"Looking at it from the other side" is also his mantra. Whether things are good, bad or gray, they are always playing in his mind. This seems to confirm what he often said in many public occasions: the main reason for a person's success is that he bets on the opposite thing.

Indeed, no matter how you look at this bookish person, he is no match for an entrepreneurial entrepreneur. But now he is the founder and helmsman of PowerVision, a robotics company that has won the "Oscar" Edison Invention Award in the technology industry and has artificial intelligence technology as its core.

Zheng Weifeng will sit relaxedly in his chair, talking about the cognitive subversion of "De-Welch" within GE from the Jack Welch era, and relishing the data of Dyson's 5-micron vacuum cleaner . When talking about how a precision equipment goes from design, engineering, simulation to actual productization, he would quickly get up and write and draw on the small blackboard, trying to make every link clear and easy to understand.

Zheng Weifeng, who has a steady voice and rarely experiences emotional ups and downs, is a slow-burning technical person. When he quit his job in 2008, he didn't even think about starting a business. "I just wanted to find a project to survive first." Those who say they have big dreams when they come up are “all bragging” in his eyes.

Therefore, he could not predict that after more than ten years of struggling in the fields of unmanned systems and virtual simulation, Zhendi could achieve leaps in more than a dozen technical fields and become the only company in the world with the ability to mass-produce aerial and water vehicles. , a new national-level specialty "little giant" for underwater drones.

At the same time, this is the only electric surfboard company in the world that can produce both hydrofoil boards and racing boards. Its WaveShark small shark can "make waves without wind" on the water, which is almost the world's largest company. Category ceiling-like existence.

Today, the photo of this "ceiling" is hanging on the wall directly opposite the entrance of Zheng Weifeng's office; there is also a disassembled version of the PowerEgg Arena hanging on the wall behind his desk. Human machine, full of design sense.

Whether it is PowerEgg or the underwater drone PowerRay, dozens of Zhendi products have won the German Red Dot Design Award. Zheng Weifeng said that the product was too ugly and he felt "sick all over" after taking it out. This aversion to "plagiarism" from technology to appearance is constantly urging Zheng Weifeng to continue to cross boundaries and embark on the path of vertically integrated design and R&D.

"The result is that you have to build R&D (teams) all over the world." Zheng Weifeng said that this is the fate of companies participating in global market competition, but on the other hand, it has also made Zhendi what it is today. In his view, the growth path of all enterprises should be "different". Better to be different than better.

The road to growth

Looking back at Zheng Weifeng’s entrepreneurial experience, you will find that 2012 was a singular point.

Three years after starting his business, Zheng Weifeng happened to see two multi-rotor drones with cameras hanging at an exhibition whose name he can no longer remember. This gave him his first whiff of opportunities in smart technology.

At that time, artificial intelligence technology had not yet been developed in China, and few people were involved in the drone industry. However, the product paradigm of "unmanned operation" made Zheng Weifeng realize that the trend of "intelligent" and "unmanned" has already begun.

With no technical accumulation, Zheng Weifeng dove in headlong. But the internal coating of the engine alone gave the team a headache for a long time. Zheng Weifeng realized that this gap, which had nothing to do with scale and was merely a gap in manufacturing technology, was the first obstacle to the door to intelligent robots.

At that time, Zheng Weifeng was still studying for an EMBA at CEIBS. Perhaps inspired and influenced by his classmates, he tried to shift his horizons overseas. Faced with problems such as Wi-Fi interference and distance in image transmission in drone technology, Zheng Weifeng believes that if the most advanced technology is not available domestically, then look for it internationally.

By integrating global technical resources, the team independently developed and used SDR technology to reduce the cost of a 100,000 yuan Wi-Fi image transmission module to less than 100 yuan.

But the road to the international market is not so easy: not finding the supply chain is the first problem. For example, if he wanted to build a camera for a drone, he would either be ignored by big brands; or he could only choose products with poor craftsmanship, and customers in the global market would not accept them. Zheng Weifeng had to continue to build and develop his own R&D around the world, from Germany to Finland, Poland and the United States.

