Why Lei Jun founded Xiaomi at 40

Before talking about Lei Jun’s founding of Xiaomi, let’s first read an interview with Shu Li Hu, editor-in-chief of Shu Li Time (Hu for short H, Lei Jun for short L).

Lei Jun started his own business in college and failed because of his “recklessness”. He joined Kingsoft the year after graduation and worked his way up to president. Realizing that Kingsoft could not become a world-class enterprise, Lei Jun transformed into an angel investor, investing in companies such as Vancl, UCWEB, YY, and DuoYue. After three years of hibernation, Lei Jun founded Xiaomi, a company that was tough on itself and determined to be different. Twenty-one years after his first foray into business, the former top student and Zhongguancun’s “model worker” is once again embarking on a new journey.

H: you do not do millet, in fact, you are also a successful person. I think no matter whether it’s Jinshan or excellence or your investment in the future, you’re actually very successful, and doing Xiaomi is a big risk for you. You do this step it, what are your worries and fears?
L: In my 40th birthday night I thought about it, I think my life can not be so over, and I was in my first year of college, especially want to run a world-class enterprise, I have not gone to try. When I had this idea, my first worry was that I had been praised as an entrepreneurial mentor, and if I went to start a company by myself, if I failed, it would be very humiliating, and this was my biggest worry. And I do angel investment, and see countless companies closed, especially see the successful people re-entrepreneurship, the majority of the losers. Because the factors that made you successful become obstacles when you start again. You think you know, in fact is not necessarily you know. So, how can I empty myself completely, how can I put this face down and start again, this is my biggest difficulty in founding Xiaomi.

H: So have you ever thought about this Xiaomi for a long time will not be recognized by people, this kind of worry of being overwhelmed?
L: Mr. Hu, the first product I made for Xiaomi was called MIUI, and the first version of MIUI was released with only 100 users. We were top secret at the beginning, people didn’t know it was made by Lei Jun, and there was no advertisement, only 100 users. I did it from 100 in the first week, 200 in the second week, 400 in the third week, doubling every week. I actually want to tell all the entrepreneurs, as long as you really get 100 users, you will be able to do it. At the time of the release of the Xiaomi phone, MIUI already has 2.5 million users, globally, and a small 1 million users from the international market, that is to say, we are also in the foreign forums fire amazing, so, really, you just need to do a good job with the product is enough.

H: So do you believe that this little restaurant can eventually become a big restaurant, can become?
L: Of course, I very, very much believe in the Internet, and I believe that Internet thinking can help us make a great company. So when I was doing Xiaomi, I was doing a small restaurant first, and then through the Internet, and then amplify it to 10,000 times, it’s a big restaurant, so I believe in this set of things very strongly. We in turn to adhere to the original intention of these things we do business, I think it is difficult. We do business when we just started to mention a few, we said the first, to learn from the Tong Ren Tang, the real price, the product should be good, the price should also be real; the second, to learn from the bottom of the sea, to let each user can become your spread, so this is what we run millet before, is so think.

H: You are 40 years old to make this decision, it is risky for you, you just said, in fact, there is fear of failure this component. But would you say there is no element of luck in your success today?
L: I myself feel that 90% of Dacheng is luck. Because, maybe there is a saying that I quoted, which has been widely spread now, I said that when a typhoon comes, even a pig can fly up to the sky. I said we must have the attitude of being a pig to be successful, even a pig can go up to the sky. So the most crucial thing is the big picture.

H: Is there another question of how to feel and grasp the “momentum”?
L: Yes. I have been doing business for more than twenty years, and to be honest, I don’t pay enough attention to the momentum, and I like to do what I like to do. Because usually people talk about entrepreneurship, they say you have to do what you like to do. This is true, but in the things you like to do can you do one of the biggest things. You have to find a big market in the things you like, for example, I’m a cell phone enthusiast, cell phone is a big market, at the same time I like to write their own software, that today’s software compared to cell phones, the size of the gap will be. So I’m going to do something big in something I know how to do.

