There is such a company founder:
Before the word "industrial Internet" appeared, he devoted himself to factory intelligence, determined to reduce the cost of industrial equipment operation and maintenance, save energy and emissions for factories, and liberate workers who worked mechanically to let them engage in more meaningful work;
But only 6 months after starting a business, it cost a few partners to put together 2 million yuan, and the income was not enough;
In 2017, the money on the company's account was only enough to pay employees a month's salary, and they almost sold their houses to pay salaries;
More than 1,000 notes in WeChat are capital-related contacts, and for a while I saw investors who wanted to vomit...
Shen Guohui admitted that he underestimated the difficulty of starting a business.
But to give up, he never thought about it.
At the end of 2017, the "Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Development of the Industrial Internet of "Internet + Advanced Manufacturing" was released, and for a time the industrial Internet rose up, and when many people were ready to enter, Shen Guohui had been waiting here for a long time.
As it turned out, he hit the trend.
Nowadays, the Mushroom Internet of Things founded by Shen Guohui has completed two rounds of financing within one year, and has been favored by the internationally renowned first-line investment institutions GGV Jiyuan Capital, Xianghe Capital, Haolan Capital, Yuanhe Origin, Ginkgo Valley Capital, Qifu Capital, Teng stock venture capital, and has accumulated hundreds of millions of yuan in investment...
As the leader of the industrial Internet, the Mushroom Internet of Things has made many peers "out of reach" and become a well-deserved capital darling.
Along the way, Shen Guohui only relied on a belief: "Doing things like digging a well, as long as the direction is right, it is not afraid of the depth of the well." ”
In the first issue of "Specialized Special", we interviewed Shen Guohui, founder and CEO of Mushroom IoT Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., hoping that his thinking on the general trend of the industrial Internet, corporate mission and human nature can inspire you.
Oral description: Shen Guohui Founder and CEO of Mushroom IoT
Editor: Zhang Qiyu specializes in the new column
Source: Zhenghe Island
Shen Guohui, founder and CEO of Mushroom IoT
01, 27 years old became the deputy general manager of the business department, bluntly said "I did not come to work"
Back in 2006, Jay Chou and Fei Yuqing's "A Thousand Miles Away" was sung in the streets.
In the same year, Shen Guohui had not yet graduated from graduate school, but had decided to go to the company to apply for a job.
Like many fresh graduates, he gathers information, runs job fairs, and submits resumes.
Later, at a job fair at LiangLuoju Middle School in Shunde, he received both the audit department of midea and the market research department of Galanz.
For Shen Guohui, this is not difficult to choose.
Because, "Galanz is 'right in the middle' for me."
Shen Guohui loved to read the Harvard Business Review when he was in school, and he was intoxicated by the cases in it, and there was an issue about Galanz at that time, which greatly aroused his curiosity:
A Chinese company, making microwave ovens occupies 40% of the market share, at the beginning to help others do OEM exports to the United States, and finally Americans directly recognize Galanz.
"How did [Galanz] do it?"
With this idea, Shen Guohui became a market researcher at Galanz.
At this time, some distinctive characteristics of Shen Guohui's personality have emerged, and unlike most "hit workers", he naturally has an idea:
"The enterprise is my business, I am not here to work."
Perhaps it is this sense of "ownership" that allows Shen Guohui to see some problems that Galanz has not been noticed.
After work, the computer display screen is still lit, there is no OA (Office Automation, office automation, referred to as OA) system, the company can only use a paper version of a document, and the delivery requires a department secretary to run up and down...
Electricity, paper, and manpower are all wasted.
"This is the textbook-level comprehensive cost leader in the Harvard Business Review?"
Shen Guohui felt that he could not leave it alone, so he proposed feedback, once or twice, and suggested that he reach the president's office through the director.
With the management of computer monitors and shen Guohui's ultra-low cost as project leader to promote the construction of the group's OA (office automation) and CRM (customer relationship management) systems, his energy is increasingly being seen.
In the process of solving one problem after another, Shen Guohui changed from a market researcher to the secretary of the group's executive committee, and soon became the deputy general manager of the refrigerator and washing machine business unit.
At that time, it was his third year in Galanz, and he was 27 years old.