The emphasis on and protection of intellectual property rights in foreign countries also makes Zheng Weifeng dare not be sloppy in independent innovation. "Selling products globally without patents is equivalent to 'streaking'. Patents can not only better protect He can also let global users see the strength of Chinese companies.”

It is precisely because of these constant pitfalls that Zheng Weifeng said that his favorite book now is Instructions: From Finance to Intellectual Property. Protection depends on what you use to make up for it, just like a jigsaw puzzle. After one round of puzzle pieces, a bigger picture comes to the puzzle.

These forced breakthroughs have now become pieces of patented technology, covering the nearly 30-meter-long and 3-meter-high wall of the Zhendi Technology Hall. Zhendi currently owns more than 1,000 independent intellectual property rights (patents, trademarks, copyrights).

"In the field of intelligent robots, we rely on drawings, components, screws, piles of electronic materials, and lines of code to accumulate. This is not just a company dropping dozens of It can be done immediately with 100 million yuan." Many people asked Zheng Weifeng what the core technology is. He believes that there is no core technology. Robots are cross-border integrated products, and everything is core technology.

New test questions of the times

Zheng Weifeng, who has a technical background, followed the craze of the times and plunged into the hottest network technology company at the time when he graduated from college. In 2001 -From R&D engineer to product manager in 2008. But these companies were either OEM or agency business, and "core technology" did not seem to be in the genes of these so-called awesome technology companies at the time.

“Once ice forms on the wings of an aircraft, it may destroy the angle of the original Bernoulli equation. At this time, you have to use simulation to calculate how much ice will form and how thick it will form. "Zheng Weifeng said that behind this company is a research and development team of university professors, which only focuses on icing analysis, but it is also a very important issue for aircraft, and a piece of software can be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Behind Boeing, there are many suppliers of small companies with more than a dozen people, and their characteristics are enough to make a difference. It seems that since then, Zheng Weifeng, who has never been separated from the excitement of technology, has a natural affinity and certainty in mastering core technologies.

Zheng Weifeng said that in the development history of Zhendi, there were moments when it could not survive.

In August 2016, Zhendi released the world’s first foldable drone, PowerEgg. But only one month later, a competitor quickly iterated and launched its first folding drone, which was "smaller and cheaper than us. Suddenly the market structure changed dramatically. That's when I started After thinking about transformation, he started to explore underwater drone products and markets.

Zheng Weifeng said that although this transformation and exploration was not too late, he still faced the most serious crisis in 2018. Dilemma. It was also at that time that Ray Dalio’s words inspired him: “Think independently and decide what you want, what the facts are; face the facts, how do you realize your wishes. "

Zheng Weifeng began to think about what is the "Tao" that he is constantly exploring? Although looking back today, Zhendi has spanned more than 20 majors, but the brand-new products of "Heaven and Water" are constantly challenging technology. At the same time, it also challenges the market and customers. Continuous iteration of products and market cultivation are the next bigger challenges.

“This is a new test question for this generation of entrepreneurs.

"Zheng Weifeng said, "The previous generation of entrepreneurs had their own era and mission. When our generation comes up again, there is no such environment as that time. The traditional way of doing business cannot be sold. We can only find breakthroughs in technology and constantly make up for our shortcomings. Only by completing the slabs and tiles piece by piece can we move forward and break out. ”

More than a decade ago, Chinese-style innovation may have meant imitation and counterfeiting. But today, China has become the world’s second largest economy. In Zheng Weifeng’s view, China must encourage innovative companies.

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And this group of entrepreneurs also has a path that they must follow. “With a three-year cycle, the pressure gradually gets used to it. Whether you start a business or live your own life, you are doing asceticism, and you rarely feel happy. "But Zheng Weifeng feels that being different is the only thing that can make him feel happy and valuable at the moment.