In August, the sun was still blazing in Beijing. Looking back at 2016, almost the entire TMT investment circle was involved in the “bike-sharing competition”. It’s hard to imagine that it was almost this time last year that Mobike had just entered Beijing.

At least 15 billion yuan of financing has gone into the bike-sharing industry, and colorful bikes are pouring onto the streets. The “land grab” continues, with 20 million bikes still sitting in factories ready to hit the market, according to the Internet Society.

Mobike has launched more than 6 million smart shared bikes in more than 150 cities around the world as of Aug 1, entering seven overseas cities including London and Singapore, becoming one of the star startups spearheading bike-sharing.

Smart locks, iot chips, 24-hour cloud supply and demand matching… “Technology” is the company’s DNA injected into its body when it was born. Ma huateng has defended Mobike, saying the company leads a future similar to “smart phones”.

So far, Mobike has reached its ninth iteration. At the annual meeting in April, Hu Weiwei, wearing a white top hat, easily lifted the “Light Float”, which saves 30% of the effort, completely removing the label of “heavy and difficult to ride” in the early days of Mobike.

This is the worship to it many peers are not similarities: continuous grinding product details, like to do a lot of work out of sight, from experience to control product brand consistency, continuity, which ofo: with its biggest competitor – bicycle, pay attention to cost performance, and rapidly, a large number of previously to the strategy of street is completely different.

“Not everyone believed it from the beginning,” said Hu Weiwei, who led her team to li bin and secured angel investment in early 2015. During the Rebuild 2017 conference in Geek Park, Aunt Hu met her former boss face to face. She seemed to have changed from a “single-minded literary journalist” a few years ago to a “pragmatic product manager”.

“Mobike is in the midst of adversity,” Hu weiwei told Zhang peng and the audience about technology, management and supply chain issues, putting aside her instincts, ideals and feelings.

The following content is compiled from the conversation between Zhang Peng, founder of Geek Park, and Hu Weiwei in “Peng Friends Talk” at geek Park Rebuild 2017 conference.

Peng Zhang: Hu Weiwei is my former colleague. We have a lot of history. But the former colleague’s relationship became known when she gave a talk at our Geek Park innovation conference in January.

In her speech, she said, “My former boss is Peng Zhang, and I told him that I wanted to make a product that would allow people to ride bikes anywhere in the city. He looked at me and said, ‘You are crazy!'”

And then a lot of people asked me about it. I remember being like, “How much is this going to cost? How many cars is this going to cost?” Didn’t you think it was crazy?

Hu Weiwei: Not bad! When you think about it, it doesn’t build a rocket, it just sets up a car that you can unlock by scanning a QR code with your phone. Then you have to make some rules to regulate people’s behavior. Maybe you need to communicate with the government and the media so that they can recognize your idea and give you some space to do it.

Peng Zhang: Your logic is all right, but I think it will cost a lot of money. Maybe my point of view at that time was, if the cost is so high, should there be enough capital to support it? Did you have any idea that there would be a lot of capital to support this?

Hu Weiwei: Not really. It’s impossible to think of every detail clearly at first (different products, of course), but at least you can get the prototype out first. Besides, I think a lot of things work out. I was naive. I thought there was always a way.

Peng Zhang: Sometimes that’s what starting a business is like. If you think through all the difficulties at the beginning, you may not be able to go further. But all of a sudden, in just over a year, this thing has moved very quickly. And recently, the two industry leaders had a “quarrel” over Mobike in their circle of friends. Many of you probably already know this, but let’s go back to it:

We’ve always believed that if a big guy likes to hate someone once in a while, it’s only a couple of sentences. I’ve seen the two of them go through this cycle a lot, and it became a big story in the tech world that day. On what occasion did you see the two of them arguing?

Hu Weiwei: Someone in wechat moments sent me a screenshot because I don’t have Allen’s wechat.

Peng Zhang: Do you have a Pony?

Hu Weiwei: I have Pony’s, but I don’t have Allen’s.

Peng Zhang: How did you feel then?

