Reborn: Billionaire in College

"Wang Tao, I really can't see a future if this continues. We can't just keep doing flight control and not making the whole aircraft. We keep spending money without making any profit." Chen Jin from the founding team complained.

"Yes, we have no money in our account, and we work so hard every day, day and night, and I haven't been out for a long time."

Wang Tao was wearing glasses and had a dazed look in his eyes.

DJI’s entrepreneurial history can be traced back to 2006.

In 03, Wang Tao, who was already a junior, dropped out of East China Normal University and applied to world-class universities. In the end, only the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology sent him an acceptance letter.

In 06, Wang Tao and two classmates who were doing graduation projects together officially founded DJI, and used the remaining part of his scholarship in college to develop and produce helicopter flight control systems. The company initially had only five or six people, working in a residential building in Shenzhen. Because of the simple office environment, they were unable to recruit particularly outstanding people, and even the two classmates who started the business together left one after another after two difficult years.

Although they have developed the first relatively mature helicopter flight control system XP3.1 and have decent monthly sales, the money they earn does not keep up with their investment, and the team has not received any salary for a long time.

This may be DJI’s second crisis. Although this crisis is much better than the previous one, it will still have no future if it continues like this.

At the most difficult time, only one cashier was left in the entire team, and all the colleagues who had started the business together left.

Part of it is that Wang Tao's energy is frightening.

He has to be crazy to live, which perfectly portrays Wang Tao's character.

Everyone works more than ten hours a day, with no clear working hours. Moreover, Wang Tao likes to work at night. He arrives at the office at eleven or twelve o'clock in the evening and works until the next day before going to bed.

This situation made the other members panic, and what was even more terrifying was Wang Tao's call.

He would often call them out of the blue to discuss ideas, no matter what time it was. This led to other members putting their phones in iron boxes after get off work, so that when others called, it was not that no one answered, but that the call could not be connected. Some even chose to turn off their phones.

From this point of view, Wang Tao is indeed very similar to Jobs or Musk.

In order to realize his dream, he dropped out of East China Normal University and enrolled in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he studied hard.

After completing his studies, he went to Shenzhen to start a business, starting from a warehouse. After seven years of hard work, he shocked the industry with the world's first consumer-grade aerial photography drone.

Everyone knows the rest of the story.

DJI has become the leader in the drone industry.

"Are we really unable to hold on any longer? I really don't want to accept this." Wang Tao murmured.

"It's not that we can't hold on, but we are short of money now, a lot of money," said Zhu Xiaorui.

"But where can we get the money now?" Wang Tao, who has been secretly researching technology, is completely clueless about capital.

The rest of the team members just do their work silently.

In fact, since starting his business, many people have come forward to help Wang Tao, but they have always taken the wrong approach.

For example, a friend of Wang Tao’s father had invested US$9 earlier, and even his middle school classmate sold his house to raise money. He is now the marketing director of DJI.

In addition, two technical experts, Li Zexiang and Zhu Xiaorui, have also invested in the company, and Zhu Xiaorui even became DJI's chief scientist.

Who is Zhu Xiaorui? She is a doctoral supervisor at Harbin Institute of Technology!

The problem DJI is facing now is that it has a bunch of technical geeks who are capable and have made the initial helicopter flight control system, but they have no idea of ​​the direction and have never been able to break even.

They don’t even know any big capital investment institutions.

And to be honest, even if they know them, people may not invest in them.

There are also some awesome drone teams on the market today.

Zhu Xiaorui said: "Our XP3.1 now has a total annual sales of only 300 million, which is far from enough after deducting employee salaries, rent, utilities, and R&D expenses. It is difficult to boost business in the short term. If we can't make a profit, we can't concentrate on R&D, and we are slowly falling into a dead end."

Guo Jia, a classmate who sold his house to support Wang Tao, said: "Why don't you try making multi-rotor model aircraft? This thing is quite popular now. Domestic model aircraft are mainly fixed-wing and helicopter, and multi-rotor aircraft have not yet been developed. I think there is a market for it."

"No, we did some research on it when you were not here. We bought a set and studied it, but it couldn't hover and it crashed very quickly."

"During this period, everyone should put aside their current work and use their own connections to attract investment."

…………

After Chen Pingjiang saw the name "DJI" in an internal document of Tianyuan Capital, he curiously found Bu Housheng.

“What’s going on with this DJI?”

Bu Housheng was somewhat curious about why Chen Pingjiang was interested in such an unknown small company, so he said, "It's a startup in Shenzhen that mainly makes helicopter flight control products and sells them well. Some time ago, they approached us to invest. After investigation, the company unanimously agreed that it didn't have much value."

