The charm of self-driving entrepreneurship and investment is not in business, but in the definition of success.
Recently, the German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) approved Mercedes-Benz's L3 level autonomous driving system, which means that Mercedes-Benz's L3 level autonomous vehicles can not only be driven on the road, but also exported to overseas markets. This news must be a milestone in the field of autonomous driving, which means that for the first time, the world's L3 level autonomous vehicles have achieved mass production and multinational sales.
The sunrise in the east and the rain in the west, in China, another frontier of autonomous driving, is a different story: from the beginning of 2021, Huawei and many other giant companies have begun to hype up the top level of their autonomous driving, but they have not seen mass production products; the situation of autonomous driving startups is even worse, and dozens of head startups have entered the "shortage of people" and "money shortage".
Old Li has been engaged in automotive intelligent primary market investment, contact with many autonomous driving startups, today Old Li and everyone to chat about some interesting: how do autonomous driving companies "fool" investors? Why is the industry reasonable? Why aren't there losers in the autonomous driving industry?
"Flickering" is a skill
Flickering is a skill, which is the most profound experience of Lao Li during his research on autonomous driving investment.
There will always be a gap between the ideal and reality, and the investment in automatic driving is far less complicated than imagined, and Lao Li's partners once decided on the investment of a certain autonomous driving company Pre-A in half an hour, and the amount far exceeded Lao Li's imagination. Old Li was puzzled by this, but slowly understood that this is a game problem, but also a human problem, rational investors can not stop the imagination of money.
All industries follow the same investment logic: one is how long the track is, the second is how difficult it is, and the third is how likely it is. According to this logic, autonomous driving is an industry with a long track, extremely difficult and extremely low possibility of realization.
It can be said that 90% of the enterprises in the automatic driving industry will end up in bankruptcy, if there is no breakthrough in the core technology bottleneck, the automatic driving business of the last giant company may also fall, there is an indisputable fact, the difficulty of the automatic driving industry is not a question of who did it, but a question of whether the industry can do it.
For a long time, investors will also throw such questions to entrepreneurs, interestingly, these questions have been cleverly resolved by autonomous driving entrepreneurs, I have to say that many autonomous driving founders not only have a high level of technology, but also have a very strong ability to fool.
First of all, the track problem, in 2015, when the investment in autonomous driving was the hottest, many investors did not look at the quality of the enterprise at all, as long as the technical team was OK, everyone would take the initiative to invest. The reason is simple, the imagination of autonomous driving is too strong, when high-level automatic driving is realized, human travel life will be completely transformed. At an investment committee, the founder of the autonomous driving company likened automatic driving to the great invention of "the Internet in the 21st century", and the breadth of its track is beyond doubt, and the appetite of investors is hung very high, and they will naturally take money out of their pockets.
The second is the technical problem, automatic driving is a typical technology-based industry, in the past few years, the investment industry has always existed a law, a new technology through 5-8 years of capital cultivation, can achieve a substantial leap forward. In the field of new energy vehicles, the most typical technology to achieve a substantial leap forward is the power battery, as early as 2012, when the Ningde era was just established, the power battery has been hanging on the label of "poor performance, high cost", and the investment in power battery companies is essentially to increase research and development through capital to achieve performance improvement and large-scale cost reduction.
Autonomous driving entrepreneurs use the same logic to tell investors that the future of autonomous driving technology will be the same as the power battery, with time to complete the iteration of technology, to achieve the effect of improving quality and efficiency, in the eyes of many investors, the next Ningde era is likely to be born in this field.
Different autonomous driving companies are also telling different stories, from the initial high-speed scene automatic driving to low-speed scene automatic driving, from open scene automatic driving to closed scene automatic driving, China's automatic driving companies have created the world's richest, most diverse, most comprehensive automatic driving scene application system, with the feeling of "Luckin Coffee".
Existence is reasonable
For autonomous driving, a thousand readers have a thousand Hamlets, which are seen horizontally as peaks on the side of the ridge, with different heights and heights near and far, suitable for the field of automatic driving. From different perspectives, everyone's expectations for automatic driving are completely different, and in different time periods, everyone's expectations for automatic driving are also completely different.
In China, the frontier of innovation and entrepreneurship, most of the enterprises in the field of automatic driving are "born from the same root". Some well-known universities and well-known enterprises have cultivated a large number of self-driving entrepreneurs, 5 years ago, everyone believed that autonomous driving is not only a blue ocean, but also will subvert the way human travel.
2015 is the year of domestic automatic driving and investment, that year, the new energy passenger car market has just started, thanks to the rapid development of intelligence and networking, automatic driving into people's sight.
Frankly speaking, compared with the entrepreneurs of electrification, the entrepreneurs of the autonomous driving industry are much more difficult to overcome on the road of cutting thorns, which include two meanings: one is from the technical level, the difficulty of automatic driving is far more than electrification, if electrification is Mount Taishan, then automatic driving is Everest; the second is from the industrial level, the industrialization of automatic driving is basically zero, consumer electronics has accumulated an industrialization foundation for the consumer battery industry, power battery entrepreneurship is more of a direction adjustment, automatic driving in addition to the concept, Nothing.