Hu Weiwei: I think at that time, actually Pony in today’s Internet industry position, can say so much, I think is very important. First of all, we can see that he is very concerned about products and innovation. In my opinion, this is a very good guidance of values. Because he’s there, what he says, what he does, for a lot of entrepreneurs, is pointing a direction. Of course I was very happy that he supported me and I had a little chat with him.

Peng Zhang: In fact, I talked with Pony before, I feel that he is straight, especially in some things he wants to understand, do not care about how others look. Do you talk to him much?

Hu Weiwei: Not a lot, not as much as people think.

Peng Zhang: Don’t imagine.

Hu Weiwei: Yeah, don’t just imagine, don’t just think I know him very well.

Peng ZHANG: It shows that people have different views on this matter, or he chose Mobike because of some choices in direction.

Hu Weiwei: That’s true. In fact, many people are willing to compare us with the model of some things in the past. I think capital may prefer to see a business story like ending a war in three months. But in my opinion, bosses are supposed to lead people to do something bigger and more important.

Peng Zhang: Yes, with great ability comes great responsibility. The big boss’s driving force should be something larger and socially transformative.

Hu Weiwei: Yes.

Peng Zhang: It’s not that you just need to make more money. There’s no end to it.

Hu Weiwei: That’s also very important.

Peng Zhang: You have changed. You are not as idealistic as I was when I was a media worker. But the reality is that a startup has to create its own value. If you have anything to be proud of, what do you feel happier and more satisfied in your heart?

Hu Weiwei: In terms of statistics, the cycling rate in China has increased from 5% in the past to more than 10%, indicating that more and more people in cities are willing to use bicycles to travel. I also see that the government gives a lot of space to bicycles. The simplest way is to draw a lot of white lines, saying that bicycles can be parked here, which is equivalent to fighting for a lot of rights and space for bicycles.

Planners have a saying: “Street for all”. Everyone has his or her own rights in this street, so pedestrians, bicycles, cars and public transportation should all have their own proportion. In the past, I really found that because of this event, people’s way of traveling has changed. The government has given more space to bicycles, and it plans to have more space in the future.

A session on the technical methodology of bicycles

Peng Zhang: I remember when you talked to me, you like the bike. Anyway, it should be a good thing for your bike. If it is done, it will be even more amazing. And now it has, objectively, doubled its usage.

Hu Weiwei: That’s what we were talking about. You may have forgotten. I remember. Can you make some small particles, and then make big ones, such as products to meet the needs of commuting first?

Peng Zhang: Yes, in certain situations, for example, if we work in 798, is there a group of shared cars in 798 that can ride directly to the subway station? Or if I can share my own car in a certain area, the car can be modified without special effort. But then you put a lot of effort into building this product. Why did it take so long?

Hu Weiwei: Because I think bike sharing is a new species, it redefines the bicycle. It used to be that you bought your bike home, or the public bike with a stake was in a fixed location, and it was really freestyle (now the word is very popular, hahaha), it actually made everyone think that the bike was their own and willing to maintain it, but at the same time it wasn’t.

So it’s more about: one, I can find the car when I want to use it; Second, when I found the car, it was a good car, not a broken car, not a broken chain, not a dead car. Third, it has to have a certain life cycle, like two years, three years, four years, rather than suddenly being scrapped, because that would create a lot of garbage that you have to recycle.

When we think about this business, we think that we use the cost of the bike, the daily depreciation to acquire users, and we think about it that way, so I definitely want to make the depreciation speed more efficient.

Peng ZHANG: So we need to make reasonable products. That is to say, if you don’t get this product in place, a series of efficiency problems may cause problems with this model.

Hu Weiwei: Yes. This is our latest model of car. It’s called Breezy.

Peng ZHANG: THAT time I heard you tell me about tires. This tire is solid tire?

Hu Weiwei: Yes, it is not afraid of pricking. There is no big problem if it is pricked. It doesn’t need to be inflated and there is no valve core.

Peng Zhang: This is a strange thing for all of us. Before, all bikes were not set this way. Is it because they are heavier or more expensive? Why is every car like this? Will it be hard?

Hu Wei Hui: this story is interesting, we start with the solid tire, but actually also use traditional public bicycle, but solid tire is will lower riding experience, we in order to both solid tyres, riding experience and can at the same time to close, inflatable tires so we are looking for the dow chemical work together.

