Ye Shengyi believes that there are three types of people in this world:
One is the "majority of people", who pursue a plain and simple life, and can be content with ordinary schools and small companies;
One is the "successful person" in the secular sense, who is the manager of a certain field and has a very deep understanding of the field;
There is also the category of "creators" who have a broad vision and can be handy no matter what kind of environment they are in.
If the vision of the first two types of people is likened to "point" and "line", then the vision of the third type of people is "face". Ye Shengyu knew very well that he wanted to become a third type of person, so he chose to start a business.
Author | Wang Ye
Edit | Chen Caixian
1 Entrepreneurial dreamer
Among the new generation of AI entrepreneurs who have emerged in China in recent years, Ye Shengyan, born in 1988, is no longer a "young guy".
In July 2021, the Alliance of Ai Young Scientists and Wutonghui released the third "A Class" list during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, and 17 outstanding Chinese AI academic youth and entrepreneurs were selected, Ye Shengyi was one of them, and the oldest one. According to statistics, most of these 17 "A class students" are post-90s, and their average age is only 26 years old.
As a "front wave", Ye Shengsheng talked about the reason why he joined the AI Young Scientists Alliance, mainly to be able to communicate with more AI entrepreneurs, and share the hardships and sins he has suffered in the process of entrepreneurship with the "back waves", so that they can take fewer detours and learn from the successful experience of others.
Photo note: Ye Shengxuan (third from left) participated in the WAIC Talent Theme Forum as the representative of the third "A Class Students"
After returning to China for four years, Ye still maintains a style of Silicon Valley technology entrepreneurs in the United States: enthusiastic, cheerful, dare to dream, like to communicate with people, talk endlessly, and think clearly. Even when it comes to how difficult it is to start a business, the tone is full of a vigor that "dreams may not be realized, but we are opening up unknown boundaries every day".
At the end of 2017, Ye Shengjian founded "Drapery Without Frontiers" in Hangzhou, with the intention of "Strategizing and Strategizing Without Frontiers", and later renamed "Drapery Ingenuity", which was called "Whale Drapery" to the outside world. But in the end, in the deep sense, Ye himself always had a kind of fearless, in-depth and uncompromising optimism and calmness in his initial heart when he founded the "Drapery".
There is no doubt that Vertel is a startup that has only been established for less than 5 years, hoping to combine artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and data to provide a digital marketing solution for the brand, but under Ye's leadership, Vertel is not at all like a startup: there is no mandatory overtime culture, flexible commuting, and even the name of the conference room is extremely dreamy - "City in the Sky".
This don Quixote idealistic spirit may be related to Ye Shengsheng's unique study experience in the United States:
After graduating from high school in 2007, Ye began to study in the United States, majoring in computer science and economics at the University of Virginia, and after graduation, he went to the California Institute of Technology to pursue a master's degree in computing and neurology, under the tutelage of Christof Koch, a well-known Neuroscientist in the United States and currently the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute of Brain Science, to study decision-making and behavioral analysis.
At Caltech, in addition to learning cutting-edge artificial intelligence knowledge, Ye Shengyun also had the opportunity to meet many maverick and knowledgeable research masters, and his mentor Christof Koch is one of them. On the one hand, Christof Koch is a highly accomplished academic leader in the field of neuroscience and artificial intelligence; on the other hand, his personality is very "geek", eclectic, likes to dye his hair bright colors, and his mentality is extremely young.
Christof Koch
Christof Koch has a wide range of disciples, and his students hold key positions around the world, including Li Feifei, a well-known Chinese female scientist and now a professor at Stanford University. In addition, according to Ye Shengyi, Christof Koch and The Nobel Prize winner francis Crick, who discovered the double helix structure of DNA, are also very familiar with each other, and the two have worked together for more than ten years, which is like a master and apprentice.
Walking with giants, it is always easy to make people have the desire to explore the unknown and far away, and their maverick, dare to think and dare to do style, and let Ye Shengyu feel that even if the harvest is far away, but every day to strive to open up the unknown boundaries of human beings, facing the broad future, is to do the right thing.
However, Ye Shengyan also quickly learned that his interest was not to be "imprisoned" in the laboratory day and night to do research. He found that it is not an easy task to really apply the research results in the laboratory, and the time spent in the laboratory will always be more than originally planned, but the progress may be much less than expected, and letting time pass like this is not in line with Ye Shengyi's attitude.
After earning his master's degree from Caltech, he went to Harvard Business School as a Research Associate, where he used the first large-scale nuclear magnetic resonance experiment to derive the thought process for business decisions, published in Nature Scientific Reports, which is now widely used in the field of business decision research (such as AC Nelson's advertising analytics).
