This article was originally created by “TGO Kunpeng Association”. Link: Kaiying Network Wu Tao: More energy will be released when technicians are armed with business minds
Wu Tao is vice president of technical support system of Kaiying Network, director and member of Shanghai Branch of TGO Club. After joining The company, I was fully responsible for the technical team of The company. Recently, I also served as CTO of blockchain Business Division of Kaiying Network, leading the team to make full efforts to advance blockchain. However, According to Wu Tao, IT is not enough to have good technology and a good team. Business thinking is also important. “Many outstanding entrepreneurs in the IT and Internet industry understand both technology and business.”
The author | Echo Tang
Famous enterprises accumulate energy through experience
In 2006, while still a graduate student at Beijing Normal University, Wu started his first job at NEC’s China Research Institute near the east gate of Tsinghua. Tsinghua is surrounded by talented people and many famous enterprises. Wu started his job from a high start.His colleagues were masters and PHDS from Tsinghua, Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Harbin Institute of Technology. After working for the company for two years, Wu Tao began to do research on big data Hadoop systems. However, after a while, Wu tao realized that it didn’t make much sense to do big data in foreign companies, because it didn’t have a solid application in China’s Internet. So he chose to leave NEC to do something solid.
Later, he entered the big data department of Alibaba Core System Department. In Alibaba, Wu Tao got to know many big talents and learned practical experience from the large-scale Internet system of Alibaba, feeling the strong entrepreneurial atmosphere of Alibaba at that time. Later, his family wanted to leave Beijing, and he also wanted to visit the United States. Wu Tao chose to leave Ali, which is still a good company in his mind. At that time, An American e-commerce company, Newegg, was looking for a talent who could promote the whole company’s back-end data architecture to open source system and big data. Wu Tao thought this was a good opportunity.
After arriving at Newegg US station, Wu Tao, with the support of COO and CTO of the company, did almost all the data systems involved in an e-commerce company, including data application, data service, search, architecture, etc. Wu Tao’s work at that time played a good role in the evolution of Newegg’s technical architecture. In addition to the improvement of technical ability, for Wu Tao, more important is the improvement of communication ability. Newegg is a geographically dispersed multinational company, and Wu Tao’s work requires communication with the headquarters and technical teams around the company. During the three years, Wu Tao has mastered the method and pace of communication. In addition to communicating with the technical team, I have also greatly improved my ability to communicate with the management and various business departments. At this time, Wu Tao is no longer an engineer focusing only on technology, but an excellent manager.
After working in the United States for two years, Wu tao saw the ceiling of his personal development. He clearly analyzed the two paths he could choose. The first path is to start a business, but a technical person needs a reliable product operation partner to start a business. Even when you start a company, it’s hard to grow it.” Wu Tao gave his first envisioned road under such a definition.
The second way is to go to silicon Valley, a science and technology resort in the United States. However, Wu Tao found that many Chinese engineers with excellent backgrounds, aged between 30 and 40, could only work as ordinary engineers in Facebook and LinkedIn. Wu tao could not accept such development space, so he decided to return to China.
NEC China Research Institute, Alibaba and Newegg are all famous enterprises, and Wu Tao, with the halo of famous enterprises, can have many choices. But unexpectedly, he chose the very low-key Caiying network, which was still focused on games at the time. In the past few years, The speed of development of The Network has been very rapid. The management of the network wanted someone to lead the team, strengthen the technical strength and break new ground in technology. Wu Tao accepted the challenge gladly.
Let each team meet the growth needs of the company
“One of the great things about Kewing is that she’s very down to earth.” Wu tao explained his choice.
In Kiying, Wu Tao managed the data team, operation and maintenance team, and security team, which ensured the company’s basic technical services. This is a big challenge for Wu. He believes that the first step is to clarify the short-term and long-term expectations of the management, and then make comprehensive adjustments and set goals so that each team can meet the basic requirements of the company’s development.
To subordinates, Wu Tao will give very clear tasks. He would clearly tell team members how to build the computer room, how much bandwidth the network should reach, how many machines to buy, how to do the technical level of the data platform, how to do the call interface level that supports the whole company, etc., so that everyone could clearly know “how I should do and to what extent”. In addition, he insisted on looking for product design, because that was the only way to make things more professional and interactive.
To sum up, there are three points: first, tell people how to do infrastructure; Second, what the product should be made of; Third, attach importance to communication, fully understand the expectations of the company’s senior management and business leaders, and pass them on to the team. If there is communication failure and unclear responsibility between the team, it is necessary to find out and clarify.
In addition to correct guidance, Wu Tao is also very demanding of his team, and needs raised by other departments must be addressed immediately. Let the other teams feel that we are a strong team.” WuTao said. Under the strict requirements of Wu Tao, the team has also grown rapidly. At present, the data team has won the Annual Support Team award of Kay Ying for two consecutive years.
“My core starting point is to be good for the company and the team. The technical team must build a reputation of being able to fight and win battles. I don’t care about unreasonable ideas of individual people. “If an employee doesn’t meet my expectations at that point, he may not be able to stay with me.”
Wu Tao also formed a team to develop the mobile office system of the whole Company and promote the improvement of internal efficiency. Because a lot of data of listed companies need to be kept strictly confidential, the company did not purchase third-party systems, and the management was eager to have their own internal system, which they entrusted to Wu Tao. At that time, the whole process of the company had all been in operation, such as financial process, personnel process, business process, etc., all had their own operation mode. It was very difficult to communicate and implement these processes to sort out, reach consensus and implement them into an information system.
With a small team of 14 people, Wu Tao spent a year to get through all the core target processes of the company and realize mobile office. Until now, the company’s middle and senior management can approve the process anytime and anywhere, and employees can access the internal system through the APP, which makes it convenient for everyone in the company.
Embrace new technology to create greater possibilities for your company
Wu Tao also maintains a positive attitude towards new technology. Blockchain is a brand new technology and a brand new business model. Kay Network believes that based on blockchain, the Value system of the Internet can be reconstructed and a new platform can be created. Based on blockchain technology, Kay hopes to create a new comprehensive service platform that can provide users with information flow, game platform and content community. The application scenarios of the platform include game App, information, community, commodities and other contents, which are user-centered and encourage users to be highly self-controlled and participate in the whole process of creating content (expressed through text, pictures, videos and other forms). Value sharing can be realized according to users’ behaviors.
Wu Tao strongly believes in the value of blockchain. As vice president of technology of the company, he also served as CTO of blockchain Business Division. Before the Spring Festival of 2018, The main force of The network integration company’s technology and operation set up the block chain Business division, to enter the block chain. At present, the business division has 80 people, and the technical team is about 40 people. Regarding the newly established business division, Wu Tao is very confident: “Our goal is TO land TO C blockchain products. Blockchain technology is the support of online core business. I believe that driven by this goal, we can become one of the first-class blockchain teams in China. We have the vision, the resources, the team and the determination.”
Wu also focuses on artificial intelligence and virtual reality because of his company’s business.
Wu Tao has experienced both e-commerce and game industries. He believes that there is a big difference between games and e-commerce. E-commerce is a buying and selling relationship, which essentially gains profits from the price difference between buying and selling. But games are different. They deal with human issues. Games can be a completely new experience, a complement to people’s real lives. It can be understood that people live in two societies, one is physical society and the other is virtual society. Games can create many virtual scenes and experiences. For example, Honor of Kings creates one society for me, and other games create another society for me.
Some time ago, a particularly popular American TV series called “Westworld”, which tells the story of a company in the future era to create a high simulation robot adventure park, each person can experience a unique plot, this park can give people a real exciting western life experience.
In addition, AR may also bring beautiful scenes. For example, I want Eddie Peng to sing to me in front of me, and there is an “Eddie Peng” with the same image and voice. If I ask him to accompany me to have dinner, he can follow me to have dinner.
“The first requirement for the presentation of these scenes is virtual reality technology, which constructs virtual tasks and can communicate with voice and body like a human. The other one is artificial intelligence. The person in the game has to understand me, communicate with me, know what I want, and there needs to be a knowledge base behind it. I think these things are very interesting and there is a lot of room for imagination.” Wu Tao said.
Be a technical person with a business mind
In addition to technology and management, Wu tao believes that technologists should further arm themselves with business thinking and try to think about how to help companies make profits and increase their market value. I think the most powerful people are the technical people with the ideal, they can combine technology and business. For example, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Elon Musk of Tesla, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Lei Jun of Xiaomi — great companies were founded by people with vision and technical background.”
As a small team company, all successful products are based on performance. As long as we do well, we can get corresponding rewards. “A competent person should come to a company like ours,” wu said.
The company seems to be low-key, but in fact, in 2017, it had a net profit of more than 1.6 billion yuan. There are not many companies that can achieve this performance. The result is that there are a lot of Internet business savvy people in the team, who are thinking about how to seize new opportunities in the Internet industry, do it when the opportunity comes, and then quickly make it big and become a new business of the company. Wu Tao believes that new business models are almost always discovered, and a keen sense of business is very important.
“If we have the background of technology, as well as the vision of life and the expectation of positive energy, we should think about using technology to create a more reasonable business model in the future and promote social development. I hope to participate in this historical process and contribute my humble strength.” Wu Tao is looking forward to his future.
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