Author 丨子钺
Edited by 丨 Barry
Image source 丨Cloud zhisheng, figure worm
2021 should have been the highlight of the IPOs of countless artificial intelligence startups on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, but the central bureau unexpectedly ushered in a "withdrawal tide", allowing entrepreneurs to continue to struggle on the runway where there is no end in sight.
lose! lose! lose! These former darlings of capital are beginning to face the test of real commercialization.
Yun Zhisheng was put into the spotlight in such a controversy. As the head player of the intelligent voice track, founded in 2012, after 9 years, founder & CEO Huang Wei revealed the mental journey along the way in an interview with Chuangbang.
Entrepreneurship is difficult, he once brushed his personal credit card in the early stage of entrepreneurship, wrote down the first 2 million IOUs in his life; he also invested in AI chips in 2015, and remained calm when he saw the chip fever in 2021; he insisted on appearing at the morning meeting of Peking Union Medical College Hospital every day in 2016, firmly optimistic about the end of the AI voice medical scene in the opposition of investors and internal teams, even if the valuation of the medical sector was zero when financing in 2018.
Up to now, the company's latest smart medical quality control system, if fully promoted, can save about 120 billion yuan in costs for national social security every year.
"Entrepreneurship is anti-human. Why did you win? Others either go the wrong way or give up because it's hard, and you win. If others say this is very correct and applaud you, this path must be wrong. ”
Huang Wei, who likes to think, has a strong personality and a decisive style, but his self-evaluation is a sentimental person. "I've had countless reasons, countless opportunities, to stop the medical business on the grounds of stop loss. Maybe in my bones I am a more emotional person, and I have good expectations for the future, so I insist on insisting on it. ”
For startup founders, being able to lead a team to win is the best team management. "Comfort, encouragement... In my experience over the past 9 years, it will take a day or two at most. Leading a team to victory is a great prestige. People join a startup and hope to get things done, so the best way to give them confidence is to win. Huang Wei said.
How exactly did Huang Wei lead the team to fight this protracted battle that lasted nine years? In the entrepreneurial story of Yunzhisheng, we hope to tap into valuable experiences and inspire more entrepreneurs.
For entrepreneurship
I wrote down my first IOU of 2 million
Being able to be willing to have all in their savings in the very low success rate of entrepreneurship can be said to be rare for such a founder.
Like Liu Qingfeng, who founded iFLYTEK, Huang Wei also graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China, and the two were three years apart and were Liu Qingfeng's brother-in-law. However, when Liu Qingfeng founded iFLYTEK in 1999, Huang Wei had not yet graduated, and he would not have thought that on the intelligent voice track, Yunzhisheng, founded by Huang Wei and Liang Jia'en, would become one of the most important opponents of iFLYTEK.
In 2004, Wei Huang joined motorola's China Research Center (MCRC) as a senior researcher. During the financial crisis, Motorola sold its entire speech recognition team to Nuance. Refusing to be accepted by Nuance, Huang Wei joined Shanda Network's Innovation Institute in July 2009 and created the Voice Branch in October 2010.
The Shanda Voice team ushered in a highlight moment under the leadership of Huang Wei. In the Voiceprint Recognition Evaluation (SRE) competition held by the National Standards and Technology Agency (NIST), Shanda Voice Team overpowered many famous universities and enterprises such as MIT, Stanford Research Center, IBM, etc., and won 5 single firsts in 9 single tasks, and the overall comprehensive indicators were the first.
Huang Wei's disciple, Liang Jia'en, is also another founder of Yun Zhisheng, who joined Shanda Speech Branch in 2011 as a senior researcher. With the strategic adjustment of Shanda Innovation Institute in 2012, the voice team was spun off from Innovation Institute to Shanda Master Technology. He and Huang Wei chose to start a business together.
At that time, the iPhone4s equipped with Siri voice assistant had just been introduced to the market in 2011, triggering a wave of global intelligent voice entrepreneurship. Huang Wei sees intelligent voice as an important entry point, a future opportunity for human-computer interaction.
In July 2012, Yunzhisheng was officially established.