On April 6, 2010, 40-year-old Lei Jun founded Xiaomi in the Yingu Building next to the Baofusi Bridge in Beijing’s Haidian District.
Xiaomi had 7 co-founders in its early days: Lei Jun, Lin Bin, Li Wanqiang, Huang Jiangji, Zhou Guangping, Hong Feng, and Liu De. Wang Chuan was the 8th co-founder, though he joined Xiaomi in 2012.

In the first half of 2010, Lei Jun just founded Xiaomi, but also found in Motorola to work in the money Chen, talk to him for two or three months, in order to persuade the money Chen to join the Xiaomi, Lei Jun even once a week for five days about the money Chen to meet, each time the chat is close to 10 hours, after a dozen times of deep chat, the money Chen also once agreed to Lei Jun to join.

But Lei Jun asked Qian Chen a question: How many shares do you want? Qian Chen’s answer was: it doesn’t matter how many shares. At that time, Lei Jun’s thinking was: “If this person does not care about our shares, but just want a job with a good salary, I think this person is not what we want, he does not have the entrepreneurial spirit.” In the end, Qian Chen had a brush with Xiaomi as a partner. (PS: In 2013, Qian Chen joined Hammer Technology founded by Luo Yonghao as CTO, and left Hammer Technology in 2016)

In October 2010, Lei Jun had also invested in a video VOD equipment provider Beijing Leishi Technology.
This year, the 3Q war broke out, Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi’s relationship has deteriorated, and Lei Jun also supported Fu Sheng a. In 2012, Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi also disliked each other on the Internet, a good deal. However, years later, they all met and smiled to end their enmity, are decent people! (In January 2024, Zhou Hongyi also historically live on the same stage with Fu Sheng, flirting with each other to do net red)

In December 2010, Lei Jun led Xiaomi Technology to launch a chat software – Mi Chat, which is 1 month earlier than WeChat on line. This product was once up to 40 million users, but ultimately under the pressure of strong competition from Tencent WeChat, no further development.

In 2011, Lei Jun and Xu Dalai founded Shunwei Capital, named after Shunwei. Since then this investment organization has invested in millet, huami, cloud rice, aqiyi, small peng car, fast hand, jinshan cloud, dingxiangyuan, the ninth company, stone technology, wanmu acoustics, cargo la la, flash delivery, monster charging, boss direct hire, copper master and many other startups.

In July 2011, Kingsoft once again encountered operational difficulties, begged Bojun, Zhang Xuanlong urged Lei Jun to return to Kingsoft, so Lei Jun succeeded begged Bojun as chairman of Kingsoft Corporation. After that, Lei Jun brought in an important shareholder, Tencent, for Kingsoft. Also in July 2011, Lei Jun led Xiaomi Technology to obtain Morningside Capital, Shunwei Fund, Qiming Venture Capital and IDG Capital’s A round of financing of 41 million U.S. dollars. In December of the same year, Xiaomi Technology received another 90 million U.S. dollars investment from Temasek and Qualcomm Ventures, and the old shareholders continued to follow the investment.

On August 16, 2011, 41-year-old Lei Jun officially released the first generation of Xiaomi cell phone in Beijing’s 798 Art District, priced at 1999 yuan. Ten years later Lei Jun had revealed in a speech that the global sales of millet 1 was 7.9 million units.

Lei Jun also summarized the five rules of entrepreneurship, known as “Lei five”:
First, know how to follow the trend;
Second, do disruptive innovation;
Third, human desire is the reason of heaven;
Fourth, make good connections. Make more friends and fewer enemies;
Fifth, focus, less is more.

Lei Jun in 2009 has also summarized the Internet business “sunflower magic formula” only 7 words, is: “focus, extreme, word of mouth, fast”.
After doing millet, Lei Jun will use all of these. Millet with Internet thinking to build cell phones, make friends with users, with cost-effective PK rivals, but also ultimately set off a round of innovation in the cell phone industry. From then on, the mixed market of cottage machines became a thing of the past.