In Shen Guohui's view, he can have such an amazing growth rate, which is inseparable from a person's appreciation and guidance:
"Mr. Liang Zhaoxian (Chairman and President of Galanz Group) is my nobleman."
The trust of the president allows Shen Guohui to gain opportunities, but opportunities and pressures often coexist.
As a 27-year-old deputy general manager who "parachuted" from the group's functional departments, any colleague in the refrigerator washing machine division at the beginning was more familiar with the business than Shen Guohui. Not to mention those teachers with more than 10 years of experience, they did not obey Shen Guohui at all.
When the meeting was proposed, some people said that they would not come if they could not come, and they adopted thunderous means, and everyone felt that Shen Guohui relied on the president standing behind him, "fox fake tiger wei to engage in politics."
Even if the master's degree is management, no matter how many cases I have seen, the reality is always more difficult than described in the books.
Shen Guohui thought about it and decided that respect "asking" did not come and "forced" not to come, this kind of thing can not be turned around and thrown to the president, the only thing that can be done is to study hard, let yourself grow rapidly, and use your ability to gain recognition and acceptance.
This run-in is more than half a year.
Colleagues in the business department saw Shen Guohui talking more and more professionally day by day, day by day to understand how Galanz refrigerator washing machine can be built well, and finally there is a more than 20 years older than Shen Guohui, the old heroes of Galanz who always can't come to the meeting have put down their mustard and called him "Guohui" cordially.
The team's "internal worries" have finally been lifted, but the problems in the production and sales line are still continuous.
02, "I saw an opportunity, and I feel extremely excited to think about it"
People who have worked in industrial production may have been irritated by one thing - "unplanned downtime".
The trouble with "unplanned downtime" is easy to understand, for example:
Tomorrow is the delivery date, today the equipment suddenly broke, the factory has no spare parts, call the manufacturer, the manufacturer also has no spare parts, the urgent production of spare parts and then send over it takes a week ... At that time, the broccoli was cold.
Shen Guohui has experienced first-hand:
Generally speaking, the exported goods will be shipped by container, so the transportation cost is relatively low, but the corresponding time required is longer.
Once, a batch of washing machines was delayed due to the "unplanned shutdown" of the factory, and the sea was too late, so they had to find planes to airlift them to Lefour, France.
What concept?
The freight cost at that time was higher than the transaction price of this batch of washing machines, which was equivalent to upside down money to do business. But in order to perform the contract in good faith, it can only be so.
The price has been paid, and Shen Guohui began to think about what caused the "unplanned downtime"?
In this observation, he found many pain points:
1. Industrial equipment and molds are mostly used badly
Regular drivers have the feeling that when a car is used correctly and maintained on time, it is hardly broken.
The same is true for industrial equipment, which is prone to problems when used under overload or used for a long time.
2. Maintenance of industrial equipment is very "tossed"
In the past, the biggest pain point of factory equipment operation and maintenance was too much dependence on "skilled craftsmen".
Experienced engineers go to the machine that is in trouble, sometimes make a hand adjustment, or even just stand for a while, and the machine is running.
The skill of skilled craftsmen is much higher than that of ordinary workers, which is the ability accumulated by skill, and it often takes a long time to cultivate a "teacher".
In addition, many experienced operation and maintenance masters are in the equipment manufacturer or maintenance provider, and do not reside in the user side factory, it is inconvenient to come to a trip, and it can only be roughly judged according to the description of the symptoms to choose what parts to bring, once the wrong one may have to run again, very tossed.
3. The assembly line labor force should be liberated
Shen Guohui once rotated to the assembly line to work, mechanically repeating an action, the height of the chair was set, and even the position of the hand was stipulated, "That was the first time I experienced what is called completely brainless."
He described himself as like Chaplin's Charlie in Modern Times.
Plot of the comedy film Modern Times
Shen Guohui found out very early that more and more young people would rather send takeaways than enter the factory, it is reasonable to say that the risk of delivering takeaways is higher than that of entering the factory, why do they choose this way?
It's freedom.
In Shen Guohui's view, mechanical repetitive work is actually anti-human, people are born with a desire for creative work, and if these people are liberated, they can flow to other industries.
Shen Guohui has been trying to find solutions to these problems since he discovered them, until 2012, when he finally had inspiration.
