On August 26th, the second episode of Luo Yonghao's video podcast program "Luo Yonghao's Crossroads" was launched. Following Li Xiang, founder of Ideal Auto, He Xiaopeng, CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, participated in the conversation as a guest in the second episode of the program. The leaders of two new car making forces took the stage one after another and had in-depth conversations with Luo Yonghao. It is inevitable that the outside world will compare the conversation styles of the two.

Compared to Li Xiang's 4-hour disclosure of his growth process, He Xiaopeng appeared more reserved in the first half of the interview, tactically avoiding many slightly sensitive issues. This weakens the excitement of the interview itself, and the image of He Xiaopeng himself is also somewhat blurred. Especially as a seasoned interviewer, Luo Yonghao often boasts about his own experiences, and He Xiaopeng does not interrupt, but enjoys listening.

However, there were still many new things revealed in this 3-hour conversation, such as how Xiaopeng thought about financial freedom and his attitude towards money, company management and his own temper, and of course, technology. When it comes to flying cars, autonomous driving, and AI, the topic clearly enters He Xiaopeng's comfort zone. Most car company leaders like to rely on themselves as STEM men, and He Xiaopeng is no exception. He said he always runs a slow company, starting from technology, then considering users, and finally thinking about business models.

It is worth noting that the recording time of this episode should be on August 7th, after the debut press conference of the all-new Xiaopeng P7. As car manufacturing enters the second half of the journey, both NIO and Xiaoli have their own new problems to solve. NIO's profit challenge and ideal pure electric breakthrough. As for Xiaopeng, after relying on 120000 yuan MONA to increase sales, where is the next product growth point? After the price drops, how can the brand become more high-end? Xiaopeng is also the weakest voice among the three new forces, which may be due to He Xiaopeng's personality. He is more restrained than Li Xiang and more distant than Li Bin. Similarly, Xiaopeng lacks ideal controversy and does not have the high stickiness of NIO users. The program was launched one day before the launch of Xiaopeng P7, which gave He Xiaopeng the heat he needed.

According to the data provided by the new ranking monitoring tool "Voice Traffic", on August 27th, the number of online works related to "He Xiaopeng" skyrocketed from 308 on August 26th to 1884, even surpassing the 819 articles at the debut press conference of the all-new Xiaopeng P7; The trend of online interaction has increased to 266000, surpassing the 164000 on August 7th.

How did He Xiaopeng think about wealth and freedom when he was young

Hubei native He Xiaopeng did not talk much about his early experiences. Public information shows that he graduated from South China University of Technology with a major in computer science in 1999 and joined AsiaInfo Technology, serving as a technical manager, testing manager, project manager, and other positions.

When he was young, He Xiaopeng had already realized that working could never achieve financial freedom. He mentioned that in college, he had envisioned three paths to wealth realization: buying lottery tickets, buying a house, and finding a good company to take stock options. Lottery relies on luck, houses cannot be bought, options are obtained, but the stock price falls below the issue price. He Xiaopeng found that the fourth path is still the most feasible - entrepreneurship.

He revealed to Luo Yonghao that before starting UC Browser, he founded a company called Longyuan (LY) as a follower of entrepreneurs. UC, known to the public, was his second venture. That was in 2004, when China's Internet was in the ascendant. He Xiaopeng was 26 years old. Ten years later, UC Vision was fully acquired by Alibaba for over 4 billion US dollars, and He Xiaopeng, who was less than 37 years old, became financially independent from then on.

Starting from UC, He Xiaopeng began to deal with capital. Luo Yonghao asked him an extremely specific and practical question - how much money did UC earn as the first founder after its inception? He Xiaopeng simply stated that they avoided the issue of unequal distribution of power, money, and responsibility and began to talk to him from both sides. He talked about the importance of partnership and team collaboration in the growth stage of a company, the development process and transformation of UC, and answered with a steady and boring answer that he is actually a middle-aged person.

He Xiaopeng is better at technology. Looking back at his entrepreneurial journey, he said that because he always considers technological changes first, then seeks user needs, accumulates user experience, and finally envisions a profit model, he will experience a long period of loss when running a business. The advantage is that technology is constantly changing, never slackening along the way, and there is no such thing as relying on old knowledge for the technology industry.

However, after selling UC, He Xiaopeng, who suddenly gained a huge fortune, began to face a difficult problem - how to spend money. Most uninformed investments tend to fail. After the fact, He Xiaopeng concluded that one should not spend money in areas they do not understand. However, the process of learning to view money more scientifically is a life experience, and he needs to experience the so-called growth of his own humanity.

In 2014, Xiaopeng Motors was established, initially called Orange Motors. He Xiaopeng, who also served as the President of Alibaba Mobile Business Group and Chairman of Alibaba Games, participated as an investor in the automotive industry. He did not choose the automobile industry from the beginning. From cross industry software to hardware, it is full of challenges. The manufacturing industry, especially automobile manufacturing, is a heavy asset, which is not as easy to iterate quickly as the Internet. But he believes that smart cars are the future, which is also his area of greatest interest.

More than one founder of a new car brand has stated that entering the automotive industry is based on the illusion brought by electric vehicles. He Xiaopeng was one of the first Tesla owners, and after experiencing the charm of electric vehicles, he also had a similar idea - he didn't have to work in the automotive industry for ten or twenty years to create a car with excellent driving experience. He Xiaopeng now recalls that if it weren't for the illusion that making cars is simple, he wouldn't have had the courage to enter this track.

In 2017, a friend told him that the combination of cars and AI was about to begin, and if he didn't come in, he would miss the opportunity. After thinking for a long time, He Xiaopeng felt that he was not suitable for investing, lying flat or immigrating, but still suitable for entrepreneurship. That year, he officially joined Xiaopeng Motors and personally went off to make cars.

This process is actually a well-known story. First generation entrepreneurs tend to underestimate the difficulty of doing things, and He Xiaopeng has previously stated in multiple interviews that making cars is like swimming in a sea of blood, "too hard". He found that the most painful part of starting a business is listening to a lot of experience and reflecting on many lessons, but still unable to avoid the pitfalls left by predecessors. History repeats itself over and over again, and people in different environments make the same mistakes. Entrepreneurs may seem indifferent, but it is only because they have stepped through countless pitfalls and suffered countless times that they have engraved their experience into their bones.

The defeat of the 2022 Xiaopeng G9 is still in sight. He Xiaopeng emphasized the harm of blindly delegating power and believed that founders must go deep into the front line. He experienced the huge difference between cars and the Internet: "Internet companies do not need to cross their businesses too much. Cars are different. In the first four or five years of doing a car, hundreds of work types and billions of investment. Once there is a point that is not well coordinated, it is a problem."

No matter in manufacturing, experience or consumption, there is a time difference of several times between automobile products and Internet products. He Xiaopeng, a software native, has already carved the fast iterative extreme experience into the muscle memory, but it is easy to go in the wrong direction when put into the hardware world. He Xiaopeng will constantly compare the differences between two industries and experience the differences in software and hardware manufacturing in practice. This difference permeates among the internal organizations of Xiaopeng Automobile. The team includes both relatively conservative traditional car companies and radical and efficient Internet background people. The two groups work together. He Xiaopeng admitted that the conflicts and differences of ideas still exist, and it is a huge test to cooperate with both sides.

Now, after taking many detours, he is gradually returning to reality. In the second half of last year, Xiaopeng launched two low-priced models, MONA M03 and P7+, which drove rapid sales growth. This year, Xiaopeng's second quarter financial report showed that its operating loss continued to narrow to 930 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 41.9%. He Xiaopeng promised that Xiaopeng Motors will achieve its first quarterly profit in the fourth quarter of this year.

Although He Xiaopeng claimed that making cars is a hellish difficulty, he also experienced a joy he had never had before.

He mentioned many times that the physical world is different from the intuition of the Internet. The interaction and entertainment experience created by software is built on imagination, while hardware innovation is built on the real physical world, facing the body directly. When the former Internet super product manager stepped into the physical world, he said: "Being a product manager in the physical world and the digital world at the same time can make a person's multiple senses and more than five senses try to make a little change and innovation. At this time, the feeling is particularly good, and as a product manager, this is the most enjoyable."

He radical believes that car manufacturing is a knockout race, and there will be results in the next 3 to 5 years. At that time, there will only be five domestic car companies left. Now, no one has already received the ticket, including Tesla. But this also means that the industry becomes "more dangerous and more interesting", and he expects more naive and honest (like him) entrepreneurs to stay in the industry.

After 11 years of car manufacturing, He Xiaopeng learned first-hand experience in the manufacturing industry and also learned to control his emotions in organizational management. He admitted that he is actually a person with a hot temper, but he appears slightly gentle against the backdrop of Wang Fengying, the CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, who has a more fiery temper. He reminded himself to try to control his temper and avoid making wrong decisions due to emotions.

An interesting point is that when he first started his business, honest person He Xiaopeng and other partners were worried about their lack of social experience. To avoid making decisions on the spot, they referred to themselves as vice presidents when meeting investors or discussing business cooperation. It can be seen that the initial team relationship was relatively equal. He Xiaopeng didn't say how he became a top leader, but he expected to build an open and equal company. This seems to be the common feature of Internet enterprises. At least, they should be equal in terms of address. Don't call them "general manager, director, manager", or even return to campus. Within the company, He Xiaopeng is referred to as the senior brother, and the management is arranged in sequence - the second senior brother, the third senior brother, the master, and classmates.

But car companies are too large and extremely test the collaboration ability of various departments, especially in the production and manufacturing workshops where semi military management is required. As the main decision maker, he is responsible for the results and must ensure that the execution actions are not distorted. The internal relationship is inevitably a state of upper level to lower level. It's hard to talk about openness and equality, just like getting angry and cursing. He Xiaopeng revealed that he installed double-layer glass in his company, separating the sound of Wang Fengying cursing outside and the sound of himself cursing inside, fearing that it would affect the work of people outside.

He Xiaopeng, who has already experienced the pains of management, is no longer the young person who worried about his lack of social experience twenty years ago. Although he claims that he has only become a little shrewd over the years, he already knows how to understand human nature. He wrote on Weibo, "It is important to follow your heart and do things, but if you can still grasp your heart after seeing countless losses, that is the rebirth of yourself