We are one of the few companies that do cloud computing exclusively. The founders do it. The other cloud companies are professional managers who do it.
Source: Shanghai News
Author: Wang Haiyan
Original link:
https://web.shobserver.com/wx…
UCloud is a very special cloud in the cloud computing market where the big names are fighting.
Facing Ali Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud, AWS (Amazon) and other domestic and foreign giants, every speech or interview, Ji Xinhua will always be asked: UCloud how to go to PK with these big companies under the umbrella of the group capital?
At this point, Mr. Ji pulls up a metaphor from the well-known science fiction novel “The Three-Body Problem,” in which there are three very large stars. The same goes for the Internet industry. Start-ups are easily attracted or destroyed by stars such as Alibaba and Tencent.
Is there only ways to be combined or destroyed? In the face of “big stars”, Ji Xinhua has his own dragon-slay tactics — UCloud only does cloud platform, not application, which is different from other giant cloud business development mode.
Uphold neutrality, UCloud fought its way out of the cloud market. On January 20 this year, Ji Xinhua, 41, rang the bell on the science and technology innovation board. Youke became the first cloud computing stock in China and also the first stock with the same share with different rights in the A-share market. The market value doubled on the day of listing.
Ji Xinhua, founder and CEO of UCloud
“We are the only company that does a public cloud with an entrepreneurial team. We do it all in, which is different from a professional manager.” Ji Xinhua is full of confidence when he says this.
He himself has the experience of a professional manager. At the beginning, he entered the world as a top “white hat” technology guru. Many tycoons were his old employers. Zhang Zhidong, Tencent’s CTO, told him that “playing” online was also productive. Ji Xinhua felt it made sense to jump from Huawei to Tencent and become the youngest division head of Tencent at the age of 30. He was lured to Shanda after Chen Tianqiao said, “I have accomplished my goal of ‘King’, and the next goal is to become a ‘King Maker’.”
At one Tencent internal meeting, Ji Xinhua sat behind Ma Huateng, showing his trademark smiling face, and was once nicknamed “the man behind Ma Huateng”.
Turning around, Ji Xinhua walked out of a big company and started his own business as King. Cloud this track is not good to walk, the opponent is also his old team, his eyes of the big star.
When the start-up was at its most difficult, he gathered executives for a meeting in Wuxi. When the founders sat on stage, the middle manager started “teasing” and the boss refused to talk back. Many people listened to the crying, crying the most fierce is Ji Xinhua. Those sharp cut-outs, words to him like knives, straight to the chest. After that, UCloud quickly adjusted its strategic direction and accelerated its push to go public.
As the CEO of the company, Ji Xinhua has to manage everything. He calls himself a handyman. He used to focus on technology, but now he has to learn to be all things to all people. The “Kuaijie UDB” (cloud database) developed by the company has the highest performance and the most cost-effective among similar products. He was quite proud of himself and wrote in the circle of friends: “Ride the fastest horse, climb the highest mountain, eat the hottest food, drink the strongest wine, play with the sharpest knife, and use the fastest database UDB.”
Employees speak of him, amiable, humorous wisdom, cute smile. On the photo wall of UCloud employees, the photos of Ji Xinhua, Mo Xianfeng and Hua Kun, the three co-founders, are naturally integrated into the wall, highlighting the spirit of equality, openness and sharing that the Internet advocates.
UCloud employee photo wall
Ji used the “neutral” strategy well. She used to be her old employer, but now she is a competitor and partner of UCloud, and some of them have even become customers. At present, the customers of UCloud cover almost all the Internet segment fields, but also expand the cake, cut into the government, retail and other traditional industries, and help Chinese enterprises to go to the world five continents.
Once, when Ji had a drink with some of his Lakeside classmates after class, someone joked that Ali Yun would accept UCloud. Ji quickly replied, “I am a student of Jack Ma’s. If a student outdoes a teacher, he should be very happy.” Ma Yun nodded again and again after hearing this: “An enterprise should Build to bigger, not Build to sale. If one day UCloud do bigger than Ali cloud, it is my success, but also your success.”
It’s Buildtobigger, of course. Speaking of his original idea, Ji recalls the reason why he persuaded Hua Kun to start a business together: cloud computing is the antidote to dreamers. We are here to help dreamers into the future. The more the future of Chinese science and technology, as the underlying foundation of cloud computing, the more spectacular.
Why play the neutral card
The word “cloud” is a bit abstract. Can you make an analogy? What is cloud computing?
