What does capital think of the hottest industry at the moment?

Absrtact: Our correspondent Jiapeng for any industry, the power of capital has been one of the most powerful drivers. What does capital think of the hottest industry at the moment? According to the latest statistics of the group, since 2014, there are 25 hardware manufacturers through VC and other means of our correspondent Jiapeng


　





the power of capital has been one of the strongest drivers of any industry. What does capital think of the hottest industry at the moment?





According to the latest statistics of the group, since 2014, 25 hardware manufacturers through VC and other means to achieve financing, and most of the intelligent hardware is still in the stage of angel investment.





July 24, the 21st century economic reporter to Preangel angel investor Wang Lijie an interview. Wang Lijie has invested more than 20 smart hardware companies since 2012.





"Investors have to be able to judge the dark horse, and then wide net to get the chance." Wang Lijie told reporters, we all know investment to cast dark horse, but in fact many people are qiangbai horse.





consumption, capital driving force before and after





"21st century": Why do you want to invest in smart hardware?





Wang Lijie: Smart Hardware This industry is still on the rise, the front-end is the consumer in the pull, behind the capital in the push. Now actively promote or we this help angel investors, really to the apex of VC, PE when the force, they smashed in a lot of money. Now taking advantage of VC, PE has not been a large-scale entry, we have the opportunity, so the front of the user's pull and behind the industry's thrust is very important.





from the consumer's point of view, smart hardware in the brand, price, fashion, function have captured the young consumers. And they're the mainstream, and that's why I invest in smart hardware. Everything becomes intelligent, and we are interested in delving into his chances.




The key to
investment is to see the market. BAT has software genes and internet genes from an industry competitive point of view, but they still lack the hardware genes. Now some small start-up team to do hardware, to a certain extent, to lead slightly. At the same time, pure software products are easy to copy, and hardware has a certain threshold, in the supply chain, manufacturing has some difficulty.





From a large environment, this time period a variety of hardware overflow. Hardware start-ups are not as difficult as they thought, with some incubators gathering talent, ideas and capital. We have invested more than 20 hardware companies, and now the big VC is also focused on, even bat is also concerned about the hardware. BAT's attention, let the entrepreneur more confidence, the new person also strong courage to come in.





"21st century": what are the major opportunities for smart hardware? Well talk about some of the smart hardware companies you voted for.





Wang Lijie: We are optimistic about transportation, medical, women and children wearable equipment and smart home orientation.





first of all, in the traffic can do a lot of things, such as intelligent way to solve the traffic pollution and parking space problems, electric vehicles, air traffic systems. In the car network has a new hardware can be less fuel consumption, anti-theft, convenient to share, such as someone to drive my car, even a stranger, he can find my car through the network, with a mobile phone to open my car to pay, we hope this is the way to share the car rental.





Medical, we have cast Shiyun medical, Rui Ren Medical, respectively, are mobile health products and cloud services, for the mother and child groups to provide health services, wearable medical equipment hardware and software. There are many possibilities in the general direction of health.





children can wear more than some of the properties of playing, but also have a safe, healthy growth attributes; and what we have invested in the cool technology before is interactive sex toys, now focus on women's health. and the entire household including living, saving electricity and other aspects of the convenience of hardware.





I speak of hardware core is in the software, but its image is a hardware, hardware without software there is no soul.





"21st century": What do you value most when investing in smart hardware companies?





Wang Lijie: Essentially looking at just two things: the entrepreneurial team and the direction of the company. The hardware team must see their industry chain integration capabilities, is not a 10 years of hardware people, which is related to industrial connections, whether someone is good at financing, do hardware need a lot of money, is not willing to cooperate.





also need to look at the sales, such as Tencent's team, plus Huawei's original hardware team to sound more of a look. How to assign the stock right of the team, the character, the work experience, the team cooperation years, the financing ability and so on are all we need to see.





