Titanium Media App Express | News on January 17: Yesterday, Li Xiang, the founder of Ideal Automobile (02015.HK/LI.US), forwarded a group car (TC.US) on his personal Weibo to announce that CEO Wen Wei was interviewed by the media after the car was built, and bombarded it for refreshing the bottom line of entrepreneurs.
Li wanted to call Tuanche a "business entrepreneur who hopes to find a super savior" and that they are "generally liars, or most likely scammers themselves." At the same time, he also criticized that "it really refreshes the bottom line of entrepreneurs."
Subsequently, Li Xiang, who was still unsatisfied, used a long text of nearly 3,000 words to further refute the irrationality of the group car.
In a long article, Lee wants to explain in detail what rhythmic and patient long-term growth is. He believes that "any startup must first complete the verification from 0-1 to go from 1 to 10." ”
Li wanted to say: "We built three fools (Note: Wei Xiaoli) in 2021 to complete the verification period from 0-1, and everyone has eaten about 3% of the market share in their own market segments... In the past six or seven years in China, there have been many entrepreneurs in smart electric vehicles, more than 300 left are less than 10, and the three Internet laymen have become the new forces in which sales are running in front, rather than those executive entrepreneurs in the automotive industry, the core reason is that Li Bin, He Xiaopeng, and Li want to control the rhythm and exert their strength as serial entrepreneurs. The worst entrepreneurs in this round of failure are often the executives of multinational auto companies, most of them want to do from the 10-100 stage, we often say a sentence is: there is no Apple's life (people and resources), apple disease (random recruitment and spending money). ”
The car builder group car network, which was angrily spewed by Li Xiang, just announced a week ago that it would enter the car building with a low-cost, small team.
On January 17, Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche, responded to Li Xiang's question through his personal Weibo: "I didn't expect that the first shot of the Long March came from Mr. Li Xiang. Apart from rhythm and patience, have you forgotten your vision and judgment? Wasn't Feng Sihan (CEO of Volkswagen China) being repulsed too early to see his eyes sprayed? Therefore, no one should think of themselves as prophets, nor should they be the ones they hate the most. ”
Public information shows that Wen Wei is a serial entrepreneur. Wen Wei graduated from the Northern Jiaotong University in the early years of industrial foreign trade, and later entered the Shanghai Mitsubishi Electric Company to engage in channel sales work, since 2000 he has done 4 times in a row to start a business have failed, the fifth venture is in 2009 he found someone in the community to assemble, and then go to the 4S store to bargain to buy a car, since then founded the group car network.
In November 2018, Tuanche.com landed on NASDAQ, becoming the first new retail stock of automobiles listed in the United States in China, with the stock code "TC", with an issue price of $7.8 and an opening price of $7.5, down 3.85% from the IPO issue price. By the close, its shares edged up 0.38 percent at $7.83 and had a market capitalization of $618 million.
More than three years later, Tuanche's stock price is $2.75, with a market value of $55.6 million, a 91% decline in market value.
In addition, on January 13, Tuanche released its third quarter financial report. In the third quarter of 2021, the net revenue of Tuanche.com was 61.1 million yuan, a decrease of 38.9% year-on-year; the gross profit in the third quarter was 46.8 million yuan, a decrease of 35.1% year-on-year. The operation status of this auto retail platform with the auto show as its main business is being challenged, and Tuanche.com urgently needs to find new performance growth points.
Perhaps to boost the stock price, or to find new performance growth points, or perhaps as Wen Wei said to grasp the "commonality of industry opportunities", on January 5, Tuanche officially announced its entry into the field of new energy vehicles.
Subsequently, at the Beijing headquarters of tuanche on January 14, Wen Wei was interviewed by a small range of media. Regarding the reasons for the group car itself, Wen Wei said, "When I saw that 'Wei Xiaoli' first started to build a car, I actually had an impulse, but the conditions were not ripe at that time. The real determination was in the second half of 2021, after matchmaking, we began to contact the top team in the industry and saw the possibility of successful car building. ”
Wen Wei said that the biggest driving force for the group car to decide to build the car came from an external team of more than 100 people. This team can undertake product planning, modeling design, engineering development, testing, chassis, three electrics, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, systematic integration program, production support, supplier management of almost all car manufacturing processes, with more than 20 years of car manufacturing experience, in the technology, sample cars have precipitation. According to Wen Wei, the above team came with semi-finished models, and the first model of the group car will be selected from many semi-finished products, priced at 100,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan, and the golden nine silver ten can be pre-sold in 2022. "We give priority to the direct sales model, and at the same time have the channel advantage of landing in the sinking market."
Wen Wei, an external car-making team, can even reduce the car-making cycle of new energy vehicles from 36 months to 18-24 months. And the cost of mass production of a car was reduced to about $50 million. Therefore, this external team is responsible for building cars, while Tuanche is responsible for product positioning, marketing, and channel networks. Simply put, one party is responsible for building cars, and group cars are responsible for selling cars.
