"Turn" "How can the Internet subvert the market of traditional industries?" The vivid practice of Internet execution: a notebook of entrepreneurs born of "iteration" of a soft and hard combination product

Indo-American co-founder intoxicated

Niuniu students think this is an excellent internet entrepreneurial process, touch the proper stone across the river, leading the entrepreneurial team to the other side of the victory.

Look at the author's products: high-quality photo printing, just need to exist, but, where is the user just need? Is there a chance that existing customer relationships will be icing on the cake? How to motivate users to make customers feel pain and timely help? The first iteration of the local app, found the user, but the user into the customer into the ease of use, this is the second iteration of the app, the second iteration still does not stimulate the user into a customer, how to do? From the user to the merchant, to the standard service foothold, the customer found, but the user irritation is not enough for the customer pain point is not enough pain, this is based on a creative non-standard solution of the third iteration. Can you go straight to the third time without going through the first two iterations? OK. Need to think in depth and answer the top 3 questions.

Niuniu students finally summed up: in the respect of law, respect for the logic on the basis of the Internet era of rapid iteration of the product can be invincible, whether it is software or hardware or services.

================================ Find cattle Network gorgeous divider line (body, cattle and cattle classmate slightly edit)

In the past short period of one months, around the word "internet thinking" and add a lot of noise, and many other from the technical circle of words, the dissemination of the network after the spread of its connotation and extension have undergone great changes, we can see a lot of wonderful articles, Authors of different areas of origin have expressed their views and thoughts on the term.

Words such as "internet thinking", because of its fiery, will soon become a description of everything "good" and "correct" big words. This is good for our computer hardware and software practitioners, which indicates that the industry is becoming the mainstream industry, the industry's culture is gradually integrated into the mainstream culture.

At the end of the year I rubbed off on a few new technology-sharing gatherings that I had never attended before, and I was amazed to find that the topics of these gatherings were very detailed and dull in the process of production, and if it wasn't for the people at hand who were using the technology to participate, it was really not true, but they could still see the pomp People who are enthusiastic about learning and understanding are seen at all ages. Then these technical gatherings were held in very tall, full of romantic cafes, in the past few years, such technology sharing, I remember my friends and I are in the Fly Hall on a few dishes.

However, no matter how new the technology, there is still no silver bullet, no one the myth of the month. Software development in the management of the complexity of the industry is doomed to fight strength and pay the industry, in this perspective, it does lead to a sense of the brutal fairness. Concepts and thinking are not as important as executive power. Said back, "Internet executive power", seems to be a good word to spoil.

Finally, this article pays tribute to all the Chinese entrepreneurs who walk silently on the path of innovation.

As an innovative Internet hardware product, the current positioning is based on the public platform of interactive entertainment printing terminal, and therefore attracts a lot of people's attention. However, it is not the beginning of this appearance. This combination of hardware and software products, in more than a year, from the software platform to the hardware carrier has undergone several major changes. Its development process, I think is a more typical use of the Internet thinking of the process of hardware innovation.

Product Introduction

In the context of the gradual development of the Internet of Things, the model shows its advantages, the Indian-American map uses the open platform in a combination of hardware and software, using cloud printing technology and QR code recognition to solve the problem of people on-site printing photos quickly, to meet the needs of self-printed photos.

The application of the Indo-American map is to share and entertain. Photo Printers just print out the photos, and the printed image can also play a social role by printing the photos.

The marketing capabilities of the Indo-American map have already emerged in business activities and have been rewarded with live traffic and fans. In the event of the scene of the printing of the United States to attract the attention of consumers, "fun" "novelty" "cool" is the participants on the Indian map of the main evaluation, such as song Leah, Procter and Gamble, Yintai department stores and other enterprises are using the Indian map to participate in activities.

Indo-American Map This entrepreneurial project contains two important trends and opportunities: Smart handheld, the development of mobile Internet and open platform innovation, the mode of Weilink, the interconnected form it presents, the connection of all objects, including the micro-chain (), which becomes the human-computer interface.