In June 2012, Lei Jun led Xiaomi to obtain 216 million U.S. dollars of C round of investment from DST and Temasek. On behalf of DST organization and Lei Jun contact, is Zhou Shouzi.
On August 16, 2012, after 1 year, Lei Jun once again released the Xiaomi 1S in the 798 Art District, priced at 1499 RMB.
In November 2012, Xiaomi acquired Wang Chuan’s MultiView Technology, and Wang Chuan officially became Xiaomi’s 8th partner.
On December 12, 2012, Lei Jun, 42, was awarded the title of “China’s Economic Personality of the Year Emerging Award” by CCTV.
In 2012, Lei Jun also donated 10 million yuan to Wuhan University to establish the Lei Jun Scholarship Program.

In 2013, Lei Jun led Xiaomi, which was founded only three years ago, to sell 18.7 million cell phones with sales of 31.6 billion yuan including tax.
In July 2013, Lei Jun led Xiaomi Technology to launch the sub-brand Redmi cell phone. Since then, Xiaomi’s cell phone brand has gradually explored to the high-end, while the Redmi phone to keep the mass price-performance positioning.
In December 2013, Lei Jun was once again selected by CCTV as China’s Economic Person of the Year. At the award ceremony, the choreographer authorized Lei Jun and Dong Mingzhu to make a 1 billion bet. They bet on whether millet turnover can exceed Gree Electric within 5 years.

In February 2014, Lei Jun was ranked 339th on the Hurun Global Rich List with a wealth value of 28 billion yuan.
In March 2014, Lei Jun led Xiaomi Technology to obtain 4 billion yuan financing from Tencent, valued at 20 billion yuan.
In 2014, the 44-year-old Lei Jun also visited Musk in the United States and toured the Tesla factory.

On December 29, 2014, Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi had completed a new round of financing, with investors including DST, Yunfeng Fund, Houpu Fund, etc., with a total financing amount of $1.1 billion, and Xiaomi’s valuation reached $45 billion.
In 2014, Lei Jun led Xiaomi cell phone to achieve 61.12 million units of cell phone sales, including tax income of 74.3 billion yuan, revenue of 63.6 billion yuan, the share of China’s cell phone market is 12.5%, ranked first in China.
In 2014, Li Bin, the founder of eCar.com, had found Lei Jun, wanting him to invest in his own car-making project, which is later known as Azure, at that time, Lei Jun’s first feeling was that it was a liar, but after a deep chat, Lei Jun still recognized Li Bin’s plan, and invested in Azure.

April 23, 2015, 45-year-old Lei Jun to participate in the millet conference in New Delhi, India, Lei Jun’s sentence “Are you OK?”, for the secondary yuan contributed to the ghost of the video material, Lei’s English is also hot all over the network.

At the end of 2015, at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, Lei Jun’s photo of Zhou Hongyi’s gaze was also on fire all over the Internet. But the next year’s Internet conference, the two have sat together and talked and laughed.
In 2015, Xiaomi failed to achieve the 80 million to 100 million units of cell phone sales target they set, with specific sales of more than 70 million units. Xiaomi also hit a growth bottleneck in 2015 and 2016, encountering some supply chain crises. Xiaomi’s revenue in those two years was 66.8 billion yuan and 68.4 billion yuan, respectively, with a significant slowdown in growth.

In 2016, because of the friction in the relationship between millet and Samsung, Lei Jun took over Zhou Guangping in June and was personally responsible for the supply chain, and since then he has visited Samsung four times to salvage the relationship before ensuring the supply of Samsung screens.
Also in this year, millet began to focus on doing millet home, emphasizing offline channels.
In October 2016, Lei Jun once again donated 999,999,999,000 yuan to his alma mater, Wuhan University, for the construction of the Lei Jun Science and Technology Building.

