Wang Jianping, founder of 3D printing startup O.ME, describes his entrepreneurial history: Entrepreneurship is toss and compromise

Why did this 3D Printing start-up in China get the investment of the American Nobel Prize winner? “I am a tossing young man born for entrepreneurship, a bit pretentious.” In an interview with “World Manager”, Wang Jianping had a smile on his face from time to time, especially when he talked about personal entrepreneurial history, Smoot financing and When the company’s future development and other issues.

In September 2015, George Smoot, the 2006 Nobel Prize winner in physics and a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, attended a press conference in the Tsinghua Science and Technology Park as an investor, announcing that his first investment in China was 3D printer development company Beijing Qingdahui Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as O.ME). O.ME was one month away from the “anniversary” of its founding. Optimistic about the huge development prospects of 3D printing in China is an important reason for Smoot’s choice in this field. Choosing O.ME, which was founded less than a year ago, has a lot to do with Wang Jianping, the founder of this startup. Before the final signing of Smoot Investment, Wang Jianping frequently communicated with Smoot on the phone. Smoot felt the entrepreneurial spirit and creative thinking of Wang Jianping, as well as the clear plan for the company’s future when discussing the issue of return on investment. . / Independent “IP” decides future life and death / This is Wang Jianping’s second venture. Before that, he ran a law firm that serves corporate intellectual property rights. It has developed well and has a good rate of return. However, as a highly professional service industry, the higher it goes, the more bottlenecks it gets. Wang Jianping, who has achieved small achievements in his career, suddenly felt “no way to go” and fell into reflection on the future value. “I still want to challenge. I think I will create a few more businesses in this life.” Wang Jianping, an “outer man”, chose 3D printing as his entrepreneurial direction. Property rights projects, such as helping foreign companies to apply for technology patents in China, deal with cutting-edge technologies every day, and 3D printing technology is one of them. The 3D printing technology with the scientific name “Additive Manufacturing” is considered to be one of the most promising manufacturing technologies in the Industry 4.0 era. This technology was born in the United States and is based on digital models, using powdered metal or plastic and other bondable materials to create three-dimensional objects by adding materials layer by layer and rapid prototyping. Simply put, because there is no need for machining or any existing molds, you can directly generate objects of any shape according to the digital model. 3D printing technology can greatly shorten the product development and production cycle, save production materials, reduce production costs, and can Produce “individualized” and “customized” products based on customer preferences and needs. Now it has been widely used in manufacturing, industrial design, aerospace industry, construction and other fields. From 2013 to 2014, Wang Jianping clearly felt that foreign 3D printing companies entered China “surgingly” to apply for intellectual property protection. These two years have also been a period when the Asia-Pacific market, especially China, has begun to be widely optimistic.

In 2013, Stratasys, one of the world’s two leading 3D printing companies, cooperated with Taiwan’s Aurora Group to expand the Chinese 3D printing market; German design-oriented integration (e-Manufacturing) technology company EOS also established a Chinese headquarters and technology center in Shanghai. Seeing this market trend, Wang Jianping handed over the law firm to professional managers and started his own “3D printing business.” He recruited the current technical partner Wang Yuewei from a British 3D printing company that came to China to apply for a patent. Wang Yuewei is the inventor of the patented technology; in order to smoothly advance the research and development, he also merged a related company in his own name. Software company. He found out all the 3D printing technologies that have been patented worldwide, and set up a team to do research in a month. One is to find a differentiated R&D direction; the other is to make a special demonstration of the future market prospects of the R&D direction. The analysis decided to start with the research and development of “desktop-level 3D printers”, mainly facing the personal consumer-level market, which corresponds to the “industrial-level”. The more advanced 3D printing technology is in the hands of foreign companies, and Wang Jianping has no previous product experience. Some people have discouraged him from doing research and development on his own. However, Wang Jianping, who worked on intellectual property rights before, is very aware of the importance of intangible assets and is determined to conduct independent research and development. He told the “World Manager”: “There is nothing to do with a small company. When the company gets bigger, a small property right issue may make the company capsize.” This also made him take a lot of detours. After 3 years of research and development, their products were officially launched in 2017. In order to launch the prototype quickly, Wang Jianping held a press conference in the early stage, “Many problems were found in the follow-up process of improvement, and he took the method of fixing the loopholes. After finishing the work, he found that this was wrong. You should start from scratch and redesign. Products.” Because of his hasty decision, they spent at least 6 months on research and development. “The highest record for R&D personnel is 3 days and 3 nights without sleep. This is R&D. It may take several months because of a small problem. All points are linked. One point may affect the entire product. It is really not a problem for non-professionals. Command professionals casually” and learn from it. Since then, Wang Jianping has given the technical partner full responsibility for research and development, and he only controls the progress and results of research and development, and does not make decisions easily on technical issues.

