“Ideal” climbing out of the 18 layers of hell

The celebration party on the evening of IPO was originally planned to be a series show, which is the consistent saving style of ideal car. However, considering the possible participation of investors, a budget of 30000 yuan was approved, which led to a dinner party with the highest standard in the five years since the establishment of the company.

has a joke in the interior of the ideal car. In Mid Autumn Festival of 2018, employees went to the dining hall to eat. They found five moon cakes and found that the company had not been able to make complaints about the moon cakes. The aunt of the canteen contractor was not happy after hearing this, “do you think it was an ideal car to buy? It’s the catering company that bought them out of their own pocket to see that you didn’t have moon cakes. ” < / P > < p > an employee of ideal automobile told 36 krypton that since the upper limit of accommodation for business trip is only 300 yuan, some employees who stay in Changzhou to provide support for the factory will even increase their own money to stay in better hotels. < p > < p > founder Li Xiang also “pinches” himself and his executives. He has always been an economy hotel and economy class on business trips. During the period of CES in the United States in 2018, Liu Jie, vice president of ideal automobile, took three senior executives on a business trip. The party did not even stay in a hotel, so they crowded into the employee apartment in ideal North America and solved the accommodation problem. At that time, Weilai employees exclaimed, “this is definitely not possible in Li Bin.” < / P > < p > < p > “cutting” makes the ideal car achieve almost the same output as its peers, but only costs a lot less money. Li Xiang once said publicly that ideal “spent more than 2 million yuan on a press conference and got tens of thousands of orders.” In contrast, a press conference of peers often costs more than 10 million yuan, and the cost of Weilai’s first NiO day conference in 2018 is more than 80 million yuan. Cost control is also the “iron law” of an ideal car. The cockpit team wants to add an NPU (coprocessor) to the modified model. “For hundreds of hardware costs, the car engine team and Li Xiang have been communicating for more than half a year. We must clarify the function definition and user value to Li Xiang before we can convince him.” A person close to the top of the ideal car told 36 krypton. < / P > < p > the long-term and high-intensity cost and expense control have enabled the ideal car to maintain the company’s operating expenses for five years with only 5 billion yuan. At the same time, two models of sev and SUV have been developed. The ideal car has delivered 10000 vehicles, and it has a 13% gross profit margin, and its operating cash flow is positive – while Weilai, which has invested more than 30 billion yuan, has just achieved a comprehensive gross profit margin of 8.4% in the second quarter of this year. However, some employees still don’t understand Li Xiang’s strategy. A number of ideal car employees revealed that the company only paid a fixed salary of 13 before selling the car, without any salary increase or promotion. It has been nearly three years since there has been no pay rise, and there are almost no benefits for festivals and holidays. It was not until June this year that the latest rank and salary reward system was introduced. < / P > < p > the employees above P7 level of ideal automobile can get shares, but only more than 200 of its 3000 employees are above P7 level. In the latest agreement, it is necessary to meet the two conditions of working in ideal automobile for 5 years and locking up for 3 years after listing in order to exercise their shares. “People will doubt that the ideal of an ideal car may only be the ideal of Li Xiang.” A number of ideal car employees said to 36 krypton. < p > < p > when the ideal car entered the critical stage of mass production and delivery, the c-round financing did not make progress. “I met hundreds of organizations and said you were very good, but no one put in any money.” Li Xiang talked about his state in the round C financing in a video column, “my immune system collapsed at that time, and I was ill for three months.” < / P > < p > from the perspective of investment, Li Xiang and Li Bin were the founders of the automobile website before, but from the perspective of the matter itself, they chose two very different routes in car building. Along the pure electric route of Tesla, Li Bin told a story of “Tesla in China”. But what the ideal car needs to do is a hybrid electric vehicle, which is difficult to match Tesla or match the electric vehicle subsidy policy of Beijing, an important city of new energy vehicles in China. Huang Mingming, the investor of ideal automobile and the founding partner of Mingshi capital, held Li Xiang to meet a large number of investment institutions such as VC and PE in the early stage. “Everyone recognized Li Xiang very much and thought he was a very excellent entrepreneur, but when he heard Li Xiang say that he would not do pure electricity, they all hesitated.” < / P > < p > a shareholder has proposed to Li Xiang, “otherwise, we can do pure electricity, financing is easy, or we can do it.” Compared with the pure electric single system, the complexity of the extended range scheme will be significantly increased. The balance of the electric and internal combustion engine systems, noise resonance and energy loss conversion should be considered. < / P > < p > “what Li Xiang said at that time was that I didn’t make this car for VC or for investors. What I wanted to do was a car that the majority of Chinese groups were willing to use and could afford.” Huang Mingming recalled to 36 krypton. < p > < p > Li Bin is open-minded and good at layout from top to bottom. In the era of e-car.com, Li Bin diluted his own shares in e-Car in 2015, and introduced Internet giants such as Baidu, Tencent and Jingdong. This not only opened the way for the privatization of e-Car, but also put himself in the camp of giants – such as Weilai, Yixin group and Moby danche, etc. Li Bin’s capital shuttled back and forth. Many investors have bemoaned to 36 krypton Li Bin’s sensitivity to capital rhythm, “especially the deal that sold Moby.”