In 2016, Xiaomi co-founder Wang Chuan revealed in response to a question from a netizen that Lei Jun worked fifteen or sixteen hours a day, six to seven days a week.
It is said that Lei Jun had wanted to take a vacation in one year, leading executives to rest for the first three days, and then meeting and discussing for the next four days, and then Wang Chuan led Lei Jun to start skiing, and as a result, Lei Jun successfully entered the pit, and went skiing around the country and abroad every year during the long vacation.

In February 2017, on New Year’s Eve, Lei Jun went to Switzerland to ski, and ate the most expensive dumplings in his life, 68 yuan a piece, and spent 1360 yuan on two plates.
In 2017, Xiaomi returned to the high-speed growth mode, and its annual revenue exceeded 100 billion yuan, reaching 114.6 billion yuan.
In March 2017, Lei Jun also met Indian Prime Minister Modi in India.

In May 2017, Xiaomi spent 180 million yuan to title “Oddball”, and Lei Jun also recorded an episode of the Oddball program.
On October 12, 2017, Lei Jun was ranked 22nd on the Hurun 100 richest list with a value of 68 billion yuan.
On December 16, 2017, Lei Jun celebrated his 48th birthday, and Lai Wanqiang and others celebrated Lei Jun’s birthday.

In December 2017, at the Wuzhen Internet Conference, Lei Jun attended Ding Lei’s meal with Huawei executive Yu Chengdong, and the two smiled and clinked glasses, and the scene appeared to be very harmonious.

On July 9, 2018, 48-year-old Lei Jun led Xiaomi to successfully land on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
After the listing of Xiaomi, Lei Jun’s personal wealth has also risen, as of August 15, 2018, Lei Jun’s personal wealth is 110 billion yuan, ranking 10th on the Hurun 100 rich list. Xiaomi’s investor, GGV Managing Partner Tong Shihao, had marveled at Lei Jun’s intelligence and diligence at the Xiaomi IPO site, saying, “Mr. Lei thinks extremely fast and is super diligent. Every time I am one or two o’clock in the middle of the night to go to Lei’s meeting, in front of people waiting in line to see him. I really do not understand, Jinshan listed, UCWeb also sold, are wealth free, Lei is still so hard, 007-style struggle, made millet company.” Here 007, refers to: from 0:00 to 0:00 the next day, 7 days a week without rest. This is another person in the venture capital circle after Wang Chuan who praised Lei Jun’s diligence and hard work.
2018 is over, we want to know who won the 5-year 1 billion dollar bet between Lei Jun and Dong Mingzhu?

In fact, it is Dong Mingzhu who won, and by 2018, millet’s revenue was 174.9 billion yuan, and Gree Electric’s revenue for the same period was 198.123 billion yuan.
But in 2019, millet’s revenue came to 205.8 billion yuan, while Gree Electric’s revenue was 2005.05 billion yuan. So their bet would have been won by Lei Jun if they had extended their bet for another year.In fact, Lei Jun also won, after all, his own company’s revenue grew from 27.1 billion yuan in 2013 to 174.9 billion yuan in 2018 in five years, more than six times, which is already very impressive!In December 2018, Lei Jun became the 9,727th owner of the Azalea ES8. In addition, Li Bin, the founder of Azure, gave Lei Jun a Azure ES6, and Lei Jun directly brought this ES6 to the lottery online and transferred it to the rice fans.

On January 10, 2019, Lei Jun shouted to friends at the Redmi conference, saying, “Life and death look down, if you don’t serve, do it.”
In 2019, Lei Jun, 49 years old, led Xiaomi to enter the list of the world’s top 500 companies, becoming the world’s youngest top 500 company.
At the end of April 2019, Lei Jun’s first angel investment project, Lakala, was listed on the A-share market, and according to the market value of Lakala at that time, the $500,000 (about 4.3 million yuan) invested by Lei Jun in 2004 turned into more than 200 million yuan, which was at least 46 times more.When writing about He Xiaopeng, we have also mentioned that Lei Jun had a law of gold bricks, which invested companies can do 1 billion scale, he will send out a 1 kilogram of gold bricks to the founders.

