Dim Sum: Innovation Workshop The eldest son of the family tried to understand "entrepreneurship" in the wrong

True entrepreneurship is never a step-by-step approach along a path, but a constant trial and error under the blood and tears, and many times, knowing what you need is more valuable than knowing how to meet the needs of others.

In China's barbaric entrepreneurial environment, few startups have a golden key at birth, and very few have been designed and planned as strategic pieces at the start of their business.

As the "eldest son" of the Family of Innovation Workshop, the luxury configuration of the early dessert set up by many grassroots entrepreneurial team is quite envious: CEO Zhang Lei is the former head of Baidu Wireless technology, product director Minthi from Tencent Wireless, former Dell product marketing director of the Greater China area Huang Zhuang as chief operating officer, Behind the founding team is Kai-Fu Lee and the halo of Hua, surrounded by their side is the innovative factory brand attracted by a group of industry technology elite.

For Kai-Fu Lee, Hua and other people believe in the "Android as King" of the big strategy, the centerpiece of Android's iphone OS snack is a crucial strategic fulcrum, and the birth of the snack reflects the entrepreneurial team's highly insightful vision of Android's future, but the team also has a heavy mission to bear.

"One of the predictions we had when we started our business two years ago was whether Android would become an independent single market, and now there is no doubt about it," he said. At that time is to seize the industry a big explosion and rise point, starting from the operating system, but do the purpose of operating system, certainly not the operating system itself, but the operating system services. So we started making dessert OS in September 2010. Dessert CEO Zhang Lei recalls.

Time back in September 2010, when China's mobile Internet was still on the eve of the outbreak, smartphones are also far from universal, and now, the first batch of innovative workshops, which are represented by dim sum, are strategically highly strategic, representing the insights that Lee and Hua have on industry trends- The huge space of Android smartphone market terminal manufacturers will certainly involve, from the software level to provide them with a solution is undoubtedly an industry opportunity that cannot be missed.

But in stark contrast to the strategic direction of almost everyone, the entrepreneurial team is dazed and groping on the tactical path.

"In fact, we have a lot of two years to explore the process, there are a lot of tangled judgments, the first is completely hazy one into the, and then do not know what." "Although Kai-fu Lee for dessert to find the CEO when the two sides only spent 5 minutes on the strategic agreement, but Zhang Lei frankly in the initial stage of the start-up tactical level is still hazy."

In fact, after a year of dim sum entrepreneurship, in the September 2011, Innovation Workshop was aware of the problems of its incubation model in the process of rethinking its incubator model. "In fact, it was so simple, and the idea of Hua was embodied in the product." Innovation workshops were the first to recruit technicians, and the first product was to implement the ideas of their founders. "Innovation Workshop COO Taoning recalls.

For Zhang, he was the CEO chosen by Kai-fu Lee for the dessert project, which was not originally an independent start-up, and was designed and lacked enough founder genes to be the underlying source of the company's struggles in the first year.

From OS to Application

If you look at the development of the dessert in the first few months, everything seems to be in the wind.

The strategic focus of the initial snack is to collaborate with the terminal handset manufacturer to enhance, optimize and localize the Android system. Whether it is the COO Huang Zhuang, the background of the hardware manufacturer, or the good relationship between the innovative factory and many handset terminal manufacturers, or the huge potential market of China's thousand-yuan Android smart machine, this idea seems to be logical, Even the eruption of the domestic Android smartphone could make dim sum the dominant force in China Mobile's internet industry chain.

On the other hand, in the beginning of the creation of innovative factory poor situation, Kai-Fu Lee in the IT industry has become a core resource of innovation Workshop, with the help of this, snacks can reach a lot of domestic and foreign intelligent Android Intelligent manufacturers, the original bucket of gold also source.

The right direction, a group of innovative factory at that time the most elite product team plus Kai-fu Lee in the hardware manufacturers there influence, dim sum quickly opened the situation. From August 2010 to October, snacks took only 3 months to make the first dim sum os phone. In November, the first mobile phone with dim sum os listed, one months later, the 2nd mobile phone listing, followed by several months, including Sharp, Haier, TCL, Changhong and other terminal manufacturers are gradually reached with dim sum cooperation.

