Xiaomi Automobile 51 Year Old Lei Jun'S Last Battle

In China's Internet companies, Xiaomi should be the most familiar with marketing. In March 29 and March 30, millet industry rarely held two heavy press conferences.

On the first day, Xiaomi mainly released two high-end models, one is Xiaomi 11pro, which is known as "Andro king", and the other is Xiaomi 11 ultra, which is known as "Andro light". At the press conference the next day, Xiaomi released the new logo, the first folding screen mobile phone mix fold, self-developed image chip surging C1 and the official announcement of car building.

If you put these contents in one day, I'm afraid all other contents will become the foil of "Xiaomi makes a car", which is naturally not what Xiaomi hopes to see. After all, this year's performance depends on Xiaomi's 11 series products.

Therefore, dividing the press conference into two can leave enough exposure time for Xiaomi 11 series products, and at the same time, it will also attract enough appetite for the next day's press conference. In particular, on the eve of the second press conference held on March 30, Xiaomi group suddenly announced the news of car making in the HKEx, and Lei Jun immediately said that he would talk about car building at the press conference in the evening. In this way, Xiaomi successfully placed himself in the spotlight.

During the two-hour press conference, car building was the last topic, and Lei Jun made careful preparations for it. Starting from his own life story, he told some thoughts behind Xiaomi's decision to build a car. More importantly, Lei Jun showed his determination and confidence to the outside world.

Continuous metamorphosis

On the stage of Xiaomi, Lei Jun seldom tells the story before he founded Xiaomi. This time, he shared several turning points in his life.

First, in 1998, when Lei Jun was 28 years old.

At that time, he was a programmer in Jinshan software. Then Qiu Bojun, the founder of Jinshan software, asked him to be the general manager. Lei Jun was not willing at first. He felt that he preferred to write programs. Later, under Qiu Bojun's insistence, Lei Jun decided to try it first.

That is to say, when trying to be the general manager of Jinshan, an accident happened that changed Lei Jun's life. Lei Jun said that when a colleague helped him to clean up his computer, he accidentally formatted its hard disk and backup disk, resulting in the code he saved as a programmer. Without a retreat, Lei Jun could only concentrate on being the general manager, which forced him to learn management, marketing and sales, and thus embarked on a completely different life path.

The second turning point was in 2007, when Lei Jun was 37.

That year, Lei Jun chose to leave Jinshan and become a full-time angel investor. Lei Jun said that this has a lot to do with his previous creation of excellence. In 2000, Lei Jun founded excellence. At that time, it became the largest e-commerce website in China. However, due to insufficient financing, Lei Jun sold excellence to Amazon in 2004, and later became Amazon China.

Therefore, Lei Jun is very aware of the hardships of starting a business and the importance of financing. And he chose to be an angel investor to help more entrepreneurs like him.

The third turning point was in 2016, when Lei Jun was 46 years old.

At that time, Xiaomi fell into a life and death situation in the sixth year of its establishment. Because of the supply chain problems, Xiaomi's mobile phone sales dropped sharply. At this time, Lei Jun had to take over Xiaomi's mobile phone department in person.

Lei Jun said it was a great challenge for him, because he had always been a software and internet background, and taking over the mobile phone Department meant re learning hardware knowledge. So during that time, Lei Jun left work every day after 12 p.m., and continued to learn and make up lessons for the next five years. Finally, led by Lei Jun, Xiaomi's mobile phone sales also returned to the top three in the world. At this time, Lei Jun's voice choked. He said, "you don't know how excited I was when I saw this achievement.".

Lei Jun said frankly that he would like to thank the pain and training, because without them, there would be no Lei Jun today. Therefore, Lei Jun also learned a truth, only continuous transformation, continuous refresh, in order to win a more interesting life.

Speaking of this, Lei Jun completed the foreshadowing of Millet's car making business with his three life stories, because the car building will be his fourth transformation. This year, Lei Jun is 51 years old. He said that Xiaomi's car making will be his last major entrepreneurial project. He is very clear about what this decision means, and he is willing to put his whole reputation on the line again and fight for Xiaomi.

ultimate war

Lei Jun's first understanding of electric vehicles came from Tesla. In 2013, Lei Jun visited Tesla CEO musk twice, and the exchange with musk greatly touched Lei Jun. in that year, he became the owner of Tesla and began to pay attention to the electric vehicle industry.

In 2014, Lei Jun participated in the establishment of Weilai automobile as a founding investor, and Xiaopeng automobile, which was established in the same year, also obtained the investment of Lei Jun. Lei Jun frankly said that in the past few years, Xiaomi's senior management meeting also discussed the topic of automobile business several times, but at that time, the theme of Xiaomi was to make up lessons. The first thing to do was to do a good job in the mobile phone business. Therefore, it was mainly through investment to participate in the development of electric vehicle industry.

Until January 15 this year, Xiaomi's board of directors proposed to seriously study the electric vehicle industry, and Xiaomi began to formally investigate and build cars.

Lei Jun said that his friends have formed two views on Xiaomi's car making. One is to persuade him to do it. He thinks Xiaomi knows well about hardware and the Internet and should start working immediately. The other is to persuade Lei Jun not to do it. He thinks that the automobile industry is very complex, the cycle is very long, the investment is very large, and it is easy to fall into the pit. And Xiaomi is a layman. Others have been doing it for five or six years. Xiaomi is too late now.

