Scientific research? Financial? Carve out! Hu Yichuan A.K.A “other people’s children”, yueyang No. 1 middle school admitted to Tsinghua University, read a doctorate in University of Pennsylvania. During his study in the United States, After careful consideration, Hu decided on three development directions in his life: academic research, finance and technological entrepreneurship, and took Samsung Research Institute of North America (academic), Merrill Lynch securities (finance) and SecondMarket (entrepreneurship) as the experimental field for his growth. While working as an intern at SecondMarket for two months, hu found the joy of building a business: Switching from job to job, challenging work, unexpected rewards for every effort, small number of colleagues but enthusiasm and energy from everyone… “In a big company, your role is bound by your role, and the bigger the company, the harder it is for an individual to have access to information outside of that role. But as an algorithm engineer intern at SecondMarket, THE things I did, the skills I learned, and the horizons I opened up were far beyond my expectations.” Entrepreneurship has become hu Yichuan’s one of the three conclusions in life. “Emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, will have a profound impact on society in the next five, 10 and 20 years, and I want to realize that beautiful future with my own hands.” In 2011, enthusiasts hu yichuan play a football match on the way home, received a phone call from friend Wang Guanchun: before two people communicate ideas ready to be born, but Wang Guanchun for personal trip to return to participate in Chinese famous investors xiao-ping xu students entrepreneurial BBS, “he can ask me to return home, choose home means drop out of school.” A few days later, Wang Guanchun and Hu Yichuan received xu Xiaoping’s investment of 1 million yuan, and their first venture project, The Chinese version of Netflix (legitimate Blu-ray disc rental), was officially launched. The proud young men did not expect the DVD rental business to last only three months. Early entrepreneurial experience: learn successful, more to understand the consumer Hu yichuan the study of the patterns of Netflix disc rental is not deep, no entity shop, disc based on logistics network to provide express service and can be repeated use of disc packaging, freight, users only need to pay a fee can be a week to receive the desired film disc… “In order to optimize the service experience, we even found manufacturers to customize the packaging for reuse.” If only the supply side is considered, Forrest Gump has cost advantages over Netflix. For example, labor costs and logistics costs in mainland China are lower than those in the United States. The problem is on the demand side: for some unspoken reason, the number of genuine blu-ray enthusiasts on the mainland is very limited. Agannet pays too much attention To transplant the successful model and pays little attention To the market end, which is the common reason why many “To China” model entrepreneurial projects do not adapt To the environment. No one is born with experience. In the face of the same dilemma, judgment decides that some people stop and some people soar. At the same time as the DVD rental business was spun off, the founding team decided to make “personalized recommendation” services, which had only been used to optimize the experience, the core business. At the beginning of the investment, Xu Xiaoping said to Hu Yichuan and Wang Guanchun, “I can understand the renting part, but I can’t understand what is personalized recommendation.” In fact, the latter is the cornerstone for Hu Yichuan and Wang Guanchun to create an ideal future. The disc rental business was originally the scene of the implementation of “personalized recommendation” technology. In just three months, the founding team has fully confirmed the high compatibility of this service with user experience. “What to Watch Tonight”, which makes personalized recommendations based on the stock of video data on the Internet and uses social networks as a cost-effective promotion channel, came into being. In 2012, “What to Watch Tonight” was acquired by Baidu with project and team, which proved the value generated by combining personalized recommendation technology with leisure and entertainment scenes. While working at Baidu, Hu continued his doctoral studies, eventually earning a doctorate in electrical and systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania with a focus on statistical optimization and machine learning. Three years in Baidu, Hu Yichuan and Wang Guanchun witnessed the complete process of the personalized recommendation system from millions of users to tens of millions a day. However, these two friends who are determined to change the future will not stop there, and a new plan is gradually conceived. “We have noticed three trends. First, smartphones and instant messaging apps are unstoppable. The public platform developed by wechat is a huge innovation, which can connect services, users and brands through natural dialogue. Second, the rise of real-time service O2O companies, finance, retail, education and other traditional offline businesses are also going online; Third, new algorithms