In 2014, some media found a young couple selling pancakes on the streets of Beijing, and when the reporter chatted with the young couple in depth, they learned that one of them was an undergraduate student majoring in software at Tsinghua University and the other was a master's student at Tsinghua University's law department. This made this reporter extremely surprised: As top students of Tsinghua University, why did they fall into selling pancakes on the streets? It is reported that the guy who sells pancakes is Wu Yili, who used to work in Oracle, IBM, and other companies, and at his peak earned an annual salary of one million. But in order to start a business, he resolutely resigned with his wife and began to sell pancakes. Now that eight years have passed, has Wu Yili succeeded in starting a business? Is he still selling pancakes on the street?
Wu Yili sells pancakes and fruits
On November 5, 1984, Wu Yili was born in Beijing, the capital of China, to educated parents. As the only son in the family, Wu Yili has been pinned on by his parents since he was a child. Parents also hope that Wu Yili can study hard in a privileged environment and Xi and realize his dream of Tsinghua University and Peking University in the future.
And Wu Yili is also very hard-working, he Xi study seriously, he always summarizes the problems encountered in the Xi of life and learning, and every time he takes an exam, Wu Yili will improve, which also makes him the most potential student in the class.
Beijing No. 4 Middle School
In 2000, 16-year-old Wu Yili was admitted to Beijing No. 4 Middle School, which has a long history of mythology and is even called "the world's No. 1 Middle School" by many people. And Beijingers also have a saying, "Entering Beijing No. 4 Middle School is equivalent to stepping into Tsinghua University and Peking University with half a foot". Obviously, until now, the acceptance rate of Peking University Tsinghua University in Beijing No. 4 High School is also very high.
Coming to this century-old famous school, Wu Yili felt tremendous pressure, and he found that all the people around him were top students. And he himself was a little relaxed at that time, in the first and second years of high school, Wu Yili's grades could only rank in the middle of the class.
In the third year of high school, Wu Yili's favorite girl Liu Jiaxue (that is, his current wife) had excellent Xi grades and had the potential to be admitted to Tsinghua University. Wu Yili felt that if he didn't study hard Xi, he might be getting farther and farther away from Liu Jiaxue, so how could he catch up with her?
Xi hard in the third year of high school
It was under the catalyst of love that Wu Yili began to study Xi seriously. During that time, Wu Yili got up very early every morning and learned Xi with a lamp in the quilt. Sometimes the mother finds out that her son is working so hard, and she will feel sorry for her son. At school, Wu Yili boldly asked his classmates for advice, and when he couldn't, he went to ask Xueba. In short, in the process of continuous efforts, Wu Yili's performance has also made great progress.
On June 7, 2003, Wu Yili took the college entrance examination with trepidation, and this year, the college entrance examination was officially advanced by a month, and for Wu Yili, he did not seem to have Xi to the best state. However, when the college entrance examination was over, Wu Yili was still very satisfied, and in his opinion, his performance this time was not bad.
The college entrance examination list is released
After the exam, Wu Yili hurriedly found Liu Jiaxue and boldly confessed to him. But Liu Jiaxue was not happy at that time, because she played abnormally and her brain was in chaos. During that time, Wu Yili comforted Liu Jiaxue all day long, telling her to believe that she would definitely be able to wait for the college entrance examination scores to come out.
Later, when the results of the college entrance examination came out, Wu Yili did better than Liu Jiaxue, and he was admitted to the School of Software of Tsinghua University. Liu Jiaxue finally gave up applying for Tsinghua University and Peking University because of her slightly poor grades, and could only be admitted to the Law Department of Fudan University. However, before leaving, Liu Jiaxue established a relationship with Wu Yili.
In the four years since, the two young people have experienced a long-distance relationship, but their relationship has grown deeper.
Tsinghua University
After entering Tsinghua University, Wu Yili found that he was surrounded by scholars, and he was still a scumbag. His mind began to lose focus on Xi. Always thinking about making money and starting a business, in his junior year, Wu Yili and 7 high school students who were admitted to Tsinghua University together held a free lecture at Tongzhou No. 4 Middle School in Beijing.
After the lecture, many parents found Wu Yili, hoping to let the children learn Xi with Wu Yili. In this way, Wu Yili and his classmates began to form a 10-day training class. Wu Yili is responsible for teaching physics, and in 10 days, Wu Yili earned more than 4,000 yuan.
At that time, parents praised Wu Yili and hoped that they would be able to hold more such training courses in the future. Wu Yili found a business opportunity in it, but most of the students were just interested in it, and everyone began to take the postgraduate entrance examination and find a job at that time, and the matter was over.
Oracle
In 2007, Wu Yili graduated from university, he did not choose to go to graduate school, and his restless heart made him unable to engage in academics with peace of mind. Since he learned to write optical discs Xi, he joined Oracle, the world's largest database software company. Here, Wu Yili did not write CDs, but began to work as a salesman.