Wen Wei even said bluntly that Tuanche itself is a listed company in the United States, and there are many investors who are very interested at present, and the desire of local governments for car-making projects can also become one of the solutions.
"I think there's at least a 50 percent chance of winning." Wen Wei is very confident in this team, wen Wei said that he will be all in the car in the future.
(Titanium Media App Editor Wu Fengye finishing)
The following is the full text of Li Xiang's Weibo:
The Importance of Rhythm Control for Entrepreneurship is from the 0-1 and 1-10 stages. Of course, this rhythm is not with rhythm, but the law and control of different stages. We can roughly divide entrepreneurship into three major stages: first, from the 0-1 verification period; second, from 1-10 growth period; third, from 10-100 maturity period. The requirements for ability and resources in these three stages are completely different, the mismatch between capabilities, resources and stages is often the root cause of enterprise failure, and rhythm control is the most core ability requirement for entrepreneurs and the number one position.
【Verification period from 0-1】
The signature feature of the validation period is that from scratch until you can eat more than 3% of the market share of your segment, you have a significant specialty that can become the ceiling of the industry.
At this stage, the company has no real competitors, mainly competing with its own growth rate, because the leader will not put you in the field of vision at all. For example, all three of us will achieve more than 90,000 units in 2021, which is actually negligible in the leader of China's passenger car industry.
At this stage, for enterprises, the most important thing is to give full play to their own strengths, which are easy to be ignored by the original leaders, but they are valuable to users. For example, Tesla's early three-electric system capabilities, such as the user service capabilities of Weilai Automobile, such as the intelligent driving ability of Xiaopeng Automobile, such as the product capabilities of the ideal car facing the family user group, such as the early automotive product library capabilities of Autohome. Although it is small, it has great user value and can achieve the industry ceiling under this specialty.
At this stage, for managers, the most important thing is to give full play to their own strengths, especially the ability of experts, each manager must go deep into every detail of the business, grasp the big and not let go of the small. At this stage, the fewer comprehensive managers of the enterprise, the better, and each manager is preferably a technical expert or business expert in his or her own field.
Whether it is an enterprise or a manager, the specialty is not to open the second pulse of what is the governor, but to invest solidly, concentrating a firepower point, ten times the investment of talents and resources of others, and there is no shortcut. If you have a penny in your pocket and you can have one more person in your recruitment, invest that money and people in the company's strengths and corresponding experts. Your money, your people, your strengths must be honest and consistent, what you think in your head, what you say in your mouth, what you actually do, and what you invest in money are all consistent. Don't try anything, either do it with all your might or die early.
I personally think that our car three fools completed the verification period from 0-1 in 2021, and everyone has eaten about 3% of the market share in their own market segments, such as the ideal car in 25-50 million passenger cars to eat 3%, and has also become the first place in the sales of medium and large SUVs with the most distinctive characteristics of home users, verifying the product strength for this user group. Tesla verified the transition from phase 0-1 through Model S and Model X (Roadster is the 0.1 triple-power verification phase) and used Model 3 and Model Y to move from the 1-10 phase. Tesla created the industrial ceiling of the three-electric system from the 0-1 stage, and drew electric vehicles and Tesla almost equal. From the 1-10 stages to start the autonomous driving, Elon as a serial entrepreneur, the rhythm control ability is almost invincible.
In the past six or seven years in China, there have been many entrepreneurs in smart electric vehicles, more than 300 left are less than 10, and the three Internet laymen have become the new forces in which sales are running in front, rather than those executive entrepreneurs in the automotive industry, the core reason is that Li Bin, He Xiaopeng, and Li want to control the rhythm and exert their strength as serial entrepreneurs. The worst entrepreneurs in this round of failure are often the executives of multinational auto companies, most of them want to do from the 10-100 stage, we often say a sentence is: there is no Apple's life (people and resources), apple disease (random recruitment and spending money).
The reason why many industry leaders are not successful in the transformation of the industry and technology is also because they are unwilling to do the 0-1 stage, which is the root cause of the failure of the transformation of large enterprises, and it is also the opportunity for latecomers and new forces, and it is impossible for any enterprise to skip the stage from 0-1 for a new productive force and production relationship.
To sum up: from the 0-1 stage of the company's strengths are the most important, the manager's professional expertise is the most important, and with the 3% market segment as the goal to quickly grow and verify.
From 0-1 is also the most difficult stage, according to statistics, more than 96% of startups will end in the 0-1 stage, in recent years this failure rate I think will be higher.
For the no. 1 position of entrepreneurship, how to resist various temptations, how not to be biased by external factors such as competition, public opinion, and shareholders, including the moment of facing great pressure and the life and death of the enterprise, it is still able to persist and not give up, and it is crucial to have a strong heart. Which business that has completed the 0-1 has not climbed out of the ICU multiple times? This is the most core test for entrepreneurs, and it is also the growth that is difficult to buy.