Ji Xinhua: The cloud is similar to electricity. You don’t need to consider whether it is thermal or hydroelectric. You can use it at the press of a button. Before the grid, each household relied on generators to generate electricity, which was expensive and had to be maintained by the household itself. With the grid, it’s different. Power plants provide electricity. Cloud computing is all about providing computing power to enterprises. And computing power is an important infrastructure of the information society. Therefore, the market opportunity of cloud computing is very big in the future. Every enterprise does not need to have its own IT operation and maintenance personnel, but can use cloud computing.
Can news organizations like us use the cloud to solve problems? For example, hot style news, sometimes the system is slow.
Ji Xinhua: Sure. If hot style occurs and the physical server can’t keep up, use the cloud to ensure normal operation. We charge users according to the amount they use. That’s why customers use cloud computing on Singles’ Day and 618.
News above: How Will the Epidemic Affect Cloud Computing Businesses This Year?
Ji Xinhua: After the epidemic, the Matthew Effect is particularly obvious. Large enterprises are getting better and better, many small and medium-sized enterprises are struggling to survive, a number of small and medium-sized enterprises died, which also has our customers. Although the challenge is not small, there are also opportunities. The rapid development of the online new economy, especially the emergence of online office, online education and other wave of market, is very helpful for our income growth.
Watch News: How you feel about it.
Ji Xinhua: Look at the amount of cloud used by our backstage during the epidemic. At 6:00 in the morning, there will be a small peak. When you get up, you will first look at the confirmed epidemic data at home and abroad. “Dxingyuan Doctor” is on our platform.
Then there is the peak of scramble for vegetables around 7 o ‘clock, when people want to grab a wave of vegetables. Daily Youxian and Yonghui Supermarket are our customers, so the data is very busy at this time.
And then it’s the peak time for students, so you can look at the data on the little blackboard. And then you have to go to work, and you have to show your health code, and we have the national health code business here. Many office software for work are on our cloud. I order takeaway for lunch, and Meituan and Dada are my customers. Afternoon speculation, some stock APP is our customers. Play games, netease games are our customers, live is also our customers, like B station, Kuaishou and so on.
Top news: why does the national “health code” use the cloud carved by you?
Ji Xinhua: This is also interesting, because the health code needs to use data from Telecom, Mobile and Unicom. Our company is “neutral”. For data security, they use our cloud.
Shanghai News: The market competition is so fierce, you adhere to the neutral, do not get involved in the user business, this will be consistent?
Ji Xinhua: This proves that our idea is right. Now any enterprise dare not only use a cloud, including Ali, Tencent, is the same. Start-up companies in the relatively scarce resources, the choice is neutral and “cheap and good” cloud.
We insist on neutrality and will not be invested by BAT. What good does this do? First of all, there is a demand for neutrality. Customers may choose us if their business competes with the giants. Second, if a company needs multiple clouds to support it, that’s our opportunity. For example, in addition to Pinduoduo with a giant cloud, he chose our cloud. Abroad, too, Walmart has so far shied away from using AWS (Amazon) clouds in America, partnering with Microsoft instead.
So neutrality is the easiest and best strategy for us.
Why Companies Backup Two Clouds?
Security is the foundation of cloud computing. Cloud computing security should be viewed from three dimensions — availability, confidentiality, and integrity. Why would a big company want to back up two, just because one of them might have a problem? When one cloud fails, there is a backup, which is “availability”; Your information can’t be seen, which is “confidential”; Your information cannot be tampered with. This is “integrity.”
In the “confidentiality” aspect, we have made a lot of innovation. Due to the easy replication and easy dissemination of data, data owners are reluctant, afraid and unable to share and open the use of data. To address this pain point in the industry, we took the lead in launching the “safe room” product and innovatively put forward the concept of separating data ownership and use rights.
The Kuaijie cloud host will be released in May 2019
Last watch news: I heard that the birth of this safe house has a story.
Ji Xinhua: When I was studying at the Lakeside, I once met a friend businessman in a hotel where I stayed. He told me that not long ago in this hotel, two auto companies wanted to combine their data for analysis so as to obtain some marketing data, but neither of them wanted to give the data to the other. So meet that day, everyone similar to the river’s lake personage joint, each with a few black big suitcase, mysteriously into the same room, ask each other: “brought?” Open the suitcase, is a stack of neat hard disk. The two sides on the scene that untie the computer package began to analyze, after the analysis will be on the spot these hard disks destroyed, to prove innocence did not take the other side of the data.
I laughed when I heard that, and when I came back, I arranged the R&D team to build a “trusted data circulation” platform. This platform is like building a room where data owners and demanders can conduct analysis, but they do not own each other’s data, and the analysis process is “safe and controllable”. This is the safe room.
News: What problem is this supposed to solve?
Ji Xinhua: For example, government data is stored in a safe room. Users can use the data for analysis on the safe room platform and take away the analysis results, but the original data cannot be taken away. We started to research the safe house product in 2016, and now the product has been launched in many places in Shanghai, Xiamen and Qingdao.