Guangzhou Mei Yu Information Technology Co., Ltd. CEO Huang that, for enterprises, the short-chain effect can bring value to enterprises, help enterprises shorten their distance with users, so that consumers re-participate in and through the product to get a new experience.

Working principle

Before printing a self-service printing terminal, take out the smartphone, scan and follow the public account, send mobile photos to the public account. Then, enter the printed image front-end screen display of the consumption code, India-US map self-service printing terminal can receive photos in 30 seconds, and produced a Polaroid style Lomo card, printing the United States map Machine self-help printing terminal began to work, you can see from the big screen printing the picture process.

thinking about hardware from the internet perspective

The concept of the Indo-American mapping device originated in a brainstorming session in June 2012.

One evening, several of our co-founders, including Huang, gathered in a café to discuss the impact of smartphones on other industries and to find the right innovation in them. We talked about a phenomenon that a few years ago the national sticker Printing service, the popularity of smartphones in the same period disappeared. While there may be other factors, such as the prevalence cycle of every entertainment product, we believe that the popularity of smart phones, with the popularity of personal instant photography and instant sharing, is an important reason for the sharp decline in the print market. Whether it is a selfie or a friend, these features are no longer required by the big sticker machine (actually a camera and printer with a PC device) to achieve, as long as there is a mobile phone is enough, both completely free and do not need to pass the media, who still need stickers? Further thinking, we believe that although there is no need to have a separate device to digitize their images, in turn, the need for their own digital images for paper preservation has never been stronger. Now people's mobile phones in the daily increase in photos, although it is worth printing, but the Jiabuzhu base is very large, in the electronic data has no way to prove that they can be long-term preservation, in fact, people may spend less than before, but still more than the photo paper. So, in our imagination, a new public photo printing device that is replaced by a sticker will probably be very market-aware.

This is the origin of the printing and mapping equipment, it began to focus on the application of mobile phone parts. With an app on your phone, people can wirelessly transfer photos from their social apps in albums to print from their nearest print-map terminal. Users no longer need to care about what the specific printer is, how the wireless connection is set up, how to print the specs, etc., we guarantee that he/she is using Android or iOS devices, in any of the printed image of the print terminal is the same texture of the photo. Compared with other mobile internet pure software startup projects, we believe that this kind of equipment and the network service based on this kind of equipment have higher user value and more commercial possibility, but this kind of judgment is correct, we are not sure. Although not fully grasp, but through the mobile phone to make it easier for users to operate the printer and other electronic devices This direction is right, so we decided to use small steps to test the wrong, fast iterative way to verify that our thinking is correct.

only iterations have a way out.

Micro-innovation, rapid iteration, I am afraid is the internet thinking to do the first important feature of products.

When our first version of IOS app was approved by the Apple app Store, the fact that the hardware was not even finished with the product design was just the initial selection of the print module and the motherboard development. In this phase of the product, users only need to open the app in the phone to scan a dynamic QR code on the screen of the printing device, and then send the next selected photos to the print terminal to print successfully. Core functions are tuned, but this product has user value, we do not know, although the internal reaction is good, but the whole product day did not put into the real environment of the test, are not convincing. So, in the hardware appearance or a plastic square box prototype, we have put it into large-scale exhibition, up and down nine pedestrian street and other crowded occasions let ordinary passers-by to try.

To our surprise, despite a variety of hardware failures, software bugs, application downloads are cumbersome, and even no payment system, ordinary users still express great enthusiasm for use. Basically, the passers-by who are aware of our equipment (mainly young people, students) will try it out and, unattended, do all the work on the propaganda instructions and are willing to pay. This gives us the confidence to continue to research and development, at the same time, in the use of the process of exposing the equipment problems, such as the need for intelligent equipment to select the network mode, printing module of the paper needs to be automated, internal needs to solve the heat dissipation, but also to our next hardware improvement indicated the direction, clear priority. Soon, the appearance of the first generation of the microwave oven products were identified, and began small batches of manufacturing, put into different segments for testing and promotion. This is the first iteration of this product.