Peng Zhang: Which one of the world’s top 500 companies?

Weiwei HU: Yes, material companies, work with them to develop more flexible materials for solid tires.

Peng Zhang: Find the source to develop a material.

Hu Weiwei: Yes, more importantly, in fact, the people who make the wheel hub will default that the wheel hub is like this, and the people who make the tire will think that the tire is like this. But what people don’t think about is, if it’s a shared bike, ridden by a lot of people, and maintained as little as possible, what should we do? In the future products, we will redesign these places. In fact, industry is inert, it has been producing like this for more than ten years, there is no need to change, but also can make money. With each change, he had to retrain workers, change production lines, and then do a lot of things he wasn’t good at at the beginning.

So we tested a lot of tyres and found that tyres were most relevant to the ride experience, so we did a lot of research on those, even going back to the source to find materials and suppliers to work with. There may be some structural changes, which we will see in future models.

Peng Zhang: I first saw some solid tires with holes.

Hu Weiwei: Yeah, we actually reduced the weight of the car. It used to be a kinetic car, but you can hardly see the motor.

Peng ZHANG: Exactly. When you want to build a product and make it an important part of your business model, you have to spend a lot of time and energy on it. Once when you came to talk to me, you were very tired. You said that bicycles were much more complicated than you imagined, and it was difficult to find someone who could build bikes well, because you were not a hardware engineer.

Hu Weiwei: Right.

Peng Zhang: So did building a car play a big role in your last year?

Hu Weiwei: I don’t think it was the right thing to do in the past, but I was completely single-minded, from beginning to end, and when I wanted to do that, I executed it like this. The first generation was a bit “over-engineered” and we did a lot of introspection later on. You have a lot of good design and materials, structures, products to polish, but you must know who you are for, what their needs are, in fact, we still think a lot on this point. So in future products, we will pay more and more attention to user experience.

“Label tearing” time

Peng ZHANG: In the past, people in the Internet circle were very enthusiastic when they saw such fast-growing companies, so they attached a lot of labels to you. We found some from the Internet, which are all good words in theory, but you should first tear down the three that are not the core and save the six that you think better represent Mobike:

Hu Weiwei: IN my opinion, the same thing is said from different angles, such as capital draught and unicorns. Actually, from the perspective of capital, I think IT is a matter from the perspective of capital that I tear it off.

Peng Zhang: The capital issue is a path and means, not the essence of the company.

Hu Weiwei: Yes, the essence of a company is definitely not related to capital, but capital also gives us a lot of energy.

Peng Zhang: Two more.

Hu Weiwei: Sharing economy and cost-performance ratio are actually from the perspective of some economic models. The equestrian woman is speaking from a topical point of view.

Peng Zhang: People think it’s funny, so they named it that way.

Mr. Hu: In terms of what the company wants to define itself in the future, I might have to take the ‘convenience’ out as well. We’re doing it in terms of product experience, but it’s not quite in the DNA of the company, or what kind of company we want to be. So, I’ll probably stay with technology, green and lifestyle.

Peng Zhang: What do you think is the most important one among the three?

Hu Weiwei: I might choose lifestyle.

Peng Zhang: I thought you would choose environmental protection or technology.

Hu Weiwei: Because I think good technology is to serve a good lifestyle, not to show off skills. We’ve talked about the Whole Earth Catalog before, and instead we’ve talked about how technology can better serve our way of life. So I think ultimately what people are looking for is a good lifestyle, and of course it’s driven by technology, but it’s not a business perspective.

Peng Zhang: From the company’s point of view.

Hu Weiwei: Right.

Peng Zhang: Good, thank you. This is also the first time for me to tell her what mobike is in her mind. Today we have a new interpretation.

‘Mobike is in the midst of adversity’

Peng Zhang: In this wave of bike-sharing, sometimes people are very happy to see you on the top of the wave, but are people in the wave really so happy? Is the inner pressure big?

Hu Weiwei: Do you think you are under great pressure and not anxious? I think I should use another word, we face challenges every day, not anxiety. Do you have your own bottlenecks and problems? I would also like to say that you probably go back every night feeling that you are broken and then rebuild.