"If I had talked to me now and told him what you would have experienced in 9 years, maybe I wouldn't have dared to start a business at that time." The journey of entrepreneurship is like people drinking water, cold and warm self-knowledge. Only those who have truly walked through can appreciate the hardships along the way. When you upgrade all the way to fight monsters and experience the difficulties of tempering, what you achieve is a strong heart of the founder.
At the beginning of the business in 2012, in order to support the early development of the company, Huang Wei borrowed 2 million yuan after draining his family and wrote the first IOU in his life. "I've never borrowed that much money to buy a house. But the result you pursue is a dream that most people in this life can't achieve, and of course you have to pay for this dream. Huang Wei said.
The biggest gain of entrepreneurship is growth, and it is also a test of the founder's learning ability. From technical managers to CEOs of startups, they need to understand products, business, capital, and talents, and slowly become an all-round player. The other side of the harvest is the price paid, in Huang Wei's view, loneliness is the price.
Many times, Huang Wei will choose a person to persist and silently solve the problem, so that everyone can see the results. The team is therefore more confident. "A lot of things you can't say to the team, they can't help you solve the problem, and you can't pass on the negative emotions."
Do you want to persevere in difficult times? When everyone applauds you, will you reflect? When 95% of the voices around you are opposed, can you bear the pressure to convince everyone? When everyone thinks you're awesome, can you stay awake? This is a huge test for entrepreneurs.
If you dial back the time to 2018, you will see that Huang Wei wrote a PPT with such a sentence: The most difficult road in the world is the shortcut. "For entrepreneurs, the easy road is mostly a dead end."
"I also have a perverse theory that it is difficult to say that one thing is difficult, that is, its probability of success may be only 5%, and 95% will fail; but there may be 95% of people who choose the easy path, or give up because it is difficult, then your probability of success is not 5%, but 100%."
After the age of 40, Huang Wei especially believed in two words - fairness, "I never thought that smooth sailing can be successful, then it is unfair to others." 」 ”
The right choice is often difficult, just like Zuo Hui, the founder of Shell Housing, said, do difficult and correct things. The same is true of Huang Wei's entrepreneurial path.
AI commercialization breakout battle
Can it save 120 billion yuan in national social security every year?
As an entrepreneur, you need to judge the forward-looking development of the industry, which is also the most basic ability of an entrepreneur. Huang Wei summed it up as, "Strategy is ahead of technology, technology is ahead of business, and business is ahead of customers." ”
Strategy is ahead of technology, that is, to know what to do first, technology around the strategy to invest, because technology also needs to be invested in front. Technology is in front of the business, that is, if the technology does not reach that level, it is thought of but cannot be done; the business must go to the customer, understand the customer's needs, step by step, it is possible.
First know what to do, "entrepreneurs need to have the ability to see the endgame, all that's left is persistence." Huang Wei said.
Huang Wei's persistence can be seen in Yun Zhisheng's layout in the medical field. In retrospect, this experience is called the darkest moment that he remembers most deeply, and even a life experience that has kept him awake at night for countless nights, pretending to be strong in front of people but secretly constantly self-doubting and wandering. "I'm optimistic about the endgame, but we can't imagine enough about some of the pain and difficulties in the process."
In Huang Wei's view, artificial intelligence must go deep into the real economy and go deep into the scene to help users solve problems. "Artificial intelligence can't tell people I'm beautiful, but how can it be beautiful?" Unseen. ”
In 2014, Huang Wei selected the two most important scenarios for the commercialization of Yunzhisheng: medical treatment and IOT.
Huang Wei will choose the landing scene of Yunzhisheng intelligent voice in medical treatment, first of all, he will see that the space in the medical market is large and the ceiling is high enough, with the improvement of economic level, the public pays more and more attention to health, and the investment in medical treatment will also increase.
Second, after market research, it was found that hospitals are relatively market-oriented, not resource-oriented or government-led, and there will be no situation where the market will be broken through through resources. Medical indicators are relatively scattered, and hospitals have independent decision-making.
Who knows", "once you enter the Houmen, it is as deep as the sea." ”
Huang Wei advocated that the company's layout of the medical sector was more of an objection. The medical sector has been very small in terms of revenue for several years, but it will disperse the company's internal research and development resources, and internal opposition is very loud. The outside is not optimistic. In the 2018 Series C financing of Yunzhisheng, investors gave the valuation of the medical sector business as nothing.