Despite this, investors are still very keen to invest in the field of automatic driving, according to the statistics of the National Automobile Strategy Institute, in the past 5 years, automatic driving is the most financing segment in the automobile industry, there is no one, Lao Li personally also has a deep feeling, all the financing originates from investors, to give an example, Lao Li's partners believe that in such a large track of automatic driving, there must be a relevant layout, regardless of whether the target is good or bad, first grab the next one.
However, good funds and good targets are complementary, in the automatic driving industry, "good projects" are very few, the so-called good projects are good teams, the financing requirements of good project teams are also more demanding, small and medium-sized funds are difficult to invest in, when the amount of industry funds far exceeds the project, more entrepreneurs will be born.
Not everyone is suitable for entrepreneurship, and not everyone is suitable for being a manager, which is vividly reflected in the field of autonomous driving. Autonomous driving is a typical technology-driven industry, so most of the early entrepreneurs are the top technical background, due to too much hot money, more and more "scientists", "genius teenagers", "industry experts" to participate in the autonomous driving entrepreneurial tide, regardless of whether there is core technology, regardless of the level of rank, turned into a founder.
Under an illusory goal, on the road of cutting through thorns, many self-driving entrepreneurs with technical backgrounds have not played the role of "co-founders", resulting in the departure of core management, and after leaving, they have started a new stove, created more "new companies", obtained more "new financing", and more and more enterprises in autonomous driving.
Those who dared to enter the game did not fail
In China, whenever an industry booms, there will always be people who put forward the "bubble" theory, as is the new energy vehicle in the past, and the current automatic driving is also the same.
Recently, many external voices are very unfriendly to the autonomous driving industry, and Lao Li believes that this should be divided into two points:
First, to recognize the bottleneck of technology, old Li partners often said that many external personnel look at automatic driving is a typical "follow the trend mentality", when the development of enterprises is good, follow the praise, poor development, hard to step. From the perspective of the pace of development, the development of autonomous driving technology is spiraling, technological breakthrough, industrial development, technological breakthrough, industrial re-development, external to provide a sufficiently relaxed environment for technological breakthroughs, which investors have not done in the past, and now they have done.
The second is to redefine success, the enterprise is essentially a combination of people, automatic driving enterprises are essentially a combination of talents, if you want to set a high education coefficient for enterprises, automatic driving companies should be the company with the highest coefficient in the field of automobile segmentation, it is such a group of people who have created China's automatic driving ecology, although the road is obstructive and long, but from the perspective of development momentum, the automatic driving industry is successful, so far, and European and American countries have formed a trend of running and running.
Old Li here does not mention too many industry views, more from a personal point of view and share with you about the success of the view, frankly speaking, old Li is very envious of this group of entrepreneurs in the field of automatic driving, in the old Li view, everyone is successful, in the autonomous driving ecology, whether it is grassroots, middle or high-level, everyone is successful, for the top, regardless of the technical level, everyone is also successful.
After huawei and other head companies entered, the industry left less and less room for the development of autonomous driving startups, even if the CTO has three heads and six arms, its technical ability and resource coordination ability is difficult to rival the giant wheel-level company. The key to the definition of high-level success is not whether the company runs out, but whether individuals can run out, many co-founders and senior executives in the process of burning money have long been in various ways to make a lot of money, whether it is financial returns or influence returns are far higher than before the start-up, the industry is a large number of tens of millionaires under the age of 30.
In fact, the power and responsibility of entrepreneurs are complementary, the greater the power, the greater the responsibility, many companies come to the end, are the founders in the bottom, in the process of entrepreneurship from small to large, the start-up team has experienced the tempering of fire.
Middle-level employees may be a more successful group of people than the top level, there is no high-level entrepreneurial pressure, there is no grass-roots research and development of the heavy, many middle-level autonomous driving startups in the company from small to large in the process, evolved into the role of uploading and issuing, on the one hand to enjoy the salary and benefits brought by the automatic driving dividend, on the one hand, to harvest the management experience brought by the company's growth period, every day thinking about how to develop the next step of the career.
Old Li once dutifully adjusted a waist automatic driving company, the company's middle-level employees more than 10 people, per capita annual salary of more than 1 million, frankly speaking, according to personal education and age, this salary in the financial industry is also considered to be the best to have, but because the domestic automatic driving industry is too hot, talent scarcity, resulting in the price of the middle layer "rising ship high". For the middle level, the enterprise succeeds, the chicken dog ascends to heaven, most of them have the opportunity to rise to the position of general manager or even vice president of the department, the enterprise fails, and there is no need to bear any responsibility, killing two birds with one stone.
Old Li has not recommended that newly graduated employees go to entrepreneurial companies, the reason is not conducive to personal development, but the automatic driving industry is different, many grass-roots employees are a graduate to join the company, automatic driving startups have three attractions to grass-roots employees, one is salary, two is the upward space, the third is the accumulation of technology, even if the company is yellow, you can also jump to Huawei and other giant companies, do not explain too much here.
The capital market has been mentioning "be a friend of time", Lao Li believes that this passage seems to be more appropriate to use in the field of automatic driving, in a very difficult track in the field, want to subvert the travel ecology, need to have enough patience, as a melon eating masses, we must ride the wind, do not break the waves, go with the trend, in the wave of automatic driving, looking for their own opportunities, this may be the biggest harvest that automatic driving can bring to practitioners at present.