At that time, it had been 3 years since then Premier Wen Jiabao proposed "Sensing China" (an image name for China's development of the Internet of Things, which made them intelligent by implanting various miniature induction chips on objects, and then with the help of wireless networks, realizing "dialogue" between people and objects, and "communication" between objects and objects), and domestic sensor technology was becoming more and more mature.
Major electronics companies have been scrambling to make household appliances intelligent.
Galanz was one of the first, and a product committee was set up to coordinate the smart home construction of the entire group.
Shen Guohui was also the secretary of the product committee at that time.
As soon as the concept of intelligence is contacted, the problem that has plagued Shen Guohui for a long time has cracked open a gap - since hundreds of pieces of household appliances can be intelligent, then hundreds of thousands, millions of high-value industrial equipment should be more intelligent!
Through intelligence, the 3 problems that plague Shen Guohui have a method of understanding:
1) Improper use of equipment, that is, there is a problem with the parameters of equipment operation, long-term high-load operation or long-term immobility may cause damage to the equipment, intelligent equipment can accurately avoid such problems through software control of equipment operation.
2) The software can predict when the equipment may be broken by monitoring various parameters, helping the factory to play an advance amount.
At the same time, if the intelligence of industrial equipment can be completed, the debugging experience of many teachers can become data and achieve the reuse of knowledge, and new people can quickly get started as long as they know how to use software.
As the economist He Fan vividly used as a metaphor: "As long as there is a skillful craftsman, the robots on the production line can become skillful craftsmen." The data makes up for the lack of experience – you have your old TCM, I have my sphygmomanometer. ”
3) The industrial equipment after intelligence can be connected with artificial intelligence, no longer the "silly work" in the automation era, which requires people to stare at the workshop, but "learn while doing", self-renewal and iteration, and liberate labor.
After thinking about this, Shen Guohui saw a huge torrent rushing in, "I think the future factory equipment will be intelligent, and not only the equipment, the future will be the entire factory intelligent, thinking of this I am extremely excited."
Shen Guohui communicates with customers
03, do not want to take anyone's life, either win-win, or do not do
In 2016, Shen Guohui decided to start a business.
He found zheng wei, a high school brother, Li Jingjing, a college teacher, and fan Shaohui, a good friend.
Zheng Wei has long been engaged in the research and development of controllers and IoT modules, is the former vice president of R&D of Ruide Intelligent, a member of the FlashLink Bidding Committee, and has great experience in how to make IoT hardware "simple, small, stable and fast";
Fan Shaohui has worked in midea mechanical and electrical equipment group for nearly 10 years, is the sales director of the former midea air compressor division, and is very familiar with the mechanical and electrical equipment industry;
There is also Li Jingjing, who has worked at Yonyou Software for many years as a project director, responsible for ERP, CRM and other software research and development.
4 people put together 2 million yuan, rented an office and began to dry, and the mushroom Internet of Things was born.
They are determined to provide standardized SaaS software for customers in the industrial equipment sector based on the Industrial Internet of Things, including PHM (Prognostics and Health Management), CRM dedicated to the electromechanical equipment industry, and other software.
When the overall direction was confirmed, Shen Guohui's thinking on products and business models was far from stopping.
There are many players in the industrial equipment market, equipment manufacturers, equipment service parties, equipment users, and the addition of mushroom IoT can easily trigger the sense of crisis of these "indigenous people" and then be excluded.
But Shen Guohui is very clear that "exclusive interests" is not the first issue they consider.
The first question is how to do this thing, with whom, and how can we improve the efficiency of the entire industry?
The market is accustomed to hearing the story of subversion, but Shen Guohui only wants to promote the industry for a win-win situation.
As Liu Run mentioned in "The Underlying Logic": "Either win-win or do not do it." ”
To this end, Shen Guohui analyzed the industrial chain of the domestic equipment market, and first developed a hardware mushroom cloud box and a software mushroom circle for equipment service providers to help them remotely monitor equipment usage and facilitate operation and maintenance.
Workers view device information on their phones
When the number of equipment service provider users reaches 100, the team enters the equipment manufacturer market, providing them with IEM (Intelligent Equipment Management System) software and hardware to help them understand which markets the equipment sold is flowing to, how it is operating, and how the service quality of downstream service providers is.