/ The key at the moment is to achieve 1 to 100 and build a brand. / At that time, more than Smoot wanted to invest in O.ME. Guangdong Camel Clothing Co., Ltd. was willing to invest 50 million yuan, which was three thousand higher than the investment made by Smoot’s subsidiaries. Wan, and Wang Jianping and the other party have completed the preliminary communication and preparation. But after weighing, Wang Jianping finally chose Smoot. “China’s current entrepreneurial environment is pretty good. It’s not difficult to find money for good projects, but talent resources like Smoot are the only ones. If you miss it, you miss it.” Wang Jianping offered to offer only half of the money is 10 million, and In the agreement, Smoot reached three other forms of cooperation: One is that Smoot authorizes his own portrait and name rights to O.ME to be used as the brand spokesperson for O.ME; the other is that Smoot serves as O.ME brand spokesperson. .ME’s distinguished chief scientist; the third is to introduce Smoot into O.ME through the talent introduction policy, so the chief scientist is not just a pure name. Not only that, because of this choice, in the end “ten million became one hundred million”. In 2017, the two parties launched a new cooperation and jointly went to Ningbo for industrial landing. As the Nobel Prize winner in physics, Smoot led the team to settle in Ningbo by introducing talents. O.ME purchased 50 acres of land in Ningbo to build an industrial park, and O.ME and Smoot will form a joint research and development project in Ningbo. The team will jointly develop industrial-grade 3D printers in the future. The Ningbo local government will provide one hundred million yuan in financial support. Wang Jianping’s unique vision is not only reflected in financing, but he has his own views on company planning and the future development of 3D printers. At present, O.ME focuses on desktop 3D printers. According to its official website, O.ME has three Android-based desktop 3D printers: O.ME-mini-1s, O.ME-tab-2T and O.ME-tab-K2. Although it is a desktop level, they are positioned for commercial use, focusing on two groups of people. The first is for corporate users. The product is aimed at the R&D department of the enterprise as an office equipment for that department. The other is “entrepreneurial customers.” Wang Jianping plans to open 500 physical stores across the country to allow people who want to start a business to open through chains. O.ME will sell equipment to these people and support them in their operations. He said to “World Manager”: “The computers in the 90s gave birth to typing and copying shops. Similarly, 3D printing shops will certainly be born now! Before computers became popular, typing and copying shops made money, and 3D printing shops were the same.” According to McKinsey’s forecast, by 2025, the economic impact of 3D printing may reach US$550 billion per year. Supporting entrepreneurial customers to open 3D printing shops is only one of them. What Wang Jianping sees is the after-sales service market for 3D printers in the future. As an emerging market, the 3D printing market has not formed a complete after-sales service network. Wang Jianping hopes that the supported 3D printing shops will become their after-sales service outlets in the future. When 3D printers enter the consumer market in large numbers, O.ME will have a great advantage, and even take over all the after-sales services of its peers and become the leader of the after-sales market. Wang Jianping said: “3D printers will be like computers in the future, and every household will need one. After the product is popularized among consumers, after-sales service is critical. It is impossible for new products to be stable, so after-sales first.” Wang Jianping Said that an important task for them at this stage is to quickly cultivate the brand. He plans to spend 50% of the funds in the future for promotion. “Before the brand is formed, technology is the core competitiveness, but the final product must be brand competition, and 3D printing The field has not yet formed a brand, it is easier to make a brand at this time. For example, to make a refrigerator, now there are Haier and Hisense, and it is difficult to make a refrigerator brand. “The most important thing he needs to solve is the process of 1 to 100. “1 It’s easy to reach 2, 2 to 3, … but it’s not easy to achieve a geometrically multiplied growth rate and quickly roll out in the market. I don’t want to pursue a short-term goal, but it is both about sales promotion and It also has brand promotion.” He is upset that no one can help him solve this problem. China’s 3D printing market is an emerging market, and everyone doesn’t know much about this market, including marketing, consulting companies and other professionalism. 3D printers are relatively mature in the United States. Wang Jianping said that he would go to the United States to “learn from experience” before making the next step. /

“Compromise” from management/”It is difficult for R&D personnel to manage.” The management challenges Wang Jianping faced also started with 3D printing. When running the law firm, Wang Jianping paid great attention to details and handled everything very rigorously. There are clear rules for the sending and receiving of emails. You must reply within 3 hours after receiving the email. If you do not receive the receipt of the other party within a certain period of time, you must forward the previous email again, and remind the other party to check the receipt after receiving it. If you still do not receive it, call Confirm whether the other party received it or not. At that time, more than 100 people in the law firm used a single mailbox for external parties. Each person could directly send mail but not receive it. The mail must be distributed through the main mailbox. The law firm can be rigorous to this level, but it cannot be done when making products. Wang Jianping said that R&D personnel do not have two minds and will act honestly, but their cooperation in company management is very low. For example, it is required to use personal corporate mailboxes, but some people still use their own private mailboxes. The mail must have a signature file, but there is still no signature file. After sending an email, it is counted if the other party receives it. Basically, it can’t be done. In the past, the professionals of the law firm still interacted with customers, but the current R&D personnel basically have no interaction with customers, so a lot of management experience is not applicable. “When a company has fewer business personnel than R&D personnel, management is the most troublesome.” Wang Jianping told “World Manager” that he finally compromised on the form, but he did not compromise on the results. Everyone’s mail is set to be automatically forwarded to another mailbox, to control the results, and does not require the process. After the product came out, Wang Jianping was also slowly increasing the number of business personnel, and through them, gradually improved the cooperation of R&D personnel, promoted the management of the company, and continuously improved the working atmosphere of the entire team. On the morning of the interview with “World Manager”, Wang Jianping also gave all employees a three-hour “improvement of company service” training, requiring all department personnel to cooperate with business personnel. He said: “Sales is not only the sales of the sales staff, but the sales of all staff. What the sales staff say, the customers are somewhat questionable. The early preparation of the non-business staff can make the sales staff achieve half the result with half the effort, and they should also follow suit. There are interactions with customers. For example, a word at the front desk during the reception process may be able to impress customers.” He asked R&D personnel to improve their coordination with sales. Can go up.” Now they have morning meetings every morning, openly encouraging, commending and so on. Wang Jianping can now feel that the team atmosphere of the entire company is much better than before. “The employees of the company must first have the spirit of cooperation.” He said.