Founders doing the cloud are different from professional managers doing the cloud
News on the view: the choice of neutrality is indeed a good strategy, the cloud is heavy assets, heavy capital market, other clouds have Dachang capital shelter, UCloud how to solve the problem of funds?
Mr. Ji: Cloud burns a lot of money, so we sought to go public very early and set the goal of going public in China from the very beginning. , after the completion of 2015 C wheel UCloud foreign investors holding more than half, at that time, our management decided to dismantle the VIE, use cash to buy back five or six times the premium of DCM, bertelsmann’s shares, so our pure domestic capital and shareholders are the domestic market, it also ensures our neutral lineage is pure, landing can also help us win the board.
UCloud is also the first A-share company with different rights. What is the original intention of setting up special voting rights?
Ji Xinhua: The same share with different rights is a common practice implemented by many mature stock markets in the world. We are also the first to taste the policy dividend of “one share with different rights” on the science and technology innovation board, adopting the AB equity model adopted by many high-tech enterprises.
We also originally had special voting rights under the VIE structure. After I split the VIE plan and went back to China to get listed, I saw the listing rules of the science and technology innovation board, which allowed the setting of special voting rights. I have been communicating with all departments and fighting for the setting of this equity structure. We believe that such a model is conducive to fully protecting the basic rights of minority shareholders and motivating the founding team to stay true to its original intention, so that the founding team will have a better guarantee of control rights and make decisions in line with the long-term development of the company.
WATCH NEWS: How much does the founder team own?
Ji Xinhua: I, Mo Xianfeng and Huakun are the top three shareholders of the company, with shareholding ratios of 13.96%, 6.44% and 6.44% respectively. The number of class A shares with voting rights is 5 times that of class B shares, and the total voting rights ratio of the three reaches 64.71%, thus firmly controlling the business decision-making rights of the company.
On the view of news: UCloud is currently the first domestic cloud computing, cloud market big boss gathered, you think UCloud belongs to the Matthew effect 28 inside the “two”?
Ji Xinhua: To be honest, right now, we’re not big enough. But we are one of the few companies that do cloud computing exclusively. The founders do it. The other cloud companies are professional managers who do it. This is our greatest advantage.
News on the View: Entrepreneurs do cloud enterprises and professional managers do what is different?
Ji Xinhua: Most cloud computing companies come to the cloud only because their business is bigger and they have money. ** We started UCloud as All In from the very beginning, which made us different from other cloud CEOs as “workers”.
For example, in the early days of our business, Mo Xianfeng and Hua Kun, my three co-founders, used to live in small hotels that cost about 100 yuan on business trips. The group chat of the three of us was named “Yunton Noodles”, which means “Even if we can’t do cloud, we should make Yunton Noodles together”. In order to start our business, I even sold my house for a time. It was a sign that we were burning our Bridges to do this. * We saw that there was a big market for the cloud and that it had potential for the future. At that time, there were not many good enterprises, but we had the ability to do “cloud”.
UCloud founders: Hua Kun, Ji Xinhua and Mo Xianfeng (from left to right)
UPI: It’s not easy for your founding team to stick to it all the way from starting your own business.
Ji Xinhua: Yes. Because most people don’t start a business and don’t understand the difference. Other cloud enterprises are generally a department within a large company, and professional managers pay more attention to the boss’s evaluation, mainly to achieve the boss’s goals, so many decisions are relatively short-term, such as meeting the two-year or three-year goals, or even may be lost.
Watch News: Does this difference lead to a difference in style?
Ji Xinhua: Cloud computing is not only a technology, but also a whole set of services. Customer service can’t only be called “love” online like e-commerce customer service. Instead, it needs to be like a nanny with a sales manager on standby and an after-sales engineer to answer the phone at any time. We were born To B, and we were stooped. They make money standing up or lying down. They don’t have To worry too much about profits. Cloud computing is a piece of their huge business, and even a part of it. And we put down the stature, what customers want to give what, in the service in the operation of all strive to fine, this is a very big difference.
Shanghai News: Cloud computing needs to invest a lot of computer room construction, in addition to the data center in Shanghai Qingpu, but also in the construction of the data center in Inner Mongolia, what is the strategic consideration?
Ji Xinhua: There are several advantages to choosing Inner Mongolia. One is that electricity is cheap. The air is cold over there. It also saves a lot on electricity bills. Coupled with the relative proximity to Beijing, there is a geographical advantage. On August 14th this year, the first stage has been capped, and now construction and installation are under way. It is estimated that the first stage can be officially put into use next year. With the development of the new online economy, there are more demands for data storage and computing power in audio and video, big data, artificial intelligence and other fields. Self-built data centers can provide customers with more customized cloud services.
