After Lei Jun became ceo of Xiaomi Automobile Company

He successfully changed China's mobile phone industry with the thinking of Internet + manufacturing, and now, he has decided to burn the fire of entrepreneurship to smart cars. He firmly believes that entrepreneurs need a strong heart to go to the other side of their dreams.

Wen | Zhao Dongshan, a reporter for China Entrepreneur

Editor| Li Wei

Head photography | Deng Pan

If you want to find a keyword for Lei Jun or Xiaomi's 2021, it is not "building a car".

In March this year, Lei Jun decided to launch an attack on the automotive manufacturing field, which is known as the "crown of manufacturing". He said: "Xiaomi Auto will be the last major entrepreneurial project in my life, and I am willing to bet on all the accumulated achievements and reputations in my life to fight for Xiaomi Auto!" ”

Since then, Lei Jun has focused almost all his energy on building cars.

In the past 7 months, Lei Jun has read more than 20,000 resumes, interviewed countless auto bulls, led the team to conduct a large number of user research and industrial chain inspections, conducted more than 2,000 research interviews, visited and deeply communicated with dozens of industry peers and partners, and intensively promoted the product definition and team building of automobiles.

All this once again made everyone see Lei Jun's diligence and enthusiasm.

In fact, before the formal decision to build a car, Lei Jun also did a lot of work, he and Xiaomi executives conducted 75 days of research, did 85 automotive industry visits and communications, held 4 internal management seminars and 2 formal board meetings. After the above research work, I finally made up my mind to build a car.

In the past 10 years, Lei Jun has led Xiaomi to continuously refresh its achievements in business history: in the fourth year of its establishment, Xiaomi's mobile phone shipments became the third in the world; in the 7th year of its establishment, Xiaomi's operating income exceeded 100 billion; in the 9th year of its establishment, Xiaomi became the world's youngest Fortune 500 company.

But Lei Jun has never been an entrepreneur who is willing to the status quo. On August 16, 2020, he announced on Weibo: "Today is a special day, Xiaomi began the journey of 're-entrepreneurship'. In the second quarter of 2021, Xiaomi's mobile phone sales became the second in the world for the first time, and Lei Jun immediately set a new goal for Xiaomi: "Within three years, win the world's first!" ”

When he was in college, Lei Jun read "Silicon Valley Fire" in the library of Wuhan University and embarked on the road of entrepreneurship since then. From Jinshan's 16 years of struggle to a bowl of millet porridge to start a new journey, Lei Jun successfully changed China's mobile phone industry with the thinking of Internet + manufacturing. Now, he has decided to burn the fire of entrepreneurship into the field of smart cars.

On the eleventh anniversary of Xiaomi, the theme of Lei Jun's annual speech was "My Dream, My Choice", and he chose to gamble again for the dream of 18 years old.

Although he has always said that "entrepreneurship is not done by people, it is done by cats and dogs", until now, the fire of entrepreneurship in his heart is still hot, because he is convinced that entrepreneurs need a strong heart to go to the other side of their dreams.

1

It's not a chaser

After the announcement of the car, Lei Jun and Xiaomi are running at high speed.

On September 1, Lei Jun released the news of the official registration of Xiaomi Automobile on Weibo, the company named Xiaomi Automobile Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 10 billion yuan, the legal representative is Lei Jun, and the first factory of Xiaomi Automobile will be located in Yizhuang, Beijing. In mid-October, at the Xiaomi 2021 Investor Day, Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi Auto has arrived at 453 jobs, and Xiaomi Auto will be mass-produced in the first half of 2024.

On November 18, Xiaomi Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., the second automobile company of Xiaomi, was established, the legal representative Lei Jun, with a registered capital of 1 billion yuan, Xiaomi Technology Co., Ltd. wholly owned shares, the scope of business includes new energy vehicle manufacturing; automobile vehicle and parts technology research and development; intelligent vehicle equipment manufacturing; lithium-ion battery manufacturing; sales of automobiles, auto parts; road motor vehicle production.

However, even if he leads Xiaomi to the current position, Lei Jun often seems very cautious and cautious, and has a sense of crisis.