Finally, the Mushroom IoT entered the equipment user market and began a journey of "digging a well".
04, the location is right, you are not afraid of the depth of the well
There are many kinds of industrial equipment, rich application scenarios, and the use of intelligent equipment naturally has a broad future.
But even though looking up at the starry sky is an infinite prospect, you still have to step steadily on the ground.
Shen Guohui thought that as a start-up with limited resources, it must be focused.
As a result, their target scope was first narrowed to general-purpose factory equipment.
The underlying logic is that although pharmaceutical factories and car factories will definitely use different professional equipment, as long as they are engaged in production, they are inseparable from water, electricity, gas, cold and heat.
Therefore, equipment around water, electricity, compressed air, cooling, etc. is like infrastructure in industrial production, and is called general equipment.
Immediately after, they focused on the general equipment again, betting on the single equipment of the air compressor.
Air compressor is used in general equipment for the production of compressed air, and compressed air in industrial production application and popularity is second only to electric energy, automotive painting, pneumatic tools, packaging and plastic, air conditioning leak detection and other processes are inseparable from it.
In this way, in the face of a huge and complex industrial equipment system, the Mushroom IoT chose to "dig a well", cut in from a centimeter wide, dig to a kilometer deep, and one day reach the underground river, and then reach in all directions.
Shen Guohui firmly believes that this is a correct choice, and has long been mentally prepared: "As long as the position is right, I am not afraid of the depth of the well." ”
But what he did not expect was that the difficulties of the business could be buried in hard work, "a penny but difficult to the hero and good man."
05, "digging a well" for 6 years, the most difficult is to find money
In order to allow industrial equipment to access the Internet, the first needs a gateway module, and the second needs an APP, which means that the research and development work of the Mushroom Internet of Things must be grasped by both hardware and software.
Less than half a year after starting a business, Shen Guohui and 3 partners put together 2 million yuan at once.
There was no way, they could only raise funds in the first year, but at that time there was no shadow of the product, and finally "purely rely on character" and find money invested by friends.
Little did he know at the time that this was just the beginning of his own path to "finding money".
Shen Guohui remembers that the company first made a product that could be put on the market at the end of 2016, sold to a Shenzhen equipment service provider, with income, but compared with the cost investment is a drop in the bucket.
The biggest problem with sales is customer distrust.
At present, people are very familiar with the "industrial Internet", "industry 4.0" and "industrial equipment cloud", and there will be no underlying logic doubts, but this is largely because since the end of 2017, the state has successively introduced relevant policies and vigorously advocated.
For the mushroom IoT in the start-up period:
"If the device is connected to the Internet, what if the software is hijacked by hackers and opened when it should not be opened?"
"What if my data is stolen?"
"What if the device fails?"
Questions from customers about the industrial control security brought by cloud technology are split every day.
Shen Guohui found that the excitement of the blue ocean market was consumed by one problem after another, and he had to admit that the competition in the blue ocean was not large, but this also meant that customer recognition was not high, and the uneducated market would bring great resistance to sales.
In September 2017, the money on the entire company's account was only enough to pay a month's salary, and the travel expenses had been stopped for two months, Shen Guohui thought, no longer can sell the house to everyone to pay money.
Fortunately, in October 2017, the Pre-A round led by Qifu Capital entered the account, and the real turning point came at the end of 2017, when the State Council issued relevant guidance, and the term "industrial Internet" entered the public eye.
"We didn't have the word industrial Internet at that time, and when we saw the guidance, we were very happy, which was equivalent to the government using real money and silver to help us do market education, and it also proved that we were on the right path."
But even if the general trend improves, intelligent manufacturing cannot win by blitzkrieg. We must take it step by step, set up a hard village, and fight a stupid battle.
From informatization to digitalization to intelligence, in layman's terms:
Informatization is the transformation of the real world into corresponding numbers;
Digitization is about letting data run in a closed loop with some kind of rule;
When it comes to intelligence, it means that the system has changed from stupid to smart, from closed to open.
Each of the above iterative upgrades requires costs, and the difficulty of the transition from digitalization to intelligence is even more exponential, and the mushroom IoT at that time, despite the improvement in revenue, still cannot make ends meet.