In addition to marketing, we value the entrepreneurial "behavioral art" ability, such as Ma Jiajia, Luo, all of its products have not come out to a large number of pre-sale entrepreneurs are behavioral artists. If entrepreneurs have this ability, then marketing can save a lot of money.




Valuation
of
business stage




"21st century": How to view the valuation of intelligent hardware start-up companies?





Wang Lijie: Valuations are staged, mainly to see how long a company has been established and whether the product has been made. If "Everything is all right, only the difference in mass production", then it is possible to subscribe to our fund's highest valuation, that is, a round of 50 percent valuation. If only the early operation, the team good enterprise, we value it within 10 million yuan.





of course, some of the founder of the special cattle themselves have invested a lot of money, we can also consider a higher valuation, they do things "tall", is our optimistic. For example, companies with international patents want to do some medical field of intelligent hardware, the product has not been done, but also prepared almost, it can also talk about.




The valuation of
angel investors is actually very flexible.





"21st century": from mobile internet to now, your investment logic, thinking has changed?





Wang Lijie: In the first stage, 50 companies were invested in 4 million, some projects in the transformation, such as our love sound, and then do the moral selection of the general direction of travel has not changed, but also doing overseas retail; Flash has been the tool, from the original Computer Management mobile phone, into the transmission between the phone, Next, a mobile app distribution channel was made; the Girlfriends app is now all about making smart hardware and making a boudoir hand ring.





second stage, with 30 million cast 40, wave nets, delicious food to send these soft silver all cast, there are car younger brother, O2O special heavy, generally see O2O development is to constantly enclosure, need a long time and funds, the order of magnitude of the outbreak is more difficult.





so this logic moved to smart hardware. Smart hardware This wave, VC, PE overall still wait and see, some of them have entered the O2O, but now has not given intelligent hardware a very high valuation. We're a little early on the whole.





Our thinking about investing in hardware will change. Last year, the investment hardware, the industrial chain is not mature, the risk is very large, but the industrial chain is tending to mature. The back-end manufacturing industry faces development, entrepreneurs become more open, capital level, loans, supply chain finance will be more and more. In the sales channels, currently Jingdong, Amazon, Taobao are helping to do these channels, backwards and forwards, all aspects are growing. The industry is not long to the best, from an investor's point of view, the more mature the industry, the lower the risk.





"21st century": What do you think of the business model of smart hardware?





Wang Lijie: The business model that we value more is to make less profit on hardware, as far as possible by reducing profit margins, to achieve penetration rate, to increase sales, so that through users, data, social network to do the profit model.





of course, a lot of products at the beginning of the big margin, because a new thing is in demand, entrepreneurs think they can make money. I do not discourage them from trying to make money first.





But if competitors appear, it is necessary to quickly through measures such as price reduction to let out the profits, because the larger data, to have more user data, the more accurate, the more real-time companies, may be more valuable. Of course, this is the need for large funds to help you burn money, to quickly docking large capital. After the big capital comes in, it can make 0 of the profit of the hardware.





"21st century": You have contacted so many entrepreneurs, think the biggest problem of the entrepreneur?





Wang Lijie: We are most afraid of the entrepreneurial impetuous, the surrounding industry financing news constantly, stimulated to disrupt the rhythm. This entrepreneur must be in a subdivision of the product to achieve the ultimate, then including investment, partners are not difficult, such as looking for jingdong, micro-letter cooperation.





Some entrepreneurs to the enterprise valuation is too high, we suggest that the entrepreneur to run small steps, there is a relatively fast and reliable funds to take first, and then keep running forward. On account of the rich entrepreneurs to talk about financing will be more emboldened.





no matter at any stage, entrepreneurs are bound to wrestle, and they must recognize the problem. We will look at entrepreneurs ' minds, perseverance, ideas, and ability to deal with crises. If appropriate, we can invest some money to help the entrepreneur tide over the difficulties, we will ask it to lay off staff when the company is in trouble, and help to find the right investor after the lesson is realized. (Edit Lu Aifang Sin Yunwei)