Chapter 1118 The Tragedy of the Great Era

Zhou Buqi likes to listen to people tell stories. A person has only one pair of eyes and two legs, and his experience is limited. But you can increase your own experience and social cognition through other people's stories.

Each of the entrepreneurs these days has a magnificent life experience.

Shi Yuzhu is one of the best.

Zhou Buqi had heard others talk about it before, but listening to the personal story told by the person involved, even if the story would be beautified a lot, it still made people feel excited and admired spontaneously.

Everyone is a genius to be able to come through that era with great wind and waves.

Shi Yuzhu's first story is exceptionally exciting.

It is said that after graduating from university, he worked in the provincial statistics bureau. When he was only 27 years old, he was a department-level cadre. At that time, it was 88 years.

The Bureau of Statistics needs to process and print a lot of documents.

However, the computer systems at that time were all in English, so there were many Chinese cards and Chinese character printers. More than a dozen models have been independently developed in China. In Zhongguancun alone, dozens of companies are acting as agents, selling and producing this product. Among them, the best one is of course Founder Group, followed by Lenovo and Tongfang.

Then there is the Stone Group owned by Mr. Duan, the current chairman of the Taishan Society. The Stone 24 dot matrix typewriter he produces is easy to operate and has beautiful fonts. Many departments in the system do not buy expensive typewriters such as Founder, Lenovo, and Tongfang, which sell for 30,000 to 50,000 yuan, but buy typewriters produced by Stone, because the price is only more than 20,000 yuan.

That was the mid-eighties.

Shi Yuzhu's department uses a four-way typewriter, but as the director, he has to deal with too many materials, so he is very dissatisfied, thinking that the four-way typewriter is too bad.

Then, he picked up the textbooks he had taught himself in college, borrowed an IBM computer, and spent half a year programming by himself to create a set of "M-6401" word processing software, which he gave to the Bureau of Statistics.

Through this software, you can print 64-dot matrix characters that are more beautiful than four-way typewriters. After he made such a move, the Sitong typewriter was directly discarded.

Zhou Buqi was greatly surprised, "Aren't you from the Department of Mathematics?"

Shi Yuzhu said: "I taught myself programming."

Zhou Buqi couldn't believe it, "Then just one person, compared to the scientific and technological teams led by academicians in those big companies?"

Shi Yuzhu laughed, "Almost! This thing is actually very simple. There were too few computer talents in China back then. As long as you learn it and have a little brain, it's easy to get out."

"It's amazing." Zhou Buqi praised repeatedly, "Then you saw a business opportunity and resigned?"

Shi Yuzhu nodded, "Responding to the country's call to start a business, I don't like working in the system, so I resigned and worked alone. Using the principle of M-6401, I developed the M-6401 Hanka, which is the giant Hanka."

Hanka is actually a chip for text processing. It is a very low-end chip. It is not too difficult to develop. Zhou Buqi asked: "There were already a lot of Hanka at that time?"

Shi Yuzhu said: "There are quite a few. There are at least a dozen models on the market. At that time, almost all technology companies were selling Chinese cards, and they all started with Chinese cards. However, their Chinese card technology is backward."

"real or fake?"

Zhou Buqi doesn't quite believe it. No matter how talented you are and how strong your technical level is, how can you be better than the product technology made by other professional technical teams with just one brother?

There's a lot of bragging involved.

Shi Yuzhu said indifferently: "After my Chinese card was launched, it only took three months for the sales volume to become the number one in the country. The price of my Giant Chinese card is several times more expensive than the Founder Han card and Lenovo Han card! One of them The Chinese card is only 1,500 yuan, and I can sell it for more than 4,000. So what? My technology is good! The product is advanced! The market is recognized!"

Zhou Buqi looked suspicious and didn't believe it.

Shi Yuzhu hummed: "Have you ever seen a state-owned enterprise competing in the market with stronger technical strength than private enterprises? If the entire market is opened to private enterprises, the state-owned enterprises will not be able to survive..."

"Don't discuss this." Zhou Buqi waved his hand, still surprised, "I just think it's too exaggerated."

Shi Yuzhu said: "It's quite an exaggeration. When I think back to those years, I'm always overwhelmed. At that time, it was so easy to make money with a little bit of technology. After the launch of my Chinese card, I sold 28,000 sets a year. The turnover was 160 million yuan, and the net profit exceeded 35 million yuan. Do you know what this concept is? It was 1992, and Giant Technology can completely compete with technology giants such as Founder, Lenovo, and Tsinghua Tongfang.”

Zhou Buqi took a deep breath.

I really didn't expect that Lao Shi was so beautiful back then!

Shi Yuzhu went on to say: "This was 1992. By 1993, my company's annual sales exceeded 500 million, more than Founder and Lenovo. At that time, I already had a technical team of several hundred people. Chinese handwriting computer, Chinese notebook computer, Giant fax card, Giant Chinese electronic cash register, Giant financial software, Giant anti-virus card, Giant encryption card and more than a dozen products, as soon as they come out, they can immediately defeat the products of those state-owned enterprises. Become the number one in the market. You seem to be very famous today, but compared with me back then, you are still a little bit worse."