So Shen Guohui could only continue to raise funds.
Which cheng thought, in the cold winter of domestic capital in 2018, it is more difficult for startups to get investment, Shen Guohui described that he had seen investors for a period of time and wanted to vomit, so far there are more than 1,000 contacts in WeChat who note investment/capital/VC/PE.
Under heavy pressure, a partner who had been carried down by the company before almost out of grain privately found Shen Guohui and said that he did not want to do it.
Shen Guohui fully understood him, but he did not want to let go like this, so he said to the partner who chose to start a business together: "If you really can't do it, rest first." ”
After that, investors have to meet again, but as more and more investors have seen, Shen Guohui can gradually judge whether the other party understands what he is doing.
He still remembers the day he visited the Beijing office of GGV Capital.
There were many entrepreneurs in Jiyuan Capital, and when Shen Guohui arrived, there was no conference room, so he and Luo Chao, executive director of GGV, found a café downstairs in Beijing Qihao Building to meet.
In a noisy environment, Shen Guohui took a piece of scratch paper and a pen and passionately wrote a whole page of his own ideas, chatting with Luo Chao:
"I do general-purpose equipment."
"Because there's a lot of industrial equipment, startups can't do everything, so we focus on the equipment that no matter what industry needs."
"Whether it's Midea, Galanz, faw-Volkswagen, which makes cars, or Youngor, which makes textiles, they all need to manage these devices."
In addition, Shen Guohui also talked about the business model, the product line, and the problems he wanted to solve, about people, about industry.
In the end, The Mushroom IoT got the investment, but more important than that, Shen Guohui said: "He (Luo Chao) understands what we are doing, and he feels that what we do is very valuable." ”
Workers are manipulating mushroom IoT products
Since then, Luo Chao has done several rounds of in-depth research on the Mushroom Internet of Things, and decided to lead the investment in the B round of financing in 2019, and continue to invest in the next B+ round and C round of financing.
At that time, what convinced Luo Chao was not only the story and dream of Shen Guohui at the beginning of his business, but also the real cases and data accumulated by Mushroom IoT in terms of scenes, teams, technologies, customers and so on.
06. Conclusion
Today, the "small spore" that only dared to cautiously bet on an air compressor has become a "well-known mushroom in the industry" that can "yunzhi control" the entire public auxiliary workshop.
Mushroom IoT employees introduce products to customers
In addition to the 3 problems that Shen Guohui aimed at the beginning, mushroom IoT can now save at least 10% of the energy cost of the factory through equipment intelligence, becoming another treasure service under the background of "double carbon".
Midea, Skyworth, Whirlpool, Geely, GAC, FAW-Volkswagen, Yangtze River Pharmaceutical, China Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical, Yingke Medical, Jabil Electronics... More and more corporate factories are benefiting from mushroom IoT.
Shen Guohui mentioned that last year the company solved 4300 needs, intelligent algorithms helped a large number of enterprises to achieve the fitting of the supply curve and demand curve of the public auxiliary workshop, the whole station energy saving 10%-30%, after each round of financing there is a deepening of products... The words are full of pride and emotion.
"I can now say that the well that the Mushroom IoT has drilled in this field is a depth that other peers will see and cannot reach."
Intelligent manufacturing, more people say, fewer people do it, and fewer people really do it.
Mushroom IoT is one of the raison d'êtres.
As the Internet evolves to the Internet of Things, the cloud era where digital is king has also shifted to the canal era.
The difference is as the economist He Fan said in Variable 4:
"There are clouds in the sky, and clouds can sow rain." Rain falls to the ground and nourishes all things. Isn't that enough?
inadequate. The irrigation should be irrigated, and the drainage should be drained. This requires digging ditches.
The person digging the canal should understand the weather, hydrology, terrain, and be willing to lean down and get his hands dirty. ”
How do you say? Shen Guohui has no shortcuts.
It is 6 years of insisting on "digging wells", and the Mushroom Internet of Things has always been in the field of industrial production.
07. Interview Notes (Zhang Qiyu, the author of this article)
One Silicon Valley investor said: "Entrepreneurs either have to be very optimistic or they have to be fanatical, because the probability of a startup actually going public is about the same as winning a multimillion-dollar lotto jackpot." ”
In Shen Guohui, this optimism and enthusiasm exist at the same time.