March 2011, only half a year to start a snack on the Jinsha River to win tens of millions of dollars in financing, everything seems to be in the direction of the original expected to develop.

However, in the dim sum also experienced the first six months of smooth sailing, Zhang Lei decided to take the initiative to change, the industry trend of sensitive to make him faint feeling in front of a calm route has been covered with reefs.

After that, Zhang Lei found that if you want to do the OS, you have to deal with the hardware, however, there are too many hardware manufacturers, every manufacturer should do a set of their own scheme, the more cooperation manufacturers, the longer the front will be, and finally become in the hardware field to play, but dim sum from the background of people or genes are a software company, A lot of hardware things are not good, even more tangled is that this makes the dim inside the cake can not form a distinct culture, whether it is a market-driven solution provider or a technology-oriented software company, hovering between the hardware and software, dim sum constantly tangled.

In addition, as a small start-up company, in addition to the reputation of Kai-fu Lee in the industry, dim sum in the dialogue with the traditional hardware manufacturers can take up the right to speak, in such as Huawei, ZTE these big manufacturers have launched its own brand of smartphones, medium-sized hardware manufacturers are also moving their own mobile phone in the The idea of helping hardware vendors provide smartphone solutions looks increasingly like chicken ribs.

"The decision that we really started to apply was in March last year, in the 3rd-pole conference room, and I called a couple of core team members, and I was never too stubborn and serious to say that they had to be applied, when half of them objected and they didn't understand." I asked them. Since we have a certain development of the basis of the operating system, with a number of cooperation based on the financing also took a large amount of financing, why not do it early. Zhang Lei recalls.

So, to get the Jinsha River the first round of financing as a node, dim sum began to overthrow the idea before the start of the business, the strategy of self change.

For a company, a proactive transition can be more internal resistance than a forced transition, not to mention that the company is at a stage that looks good. Early snacks in essence is a business-led company, marketing and hardware factory negotiations, technical departments responsible for implementation, when the company's focus shifted to do the application, snack began to become technology-led companies, from the internal management point of view, a vibration is difficult to avoid.

To dim sum coo Huang Zhuang as an example, Dell product Marketing director He was invited to the entrepreneurial core team by Lee Kai-fu to hope that he would be able to take a step forward in his familiar hardware field. Under the original strategy, Huang Zhuang's followers gathered a large number of market and sales negotiators to bring a single and one single contract for dessert, This segment of the market and sales elite is facing an embarrassing situation when the company moves strategically from OS to app, from market-led to technology-led.

Some market elites want to prove their worth in the company with better results, and CEO Zhang Lei, in a 2011 interview with the Economic Observer, also said that in October there would be a batch of midrange phone interviews with dim sum systems, and a slew of low-end smartphones in early 2012.

According to the former snack staff to the "business value" reporter revealed that a long time in the dim sum team many people are not willing to give up the idea of hardware cooperation, dim sum inside even once brewing in March this year launched its own-brand mobile phone and with Shanghai, a foundry company has been talking about cooperation, But the proposal was rejected when it was later presented to the Board for discussion--the innovation workshop itself, after two years of growth, realized that strategic correctness may not be the same as tactical, and that software companies should not be overly involved in the hardware sector. Since then, dim sum's plans to launch its own-branded handsets have died.

For the market and sales elite of dim sum, this is a heavy blow, it is understood that the dim sum market, a close relationship with the terminal manufacturer of the sales director was then 360 dug away to help 360 launch the special machine; before and after, a large number of marketing staff left, some of the marketing staff unwilling to dream of the mobile phone, Run away and set up a start-up team and work with Shanghai's OEM manufacturers to continue to do their own mobile phone dream.

But for the dessert company, this is a brutal but must go through the pain, since the dim sum from the company clearly from the application of the king, technology-led strategy, but also to start their own transformation.

"For this road, it is also very bumpy, there are many problems, but we think we have done the right." "said Zhang.

Zhang Lei said that in the last 10 years there have been two splinters of entrepreneurial pain, one that changed his worldview when he left Huawei to start his first venture in 2008, and the other was the brutal strategic decision of March 2012, which changed his values.