After three months at Harvard Business School, Mr. Ye moved to Facebook as a software engineer and was one of the first members to join Facebook's Marketing Innovation Lab. During this time, he modeled the consumer behavior of a Fortune 500 retail company's global information, helping it improve its brand influence.
It was also the experience of working at Harvard Business School and Facebook that led Ye to have the idea of combining artificial intelligence with brand marketing. But doing technical applications in large factories does not satisfy his "ambitions".
"I've always thought starting a business is a lot of fun, and I'm looking at the right opportunities." He said.
2 Entering "AI+ Brand Marketing"
Every geek has a dream of changing the world with technology, and entrepreneurs are the most fanatical part of them.
In 2017, Ma Yun mentioned the concept of "new retail", and the new consumption model represented by Hema and e-commerce live broadcasting promoted the rise of many emerging brands. For example, in recent years, the Yuanqi Forest, Hi Tea, Perfect Diary, etc., which have been vigorously touted by young people, have developed by leaps and bounds. In such a market background, the brand's personalized marketing needs gradually increase, and the role of technology in brand marketing is becoming increasingly prominent.
Seeing the changes in the domestic market, in 2017, Ye Shengyu resolutely decided to resign from Facebook and return to China to start a business.
He knows that starting a business is a difficult thing in itself, so it is especially important to follow his heart's call to make decisions. If you start from the heart, then the weight of success and failure can be much higher than the success or failure and income:
"Entrepreneurship is really not rich. If you go to a big company as a professional manager, some can earn two or three million a year and achieve financial freedom. I think they live a very moist life, and it's a way of life." Ye Shengxuan analyzed, but this is not the most important thing for an "idealist" like him.
He wants to become the "third type of person" in his eyes, that is, the person who opens up the territory, and the joy of entrepreneurship is that he can form a new line of knowledge points accumulated every day, and then continuously expand his cognitive aspect, enrich his understanding of life and the world. From this perspective, "entrepreneurship" is extremely consistent with his outlook on life.
Picture note: Ye Shengyan
The marketing track is very sensitive to the development of computers and modern communication technology, and will continue to raise new questions and generate new hot spots as the technology is updated. The earliest marketing system consisted of offline advertising, television, radio and print media, etc., and now the marketing presentation is digital, and there are many marketing methods that face consumers directly, such as WeChat public accounts, vibrato live broadcasts and other various media, and even the current explosive meta-universe.
"Many brands such as Procter & Gamble and Yuanqi Forest will use 40% to 80% of the money for marketing, while beauty and makeup brands account for even as much as 80% to 90%." Ye Shengxuan introduced.
In the brand marketing and sales scenario, it is also divided into online and offline. At present, only about 30% of the highly digital online marketing sales are accounted for, while the remaining 70% of the offline scenes are still in the initial stage of digitalization. After aiming at this market, Ye Shengyu decided to start from his own artificial intelligence knowledge and develop technical solutions for brand marketing services.
In terms of technology, artificial intelligence is a very important component. Ye explains: "AI can make the delivery more precise. We buy things on the top of the mini program or APP, and the words "add purchase" or "you may also like" may appear under the shopping cart to recommend products for consumers, which are inseparable from AI technology."
In addition to the main data collection and behavioral analysis, the team also combined the hardware facilities of the Internet of Things, soft and hard. For offline store sales analytics, sensors in the Internet of Things are indispensable to devices such as cameras, for example, they need to collect offline consumer purchase behavior data and the delivery process of items through cameras.
People say, "Data is a resource, and a resource is an opportunity." In brand marketing, this phrase is fulfilled. From the beginning of his business, Ye Shengyi hoped to effectively mine the value of data, form a data network through accurate data acquisition and analysis, and boost brand parties to increase sales conversion.
He likens technology and problems to "hammers" and "nails", and to solve different "nail" problems, different "hammers" are used, and may even use different tools such as "drills" and "pliers". Unlike many emerging artificial intelligence startups in China, in addition to the hammer of AI, they also combine data analysis and Internet of Things technology to a large extent, of which data analysis accounts for about 40%.
After determining the track, Ye Shengjian led the team to start from the offline store to study how to combine AI (artificial intelligence), IoT (Internet of Things) and Data (data) to help brands improve sales conversion rates.
3 Make a hammer and knock on the nails
The online model of digital brand marketing is very common, that is, the products that users may be interested in are delivered to the pages that users often open, strengthening the user's understanding and cognition of the brand, and the principle of technical implementation is almost the same as that recommended by social platforms such as Douyin and Facebook. So, what is the "offline digitalization" of The Curtain?