. However, Li Xiang, when he was a car home, had introduced angel investment from Xue Manzi and others in the early stage. The second financing was IPO, and he didn’t have much experience in the capital circle. “< p > < p >” Li Bin was born in Peking University and has an elite aura. He has the ability to make the organization invest money at that station, “an investor who has participated in the ideal automobile project commented to 36 krypton.” Li Xiang is a typical product manager, and lacks a kind of sales (Sales) experience for investment institutions. ” Huaxing BaoFan’s evaluation of Li Xiang is “big boy”. “Some people in this industry have deep city government, some people will consider it very complicated, but Li Xiang is a very pure person.” “When Li Xiang talks about a new function that he wants to do in the car, he is very excited,” Bao Fan said The logic of Li Xiang is more from inside to outside. His “typical product manager” is based on the needs of users as the origin and chassis of all decisions: the pure electric route led by Tesla, the cost and energy density of power batteries, charging efficiency, and the popularity of energy supplement facilities can not meet Li Xiang’s product principles. His colleagues told 36 krypton that Li Xiang’s biggest hobby was cars. Because of carsickness, Li Xiang had to drive by himself. As a driver, Li Xiang likes BMW more than Tesla. From BMW 325 to X6 and X7, Li Xiang has bought 7 or 8 BMW, but only 3 Tesla, 2 model s and 1 model X. This makes him feel more personally about the freedom of driving fuel vehicles and the anxiety of electric vehicles’ endurance. < / P > < p > “when you want to do electrification, you have to solve the problem of mileage anxiety. You can’t make it as a niche toy. I hope to make a product with large sales volume.” In an interview with his colleague Zhang Hui, Li Xiang said that in terms of his own feelings, he actually feels very good driving Tesla, but every time he wants to go further, he still drives his Mercedes Benz S or BMW X5. < / P > < p > “line% of the families have the conditions to install charging piles, so Tesla has excellent performance; 80% of the families in China do not even have fixed parking spaces, let alone fixed charging piles.” In an interview with his colleague Zhang Hui, Li Xiang said that he did not deliberately care whether he was different from others, “but paid more attention to what is the truth of the facts.” However, in fact, Li Xiang’s life has always been “non mainstream”, and has been constantly benefiting from the “non mainstream”: he dropped out of high school and had a fortune of over 100 million at the age of 24. < p > < p > the first year of senior high school is different from all his classmates when he writes articles on the computer newspaper. He is different from all his classmates when he runs a website. He earns 20000 yuan a month, which is different from everyone else. He drops out of school and doesn’t take the college entrance examination, which shocked everyone around him. He challenges the gray rules of the industry and refuses to give kickbacks to manufacturers during the period of automobile home He has received positive feedback and achieved success in his unique choices. < / P > < p > for the public, it is a wonderful inspirational story for the public to drop out of high school to start a business and be worth hundreds of millions at the age of 24. However, for Li Xiang, the party concerned, he needs to clarify where his value position is in the business world. “I don’t have any background, so I have to do something before I can get investment.” Li Xiang once said in CCTV’s dialogue program in 2006. The reason why humans tend to follow the crowd is that non mainstream does not mean certain success, but often means high risk. To take the road of “non mainstream” and succeed, it is not only “pay attention to the truth” and “user product thinking”. For example, once it is not mainstream, most people may not be able to get through the financing. In the difficult time of round C financing, Zhang Ying of Jingwei venture capital came up with an idea for Li: “you go and look for all your rich friends to see if anyone has invested in you.” Only then did Wang Xing and Zhang Yiming bet on the C financing of ideal automobile, and jointly invested 530 million US dollars with old shareholders. < p > < p > Li Xiang does not shy away from saying that he was a “self righteous idiot” when he dropped out of school to establish “bubble net”. And car making “such a difficult industry, we must train a start-up enterprise to climb up from the 18 levels of hell, so that it can be more competitive if it comes out of the ground.” < p > < p > How did a teenager who dropped out of high school cross this seemingly huge gap from the establishment of bubble net and car home to the operation of new car manufacturing business with a market value of 10 billion US dollars? < p > < p > in 2015, in a coffee shop in Wangjing, Li Xiang spent more than three hours with Huang Mingming to recount the gains and losses of starting a business in the past with Huang Mingming, and said that he would resign from the position of automobile home and start a business to build cars. At that time, Huang Mingming was still a little puzzled. The car home had just been on the market for two years, and its growth rate was almost 20-30% every quarter. “If you don’t do anything with your eyes closed, you can become a $10 billion company.” < p > < p > but Li Xiang’s idea is firm, “I see an opportunity to build another Toyota in my lifetime.” Li Xiang believes that Toyota, with “lean manufacturing” as its killer, is the peak of the traditional automobile manufacturing industry. < p > < p > regarding the history of bubble.com in 2000, Li Xiang summarized that the problem at that time was that he did not understand management and team cooperation, nor did he know what kind of management structure to establish. Moreover, because he was the third largest in the industry, he was kidnapped by the gray rules of the head company all the year round. So when he founded the auto home in 2005, Li Xiang’s principle was “to be the first in the industry”. Considering his own shortcomings in management, he introduced Qin Zhi, a returnee background, as CEO to help build the management structure and sort out the corporate culture. Finally, the scale and flow of the auto home were quickly achieved to the top. A website ate almost all the profits of the industry. However, Li Xiang’s regret for the car home is that it does not clearly summarize the system and methodology of “why is it good”. In the company of ideal automobile, “there should be systems and methodology to support it