such as deep learning and reinforcement learning have great effects on NLP (natural language processing) applications, especially conversational systems. Is it possible to make an intelligent assistant product that directly connects human interaction with service?” In June 2015, Hu Yichuan and Wang Guanchun co-founded Laiye Technology. On July 1, 2015, the C-terminal product “Assistant Laiye” (later renamed “Xiaolai”) was launched. Years of practical accumulation and strong technical strength enable Laiye Technology to quickly build a strong core competitiveness in the technical function level. “The unique feature of Laiye Technology is to find a perfect combination of AI and HI (Human Intelligence), enabling AI to empower service providers, on the one hand, improve HI efficiency, On the one hand, the user experience is improved. The service experience beyond expectation makes users more active and generates more high-quality data, which feeds back to AI, and AI optimizes its assistance to HI, establishing a positive cycle of sustainable evolution.” Technical level white horse spear burst into thousands of miles, but the market realizability was once again frustrated. However, this time Lai Ye Technology is not as brave as Forrest Gam, Hu Yichuan and the founding team after sober thinking and analysis, found that vertical is a feasible way of evolution. “Vertical business field has a closer and more specific scene from realization. Through To B output AI technology and system To empower enterprise customers To build industry intelligent assistant, through improving service efficiency and indirectly improving C-end experience, open up business model.” The maternal and child market has become one of the test fields for laiye Technology To transform from C To B: To build the consultant role of service and marketing integration with laiye Technology’s AI interaction ability — To connect with users through wechat public accounts and communities — To build trust between users and brands through interaction — To recommend more products and provide more services. “Mothers-to-be and new mothers have similar questions and needs every day, and this is an area where AI can significantly improve service efficiency and user experience. “We realized that by exporting our accumulated AI technology and systems to the industry, we could unlock value and commercialize it faster.” In December 2017, Laiye Technology launched “Wulai”, a dialogue robot platform for enterprises. Both the two strategic adjustments made by Forrest Gump and Laiye Technology have achieved good results. The former is to ensure Happy Ending, the first venture, while the latter has laid the foundation for the rapid development of Laiye Technology. For Hu Yichuan, these two key nodes in the process of experience also made him personal transformation and growth. “The conversion of Forrest Gump means giving up the hard-won paying users, although the number is not much, but it is really not willing to give up completely, need to fight with their own heart. By contrast, the difficulty of the transformation of Laiye Technology is not in my own mind, but in how to complete the adjustment of the strategic direction of the team. After all, Laiye Technology team is bigger than The Forrest Gump team, so the strategic transformation needs a lot of work.” As it turns out, Hu yichuan, a technicist, has a strong track record in corporate governance, and Laiye has made a quick and almost painless strategic turnaround: The C-end product is positioned as a personal companion robot, while Wu Lai, who is To B, has quickly made a breakthrough. In June 2019, Laiye Announced the completion of the merger with RPA (robot process automation) enterprise Orson Technology, “New Laiye” announced the completion of B+ round of $35 million financing. At the same time, the first person in China RPA, the former CTO chu Rui of Orson Technology joined. In February 2020, Weng Jiaqi (Phantom), the former smart CTO of Takesuma, joined Laiye Technology. At the end of February 2020, Laiye Technology completed a SERIES C financing of usd 42 million. Expanding territory makes a strong army and horse.
“If all goes well, how will laiye technology ultimately change the world and everyone’s life?” Hu Yichuan at the end of the video smiled, “The mission of Laiye Technology is To ‘let robots help everyone’ when it was founded. To TRANSFORM To B is not To break away from THE C-terminal, but To find a scene that can provide long-term and continuous services for people. The essence is still To serve each of us. In the future, Laiye’s products will surely serve everyone. Maybe we will start from a small assistant serving only a small scene, gradually cultivate people’s use habits, enrich the service content, and finally improve everyone’s life experience.” “From the moment you open your eyes, an intelligent robot helps you optimize one detail of your life after another, freeing up your mind and hands so that scarce attention and brain power can be focused on higher-value areas. When you are lazy, he or she will remind you to do something worthwhile. They help you fall asleep faster when you can’t.” Sounds good. I hope that day comes soon. “Of course I will.” He smiled again, confident and firm.