In essence, the innovation of offline marketing models is ultimately inseparable from the two main bodies of transactions: sellers and buyers. Among them, the seller is the brand of each store, such as Zhou Black Duck, Xibei Shinomian Village, Xicha, Liangpin Shop, etc., that is, the "B" group in the "To B" strategy of the drapery, commonly known as "customer dad". The buyer, that is, the ordinary you and I hit workers, a family of five who like to visit Hema and so on, are also the target groups of draperies and brands.
Whether online or offline, grasping consumer behavior and preferences is always the core, and the digital marketing plan of the drapery is the same, but online is to analyze consumers' browsing preferences and click behavior, while offline is to collect consumers' walking, staying, asking and other behavior data in the store, and then analyze these data to deduce the delivery plan that attracts consumers. Just like the behavior trace analysis expert played by Chen Shu in the 2018 domestic spy war drama "Peace Hotel", the truth of the facts can be restored only from the behavior of the characters:
Photo note: Stills from "Peace Hotel"
Inside the store, Vernier will deploy a customer flow system, security system, sensors, interactive screens and inventory counting systems that integrate artificial intelligence algorithms to help improve the brand's sales efficiency.
In the context of brand marketing, "vision" really breaks the boundaries of perception and reflects the role of decision-making. For example, in the analysis of offline consumer behavior, they found that most Chinese enter the supermarket and are accustomed to walking to the right first, and then from the right to the left. At this time, the brand side can formulate its own delivery plan based on the characteristics of the user's walking to increase sales.
"Consumer neuroscience studies how consumers make decisions and how their brains calculate. For example, buy one get one free and get 50% off, which one will you choose. It seems that the results of these two promotions are the same, but the process of calculation in people's brains is not the same. For example, many people walk into the supermarket and habitually look to the right, or go to the right. This is actually because Chinese are more familiar with the right. If it's in the UK, a lot of people are used to going to the left." Ye Shengxuan introduced.
Based on the offline experience and the amount of online data, Vernier has developed its own technical solutions, which can help the brand to accurately draw user portraits and product portraits, realize the consumption recommendation of thousands of people, and display the brand's thousand stores and thousands of faces according to the user's movement line and display plan.
In managing massive amounts of data and decision analysis, the efficiency of artificial intelligence algorithms is naturally much higher than that of manual analysis. Ye Shengyu took the Northwest cuisine brand Xibei Shinomian Village as an example:
"Xibei has nearly 400 stores across the country, each with 7-20 digital screens, which means that Xibei has more than 4,000 screens to manage. In the past, the turnover of these screen contents required employees to manually upload them from store to store with a USB stick. Now, all content adjustments can be achieved through the remote operation of the Vernier Digital Asset Management System, and one person can control all screens, control the screen content, and set the playback rules of the screen content, which is much more efficient than 10 times."
However, the drapery is not limited to offline, but online and offline at the same time,
The idea of data drive is still not outdated. From Ye's perspective, he believes that the application of data can be divided into six stages: acquisition, reporting, analysis and attribution, forecasting, recommendation, and automation.
Ye Shengyan also stressed that in the process of data collection and analysis, they paid attention to the protection of consumer data privacy and carried out five protection measures:
- In the data collection process, standardize the process of data collection and processing. Do not collect or store face biometric features, such as passenger flow statistics, use the "head-to-shoulder ratio + humanoid profile" scheme, and only upload statistical information to the cloud after the edge-end computation is completed;
- In the data storage link, through the unified management of large data centers, establish standardized data storage conditions to prevent data loss or theft;
- In the data analysis process, the user data is localized and processed through the edge computing unit to reduce the possibility of the original data being leaked during transmission and sharing;
- In the data processing processing link, improve the means of data processing, remove the processing of unless necessary data, and avoid the secondary leakage of personal information;
- In the data deletion process, the storage and use of user privacy data is minimized, and the original sample is deleted in a timely manner after the use of data is used, so as to ensure the compliance and legality of data use, and provide an effective way for users to apply for deletion of personal privacy data.
The onlineization of offline data is inevitable, and the processing of data is not the purpose, to achieve marketing automation and improve the efficiency of marketing conversion is the meaning of drunkenness.
Using the advantages of technology products, Wechat has served many consumer brands and retail giants, including Well-known brands such as Midea, Xibei, Unilever, Watsons, etc., and is also the digital exploration driver behind many new consumer goods such as Bubble Mart and NIO, and has shown good results. It is understood that the current financing of The Curtain has been carried out to the fifth round, which also shows investors' confidence in marketing technology.
If you look at the improvement of sales performance alone, this does not seem to be "idealistic" enough. Ye Shengyi's ultimate vision is to create Chinese brands: "China must have its own brands, and using technology to help these brands grow is the core mission of The Company."