Chen Pingjiang wanted to laugh. Is DJI doing so badly now? It was directly judged as worthless.

"Tell me more specifically."

"The company was founded in 06, which is four years ago. Its current product is a helicopter flight control system, and its annual sales are only 4 million yuan. It is currently in a stage where its income is not enough to cover its expenses. There are only a few private helicopters in China, and the market is much larger."

After hearing this, Chen Pingjiang understood.

From an investor's perspective, DJI has little investment value and little room for imagination. It has been in business for a long time, has almost no achievements to show for itself, and has not even started making drones.

The design of this factory is not much different from that of ordinary small factories in China, and there are a lot of such factories in China at this time. No matter from which dimension, DJI has no investment value.

Chen Pingjiang was also somewhat relieved. If he hadn't remembered to look through the documents today, he might have missed DJI.

This cannot be blamed on Chen Pingjiang. In everyone's impression, DJI has only been famous for a few years. Who would have thought that DJI was founded so early.

After thinking for a while, Chen Pingjiang said to Bu Housheng, "You go and arrange for the servants to go to Shenzhen with me tomorrow. Do you know where their company's office is located?"

"I know, but..." Bu Housheng was too familiar with this style of his big boss.

The last time was when I invested in Riot Games.

It’s just that Riot is making games, which has more room for imagination, but DJI…

"But boss, is there anything special about this company? Or did I miss some important information, or did you know about this company before?"

The shadow of the famous tree of man!

Chen Pingjiang has always had a unique vision for investment. Bu Housheng was shocked. For a moment, he was not sure whether Chen Pingjiang really wanted to go and take a look on a whim, or whether his subordinates were rash and missed a great investment opportunity.

Chen Pingjiang really couldn't explain this.

You can't just tell Bu Housheng that DJI is destined to be a great company in the future, right?
Who believes it!?
After thinking for a long time, Chen Pingjiang finally found a seemingly satisfactory answer: "Internet companies have developed to this day, and we have almost tapped out the good salaries. Tianyuan Capital's future investment direction should still be mainly in industry. I am optimistic about the future of the low-altitude economy. I want to find an industry that can make drones. This time I will start with this company called DJI. In addition, biomedicine, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, mixed reality, and energy are all good directions. There is no need to focus on the Internet all the time."

"Mr. Chen, are you saying that these are the development trends of the future world?"

"What else?" Chen Pingjiang smiled.

Standing at the forefront of 2010, no one understands better than him how the world will change in the next twenty years.

In particular, the development momentum of the two industries of blockchain and artificial intelligence is particularly eye-catching.

Since Satoshi Nakamoto released the first block of the Bitcoin system, the Genesis Block, in 2009, the digital currency has begun to soar, reaching more than $6 per coin.

In this day and age, if you tell others about this, people will probably look at you as if you are a fool.

But reality is so magical.

Speaking of artificial intelligence, in just a few years, Wenxinyiyan, ChatGPT, and Sora have emerged.

Follow the path of Master Ma and leave Master Ma with no way to go.

Chen Pingjiang also wants to experience reverse open source and let the world see his remote farming technology. After ten or twenty years of interest, he will have his own group of "believers" abroad.

The phone did.

What electric cars need next.

Private rocket launch companies and Starlink have also come up with a whole set of things to force Ma to step aside.

We also need to think about brain-computer interfaces.

Artificial intelligence is obviously indispensable. Although strong artificial intelligence may not be possible, weak artificial intelligence should not be a big problem.

Changing the course of human progress would be interesting. Are we going to sell vegetables like those domestic companies?

“Okay, then I will immediately arrange someone to communicate with DJI and confirm the time.” Bu Housheng said.

Chen Pingjiang waved his hand: "No need, let's go straight over and kill them by surprise to see their true appearance."

This time, Chen Pingjiang also planned to look for Wang Xin and take him down for KuaiBo if possible.

I don't know if this guy will still go in and operate the sewing machine in the future after I protect him.

When it comes to the Kuaibo incident, Chen Pingjiang really doesn't have a good impression of Boss Jia.

What made him even more unhappy was that this guy went to the United States and said every week that he would be back next week.

What is FF car? It is Faraday Future, and its stock price has fallen below $0.1.

Seeing that he was about to go out of business and was about to be in trouble by investors, he thought about returning home.

When it comes to fooling people, Boss Jia and Boss Xu can be described as the Dragon and the Phoenix.

However, Boss Jia is currently in high spirits.

In less than two months, LeTV will go public and will become the first video website to be listed on the A-share market.

Boss Xu is not bad either. The song and dance troupe is said to have been established, and Evergrande has also ranked first in the domestic real estate brand value list for the first time. (End of this chapter)