Lin Shiwei, vice president of Xiaomi Group, CFO and CEO of Tianxing Digital, recalled to "Chinese Entrepreneur": "At the beginning, Lei always held the mentality of 'Xiaomi does not do cars' to do research, and the results of the survey found that if you do not do cars, Xiaomi will be greatly affected, it is likely that xiaomi mobile phones will not sell in the future, we are a traditional enterprise." ”

Once the strategic direction was determined, the Lei Army forged ahead. "Xiaomi is not chasing the wind and catching up with the trend, but because smart electric vehicles have changed from the 'machinery industry' to the 'information industry'." Xiaomi will be eliminated if it does not do it, not to mention that our two peers are already doing it. Smart electric vehicles are already a must for the military, xiaomi has to fight. ”

Lei Jun clearly knows the risks of the automotive industry: tens of billions of investments, and it takes 3 to 5 years to achieve results, "to do or not to do? This decision is really too important for me, sometimes during the day I feel that there are 100 reasons to do, and at night, when I calm down, there are 100 reasons to feel that I should not do it. ”

Lin Shiwei told Chinese Entrepreneur: "Lei is always a very good listener and learner, and everyone may think that he has achieved his current position, and everything is determined by him." In fact, every time he discusses, he will listen to everyone's opinions, consider the problem from every angle, and make a summary. Most of the situations are discussed and decided together, and if there is no conclusion, it may take two or three discussions before it is decided. ”

As for car manufacturing, Lei Jun saw some realistic possibilities after a series of investigations and studies: "The PROPORTION OF BOM (BILL OF MATERIALS) of vehicle electronic parts has exceeded 50%, and the proportion will be higher and higher in the future." At the same time, 2/3 of the R&D cost of automobiles is electronics-related, and electric vehicles are increasingly becoming consumer electronics. So if Xiaomi doesn't do it, it will be eliminated. ”

However, when the development of new car-making forces is in full swing, is it too late for Xiaomi to enter the smart electric vehicle industry?

Lei Jun's words may have already answered: "11 years ago, we started to make mobile phones as a layman, and no one was optimistic. Indeed, 11 years ago, there was Apple Samsung, nokia Motorola, there was 'China CoolLink', the mobile phone market was a red sea, but a small company in Zhongguancun entered the extremely competitive mobile phone industry, miracles happened, it only took 3 years, we beat Apple, Huawei, to achieve the world's third, China's first. ”

2

Small test to B business

In addition to car building, in 2021, Xiaomi also officially entered the enterprise service, that is, the to B field.

On January 1, Xiaomi officially established the to B business department, hoping to use Xiaomi's existing advantages such as brand, product, technology and efficiency for the C-end to fully empower B-end customers.

Although in just a few months, Xiaomi's customized terminals have served more than 15 industries, exceeded 500,000 terminals, and sold more than 1 million units; in terms of intelligent ecological business, 75% of the TOP3 real estate leaders have reached cooperation with Xiaomi; and the intelligent ecological business has covered 15 cities.

"Enterprise digital transformation is becoming a just need, Xiaomi has been thinking and paying attention to the changes in various industries, we hope to improve the operational efficiency of the entire enterprise and society, and help enterprises face digital intelligence." Wang Xiang, president of Xiaomi Group, answered the reason why Xiaomi turned to the B-side.

Some investors have described the to C business as like flying a kite, as soon as the wind comes, the kite rises, and the company that does not hesitate to come to the wind outlet goes up very quickly, but it can also fall very quickly. And to B field like a flying machine, before take-off need to do a lot of preparation, wings, engines, propellers, electromechanical control, etc., its disadvantages are long preparation time, complex operation, the advantage is good stability.

Wang Xiang also believes that the core of Xiaomi's successful business model is efficiency, but before going all out to do the C business, it could not free up its hands. Now that it has accumulated 11 years, from the technology, brand, product level, Xiaomi has reached a certain level, there are opportunities, capabilities to "take off", empowering service companies to improve their efficiency, before deciding to enter this field.

In fact, in recent years, concerns about the peak of C-end traffic have made the to B service a must-fight place for soldiers. Over the past two years, ETFs that track global cloud computing have risen nearly 100 percent. Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance and other domestic Internet giants have actively laid out in the field of enterprise services, such as enterprise WeChat, DingTalk, feishu, all of which have helped people improve work efficiency to a large extent.

In the past 20 years, among the listed enterprise service companies, the total market value of Chinese companies is only about 1/10 of the total market value of American companies, which means that if the Chinese enterprise service industry is benchmarked against the United States, there is still a lot of room for development. Market research firm Omdia expects a compound annual growth rate of 8.7% between 2022 and 2026, and the global enterprise services market will reach $3 trillion by 2026.

In the face of such a large cake, what are the advantages of Xiaomi?

"Xiaomi's core strategy is 'mobile phone × AIoT', which is the foundation of our standing, is xiaomi's strongest place, we have a very strong hardware manufacturing, with the Internet thinking to do hardware, improve the efficiency of hardware production, manufacturing, sales, this is the core of millet, so in the to B business will also cut from xiaomi's strongest field to cut in." Wang Xiang thinks.

