After chatting for an hour, she said to me: Would you like to work in Tesla? I'm surprised. Tesla, which was shrouded in the aura of Silicon Valley stars at that time, was used by various enterprises to take advantage of marketing, so a job opportunity without an interview was both exciting and disturbing.
In the following time, I did a lot of homework to study the topics that Tesla will face in China, such as mileage, charging, new energy vehicle policy and so on. After the research, I accepted it without hesitation, because all the questions were answered. Tesla is in China, and all it needs is time. More importantly, a CEO like elon musk is fascinating. I am past the age of idolization, but if I have to choose to be a fan of someone, then no one is more suitable than him. He has been engaged in the Internet, electric vehicles, outer space exploration and solar energy, each of which was the most advanced field at that time, and each of which made extraordinary achievements. It's exciting to think about being a colleague who looks beyond the geeks locked out of the blue planet.
Some things happened later, which made me constantly revise my understanding. It is a great achievement for an enterprise to create the most advanced products and provide consumers with the most comprehensive solutions, but at the same time, it should constantly show this to the outside world and tell people its efforts and the value it can bring to consumers.
Entrepreneurship is staring at the abyss of death while drinking glass.
I thought Tesla's style was similar to that of other foreign companies, but I changed my mind on my first day at work. In the office, everyone works in the same big room with rows of tables. No matter where it is located, the desk is exactly the same, with no compartment and no glass. I thought, wow, this is what starting a business looks like. I went to the headquarters recently, only to know that Elon, like everyone else, is also a desk, only to understand that this is a spirit immersed in his bones.
To this day, Tesla is still a startup company. Starting a business means finding another way in a mature market and challenging people's ideas and wallets, so it is extremely difficult.
Entrepreneurship represents high-intensity work, and working overtime until late at night is just a common occurrence. I haven't seen many friends for half a year since last September. Later, at the Spring Festival party, they said that I was a few years older.
Entrepreneurship is to constantly solve problems, break through routine and process restrictions, and find the best solution when resources, manpower and time are scarce. There are problems almost every day, but every time you solve a problem, it is like upgrading and blaming, which makes people feel very fulfilled.
Entrepreneurship requires a strong nerve, because you are doing something that no one has ever succeeded, so you should go forward with great courage and perseverance. You will also encounter situations that you will not face in a stable company, and constantly adjust yourself to keep in good condition.
The most important thing is that starting a business is difficult and often faces twists and turns. Tesla went through such a process in China. It takes time to adapt to the market and faces ridicule from others. It also adjusts itself to move forward at a faster speed. Elon once said, "If everything goes well, you are not innovative enough." There is no better summary.
Be ambitious and go forward bravely
Tesla is a unique company. Because it is unique, it needs more time for others to understand its pursuit. It often makes some seemingly strange moves-Tesla has opened more than 200 core patents, which is extremely naive in the business world where patented technology is regarded as a moat; After Tesla entered China, it didn't raise the price according to the conventional fare increase of the automobile industry, and gave home charging piles and basic installation services to consumers in China. This kind of behavior is stupid in the eyes of smart China enterprises; Tesla has built a charging network consisting of thousands of super charging piles around the world, which requires huge manpower and material resources.
If we use conventional business thinking to judge the above behavior, we can't get a convincing answer. In the final analysis, it falls on Tesla's mission: to push the world towards sustainable transportation. Fuel vehicles not only pollute seriously, but also make people face the dilemma of energy exhaustion, so Tesla is committed to making human society transition from the era of gasoline vehicles to the era of electric vehicles. As for how many cars Tesla sold, the profit geometry is a trivial matter compared with this goal.
Other car companies are worried that the research cost of electric vehicles is too high. Well, Tesla opens patents and hopes more people will join the electric vehicle industry. Consumers are worried that charging is a problem, ok, Tesla provides the most complete and free home charging solution; The public is worried that it is impossible to travel long distances by electric car. Well, Tesla built the largest charging network in the world by himself.
All the actions are to let more people know, accept and love electric vehicles, so that gasoline vehicles with constant exhaust will disappear as soon as possible, and electric vehicles are running everywhere in the street, even if many electric vehicles are not Tesla brands, it doesn't matter.
All these behaviors need time to be recognized by others. The deepest understanding of Tesla's spirit is the owner of Tesla. Every time I talk to them, I will better understand the meaning of my work. At the beginning of this year, Tesla faced a challenge in China. It appears on Baidu news every day, and various speculations and inferences emerge one after another. Frankly speaking, all this can be frustrating at times. Later, in the circle of friends, I saw Tesla owners from all over the country spontaneously stand up. They expressed their support in various ways. Some car owners even said: I don't want to touch any gasoline cars after driving Model S. I want to speak for Tesla!
Engineer thinking
When I first came to Tesla, I always had a mystery: Why is the name of the conference room so strange? Bi Sheng, Luban and Mozi later learned that Tesla's offices around the world were named after famous local scientists. The reason for all this is that this is a company that believes in the thinking of engineers.
Engineers think and believe in the power of technology, so they created Model S, a revolutionary product which was rated as the greatest car in history by the authoritative American automobile media Motor Trend. Engineers think, believe in logic and rationality, and don't like too much publicity and packaging, so Tesla doesn't advertise all over the world, and all the conference videos are very simple; Engineers believe that products are the highest, so they put the most resources and manpower into product research and development, although this will make the company's financial statements look less beautiful.
But China is actually a special market: consumers are used to making decisions driven by emotions, the public's ability to screen information is not strong enough, and it is easy to be influenced by public opinion, and the marketing skills are ever-changing. So Tesla also went through the adaptation process in China, just as Elon returned to the United States after attending the Boao Forum and tweeted that he was also learning about the China market.
It is precisely because of the thinking of engineers that once they realize that they need to change, the speed will be extremely fast. Since 20 15, Tesla has released various localization measures and held dozens of experience days with the media and the public, so that many friends who are not in the automobile industry later said: Your activities this year are quite big. For a startup company, no matter what difficulties it encounters, as long as it stays in Do not forget your initiative mind and doesn't lose its heart, it can fight again.
In the past 10 months, together with a company that has just entered China, I have experienced the ups and downs and moved forward again. Every day is extremely dense, and I often feel that several years have passed. Witnessing the great changes in an industry and participating in the spread of innovative things, this journey is so wonderful even if it is stormy.
It is precisely because my heart has crossed the hills again and again that I recently read the article written by Tesla by Wait but why (the media that wrote the widely circulated article on artificial intelligence), and my heart was full of sadness:
Great expressions are always similar, as Nabokov said in his autobiography: "Although you can't see much through the fog, I don't know why there is always some bliss feeling of looking in the right direction."
If we can sum up this 10 month and the next days with Tesla in one sentence, the most appropriate one is Rilke's poem-when I recognized the storm, I was as excited as the sea.