The Paper's reporter Tang Qi
From 0 to 1, from thin to strong, post-80s entrepreneur Zhang Yunfei has been wandering in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province for 11 years.
In the early days of entrepreneurship, Zhang Yunfei weighed less than 140 pounds, and now he has more than 200 pounds. Due to the hardships and pressures of starting a business, one of the ways he has channeled over the years has been a "retaliatory diet", and after working 14 hours a day, he has to eat some food to relieve stress.
Zhang Yunfei, founder of Yunzhou Intelligence. The pictures in this article are all pictures of the surging news reporter Sun Zhan
Along with this, the company he founded filled the gap in the field of unmanned boats in China - in 2010, he founded Zhuhai Yunzhou Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yunzhou Intelligence"), China's first unmanned boat enterprise. After more than ten years of independent innovation, Zhang Yunfei led the team to overcome a number of core key technologies of unmanned boats such as autonomous navigation, intelligent obstacle avoidance, and collaborative control, with more than 390 patents, led the formulation of 9 industry standards, and built a huge independent innovation technology system for unmanned boats.
All these achievements are attributed to a look back at Zhang Yunfei 11 years ago - studying in Hong Kong and returning to Zhuhai, the mainland to start a business.
Studied in Hong Kong and started a business in Zhuhai
In 2007, Zhang Yunfei came to Hong Kong from the Mainland to study at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ("HKUST"). At that time, on a global scale, most of the key core technologies in the field of unmanned ships were in the hands of research institutions in the United States, Israel and other countries. For China, this is an exploration that needs to rely on its own accumulation and independent research and development.
Zhang Yunfei's HKUST university has made great achievements in the research of unmanned operating systems, and a number of young talents, including DJI founder Wang Tao, have emerged. It is in this soil that during his studies at HKUST, Zhang Yunfei was full of interest in the exploration and research of unmanned boats.
Just a year after his PhD, in 2010, Zhang Yunfei chose to start a business, and the direction was locked in the exploration of unmanned boats. "I can say 'truancy to start a business', and I didn't go back to school until the end of the year to defend." Zhang Yunfei told the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) with a smile that he may have spent the longest time graduating from the University of Science and Technology of Hong Kong.
The decision to start a business and land in Zhuhai is not a whim in Zhang Yunfei's view.
Before the official establishment of Yunzhou Intelligence, in order to find out the roots of the industry, he took the first generation of unmanned ship prototypes and spent more than half a year to conduct field research in environmental protection units in Guangdong, Yunnan, Sichuan, Beijing and other places, asking them if they needed such equipment. After doing research, he found a vast demand market, which strengthened his entrepreneurial confidence.
In an interview with the surging news (www.thepaper.cn), Zhang Yunfei repeatedly emphasized the process of entrepreneurship "from 0 to 1", not only because he and his team founded China's first enterprise focusing on the research and development and manufacturing of unmanned boats, but also in the exploration and development of independent innovation technology of unmanned boats.
"This era offers unimaginable opportunities for our young people." Zhang Yunfei said that to do unmanned boats such equipment requires a lot of complex investment, we go to sea to test once, itself is a very complicated thing, need to coordinate the maritime, border defense and other departments, Zhuhai and even Guangdong Province relevant departments for Yunzhou intelligence to provide a lot of support.
Zhang Yunfei and unmanned boats
Unmanned boats sailing from the Greater Bay Area
After more than ten years of development, Yunzhou Intelligent has carried out product innovation around core technologies, from small boats to large boats, from environmental monitoring to marine survey, from civilian to security, and its business has covered 46 countries and regions.
They have participated in the 34th Antarctic scientific expedition, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau glacier lake scientific expedition, Jiangxi flood control and flood control and other major national tasks; as members of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment Emergency Expert Group and the only unmanned boat emergency detachment, they have participated in the investigation and rectification of sewage outlets into the Yangtze River and other environmental pollution accidents.
In the past two years, the rapid development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has also prompted Zhang Yunfei to see a broader development space for unmanned boats.
This year, the first unmanned ship R&D and testing base in China, "Xiangshan Marine Science and Technology Port", which integrates R&D, testing, industry and incubation, has been put into use, and the catamaran-shaped building located in Zhuhai, the frontier center of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, has become a new local landmark.
Zhang Yunfei told the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) that compared with the early days of entrepreneurship, the team's scientific research work is now more complicated. "In the early days of entrepreneurship, it is to engage in development, engage in technical research, make technology, and then study how to be stable, and now it is a management enterprise, and there are more things to worry about." He frankly said that in addition to solving business problems, it is also necessary to improve enterprise management and cultural construction.
Zhang Yunfei introduced the application of unmanned boats
"I work from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, 14 hours a day, and I am relatively idle on weekends, but I still work for more than ten hours when I have a lot of trouble." Zhang Yunfei said with a smile that the way he relieves the pressure of work is to eat, which has also led to his weight gaining a lot in the past ten years of entrepreneurship, which can be said to be "overworked and fat".
Today, like Zhang Yunfei, more and more graduates of Hong Kong and Macao universities are beginning to look back at the mainland and come to the mainland to explore development opportunities.
Seeing that many Graduates of Hong Kong and Macao universities have joined their own companies, Zhang Yunfei has also felt more and more the possibility of the unmanned boat industry continuing to flourish in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. "The characteristic of the Greater Bay Area is that the industrial base is very strong, which lays a solid foundation for the development of high-tech equipment and hard-core manufacturing."
From 0 to 1, from hardship to vitality, unmanned boats sailing out of the Greater Bay Area are sailing to a wider world together with Zhang Yunfei's dream.
Editor-in-Charge: Jiang Ziwen
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang