Zhang Lipeng, Co-Founder Of Polar Routing: How Do Start-Ups Make Hardware?

< p > < a href= "http://sjfzxm.com/pioneer/" > anomalous < /a > Red Hot routing is actually not a "black history" known to ordinary users: in the middle of 2013, the extreme route with intelligence as the selling point was just listed.

At that time, the market of intelligent routers had not been detonated, so the most popular goal of polar routing was the senior router players of some hard core geeks forum in China.

However, this choice has brought a lot of trouble to the early polar routing. The extreme route is not only praised but also "encircled" by the "professional players".

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< p > because polar routing is developed on the system based on OpenWRT, which is equivalent to making a more user-friendly interface and many humanized designs in an open source system.

At the same time, hardware is also adjusted for OpenWRT.

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< p > in the ability to play "native OpenWRT" router players, the existence of extreme routing is chicken ribs.

Therefore, it is considered that the cost performance of extreme routing is not as good as those of "big factory routers" that can be brushed OpenWRT.

This is not a difficult thing to understand at first. However, the very early routing team failed to respond properly, which led to a crisis of public opinion.

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< p > our original intention is to enable our customers to see our sincerity, so several of our founders went on the scene in person to explain them.

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< p >, but this sincerity has not gained enough effect.

Because the founder of the extreme routing is a technical source, and originally was also a "public relations" on the geek forum, of course, it became a "debate" on router hardware and software technology.

From the psychological expectations of ordinary consumers, the company and consumers are not really "equal" relations. In the eyes of the founders, the exchange of ground air makes users who do not know much about the device think that extreme routing is a company that is not sincere and will quarrel with users.

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< p > in this process, Zhang Lipeng, the founder of route routing, admitted that his own harvest is to make professional people do professional things.

In the matter of public relations, professional public relations should be done.

Even if we need to explain technical details to users, we should let the public relations team take care of it.

In this way, we can avoid the bad influence of inappropriate wording on the company and create a good atmosphere for discussion.

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< p > in the process of communicating with users, we should listen carefully to the opinions and suggestions of users and learn from professional users.

Debate and "fight" should be left inside the team.

Feedback to users should be improved on products and excellent user experience, and ultimately the product must be spoken.

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< p > the entry of large enterprises actually brings more opportunities to start-ups. < /p >

< p > extreme routing can be said to be the pioneer of the domestic intelligent router market. After last year's extreme routing, the concept of intelligent router was put forward.

Xiaomi, Baidu, and other 360 giants have modeled themselves as intelligent routers, and in contrast, the voice routing of start-ups is rather small.

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The entry of P has proved that we have chosen the right market.

Moreover, without their huge market expenditure, ordinary consumers would not be able to recognize the concept of intelligent router so quickly.

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< p > there are two advantages of polar routing, which are not comparable to giants. This is also the advantage of most startups: first and focus.

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< p > as the concept of intelligent router, in the early days of domestic preacher, the routing has the advantage of first mover.

The first mover advantage does not mean that we can take advantage of more market fees to seize the market than the giants, but let them become the latecomers of intelligent routers and follow their own steps. When giants begin to learn to do intelligent routers, extreme routing has begun to study how the router can expand and explore the next generation of routers.

"Polar satellite" released at the end of last year is such a product. It completely abandons the idea that a single router relies on stacking power to solve the problem of wall to wall and signal difference, because in some environments, single point coverage, no matter how strong, will cause signal dead angle.

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< p > polar satellite is an intelligent AP integrated with the interface of the Internet of things, which can be directly inserted into any power supply to match the complex family environment comprehensively.

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At the same time, on the router itself, the extreme routing is also constantly thinking about P.

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< p > after the very one router, the S and the intelligent router are also introduced.

However, until now, extreme routing has not launched NAS products like millet routers on the products, which is not that the extreme routing team did not think of users' needs: < /p >

"P" a good use of NAS function is soft and hard combination, in the hardware, to do the support of the NAS function can be cloud and water; in the software, to achieve the simple manipulation of the NAS function, good experience, can be approved by the user.

The reason that polar routing has not been too much concerned with NAS is that the previous hardware version is not the best choice for the NAS function, either in the way in the built-in SD or in the way of the external USB2.0, the speed bottleneck in the frequent IO reading and writing operation.