A Tsinghua genius actually started sales, of course, to be able to do sales in Oracle, Tsinghua must also start. Here, Wu Yili worked very hard, and he also learned a lot of sales skills, and his eloquence and conversation have also grown a lot. After working in Oracle for three years, Wu Yili had more than 100,000 savings, and his restless heart made him unwilling to work, so he resigned.
Meituan and Wang Xing
In 2010, domestic group buying websites became popular, and group buying websites such as Meituan and Nuomi.com all emerged in this year. And Wu Yili also resigned, followed two PhDs from Tsinghua University to start a group buying website. When I first started group buying, there were only more than 30 group buying websites across the country, and everyone was about the same size, so they all had the opportunity to become bigger and stronger.
Wu Yili named his group buying website Baotuanle, from starting a company to getting invited merchants to settle in. Wu Yili only took three weeks, just started to start a business, they were full of confidence, and they continued to run the business and sign orders.
At first, the profit was very considerable, a group purchase order of 100 yuan had a profit of 30 yuan, but soon the profit fell sharply. With the entry of capital, many platforms have opened a money-burning mode in order to attract merchants and users, and a large number of subsidies have begun to make Wu Yili's products encounter a crisis, and soon, Wu Yili burned up his more than 100,000 yuan.
IBM
After running out of money, Wu Yili realized that his website could not be operated, and in desperation, he had to close the company. In order to make ends meet, he had to find a new job. Relying on his diploma from Tsinghua University, Wu Yili entered IBM and continued to work in sales.
At that time, Wu Yili was responsible for the sale of an e-commerce software in the company, and with his excellent work ability, Wu Yili sold out this software, occupying 70% of the sales of the entire industry. In 2013, Wu Yili achieved the goal of earning one million a year.
It was also in this year that Wu Yili and his high school classmate Liu Jiaxue got married. It turned out that after graduating from Fudan University, Liu Jiaxue went to Tsinghua University to study for a master's degree in law. In 2010, after graduating with a master's degree, Liu Jiaxue joined the investment bank of a listed company as a legal consultant, with an annual salary of about 500,000 yuan.
After getting married, the couple has an annual salary of nearly 1.5 million, and they also have a house and a car in Beijing. But Wu Yili and Liu Jiaxue were not reconciled.
Wu Yili learned at the class reunion that a classmate made a software and sold it to Alibaba and made hundreds of millions of profits, which made him very angry. And his wife Liu Jiaxue can see many successful stories of entrepreneurship in the company all day long, and she is also envious of the young talents. In this way, the couple also had the idea of starting a new business, but what kind of project should they do?
Pancake fruit
In life, Wu Yili and his wife often get off work together and go to the street to buy a pancake and fruit to eat. Both husband and wife love to eat pancakes and fruits. And every time they buy pancake fruit, they have to wait in line for a long time, which makes them realize that pancake fruit is a very high demand industry.
One afternoon in May 2014, Wu Yili and Liu Jiaxue each bought a pancake after work, and they returned home after eating the pancake fruit. As a result, that night, both of them began to have stomach troubles. Apparently it was eating that pancake fruit that made them have a stomach upset.
Roadside stall pancakes and fruits
This also made the husband and wife realize that the current management of pancake fruit is not very standardized, and the choice is not uniform. It is not possible for consumers to eat pancake fruits that are safe enough. And there is no unified signboard for pancakes and fruits on the market, some say that they are Shandong pancakes, and some say that they are Henan pancakes. In short, the most important thing is to make the pancake fruit have a brand.
Therefore, at that time, Wu Yili and his wife planned to do the business of pancakes and fruits, before doing business, Wu Yili also did a simple survey, he found that about 100,000 people in Beijing eat pancakes every day, and the consumption generated is about 300 million yuan, so it seems that looking at the whole country, the market brought by pancakes and fruits alone is close to more than 10 billion every day.
Just do it, Wu Yili called his colleague Feng Wei to resign from IBM together, and then let his wife resign from the investment banking company. Three young people with a Tsinghua background started their own business.
Wu Yili and his wife
On June 10, 2014, a pancake and fruit shop called Shi Haoyun opened in the Jianwai SOHO business district on Chang'an Avenue in Beijing. Due to its prime location, hundreds of thousands of white-collar elites come and go every day. In order to highlight the difference of his pancake fruit, before opening the store, Wu Yili deliberately found a Shandong uncle who Xi had studied pancake fruit for a month with him, not to learn Xi ingredients, but to learn how the old man did it.
Make pancakes Wu Yili
After that, Wu Yili and his wife looked for ingredients everywhere, and they priced their pancakes at about 10 yuan, the reason is that the ingredients are different, their eggs are all farm-raised eggs, and the crispy ingredients are fried with COFCO, and the side dishes he chose Wujiang Fuling mustard, as for the hot sauce, Wu Yili directly chose the old godmother hot sauce.