Seize the third wave of Internet development opportunities
Shanghai Internet enterprise development momentum is very obvious in the past two years, Pinduoduo, B station, Xiaohongshu a group of star enterprises, Youcut is also among them, mainly distributed in Pudong, Zhangjiang, Xuhui, Changning, Yangpu and other areas, known as the golden “C circle” along the Huangpu River.
Ji Xinhua: The recent development trend is really good. I am very optimistic about the future of the Internet industry in Shanghai. Looking back, Shanghai has had three good opportunities to develop the Internet in history.
The first wave of opportunities came around 1998, when it was the era of four major portals, and websites such as Shanghai Hotline and Eastday appeared in Shanghai. In 1998, eBay was founded in Shanghai.
Last News: You were in college.
Ji Xinhua: Yes, I was studying in Tongji at that time, and I also tried to start my own business. I started Ala Shanghai, which was similar to the later Dianping, and Shiyi, which specializes in online question bank. Then I started a security company in Shenzhen, which was acquired later. It was also the early days of e-commerce, when eBay competed with Taobao, which later won.
The second wave of opportunity is the game around 2009, the emergence of companies such as Shanda, Giant, Nine Games in Shanghai, the development momentum is also good. At one point, I jumped from Tencent to Shanda. But these companies are focused on content, don’t have platforms, and don’t grow as well.
The third wave of opportunities is the mobile Internet. After 2012, Shanghai switched from the PC terminal to the mobile terminal. Many Internet companies emerged in Shanghai, including Dianping, Ele. me and Ximalaya.
Are you just catching the third wave?
Ji Xinhua: Yes, we have seized the opportunity of mobile Internet. The era of portal has been lost, the era of PC e-commerce has been lost, but in the wave of mobile Internet, Shanghai has a great advantage.
We founded Unicode in 2012. Basically, the key customer industry of each stage of UCloud is also the Internet tuyere of that period. Nowadays, many Internet enterprises in the golden C circle are also our partners and customers. I also look forward to working with these Internet companies to create a legend that belongs to Shanghai.
Last News: Can you describe the portraits of company employees?
Ji Xinhua: More than 50% of the company are R&D staff, and more than 70% are technical staff. The average age is 29. The youngest students, born in 1997 and 1998, are basically graduates of 985 and 211 universities, or backbones who have worked in big companies for three to five years, plus a number of experts who have worked for eight to ten years.
In fact, we recruit talent regardless of style, even if they do not have a glamorous academic background, as long as they have the ability to hire. The company has a secondary school student is now a core executive, last month as a talent introduction just settled in Shanghai.
UCloud is celebrating its seventh anniversary
Is it better to recruit excellent employees after the science and technology innovation board is listed?
Ji Xinhua: Yes, ESOP can better align the interests of employees with the interests of the company in the long run. Before we went public, we had no more than 200 employees. After we went public, we did another round of equity incentives, and now it’s extended to nearly 25 percent of our employees.
News: Cloud computing companies have been reshuffling their cards since 2017 and 2018. Some have left the field, some have formed alliances, and some are guarding their territory. The battle in the original main battlefield of the Internet industry has become more intense.
Ji Xinhua: For so many years, we have gone all the way in the competition with the giants and grown together with our customers. Our old customer for many years, because of their own business expansion to the Internet +, the use of cloud increased significantly. For example, Yonghui Yunchuang successfully entered online e-commerce from offline sales; For example, starting from the Internet, “Sanwei Jia”, which specializes in enterprise services, has expanded offline and become the industry leader. For example, Youzan Mall opened the “Normandy Plan”, landed offline, and the performance exploded. Such customers like from the prairie out of the dark horse, more and more, but also the achievement of our UCloud strong purchasing power.
WATCH NEWS: You have a presence overseas as well.
Ji Xinhua: Yes. Ucut is the first Chinese cloud company in the industry to conduct overseas layout. After 2015, with the entry of giants, a large number of small and medium-sized game enterprises have turned to overseas investment. They from Hong Kong, Taiwan, to Vietnam, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian regions, and even fled to Africa, in such an opportunity, maintain neutral UCloud also the whole ship sail, to provide localized technical facilities services for these enterprises. In addition to games, there are e-commerce, social networking, live streaming, fintech, smart hardware and other companies looking for new gold mines. We are just like the IT cloud station of the Belt and Road, and the territory of the sea is also expanding rapidly. Up to now, Unicode has deployed 32 data centers in 25 locations around the world.
In addition, the traditional industry is also opening a huge market, this part or a piece of any player can not eat a big cake. So, we are very confident about the future. You know, the mission of our company is to use cloud computing to help dreamers advance humanity.
