Zhang Lianghe has achieved mass production of general-purpose human-computer interaction controller, which is the only technology in China.
3D printed model of a general-purpose human-computer interaction controller.
Graduated from China University of Science and Technology, entrepreneur of technology company, and senior photography player, ......These seemingly unrelated labels are concentrated on one person. After graduating for more than ten years, Zhang Liang, who loves photography, felt the operational pain points in the field of digital entrepreneurship, and a new idea germinated, and then he resigned and partnered with his college classmates to start a business and devote himself to product research and development. From the initial three-person team to the current scale of nearly 100 people, it only took 7 years.
Plasticine pinched out "new technology" This team is very good at "playing".
2016 is the 12th year of graduation of Zhang Liang, an alumnus of USTC, and the 12th year of Beipiao, this year, he made an important decision in his life - to return to his hometown to start a business.
Previously, Zhang Liang worked in a consulting company in Beijing, and in his spare time he was also a photography enthusiast, in the process of "tinkering" with various equipment software, Zhang Liang and his friends found that although the continuous improvement of computer computing power provides a lot of convenience for ** and processing, it lacks a good sense of interaction mode.
After careful consideration, in 2016, he returned to his hometown Hefei from Beijing, and made the same decision with partners Tian Yu and Xie Lei, the three of them came to Hefei from other places, jointly invested 1 million, and set up the first office in Tian Yu's rough room.
The founder, Tian Yu, is conducting research and development of new technologies.
For start-ups, going from "0 to 1" is a long process. After a year and a half of technology research and development, the team decided that the time was ripe to "land" the product. "In the early days of the business, I didn't have a lot of money on hand to make abrasives, let alone mass production and manufacturing, so I used plasticine to knead out the equipment shape according to my imagination. Zhang Liang told reporters that this clay sculpture was made at will, and later used a 3D printer to make it the first generation of products.
The seemingly "simple" R&D process is very interesting in Zhang Liang's view. "Once the first mold was printed, we wrote the program in it through embedded development and tested it over and over again. ”
3D printed model of a general-purpose human-computer interaction controller.
Won the innovation competition and received 4 rounds of investment in 6 years.
What Zhang Liang and the team did not expect was that the new technology, which was going through the testing stage, was about to usher in its first important turning point.
In 2017, the "Create China" Anhui Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition was held for the first time, recruiting and screening cutting-edge technology entrepreneurial talents and projects from all over the world.
All kinds of policy support seemed to push us forward", at that time, the team was trying to proofing and production, so as to promote mass production, and this chance competition undoubtedly became a "catalyst". With the crown of first place, Tuwa Technology was introduced and settled in Hefei High-tech Zone for "incubation".
In 2018, the first generation of commercial TOURBOX was launched, and after raising initial fundraising, large-scale production was started, and in the same year, it received a seed round investment of 1.5 million yuan from Hefei High-tech Zone.
After landing in the high-tech zone, we enjoy a series of policy support provided by Hefei City. Zhang Liang introduced that these policies include rent subsidies, office location selection, investment and financing docking, and the children of corporate executives going to school nearby. "Without these early helps, it would have been difficult for the company to grow to where it is now."
With its new human-machine interaction solution that combines software, hardware and cloud, the product was delivered to 58 countries around the world in the second year of its launch.
In just six years from 2017 to 2022, Zhang Liang's team has received four rounds of investment support from Anhui Province, and the company's scale has expanded from the initial three people to nearly 100 people today, of which more than one-third are involved in technology research and development. Based on the growing market demand, the product has undergone about 10 technical iterations.
There is a heated discussion in the office of Tuwa Technology.
"Play" is the inexhaustible passion.
Anhui Province high-tech enterprises, Hefei High-tech Zone Eagle Enterprise, Hefei High-growth Seed Enterprise ......In the past 7 years, Tuva Technology has won many honorary titles, in addition, the company has also won awards in famous international competitions such as the Red Dot Award in Germany and the New York Design Award in the United States.
Looking back at the time of entrepreneurship, Zhang Liang has a rare calmness. Whether it is facing the competition or technical iteration, Zhang Liang and the team have always maintained a normal heart, in his words, this is an attitude of "difficult things are easy to achieve".
Unlike traditional "workers", entrepreneurship requires leaders to do everything themselves.
None of the three of us came from a hardware background, and all the manufacturing problems were tackled by ourselves. Zhang Liang said that there are countless difficulties like this, taking the manufacturer as an example, the team members spent more than two months, running through the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta region, and finally settled in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province after many comparisons.
And this is only the first step to achieve mass production, and there will be a lot of problems in the process, such as the inability to produce in a short time in the case of rushing for mass production. Emergencies are frequent, and Zhang Liang has developed a strong heart.
The general-purpose human-computer interaction controller has undergone about 10 technical iterations.
The first time I saw the mass-produced product, I couldn't wait to take a photo on the factory line. But the excitement didn't last long, and Zhang Liang and his team worked non-stop to deal with a series of problems after mass production. "Because it is positive R&D, we don't have any reference and we don't know what will happen when the product comes out, so we can only move forward step by step. ”
The reason for this may be the initial love of the team.
As early as 2000, when he was studying at the University of Science and Technology of China, Zhang Liang participated in the Anhui Provincial Advertising Festival and won the third place in the college student group. After work, he spent his spare time on photography and videography, and found the pain points of post-production operations in the process of doing **, so he worked with team members to transform the needs into real new technologies.
The reason why I chose to start a business is because I want to do something more challenging. Zhang Liang said that the team's goal is to make practical innovations, and so far, the product has more than 100,000 users all over the world.
In August this year, the company was selected as a "specialized, special and new" enterprise in Anhui Province. In another week, a new generation of products will be launched, and at that time, Zhang Liang and his team will also expand the domestic market as a goal for the coming year, "I hope that our technology can bring accurate and efficient experience to domestic digital creators and liberate the productivity of the digital creative field." ”
Hefei Tong Client-Hebao Quan** Reporter Li Runyuan Wen Zhang Zhengpeng Photo by Xi Yang Jun.