The opportunity for Mr. Deng to join Yunlong Automobile came from a consultation call that Ms. Zhao called him shortly after taking office.
Mr. Deng is a bigwig in China’s venture capital circle. He was the founder of Apple’s China branch, and then served as Nokia’s global vice president, helping Nokia to pass the Chinese market and become the global hegemon in the 2G era. Since then, he has successively served as senior vice president of AMD, president of Greater China, managing director and partner of Nokia Growth Fund. After transforming into an investor, Mr. Deng led the Chinese team to invest in a number of unicorns such as Xiaomi Corporation, UC Youshi, and Ganji.
After coming to Yunlong Auto, Mr. Deng found that the other party needed more help than advice. Jason Liu was the one who liked him and invited him to join Yunlong to do something that would disrupt the industry and change the world together.
Changing the world means that as a new infrastructure of a smart city, Yunlong Motors should provide an integrated full-process logistics solution of “smart hardware + system + service”, using the “Xiaomi company” model and replacing it with IoT commercial vehicle solutions for dimensionality reduction. Two- and three-wheeled vehicles will quickly realize large-scale replacement.
The first time he met with founder Jason Liu, Mr. Deng’s eyes lit up, and he felt a play.
The logistics system is an important infrastructure of the country, and it is also the basic “artery” of the national economy. China’s logistics development level is leading the world, especially during the epidemic period, highlighting the supporting role of logistics to the social economy and ensuring the daily needs of residents.
The “14th Five-Year Plan” proposal puts forward requirements for the modernization of the industrial chain supply chain, the construction of a modern logistics system, a sound modern circulation system, acceleration of digital development, and smooth domestic circulation. However, the terminal logistics link has always been primitive and chaotic. What is the replacement for the electric two- or three-wheeled vehicles of the express delivery buddies? This has been a problem that the government has been difficult to solve for many years. In particular, competent authorities like the State Post Administration have a strong desire for digital operation and management of terminal distribution.
As early as 2017, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Public Security and local governments have issued a number of policies related to logistics vehicles, hoping to solve the chaos that affects urban traffic due to the low safety of express delivery vehicles.
In the early policy practice in various places, Mini EEC electric car is a planned alternative. But after being put into use, people found that compliant cars are not rivals of EEC electric tricycles in terms of cost and flexibility. Even today, electric tricycles are still in most cities, supporting the last mile of express delivery services.
However, the pace of eliminating electric tricycles everywhere has not stopped. In the new regulations that Beijing began to implement in July this year, not only does it prohibit any unit or individual from adding illegal electric tricycles, it also sets a “large limit” for this type of transportation: starting from 2024, illegal electric three-wheeled and four-wheeled vehicles will be It is not allowed to drive or park on the road, and the postal express department will also need to use all special legal vehicles by then.
EEC electric tricycle has entered the stage of history, and the complete digitalization of terminal logistics will be a major trend in the future.
“This is a blue sea.” In Mr. Deng’s eyes, the sea is open and the scenery is attractive.
At present, there is no mature solution for the legal upgrade of EEC electric tricycles in the market, and Yunlong Automobile’s disruptive plan for the city’s terminal capacity has allowed Mr. Deng to see greater social value.
“I see this is a very meaningful thing. Whether it is from the national or social level, the industry calls for a solution. The safety of tens of millions of express delivery brothers needs to be guaranteed, and efficiency needs to be improved. This is a big pain point. .”
Mr. Deng, who graduated from California State University, chose to major in computer science because he believes that one day computers will affect people’s lives and have a profound impact on the entire world. And there was no personal PC in that era. “My life has always been to do meaningful things and things with great influence.”
As an investor, the urge to start a business has sprouted in Mr. Deng’s heart many times. After NGP instructed many start-up companies to grow from weak to strong, Mr. Deng has been itching from time to time and imagines that like his friend Lei Jun, he devotes himself to the entrepreneurship of a great company.
When he received the olive branch thrown by the Yunlong car, Mr. Deng felt that the timing was just right. He has cultivated his successor in NGP. After returning, Mr. Deng conducted a lot of research on this industry, and at the same time, as described at the beginning of the article, he asked friends from all walks of life to solicit opinions. Within two months, Mr. Deng made the decision to join Yunlong.
During this period, Mr. Deng and several senior executives of Yunlong Automobile repeatedly discussed how to make the business more in line with the needs of the industry and hit the pain points directly. An intelligent logistics vehicle of the “Xiaomi Company” model has gradually surfaced. Mr. Deng is increasingly confident that this company will surely disrupt the industry and change the world in the future.
In the early contact with the team, Mr. Deng also found that Yunlong Automobile has gathered a large number of outstanding talents in the automotive, communications, and consumer electronics industries, making the entire team appear quite “sexy”.
Ms. Zhao, COO of Yunlong Automobile, also discovered that Yunlong Automobile’s attractiveness to senior talents is beyond her imagination. In addition to Mr. Deng, she has also invited many experts in other fields to join the company, including the founders and partners of the company.
More than that, many engineers in Kering are also recruited from Huawei, Xiaomi, 3Com, Inspur and other companies. “In any medium-sized company, the position is definitely above the vice president level. Our standard for recruiting people is the world’s top 500 companies, and we are calling for the world’s top 500 companies. It will definitely not work to recruit some second-rate talents.” Ms. Zhao said.
Even Ms. Zhao herself is the same. When she was at Xiaomi, she was responsible for creating a unified supply chain system for different categories in the ecological chain. Different from traditional supply chain management, Xiaomi’s ecological chain includes a wide range of categories, from smart hardware to umbrellas and stationery. To open up the ecological chain with a unified supply chain system, the complexity will inevitably increase exponentially.
Even so, she built a centralized procurement platform for Xiaomi’s ecological chain from scratch. As a supply chain system, this platform has extremely high operating efficiency. It only requires two people to connect more than 100 millet ecological chain companies, more than 200 foundries, and more than 500 suppliers.
The person who introduced Ms. Zhao to Jason Liu was her old boss at Xiaomi, Mr. Liu. Although it took less than two months for Yunlong Motor to become a shareholder, Mr. Liu and Yunlong Motor’s founder Jason liu have been friends for many years. After conceiving a new strategy for Yunlong Automobile’s transformation, Jason Liu began to look for suitable COO candidates. Mr. Liu recommended to him Ms. Zhao, who had left Xiaomi at that time and joined Bull Electric.
Like Mr. Deng, Ms. Zhao only had contact with Jason Liu once and was moved by this company. The EEC electric vehicle industry has a mature supply chain, but there is still a lot of room for imagination if it wants to build cars in the “Xiaomi company model”.
Although she has not been exposed to the EEC electric vehicle industry before, Ms. Zhao is confident that Xiaomi’s work experience has helped her find the underlying logic of supply chain management. Using these logics to transform the EEC electric vehicle industry is far more interesting than continuing to engage in smart homes.
In the vision described by founder Jason Liu, Yunlong Automobile will become a Fortune 500 company, but Ms. Zhao did not think this is an unrealistic pie. In her view, this goal has occupied the right time and place, and whether it can become a reality is only a matter of harmony. For any senior talent who wants to realize himself, it is really unreasonable to participate in a great industry change without bowing himself.
Post time: Aug-11-2021