4 From "First Grade" to "Sixth Grade"
Speaking of the mental journey of entrepreneurship, Ye Shengyu described himself as a "primary school student":
"Entrepreneurship is more of a learning process, very similar to reading, from the first grade to the sixth grade of primary school, from the feeling of not knowing at all to knowing, and it is also a process of rapidly accumulating knowledge and shaping personal values." 」
In the process, the challenges he faced were also unknown. The drapery received orders in the first three months of its establishment, but it was not smooth sailing. "Starting a business is not easy after all." "Starting a business is far more difficult than people who have never started a business think, and they may encounter setbacks every day. But entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs are very resilient because they face the hardest things."
The larger the enterprise, the more difficult it is to deal with the things that end up falling on the CEO, and Ye Shengyi faces these most difficult problems every day. From data collection to data analysis, from finding people to finding money, he has to participate in these tasks.
But in the final analysis, as an entrepreneur, the core question that Ye Shengyi has to consider the most is still "whether a technology can be applied to the market to generate value". Is the market real, or is it the imagination of fanatical entrepreneurs, or is it misled by statistics? This question can always make people anxious.
In the face of huge pressure, Ye Shengyu still maintains an optimistic attitude, believing that to solve 99% of the problems, what is needed is a methodology; even if many difficulties are unknown and have not been encountered, he can also avoid them to the greatest extent in advance through observation, thinking and prevention.
There is no end to learning. At the same time as starting a business, Ye Shengyu did not stop academic research. After returning to China, he embarked on the road of entrepreneurship with one foot, and the other foot stepped into the school gate of Zhejiang University to pursue a doctorate in electronic science and technology (part-time). Behind the continued PhD is not the obsession with the doctorate. For him, it was the result of natural development: the technology was researched and put into use.
"Academia and entrepreneurship are themselves A/B sides, and the two are not completely unrelated. Many of the technologies in the lab also need to be commercialized through entrepreneurship or enterprises." Ye Shengyan commented on AI technology. So, for him, starting a business and a PhD is a thing in itself.
Previously, much of the research he conducted at Caltech and Harvard was based on data from the lab, with very little real data from the real world. After starting his own company, Ye Shengjian can obtain large-scale real data to guide decision-making research in real-life applications, which can help Vermilion formulate plans with more cutting-edge technologies and form a virtuous circle. According to reports, the marketing technology developed by Vernier for many customers is developed by him in cooperation with the team of Zhejiang University.
Photo note: Zhejiang University
Although it was arduous, Ye Shengyu also enjoyed it. For him, the biggest improvement that entrepreneurship has brought him is his own level of cognition, not the level of knowledge or ability. Just like what a first-grader thinks and what a sixth-grader writes, there's a big difference between the two, because the cognitive level is different and the mindset changes: "The problems that were thought to be difficult before may not be a problem in retrospect."
Much of this awareness comes from his dealings with customers. Ye Shengyi's daily schedule is very close, but he still insists on meeting at least three customers a week, communicating with them one-on-one, and understanding the effects of products, energy consumption and industry dynamics from them. "It's something I couldn't learn in school." He laughed.
5 Run to the future
Today, under the leadership of Ye Shengjian, Drapery has reached its fifth year and has steadily survived what the data company calls a "three-year entrepreneurial test period".
"Overtime isn't necessarily a good culture." Ye Shengyu had always thought so. He doesn't want employees to be passively sluggish under the "996" work system; instead, as a geek, he wants employees to work more efficiently and do things that other company employees can do in 12 hours in 8 hours.
"Efficiency" has always been Ye's mantra. As long as he can improve the efficiency of employees, he is willing to personally run downstairs to buy coffee for everyone; as long as he can improve the marketing efficiency of the brand, he is also willing to go all out, find a variety of "hammers" and "hammers" to develop the so-called optimal plan, and meticulously implement the spirit of value creation.
When asked if the employees were happy, Ye Shengjian replied without hesitation: "Of course happiness."
He believes that a person's happiness comes from a sense of mission. Not everyone has a sense of purpose, and that's what they have to consider when hiring, "We don't want people who don't have a sense of mission to come in because it's hard for these people to get things done."
From the beginning of the dazed unknown, to the current "Hangzhou quasi-unicorn enterprise", what kind of hardships behind the team of the drapery is unknown. But Ye Shengyan is always optimistic, always thinking about how to break the digital boundaries of brand marketing, maintain the initial enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, and rush to the next mountain.
What kind of business can an "idealistic" entrepreneur ultimately build? Let's wait and see.
Editor's note: If you have a good story, please contact me (WeChat: 302703941).
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