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Although P router has been praised by many users after its listing, it is also common for continuous reading and writing and CPU to occupy too much.

Because of insufficient supply and imperfect details, the millet router has not fundamentally shaken the market of 1000 yuan or more professional family NAS market. At the same time, it is also the reason why the very early routing team did not set foot in the NAS market.

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At the present stage, the extreme routing has been able to meet some lightweight NAS requirements of users. As the extreme routing itself has TF card slot and USB interface, with the built-in functions and some open source tools, extreme routing can still achieve NAS functions such as file sharing in LAN, thunderbolt download and other NAS.

Of course, limited by the price and cost, these functions can not be compared with the 699 yuan millet router and the more expensive professional NAS.

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< p > a quality NAS product may not cost a lot of money on cost. The key is to see how it solves the performance bottleneck.

For example, take a CPU that only supports USB2.0 interface, even if it is invested in CPU resources and memory resources, its bottleneck of reading and writing hard disk is USB2.0. Therefore, other configurations are not high.

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< p > in the interview, Zhang Lipeng revealed that extreme routing has found a NAS implementation method to improve performance while reducing costs.

Very soon, there will be a new routing product on the route.

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< p > competitors in different industries have more potential than the industry.

We are very confident that we will win the opponent in making the router.

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< p > fast iteration and hunger marketing are not suitable for hardware startups, < /p >

< p > in last year's intelligent hardware vendors, the two popular concepts: fast iteration and hunger marketing, all of which are advertised as the extension of the Internet thinking in the hardware field.

But in Zhang Lipeng's view, these two concepts are not suitable for hardware startups.

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< p > if you are a very route fan, you may have held a mouse at a certain time and strained the router in a very official network.

There are also many people who abuse the route of hunger marketing because they fail many times.

However, during the interview process, the clear signals from the very routing team revealed: < /p >

< p > If any entrepreneurial company can produce so much, but it will not sell it, it is to die.

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< p > a problem for any Hard Suits Inc is to deal with upstream hardware manufacturers and assembly plants, deep traditional industries in the upper reaches of the supply chain, which hardly care about the trend in the consumer market.

For them, the only thing that moves downstream manufacturers such as terminal consumer goods factories is the order quantity.

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< p > the volume of the hardware venture enterprise determines its lack of bargaining power with the upstream, and the direct consequence is the long production cycle, insufficient capacity and short account period. This is reflected in the fact that rush buying has become the norm on the user side.

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"P >" I personally believe that rush buying is a bad user experience, and no user is willing to come with joy and embrace disappointment.

We all want the products we want.

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< p > polar route is now growing, products are also initially recognized by the market, and the upstream has also released some sincerity and is willing to grow with the enterprises.

In the later stage, both cost and delivery time will be improved.

Polar routing also hopes that after improving the supply chain, it can bring users more fluent purchase experience and no longer be criticized by others for "hungry marketing".

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< p > another concept is fast iteration, which is often accompanied by hunger and thirst marketing.

The general situation is that the first generation of products has not been snatched by the users, and the second generation products have been released. In extreme routing, rapid iteration is also unreasonable, and it is not the correct embodiment of "Internet thinking" on hardware only: < /p >

< p > I think the express iteration is not suitable for hardware business, especially in the field of Internet hardware. Basically, the hardware is not much profitable. It is expected that the software will be profitable in the future.

Then, the rapid iteration will make the product obsolete, and the more it sells unprofitable hardware, the greater the pressure on startups.

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< p > rapid iteration in the hardware field, many manufacturers are doing it.

Their advantage is that they have sufficient bargaining power with upstream manufacturers to get the best solution.

Their funds can also support them to "lose money quickly" in the hardware field, and then make up for it through software.

But the risk of doing this is that it is possible to fall into the homogenization of rapid competition and lead the way through the solution. The upstream scheme iterations once, the product iterated once, the vicious cycle of what function the upstream program produces, which is the reason why every iteration of the hardware has many defects.

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< p > in polar routing, fast iteration should always be software. Hardware as the foundation of software must be stable, low cost and perfect match with software.

The function (requirement) of hardware products should be determined by product manufacturers (polar routed, millet, Baidu) instead of being kidnapped by upstream vendors.

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