"I believe that the combination of AI technology and medical treatment is true, but I'm not sure it's 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, 8 years... I may not even live that day, but even if I don't live that day, I think that endgame is valid. ”
Nuance, the world's largest speech recognition technology company, had a brief working experience that also gave Huang Wei the confidence to bet on medical treatment. Healthcare accounts for about 50% of Nuance's revenue and is its most important business segment.
"I believe that the profession of doctor will play an increasingly important role in our lives, then their time will become more and more precious, so I think it is valuable to improve their work efficiency."
Through AI voice + medical treatment, Yunzhisheng cooperates with hospitals, and through speech recognition technology, it can help doctors quickly complete the entry of medical records, that is, electronic cases, thereby helping doctors improve work efficiency, improve medical quality, and help hospitals save money. "Every doctor spends an average of three hours a day writing medical records, and now it only takes an hour."
With the product, how does the customer stumble?
Many people think that Yunzhisheng's first customer in the medical field, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, was found by relationship. What people don't know is that at the morning meeting inside Peking Union Medical College Hospital at 7 o'clock every morning in 2016, Huang Wei's figure will be seen on time. Before the doctor's rounds, Huang Wei will discuss the informatization needs of Peking Union With the director of the information office, the vice president in charge and the heads of various departments every day.
"The hospital does not look at the academic indicators of the product, directly takes it to the ward, and casually finds people with various accents to do on-site tests." The academic indicator is the accuracy of intelligent speech translation in the production environment, but whether it can withstand field testing in the application environment is a greater test. Coupled with medical terminology, the accuracy rate will be lower, and the ability of speech technology will put forward high requirements. "It is said to be an efficiency tool, but is it to improve efficiency or to make trouble for doctors?"
After Peking Union Medical College Hospital, will there be another hospital?
In 2016, Yunzhisheng encountered a greater challenge of how to do product standardization, which determined the company's business model in the medical sector, whether to do products or customized projects.
What is the difference between a project and a product? If the company is doing a project, then the customer is the product manager, who understands the scenario, understands the requirements and makes the requirements, which become the direction of the company's development.
If the company is its own product manager, it needs to ensure that the product has met 90% of the customer's needs at the beginning of production. This requires the team to have a very deep understanding of the entire scene of the hospital, the doctor's usage habits, and at the same time propose an evolution path and an evolution time point. Only in this way will it be possible that after 6 months or even 12 months, the delivered products will be able to meet more than 90% of the needs of the cooperative hospitals.
The commercialization of Yunzhisheng in the field of artificial intelligence is to be a product-oriented company. "The products we sell to Fujian Provincial Hospital are exactly the same as the products we sell to Union Hospital, and we don't need to do any customization."
"We have built a rich product matrix around medical needs, providing capability support from three levels: medical affairs, medical management and medical insurance." Huang Wei introduced.
In 2015, Yun Zhisheng began to study the medical knowledge graph. "It took us 5 years to build the largest medical knowledge graph in the country. Through the knowledge graph, the virtual experts in the background can check the cases entered by the voice, such as whether the medication is standardized, whether it will lead to some misdiagnosis, and whether there is excessive diagnosis and treatment. ”
According to Huang Wei, Yun Zhisheng used the medical knowledge map to help the national medical insurance control through cooperation with the medical insurance bureau, and obtained significant economic benefits. The so-called cost control is that it can be screened to find out how much of the cost in the medical insurance reimbursement should not be reimbursed. "We've increased the rate from 1 percent to 7 percent. If the improvement of 6 points is fully promoted, it can save the country 120 billion yuan per year. ”
"We only have a medical team of 70 people, including product research and development, and the horizontal comparison of per capita output value must be one of the best in China." In Huang Wei's view, productization is an important way for companies to improve the efficiency ratio. He expects the revenue of the medical sector to reach more than 100 million in 2021.
Fight a protracted battle
It is expected to be profitable within 2 years
After the application for the IPO of the Science and Technology Innovation Board was terminated, the company began to launch a Series D financing.