【Growth period from 1-10】
After completing the verification from 0-1, it is easy to make many surviving businesses still fail. I was fortunate that when I founded Autohome, I led the team to complete the stage from 0-1, and after Qin Zhi joined in 2007, it took two years to build various basic conditions from 1-10, leading Autohome to successfully complete the growth period from 1-10, and by 2016, the scale of users and revenues had increased by hundreds of times. Such a personal experience also gave me a general understanding of the various key elements from 1-10. In 2007-2008, when we only had a small income of tens of millions, we firmly believed that the auto home could achieve more than 100 times growth, achieve billions of revenue scale, and finally did it.
The hallmark of the formative years is that at this stage you will grow 10-100 times in size (depending on the industry), and you will face all kinds of competition as you begin to invade the territory of leaders and vested interests.
There are two things that basically determine life and death: 1. You must continue to maintain the advantages you have built from the 0-1 verification period, and this negligence is the root cause of most businesses' rapid death from 1-10. The core business action from 1-10 is to continue to amplify the advantages established before, rather than building new advantages from scratch and abandoning the original advantages. Autohome's original product library and website product advantages are absolutely impossible to give up, Tesla's three-electric system advantages must not be abandoned, and the ideal car's product advantages for home users must not be abandoned, but to continue to amplify this advantage, there are many things that can be done. 2, under the premise of insisting on amplifying the advantage, we must consider the elements of competition, that is, we must do more necessary work in the face of competition, and remember that it is necessity, not multiple choice. For example, management and systems, technology research and development, supply chain training, commercialization capabilities and so on. From 1-10 competition, it is a comprehensive competition under the premise of maintaining characteristics, and it is indispensable to continue to maintain characteristics and make up for comprehensive capabilities.
Enterprises that fail from the 1-10 stage can be said to be these two problems: 1, did not continue their own strengths; 2, did not make up for the shortcomings of competition. As long as one doesn't do it, it's over.
This stage is the same for managers. First of all, you have to continue to play your professional strengths, and secondly, you must also quickly improve your professionalism, and I mean professionalism is a higher level of mind, a mental model that can understand others and give their own solutions to help each other. Similar to my biggest change in 2008, it was that understanding others was just as important as insisting on yourself. Remember, to lead a larger team, understanding others is the first important training. To observe and understand the strengths and problems of the people around us, as well as the driving forces and principles behind them, understand their driving forces and historical reasons, and let the other party have a sense of security and trust (to be understood), we can give better solutions, help the team grow, and cooperate effectively with different teams.
As a manager, the competition from 0-1 is to understand oneself, and from 1-10 is to improve the understanding of others.
I think that Ideal Auto entered the stage from 1-10 in 2022, but due to the previous experience of running a car home with Qin Zhi, Ideal Auto began to build infrastructure for the stage from 1-10 from 2019, learning how those trillion-dollar revenue scale enterprises came through, and why behind it, to build basic capabilities at the strategic, organizational, and system levels. Ideal Car made one product from 0-1, how to manage ten products from 1-10, and how to ensure that the product value of each product is consistently leading? The product and R&D management system will definitely need to be greatly upgraded, and it is best to prepare in advance. In terms of technology research and development, can you penetrate the application, technology, and system vertically, and can you get the ticket to enter the final round? In terms of business model, can it support the trillion-dollar revenue scale, and the operating efficiency and user experience continue to improve? In terms of supply chain and manufacturing capacity, can it keep up with the explosive growth of sales, and can it produce more JPH per acre of land? In terms of organization, can it be scaled up but the company is not complicated, talents are not greasy, not rolled in, can we continue to improve the efficiency of talents? Financially, can we continue to maintain healthy cash flow and hematopoietic capacity, and no longer rely solely on financing to promote R&D investment and scale growth?
It's been the last three years, and we've been asking our own questions every day and patiently searching for answers.
This is my personal understanding of the growth period from 1-10, and the successful experience of Autohome from 1-10 has a reference for the ideal car, but the problem solving methods are also different. Ideal Car only had less than 30 billion in revenue last year, and I think the revenue scale of more than 1 trillion is a time point for a smart electric vehicle company to complete the homework from 1-10.
To sum up: from the 1-10 growth period, the most important thing for the enterprise is to adhere to and amplify your strengths from 0-1, and make up for the fatal shortcomings that will occur in competition and rapid growth. For individual participants, it is still necessary to continuously enhance their professional strengths, but they must make up for their own professional qualities, that is, the mental model of understanding others and giving solutions.
Looking at the entire venture, the ratio of being able to complete from 1-10 to 10 should be one in a thousand. In short, what can be done will survive, and what cannot be done will be naturally eliminated.
Keep two points in mind: 1, continue to expand the company and their own long board; 2, make up for the shortcomings, this is the necessity, not the choice of questions.