At this time, the difficult choice is placed in front of Lei Jun, do or not do? This decision will have a bearing on Xiaomi's development in the next 10 years. In the past 75 days, Lei Jun has been thinking about it every day. Finally, after 85 visits to the industry, in-depth exchanges with more than 200 senior people in the automotive industry, four internal management seminars and two formal board meetings, Lei Jun decided to formally enter the intelligent electric vehicle market.

There are many reasons behind this decision. Lei Jun said that rice noodles gave him great encouragement. During several rice noodles exchange activities at the beginning of the year, he felt rice noodles' love for millet. Moreover, rice noodles said, "as long as millet makes cars, he will definitely buy them." Of course, the verbal promise of rice noodles is not binding. Whether they will buy Xiaomi car or not depends on what kind of car Xiaomi makes.

For Lei Jun, what he has to consider is a more realistic issue. Xiaomi group said in the announcement that Xiaomi will set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to be responsible for the business of intelligent electric vehicles, with an initial investment of 10 billion yuan and an estimated investment of $10 billion in the next 10 years.

Lei Jun said that he knows that car building is a big risk for Xiaomi, but after ten years of entrepreneurship, Xiaomi has accumulated a certain amount. For example, Xiaomi has a R & D team of more than 10000 people, the world's third-largest mobile phone business, the best intelligent ecology, and of course, it has a cash reserve of 108 billion yuan, which makes Xiaomi able to afford to lose money.

New forces 2.0

Why did Lei Jun build cars? The reporter consulted many people in the industry. None of them thought that Lei Jun was trying to make money. In fact, Lei Jun had already realized financial freedom through more than 20 years of hard work. On the contrary, the huge risks hidden in car building may even make Lei Jun's assets shrink.

Therefore, the industry believes that Lei Jun decided to build a car out of consideration for the sustainable development of Xiaomi. Now that the smartphone industry has peaked, Xiaomi also needs a new story with a new attraction. At the same time, Lei Jun's heart is surging when he sees the development wave of new energy vehicles.

Lei Jun is a real workaholic. He was the first person to put forward the theory of tuyere. The famous "standing on the wind outlet, pigs can fly" has inspired many entrepreneurs. Now facing the wind of smart electric vehicles, he decided to be the last wind chaser.

In fact, Xiaomi chooses this time to leave the field to build a car, which is indeed a good time. On the one hand, from the national policy level, encouraging the development of new energy vehicles has become a national strategy. The "new energy vehicle industry development plan (2021-2035)" issued by the general office of the State Council last year proposed that the sales volume of new energy vehicles in China will reach about 20% of the total sales volume of new vehicles by 2025.

From the industry level, new forces such as Weilai, Xiaopeng and ideal have completed the initial accumulation of China's new energy vehicle enterprises after years of hardship, and proved their value in the capital market last year. Not only that, Baidu, apple and other technology giants enter the Bureau, which further adds a fire to the lively new energy.

Ping An Securities analysts believe that the first round of new forces to build cars from the electric cut in, some enterprises have won the stage. The second round of new forces will take intelligence as the core and raise barriers. Enterprises with hardware and software integration capabilities, represented by apple and Xiaomi, will enter the automotive field, which will start the second round of intelligent new force wave.

Therefore, for Xiaomi, at this time, it is no longer necessary to consider whether the direction of new energy vehicles is correct. What it needs to consider is whether and how to make cars.

From the point of view of capital investment planning, millet is the army and horse have not moved, food and grass go first. Indeed, abundant cash reserves are particularly important for car building. At present, all of the major new automobile manufacturing forces have experienced the capital chain crisis. After Xiaomi takes out 10 billion US dollars as the bottom line, its car building projects can be launched with light equipment, which can reduce the trouble of lack of money.

Lei Jun also revealed that in the past two months and two hours after the official announcement of Xiaomi's car building news, many big investors have come to ask whether they can invest. However, after repeated consideration, he decided that Xiaomi should wholly own the car building, because he believes that only when the ecological chain of cars and mobile phones is fully opened can the omnipotent intelligent experience be brought.

Even if there is only one short board, other long boards will be affected. In terms of capital, users, brand, technology, supply chain and channels of new energy vehicles, Xiaomi's long board and short board are also clear at a glance.

For example, at the brand and user level, by the end of 2020, the monthly active users of Xiaomi MIUI reached 396 million, and a sticky rice noodle ecology was established, which has targeted the target customers for future automobile sales.

In the supply chain, Xiaomi has accumulated a strong ability of software and hardware integration through the layout of mobile phone + aiot, and has a strong ability of management and cost control of the supply chain. However, compared with mobile phones, the automotive supply chain is more complex. It remains to be seen whether Xiaomi can copy its successful experience in the smartphone industry to the automotive business. It is reported that Xiaomi has invested in nearly 10 electric vehicle industry chain companies.

In terms of automobile technology, although Xiaomi holds more than 800 patents, this is far from enough. According to the smart bud data, at present, there are 834 patents related to automobiles, of which more than 96% are invention patents, which are concentrated in the fields of wireless communication network, electronic data processing, digital information transmission, image communication, traffic control system, distance measurement, navigation, etc., while the proportion of patents for automobile parts is relatively low.

According to the information from the State Intellectual Property Office, more than 60% of Xiaomi's automobile patents are about intelligent cockpit and driving safety, including rearview mirror adjustment method, automatic navigation service, and in car driving safety monitoring.

It can be seen that there are still many lessons to be made up in Xiaomi's car making road, but from another angle, as a new player who has just entered the game, Xiaomi's starting point is already high enough. Lei Jun often said that we should be friends of time, and Xiaomi is ready to sprint for at least 5 to 10 years.