As the hardware of the device stabilizes, software problems begin to emerge. Although it has tried to compress the size of the app, but because the user's mobile phone network is not controllable, two or three trillion of application data may also have to spend a lot of waiting time, which is enough to kill the user's valuable curiosity, the user experience is bad. To do this, we started by incorporating SDK and API development into the program and working with some of the already-budding photo-studio applications. However, we still encounter the problem of the first chicken or egg before the start-up. Without a lot of hardware, you can't persuade mainstream apps to add your SDK, and if there isn't enough App installed or SDK updates, there's no way to say that people are running our devices. If you use WEBAPP as our client without using the APP, you'll face browser compatibility issues, such as Safari's support for uploading images on IOS, which means we're losing a lot of potential customers from the start.

when we start to realize the public platform was launched at the end of August 2012.

The existence value of the Indian map is to simplify the user's photo output process, its operational requirements for the client can be completely and should be simplified to a single instruction to complete, if you can completely abandon the client App and even WebApp, with this interface-friendly and high-capacity rich media communication tool channel to complete the operation, Wouldn't it be a greater improvement in the user experience? If the user experience is enhanced, the possible consequences of abandoning the App, such as reduced functionality and reduced user stickiness, can be acceptable.

With a great openness to the public platform, we contacted the team, and like other passionate developers, they were very interested in our generation of products that were still rough, and we welcomed our attempts to make docking on the platform. They helped us to familiarize ourselves with the various public APIs that the platform allowed to access, which was a great support and encouragement when the platform's help documents were still quite chaotic. It turns out that the API at the time was enough to support the entire business process we designed. For three days, we have reproduced the main features of the APP in the dialogue mode, simplifying the printing process and making it even easier for us to believe. Since then, the Indian-American map has discontinued the development of the client, fully transferred to the platform, to become a unique public platform-based print terminal. at the same time, later batches of equipment hardware modified the appearance, reducing the size to accommodate more occasions, which is the second iteration of this product.

Internet thinking to Internet mode

The basic function is free, through the value-added service charge or the backward charge, is another characteristic of the internet thinking.

As the number of product paving points continues to grow, we have noticed that the first-ever idea of a sticker-charging model may not be the best commercially available option. On the one hand, even if the adoption of a very low pricing strategy, the user whenever involved in the payment will enter a very cumbersome process, poor experience, software and hardware needs to adapt to a variety of payment environment and methods, on the other hand, our operators found that in the product use process accumulated popularity, Tend to be more valuable than their direct cash receipts.

Since the beginning of 2013, with the further expansion of the user base, the platform of the public number has flourished, many public numbers on the offline dissemination and promotion of the growing demand. Before, our strategy was to maintain the only Indian-American graphic official number, in order to turn users into our own fans. At this time, many operators have asked to change the strategy of adding powder, so that the user even attention to other official numbers can also use the Indian map device to print. When we tried to open the powder, because of the user experience and the cluster effect of the physical machine in the crowd use, the Indian map can easily be a brand in a line activity to bring three to five times times the number of fan growth before doing the same activity. In this way, India and the United States map Equipment has become a brand marketing tool, and we also logically to the product's business model from direct to user fees, into service users, in turn, to seek brand promotion customers charge.

Business model changes, the impact of hardware and software is huge.

In the software, at this time began to need a open to the customer backend system, so that the purchase or leasing of our equipment customers can modify their own official number, advertising, copy, reply and other configurations, but also to enable customers to monitor the use of equipment in real-time. On the hardware, as a need to have the ability to display advertising equipment, first of all need a large and clear screen, followed by a more eye-catching and fashionable appearance, which means that a generation of models just a mass production is behind, and have to redesign. After the unremitting efforts of the team, the second generation of printed American products in 2013, the hardware appearance of stability in the market today most people see the appearance of software services, entertainment has been strengthened, but also introduced a leading intermediary platform Socialbase for customers to do better business management. This is the third iteration of this product.

Why hardware iterations become possible

For now, the iterations of the Indo-American product are far from slowing down and even accelerating.