In August 2020, Lei Jun, 50 years old, led millet to launch a new partner system, Lu Weibing, Zhou Shouzi and other four people became millet’s new partners.

Lei Jun at that time showed a group photo of Xiaomi’s new nine partners. They are Wang Chuan, Hong Feng, Lei Jun, Lin Bin, Liu De in the front row, and Lu Weibing, Zhou Shouzi, Wang Xiang, Zhang Feng in the back row. Among them, the four in the back row are new partners. (Unfortunately, Zhou Shouzui left Xiaomi Group for Zhang Yiming in March 2021)
Lei Jun’s investments also blossomed in 2020, with Lei Jun reportedly reaping the rewards of at least 8 IPOs in 2020. these include Kingsoft Cloud, Together Education, Stone Technology, Nine, Xiaopeng Automobile, Sonic, Lychee, and Blue City Bros.

At the beginning of 2021, millet technology was sanctioned by the United States, Lei Jun decided to start researching to build a car, and finally 51-year-old Lei Jun at the end of March 2021 official announcement millet car, the first investment of 10 billion yuan, Lei Jun also said that within 10 years to invest 10 billion U.S. dollars for car.
In April 2021, Lei Jun and Li Bin, He Xiaopeng, Li Want, as well as Wang Chuanfu and a host of car circle bigwigs photo out. Xiaomi said that the photo is the scene of the Huaxia reunion party, Lei Jun hosted a treat.

In September 2021, millet car company was officially registered.

In April 2022, the construction of Xiaomi Automobile’s car-making base in Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone began.
In August 2022, Lei Jun published the book “Xiaomi Entrepreneurial Reflections”, which was dictated by Lei Jun, reviewing the process of Xiaomi’s entrepreneurial period, the trough period and the process of re-stepping into growth, as well as Lei Jun’s summarized experience of Xiaomi’s methodology and industrial practice, which can be read by interested friends.
At the end of August 2022, Lei Jun was elected vice chairman of the Beijing Federation of Industry and Commerce together with Zhou Hongyi, and the two of them smiled and took a photo together.

In August 2023, Lei Jun had also decided to double the amount of the Lei Jun Scholarship program he set up at Wuhan University, from 10 million yuan in the past 10 years to 20 million yuan in the next 10 years. Lei Jun has also been very generous indeed in helping his schoolmates!
On November 29, 2023, on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the founding of Wuhan University, Lei Jun donated another 1.3 billion yuan to his alma mater, setting a record for the largest single alumni individual cash donation received by a college or university in China.

On March 28, 2024, millet held a millet car conference in Beijing, Lei Jun officially released the millet SU7 sedan, priced from 215,900 yuan.
October 24, 2024, 1024 Programmer’s Day, Lei Jun said in a post, “As a former coder, there is always a trace of excitement, can not help but think of the past countless all-nighters spent in front of the computer.”
October 29, 2024, Lei Jun and officially released the millet SU7 Ultra car, pre-sale price of 814,900 yuan.
In 2024, the 54-year-old Lei Jun is also very active in the video platform, at the end of October this year, Lei Jun’s jittery fans exceeded 30 million, and he released 151 short videos in 10 months this year, did three conferences and five live broadcasts, and also participated in the Beijing Auto Show, did offline research, went to Europe to watch the Olympic Games, and went to the New York North Raceway to visit the camp.

I have to say, Lei Jun is too diligent! It’s hard for other bosses to look up to him. His success is truly deserved! As of October 29, 2024, Lei Jun ranked 19th on the Hurun 100 list with a personal wealth of 130 billion yuan.

This article is over, but Lei Jun’s legend continues. The reason why Lei Jun is called “Zhongguancun labor model”, there is a reason, as the saying goes, we are afraid of people smarter than us, but also harder than us, Lei Jun is probably this kind of people.