Peng Zhang: It’s rebuilt again.

Hu Weiwei: Right. Just keep your head down.

Peng Zhang: There is no need to render it deliberately.

Hu Weiwei: Yes, I think so.

Peng ZHANG: So, pragmatically speaking, the team has grown from a dozen people at the beginning to thousands now. The growth rate is very fast. Individuals can sleep through the night and come back to life, but as a company, how do you deal with the constant expansion of the team? Will culture be diluted?

Hu Weiwei: Actually, I talked with my friend zhou Yuan from Zhihu two days ago. I asked him a lot of questions. What is the company culture? How to make the values of the company consistent. That’s what he says he gets asked most every day.

We didn’t give answers to each other that day. Later, I found it difficult for you to express this with something particularly formal. Instead, what is your standard for hiring people every day, how do you make decisions and decisions every day, and what is your organizational structure? It basically says what kind of company you’re going to be, but it’s a lot of detail.

Peng ZHANG: People really want to hear about some special trick and solve the problem, but there isn’t one.

Hu Weiwei: Yes, actually at that time, I thought writing articles was more eye-catching. But every day is just like living a life. Every day in your company, you have to make a lot of decisions.

Peng Zhang: There are so many everyday stirring emotions, aren’t there? In fact, it’s more about sticking to it every day, and then taking little actions to solve these problems.

Hu Weiwei: Of course your structure is important, how your information flows, what is the structure of the whole company.

Peng ZHANG: So the most important thing is to think clearly about the basic structure. The rest needs time and energy to be able to withstand it. Recently see your circle of friends almost back and forth in the global shuttle, it seems that you in the market of foreign recently a lot of action. How many overseas cities has Mobike entered?

Mr. Hu: Seven, two in Italy, two in the UK, then Singapore, and two in Japan. When Mobike was launched in Italy, actually the mayor of Milan, the mayor of Florence, was there at the same time, and it was really very enthusiastic. What I said was (and I’m being very artistic in saying this, sorry!) In my opinion, bicycle is just like music. You may not know the language of music, but when you listen to it, you can know whether the rhythm is your favorite or you can understand a lot of music, whether it is sad or happy. A bicycle is, basically, you know how to use it just by looking at it, and most people around the world use it.

I said, I want the world to be full of cities, not countries, and from the time we first started Mobike we thought, we’re going to do so many cities, not we’re going to do so many countries. So in our view, this is one city at a time, and we want it to be like a messenger of peace.

Of course, at the company level, when we started the company with only two people, we started to buy the domain name Mobike.com, because we thought that if we were going to be international, we would definitely become a service that could be used all over the world. It’s the only way to be cool and fun.

For example, two days ago, my friend said that he had ridden Mobike in Florence. Using an APP, you can open a bike in Florence. This experience is very wonderful and surprising, and it is especially suitable for you to ride a bike around the city.

So, this is a vision, of course we will hire a localization team to do it, we will be very careful to communicate with the local government, we are not saying that we are revolutionaries, but we can provide better services for people, to make the city better. So, we actually did a lot of work behind the scenes, including modifying the vehicle to meet local regulations. What’s more, our products have inherent advantages to go overseas, such as Europe, where we are very particular about quality and safety, and highly approve of management and networking.

Peng ZHANG: Actually, the internationalization issue suddenly comes to my mind. I remember what Wang Xing said last year about the internationalization of concentric circles. In the past, China’s internationalization was in a circle. For example, there was one Indian market, one Indonesian market, one American market and one European market. The products, brands and even business models in each market might be different. But now we have the opportunity to create something that is essentially the same product, the same model, the same brand, even the same concept — something that is centralized, and then hits the world like a central circle. So, you’re kind of a typical case.

Hu Weiwei: It is. As I just said, you can understand, in fact, everyone’s needs are the same. That’s why people say Mobike is one of the “new four great inventions”.

Peng ZHANG: New things made in China are now the “new four great inventions” spreading around the world. But I see, it seems that foreign countries are now copying some of these models.