In the interview, I asked many times about "giving up", but Shen Guohui's answer was more and more firm than once again: "No, never thought, never thought." ”
But talking about hard work, he had something to say.
"Once in the small office of Baoneng Science and Technology Park in Shenzhen, we organized everyone to watch a video made by Mobike Hu Weiwei.
In the video, each bicycle moves with a signal, and they show how the density of bicycles in major Chinese cities has changed over time.
When we saw Shenzhen, we found that there were still a lot of bicycles moving at three or four o'clock in the morning, and I was particularly touched at that time, remembering our first days, every day until the early morning, and then riding a bicycle home. ”
Now that the Mushroom Internet of Things has become the darling of capital, and the products are becoming more and more mature and irreplaceable, Shen Guohui no longer has to make difficulties in finding money, I asked him: "Do you think yunzhi control has become this?" ”
Shen Guohui: "The Yunzhi Control of the public auxiliary workshop has been verified in large quantities at present. ”
Me: "What about intelligence?" ”
"Intelligent things have to be iterative, endless, and this ceiling has been broken, and it's big." When he said this, Shen Guohui's eyes were full of light.
Chen Li, Founding Partner and President of Zhenghe Island Investment:
The discovery of the mushroom IOT company is an industry research from the small partners of zhenghe island fund, and the acquaintance of Guohui is thanks to the introduction of fu zhekuan, founder of qifu capital, an old friend.
I remember the first meeting was in the office of Mushroom Shenzhen, at first slightly restrained Guohui talked about business like a change of person, passionate, gushing, the original one-hour communication time was reluctantly suspended under the repeated reminders of the assistant.
I walked out of the office only to find that a well-known investor had been waiting outside the door with the team for more than half an hour, which showed the popularity of Mushroom IoT in the investment community.
After only half a year of acquaintance, Guohui and I have had in-depth discussions on various issues no less than ten times, and each exchange has allowed me to have a new understanding of him from different angles, especially a dinner party.
That day, Guohui was scheduled to rush back to the company at 10 p.m. to prepare for the next day's executive strategic consensus meeting, so we set the dinner time for 6:30 to 9:30.
Unexpectedly, the two people chatted more and more deeply, and three hours passed in a flash, and Guo Hui immediately said to me: General Manager Chen, can you give me ten minutes? I'll take care of the work urgently, and then we'll talk!
As soon as my voice dropped, he put the computer on the dinner table and went to work without distraction. That kind of focused look made me can't help but quietly shoot it down and send it to the friends of the Zhenghe Island Fund, so that everyone can guess what Guohui is doing.
It turned out that he was writing the final draft of the PPT framework of the executive consensus meeting that would be held from 8:00 to 9:30 the next morning.
I remember later asking him, why is it so important at such an early time as eight o'clock, and it only takes an hour and a half? Guo Hui replied that because it is necessary to achieve the effect of the meeting and not to affect the work of the day, everyone must prepare carefully.
Sure enough, being efficient and pragmatic is his consistent style.
Finally, less than a quarter of an hour later, I saw him close the computer with a long sigh of relief and say, let's continue to speak freely!
At the dinner table for three hours, the hotel downstairs walked and talked for two hours, and when we talked about being in full swing, it was almost 12 o'clock that night.
The most memorable thing is that he shared with me the thinking process of the company's mission, vision, and values, as well as the deep meaning contained in these words, accompanied by sonorous and powerful words echoing in the quiet night sky...
There are ideals, goals, actions, and results, and the Shen Guohui I know is a doer with lofty ambitions.
Thanks to Chen Li, founding partner and president of Zhenghe Island Investment, and Ding Shali and Zhou Shuang of Mushroom IOT for their help in this article.
Resources:
[1]. Yu Jing, Huang Zhengyu: After 5 years of entrepreneurship, he insisted on "digging a well", and when he was the worst, he only paid one month's salary on the account, and now he has become a capital darling and a Magazine of Chinese Entrepreneurs
[2]. He Fan, Variable 4: The Movement of Great Powers, Nova Press
[3]. Liu Run, "The Underlying Logic", China Machine Press