Just listening to these ingredients, I feel that the cost is very high, and in addition, as a senior pancake fruit foodie, I always feel that these ingredients will be difficult to eat together. The main reason is that I am not used to eating pancakes, and there are Lao Gan Ma spicy sauce and Fuling mustard in the fruit.
Pancake and fruit shop
Wu Yili's pancake and fruit shop is less than 8 square meters, and after it opened, business was quite hot. The three of them worked in the store for nearly 12 hours a day. But they found that no matter how hard the three of them worked, they could only make so many pancakes and fruits, and the monthly sales were at most more than 100,000 yuan.
Wu Yili thought about expanding his business, but when he opened a new store, he found that the effect was not obvious. And many customers come to buy pancakes, in fact, they are buying them for the three of them.
Because at that time, the news had spread in Jianwai SOHO that there was a pancake shop opened by a talented man from Tsinghua University, and everyone wanted to try whether eating the pancakes here would become smarter.
Entrepreneurship could not break through the bottleneck, which made Wu Yili and his wife sad, and at this moment, a noble man appeared.
Wu Yili and Shi Kanle
In 2015, Wu Yili met his undergraduate classmate Shi Kanle at a class reunion. At that time, Shi Kanle had just finished his postdoctoral studies in France, and through chatting, Wu Yili learned that Shi Kanle's postdoctoral research direction was 3D printing. Wu Yili jokingly said: "Can you use 3D printing technology to make pancakes, so that my pancake output can be greatly improved."
It was because of this sentence that the two men agreed to develop the world's first pancake printer.
On September 25, 2015, a company named Beijing Peter Pan Technology was established in Shunyi District, Beijing. After that, Dr. Schneer began to concentrate on the development of the pancake printer. Wu Yili is responsible for business operations and is responsible for building momentum and attracting investment in products.
The third brother paints a pie printer
After two months of hard development, the world's first pancake printer was successfully launched. Wu Yili named it the third brother painting cake, as long as the batter is poured in, you can make pancakes of any shape, and you can also support users to customize the pancake pattern.
Wu Yili shows 3D printed pancakes
So as soon as the machine came out, Wu Yili was full of confidence, but how to make the machine mass-produced? Wu Yili had to consider the issue of financing, at this time, Shi Kanle invited Xu Xiaoping, whom he had known for a long time, to Wu Yili's pancake shop, and let Xu Xiaoping personally try the pancakes, Xu Xiaoping felt that the idea of two Tsinghua top students was very good.
He also figured out a slogan for the third brother: "Love it and lick it, hate it and take a bite, love and hate and swallow it." ”
Obviously, as a senior angel investor, Xu Xiaoping is full of confidence in this project. Later, he revealed in his Weibo that he had invested 10 million yuan in the third brother's cake.
Wu Yili and Xu Xiaoping took a group photo
After getting financing, the third brother painting cake was officially mass-produced, the initial price of this product was more than 5,000 yuan, and later it was sold on an east platform, in less than half a year, the sales of this machine have exceeded 10,000 units, and Wu Yili also made a profit of nearly 10 million.
However, this product is only a hot moment, and after the freshness passes, no one cares about it. Ended up facing a large number of complaints and returns. Wu Yili had to stop the research and development of this product. In the end, he and his classmate's Peter Pan Technology Company was also deregistered in 2019.
Wu Yili and his third brother draw cakes
In February 2017, Wu Yili registered Turingtonnuo (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. again. Started to focus on the unmanned retail industry, to be honest, unmanned retail was very popular in those years, and there were that kind of vending cabinets everywhere. Unlike other companies, Wu Yili is more focused on technology and provides technical services for unmanned retailers.
At the end of 2017, the company also received tens of millions of yuan in Series A financing led by Quzhong Capital. At this time, Wu Yili is no longer a pancake boy, but an excellent entrepreneur, for him, an annual salary of one million is no longer a dream, he just hopes to make this new company bigger and stronger.
In October 2019, Wu Yili announced that the company had completed a Series B financing of nearly 100 million yuan led by Guopeng Capital and followed by Mobai Capital. And the name of the company has also been changed to SandStar, which means machine vision and knows insight.
SandStar products
According to relevant media reports, the unmanned store recognition accuracy developed by SandStar is more than 99%, which can track customer information, behavior paths and full shopping behaviors in real time.
On August 4, 2020, Wu Yili announced that SandStar had completed B+ financing, with a financing amount of hundreds of millions of yuan.
Today, SandStar has more than 500 engineers, deployed in more than 15 countries around the world, serving many Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and so on. It has headquarters in Beijing and New York, and the founder and boss of this company is 38-year-old Wu Yili.
Wu Yili
From a certain eye inspection, it can be found that Wu Yili accounts for nearly 32.3% of the shares and is the main decision-maker of the company. As for Wu Yili's good luck pancake and fruit shop, there is no trace of him and his wife. Both of them stopped selling pancakes and began to concentrate on technology, because this is what they can use, or that sentence, worthy of graduating from Tsinghua University.
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