should see the congenital defects of entrepreneurs. They are easy to be trapped in a technological utopia, believing that there is nothing that cannot be solved by technology. When confronted with problems, they first think about what technical solutions can be solved. It’s ok for programmers to think this way, but it’s wrong for ctos to think this way, because the domestic market judges a company’s success mainly by its business development.

CTO usually only focuses on products and technology, and lacks attention to finance, flow, business and market. These are the big shortcomings of CTO Zhang Hu. To be a CTO, the vision radius should be larger.

Followed by talents, talents contribution to the startup value is large, we are also in accordance with this standard hiring, training him to help him grow, but if the company’s rate of growth lags behind that of the individual, the brain drain will eventually, so the enterprise the ability of the pattern is the ceiling for the development of the company founder, entrepreneurs to quick filling ability.

Q&A

Investors’ questions contain valuable information

Q: What fundamental changes in your thinking occurred during your transition from CTO to CEO?

A: The biggest change is that I used to pursue the most perfect technology, but now I advocate the most suitable technology.

For example, it took three months to write a module in the C language used in the early server platform. The development efficiency was very low, so we invested a lot of energy to improve the technical efficiency, but did not fully meet the value needs of customers.

From the technical point of view, if the code is written smoothly, the technology stack is selected accurately and the product is polished well, there should be a large market. But from a business perspective, customers may only focus on user experience, business processes, functional value, etc. It’s like someone who buys a car only because it looks beautiful, not because it has three cylinders or four cylinders. In business, too, only products that fit the needs of users can make money.

I hope to give young people a piece of advice, as early as possible to establish a “boss mentality”. For example, if you are currently responsible for a small part of the company and have a lot of different ideas from your boss, try switching your perspective and thinking about why he is doing what he is doing. What may seem low to you is the thing that the boss cares more about, because it can better realize the value and will of the customer, and the best solution is the one that can make the customer pay.

Q: How do you maintain your information acuity and judgment after starting your own business?

A: I read social news, industry news and international news. I read both domestic and foreign media.

Understanding new technology does not require hands-on experience with every technology, but rather what problems it solves, what application scenarios it has, and keeping up with the current of technology development.

Q: How do you finance a prototype?

A: There is no standard method for financing. The general process is as follows: first, A product demo is required, and then A PRODUCT BP is written, which can focus on entrepreneurial idea, product research, market estimation and other aspects. Then, friends are asked to introduce investors or participate in entrepreneurial activities, which can get some media attention and increase the exposure of the project.

You can also find FA Company, who will recommend investors to entrepreneurs according to the project track. It should be noted that investors should have a normal mind when meeting with entrepreneurs. If the other party recognizes the project, he will pick up some problems with you, and will also tell you his views and questions about the project, which is a good phenomenon. Carefully review every question of the investor, can learn high-value experience.

Communicate with investors, the prospect advantage of the product should be clear, the performance of personal charm is also very extra points, be sure to make clear which points can move each other.