As the market matures, the printing and mapping equipment has been able to enter more segments and operational scenarios, exposing a variety of hardware deficiencies. Some occasions, equipment appears small, some occasions equipment is not big enough, some places need long-term unattended, some places also want to power off operation. Different customers are always calling for more service content, for the accumulated users, but also need to timely launch value-added online services to take advantage of the long tail effect of the Internet. And, like Internet Software entrepreneurship, in the leading market six months later, a variety of shanzhai products have not unexpectedly emerged. All of these forces us to continue the iteration of this product, and constantly need to have a new version of software and hardware to enter the market.

In order to adapt to this fast iteration, our choice of software has nothing to do with many pure Internet companies. For example, the language we develop is primarily Python, and the operations of the mainframe are all well-established Linux remote login operations tools and infrastructure, and the background is running on the mainstream cloud platform in China.

The reason this iteration is possible on hardware is ultimately due to the strong manufacturing capabilities of our Pearl River Delta region. This ability is the cornerstone of Apple's ascent to the top, and a source of survival for other Android manufacturers. Here, you can find the right amount of factory to work with, whether it's mold manufacturing, small batch production, or a large production line order. We finalized the design in Guangzhou this afternoon, the same night we can go to Dongguan, Shenzhen cooperation factory to modify, the next day can be reflected in the prototype. It is because we are rooted in this environment that we have the courage to do iterative product development.

now is the beginning of the start

Over the past 20 years, the Internet industry has been a magnificent development of 20 years. And we believe that in the future, the Internet will go deeper into our lives, and this will be achieved through the IoT of more intelligent hardware. Fortunately, we have been able to engage in this new wave from the beginning with other teams from all over the world who came to the PRD for hardware entrepreneurship. The internet to change the traditional industry, first of all have to change the traditional way of manufacturing, India and the United States map is our first attempt, but not the last one.

Internet hardware Entrepreneurship, there are many unique problems, most obviously, it involves material and production management, start-up costs than a laptop plus network cable to high. However, at a more central level, it is actually the same as software entrepreneurship. The fundamental problem that entrepreneurs need to solve is how to transform niche innovations into products that meet the needs of the masses. Now many of the team's products, have their new ideas, in a particular niche circle (often Geek circle) can get a good response, but ultimately to enter the public's vision, I am afraid also need a long and arduous iterative process.

Tween

After sending the Tiger Sniff, the founder Li Yu asked me what the biggest lesson our team has learned so far. I think back to think, India and the United States map team, in fact, the establishment and development of more than a year, itself or a young start-up company, although the usual sense of the company will encounter the lessons encountered, but there seems to be no vigorous story to say, not to mention as a small, the team has too long to go, Not qualified to chat with the revolutionary homely.

Still, the right crap can be shared with Internet developers who are also trying to get on the road to hardware startups, as well as being alert to the team itself. summing up, is to respect the logic of business, but also to respect the logic of production, do not try to subvert them in the beginning, but first to survive, and then to improve them, and the purpose of improvement is simply to survive.

In the improvement, we also made a variety of small attempts.

For example, because the printing equipment sales are now business-oriented, we must strictly follow the traditional industry agent system, channel construction steps, step by step. However, even if the cautious, traditional agent of various kinds of goods, cross-regional sales and other management problems will inevitably appear, then we try to develop a set of equipment based on geographical and IP information Monitoring system technology means to solve. Equipment as long as the power-on, and found that it is not registered in the use of the location or operation is not the specified business model will be reported to the police, immediately be responsible for the equipment from the delivery of personnel.

Also, for example, as a new hardware company that has to rely on foundries, quality control is also a daunting issue. Product out of the question, the customer will not scold the factory, will only scold the brand, however, we do not have enough manpower to each home on behalf of the factory stare at every day. So at least at the factory stage, we think of some methods, in the process of equipment baking, we have to run a test script, similar to the graphics test program, it performs a variety of extreme instructions, at the same time through the device's sensor to receive the baking machine process parameters, including time, load, mechanical conditions, sent back to the company server , we received this data, and the data passed, the scene of the personnel to receive.

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In all other bigger ways, all we can do is learn and execute.

"Turn" "How can the Internet subvert the market of traditional industries?" The vivid practice of Internet execution: a notebook of entrepreneurs born of "iteration" of a soft and hard combination product