3

Efficient and talented

Lei Jun mentions Xiaomi's efficiency almost every time he gives a public speech. In order to increase efficiency, at the beginning of the establishment of Xiaomi, Lei Jun designed a high-efficiency model, which requires efficiency improvement in every link, so as to achieve high cost performance.

"The ordinary commodity price composition is composed of manufacturing and service costs, R&D sharing costs, marketing and advertising costs, sales and channel costs, profits, etc., but in Xiaomi's high-efficiency model, explosive products reduce manufacturing and service costs, reduce R&D apportionment costs, new media marketing reduces market costs, and e-commerce reduces sales costs." Lei Jun concluded.

Over the past year, the expansion of Xiaomi House has been quite efficient. In 2018, Xiaomi had only 586 Xiaomi homes. In 2019, Xiaomi Homes slowly climbed to 630. From October 2020 to the present, Xiaomi Home has grown from 2,000 to 10,000. The coverage rate of these stores in cities has reached 97%, in county seats to reach 81%, and in townships to reach 4%.

Lei Jun knows that behind the efficiency is actually talent.

In the past few years, competitors who once fought tit-for-tat with Xiaomi have been recruited by Lei Jun, and gathered a business executive team that has been ridiculed by the outside world as an "Avengers Alliance": Lu Weibing, former president of Gionee Group, joined Xiaomi on January 2, 2019, is currently the vice president of Xiaomi Group, president of China, and general manager of Redmi Redmi brand; Zeng Xuezhong, former CEO of ZTE, joined Xiaomi on July 29, 2020, as vice president of Xiaomi Group and president of the mobile phone department, responsible for the research and development and production of mobile phone products Chang Cheng, former vice president of Lenovo Group, joined Xiaomi on January 2, 2020, and is currently the vice president of Xiaomi Group, responsible for mobile phone product planning; Wang Xiaoyan, founder of Xiao pepper, announced his joining Xiaomi on January 4, 2020, and is currently the vice president of Xiaomi China and the general manager of the second sales department.

In addition to executives, driven by the slogan of "re-entrepreneurship", Lei Jun is stimulating the enthusiasm of employees and the mentality of joint entrepreneurship through equity incentives. On July 2, 2021, Xiaomi Group announced that it intends to award 70.2317 million shares (worth 1.54 billion yuan) to 3904 employees to reward outstanding young engineers, outstanding fresh graduates and outstanding employees in core positions of the team, as well as the winners of the annual technology award.

Lei Jun also personally undertook the "Young Engineer Incentive Program", and the first batch of about 700 outstanding young engineers were selected and received a total of 16.042 million shares (about 350 million yuan). This time, we first cut from the mobile phone department and the Internet department, mainly front-line R & D engineers, test engineers, product managers, designers, etc., of which the youngest selected employee is only 24 years old.

Lei Jun said in a post on Weibo that Xiaomi implements a "technology-based" strategy and regards the recruitment, training and motivation of young engineers as one of the most core tasks.

Among all the talents, Lei Jun and Xiaomi attach great importance to technical talents. A small episode in the history of Xiaomi's growth is that for a long time after Xiaomi's listing in Hong Kong, the stock price did not perform well, and by September 2019, it even fell all the way to HK$8.28.

Recalling this period of time, Lei Jun said in a public speech in 2021: "In recent years, the more we have held our breath and desperately invested in research and development. If Xiaomi wants to become a great company and realize its dreams, it must break through the high-end. ”

In the past few years, Xiaomi's R&D investment has increased from 3.2 billion yuan to 13 billion yuan, and there have been more than 14,000 R&D engineers, and it is expected to reach 16,000 people by the end of this year. Lei Jun said bluntly, "Engineers are Xiaomi's most important asset. He also set up the Xiaomi Technology Award at the company, the highest award within Xiaomi, for $1 million worth of stock.

Wu Bofan, a researcher at the Institute of New Media research at Peking University, once said that Lei Jun has many contradictory points, both the "pirate" side and the "farmer" side. One sharp and one rounded, but these two qualities were balanced in Lei Jun. "Pirate" refers to the only fast and unbreakable, taking advantage of the victory to pursue, and the "farmer" is pragmatic.

These two characteristics allow Lei Jun to constantly break into different industries and achieve new achievements. Lei Jun said that in the past 11 years of Xiaomi's entrepreneurship, he has worried about failure, worried about whether his ability can keep up with the development of the company, and worried about physical strength and energy, but whenever he encounters a huge crisis and challenge, he will not hesitate to come forward.

"I'm not a genius, I'm not a model worker, I'm not a god of war, I'm just an ordinary engineer, pursuing my dreams and doing what I love."