Hu Weiwei: I think it’s very interesting. It’s a product of hardware, software and services, and it’s about three things, not just one of them. Hardware, software and services are good, but China has the best chance, because if you look at their copyers, they will eventually have to buy bikes from China. In software, China is also very strong. Of course, Silicon Valley may have more foundation. But IN my opinion, the combination of hardware, software and service is very good, which happens to be Mobike. So it was born in China first, or we have such a big opportunity, because of those reasons.

Peng ZHANG: Finally, I would like to ask you a question. At the beginning, you just wanted to make a single-minded attempt. Today, whether it is the boost of capital or the recognition of society, you have a rare opportunity to do something bigger than you thought at the beginning. What is your vision for Mobike now, and what is it that you are doing this on your own? Do you have any new ideas or new goals?

Hu Weiwei: I think there is still a lot of room for imagination. I have posted on my wechat moments. Many people have written to me, telling me what else Mobike can do in the future and how to make money.

They told me about a dozen ways to make money and take a new direction. I think it’s really interesting that you don’t know a lot of things when you start, and you try. Now, we’re going in a lot of new directions. However, IN my opinion, at this stage, MObike is not in a completely prosperous state, and we are still mostly in the process of adversity.

Peng ZHANG: Why is it called adversity?

Hu Weiwei: I think, including the “boost of capital”, we have quickly become a huge company and products, but I think a lot of internal skills need to be cultivated. Only by cultivating internal skills can you become a company with a lasting foundation. I think being a good company is very important.

Plus, you’re going to have a lot of other capital-fueled companies that are probably even crazier.

Peng Zhang: Everyone will work hard.

Hu Weiwei: Yes, everyone will work hard. So, in my own mind, we are still in the midst of adversity.

Peng Zhang: The whole industry is like this, objectively speaking.

Hu Weiwei: Because we have many problems to solve, and this is the first one. Second, although there is a lot of capital, in fact, as you just said, this is a very expensive industry and industry. So, in fact, you need to focus on doing one thing well. If you do this one thing well, you will have other energy to do other things.

Peng ZHANG: So we still need to focus on it. Even if we use capital to boost it, we still need to consider efficiency. Still have just said that point, still want to think of things a little harder, delay happiness (this is zhang Yiming’s words). I see others talking about Mobike. Pony, for example, also said that our technology and thinking are very advanced. Do you think this is your core competitiveness? Or is it something that will sustain you to win the battle and the journey?

Mr. Hu: I think it’s a company’s belief that what’s good, what’s good, it has to provide socially responsible products. And, this is something you believe in and won’t change easily. But I don’t think it’s enough for you to win, or for you to be the real boss.

Peng ZHANG: Is one technology not enough?

Mr. Hu: Definitely not enough. It depends on a very precise grasp of user experience, that is, knowing what users really need and being able to meet their needs. They probably don’t even know that, like people don’t know that I really want to ride a bike every day, right?

Peng ZHANG: So, continue to use technology. You said that the belief in the basis of technology and the belief that technology can change things is something in your genetic layer. But it’s not going to be one technology that’s going to win this process, it’s going to be a continuous process, right?

Mr. Hu: Yes, it should continue. Technology is designed to meet people’s needs. Just like when we opened Florence and Milan, I wrote a paragraph: The city of the future may be unimaginable to us now, we may not be able to imagine it in our mind, I think the city of the future may have great changes. Mobike could be a starting point and a very important catalyst for urban change in the future.

In this process, what is the best city? In my opinion, it is not only very humane but also retains the historical aspect, but also embraces innovation and technology, and really applies it to real life. Put these two together, it is the most beautiful city.

Peng ZHANG: It can be seen that in such a business, people are in fact constantly evolving and changing. That impressed me.

Today, we would like to thank Wei Wei very much for coming to share with us, so that we have a new understanding of Mobike from her perspective.

From my point of view, the fear of falling was definitely the reason why I said, “You can’t be crazy.” But now it seems to me that it is important to keep trying in one direction. Because you don’t know if there’s a wave out there just waiting for you to stick with it. Most people just because he thought more clearly, the less likely it is to take this step.

Therefore, at that time we jokingly called her “natural idiot”, sometimes it is not so clear, but a key breakthrough point. Thanks to Wei Wei, we hope her crazy dream can have more amazing and brilliant imagination in the future.