"Is the marketing doing well?"

"Not only is marketing good, technology can also crush them. How can marketing alone dominate the market without hard power?"

"Why didn't it work later?"

Shi Yuzhu sighed, "The strategy is wrong."

Zhou Buqi asked, "Because of the giant building?"

Shi Yuzhu shook his head, "It's not about the building. I have calculated that as long as the company develops normally, the Giant Building will be fine. Moreover, that was the period when Giant diversified into health care products. This is the second story. I'm talking about the early days, when I was determined to build a Chinese IBM."

Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows, "I have suffered setbacks in the technology industry, so I have diversified into health care products?"

"Yes." Shi Yuzhu nodded, "It's still the same sentence, strategic vision. Having a correct strategic vision is far more important than large investment in the technology industry. At that time, Giant's research and development funds were the most in the country. You Guess what? The 486 microcomputer and the Window3.2 Chinese system appeared. The powerful processing power and the Chinese version of the Microsoft system wiped out all the domestic technology companies at that time. Can you imagine that feeling?"

"Well, dimensionality reduction blow. It has nothing to do with you to destroy you."

"Yes, that's so true, that's the feeling. It's really a kind of desolation in the great era, which makes people despair. It's the first time in my life that I feel the taste of despair."

Shi Yuzhu seemed to be recalling the scene of the collective collapse of the domestic technology industry back then, with a sad and rather sad expression.

Zhou Buqi frowned, "Then you gave up?"

Shi Yuzhu glanced at him, and said calmly: "You are too young, you can't feel the severe atmosphere back then. At that time, there were more than a dozen technology companies under the Chinese Academy of Sciences of Tsinghua University and Peking University, and each company was led by seven or eight academicians. What happened? Except for Founder, Lenovo, Tongfang and Unisplendour, which survived, all the rest died. Giants also suffered huge losses. More than a dozen of our Chinese products were scrapped overnight. .At that time, there was a small company that made the right strategic choice and developed an office software, which rose rapidly..."

Zhou Buqi immediately said: "It's Mr. Qiu Bo, Jinshan's WPS."

Shi Yuzhu nodded slightly, and said with a sigh: "What do you think I was feeling at the time? I spent 300 million in research and development funds and developed more than a dozen products, including seven or eight software products and five or six chip products. The technical difficulty It is much higher than his WPS. But what is the result? If the strategy is wrong, it will be a complete failure. Fortunately, in the past few years, I made a lot of money and could afford to lose, otherwise the giant would have gone bankrupt at that time. Transformation into health care products is the only way to survive , the tech industry is too risky."

Zhou Buqi is too young, that era is far away from him, it is difficult for him to empathize with him.

However, from the reverse deduction process of the results, we can feel the pressure of the year and the desolation of the general environment.

Lenovo gave up self-development early on, and internal strife occurred. Fangzheng and Tongfang persisted for a few years, but soon they couldn't survive and were forced to transform. Even academician Wang Xuan, a technology leader, stepped down from the position of chairman and president of Founder Group, and replaced him with a businessman to lead Fangzheng to revive. It's a pity that a technology-based state-owned enterprise that failed the shareholding reform could not survive at all. More than ten years later, enterprises such as Founder and Tongfang also went bankrupt with insolvency.

Zhou Buqi sighed, "Now the domestic mobile phone supply chain system environment is very severe, but it is still 10,000 times better than it was back then."

A smile appeared on Shi Yuzhu's face, "Yes, I've told you so much, and that's why I'm looking for you today."

"oh?"

"Those upstream companies that produce spare parts are all very small technology companies with an annual output value of hundreds of millions. If they want to develop new technologies and products, they may have to invest their entire family. The research and development failed. , the company goes bankrupt; R\u0026D succeeds, but the strategy fails, and the company will still go bankrupt.”

These remarks are a bit exaggerated, but the big logic is correct. It is indeed necessary to take huge risks in the research and development of new technologies. A big company like Ziweixing has strong funds and can afford R\u0026D failure.

For many small and medium-sized enterprises, once they fail, it is likely to be a disaster.

More tragic than R\u0026D failures are strategic mistakes.

Breaking through the technical barriers through untold hardships and succeeding in research and development, but it turns out that the strategic choice is wrong. That is even more desolate from the bottom of my heart, and despair from the mountain peak to the bottom of the valley.

Just like how to unlock your phone.

In addition to fingerprint unlocking, there are also iris unlocking, eye pattern unlocking, voiceprint unlocking, face unlocking, NFC unlocking and so on.

With the current domestic technical level, all these can be done.

It's just not precise enough.

This is a strategic choice.

Zhou Buqi went to Goodix Technology specifically to give them advice on fingerprint unlocking. This is the guidance of the strategic direction and can prevent them from detours.