On June 24, Yunzhisheng announced that the D1 round of financing has completed nearly $100 million. This round of financing is led by Trusttrust Capital, followed by Qiming Venture Capital and Iwatani Venture Capital. Since its inception, Yunzhisheng has completed financing of about 3 billion yuan. According to Huang Wei, the company's valuation after the latest round of financing has approached 10 billion yuan.
For the AI company's continuous losses and difficulty in commercialization, Huang Wei saw an optimistic trend from the company's operating data, "It is expected that the company's overall revenue will double in 2021, and it is expected to achieve profitability within 2 years." ”
The medical scene is just a corner of Yunzhisheng's commercialization map. 9 years of entrepreneurial journey, you can see the company's product route changes.
In 2014, Yunzhisheng began to build a "cloud-end-core" product system. In 2018, two IoT AI chips "Swift" and "Hummingbird" for the high- and low-end markets were launched. "Chips are ultimately justified by shipments. Last year, we had about 2 million shipments, and the shipments of AI voice chips and modules in the first four months of this year also exceeded last year. Huang Wei said.
At present, the company's main sources of revenue are intelligent voice interaction products, intelligent IoT solutions and artificial intelligence technology services. Intelligent voice interaction products include Internet of Things voice interaction products and intelligent voice tool products; smart IoT solutions are mainly for specific scenarios such as hotels, communities, residences, and hospitals; and artificial intelligence technology services enable customers to carry out intelligent business upgrades, reduce costs and increase efficiency, and improve productivity.
According to the prospectus, since 2019, the revenue of Yunzhisheng's intelligent IoT solution has continued to increase, and the proportion of revenue has increased from 22.96% to 67.25% in 2020, while the original revenue of the intelligent voice sector has shrunk to 28.18% in the first half of 2020.
Behind the data, we can see that after Baidu, Ali, Xiaomi and other giants have successively entered the consumer electronics track such as smart speakers, and the market competition has become increasingly fierce, Yunzhisheng's transformation from a smart single product supplier to a smart IoT solution provider can also understand why Yunzhisheng has spent a lot of effort to lay out medical treatment.
Judging from the prospectus, the company's top five customers are mainly real estate companies. "People think that we have moved from chips to real estate, which is a misunderstanding." Huang Wei explained that with the continuous deepening of the IOT scene, the user's demand for one device interaction has developed into a demand for smart home, that is, the interaction of all devices. Further development is the interaction with the needs of the property. "Room equipment is becoming more and more intelligent, and one drawback is that it is too complicated, and the elderly and children will not use it." But everyone can talk, and using voice is the best way to interact. ”
Huang Wei revealed that the company will continue to raise funds this year to ensure investment in research and development to ensure that it can be in a global leading position in intelligent speech semantics and medical knowledge graph. "The entire product side hopes to increase investment to further enrich and improve our products." The company has a small number of sales, and it may be necessary to increase the number of sales BD appropriately, which can reserve more business opportunities for this year or for next year. "In the future, Yunzhisheng is expected to continue to exert efforts in the two major business directions of IOT and smart medical care.
Looking back on the 9 years of entrepreneurship, Huang Wei really felt the ebb and flow of AI companies boosted by capital. 2019 is seen as a watershed between hot and cold AI capital environments. From 2013 to 2018, the amount of financing increased by nearly 31 times in six years, and the financing scale of Chinese AI enterprises peaked at 148.5 billion yuan in 2018.
After the hustle and bustle, these AI companies that rely on capital investment have finally realized the importance of commercialization going independently. More and more AI companies have to try to explore a wider range of industry landing scenarios. How to find the real industry pain points and meet the needs of cost reduction and efficiency increase; how to make a technology-driven company develop healthily and create commercial value and social value has become a new examination topic for AI entrepreneurs.
Of course, Huang Wei, as an entrepreneur, also has an invisible price behind constantly working hard for his dreams. "I often watch others go out in the circle of friends, but I have never gone out for the purpose of traveling, so I am particularly envious of others."
But this is the choice of an entrepreneur.
Ben Horowitz, a top Silicon Valley investor who wrote "Entrepreneurship Difficulties," once said, "Entrepreneurship is like fighting, hard and lonely... In a fight, you get beaten and you feel the pain, and then you sit on the sidelines and wait until the adrenaline is gone before you really feel the pain. Then, you have to play the next round. ”
This is a game that truly belongs to the brave.