A great entrepreneur, Lei Jun

Lei Jun was born in 1969. He is the founder of China's most subversive start-up company, Xiaomi.

In 2007, leaving Kingsoft Company was an important node in Lei Jun’s life. Leaving Kingsoft was a great blow to Lei Jun, but also fated to his greatest help. If he did not leave Kingsoft, Lei Jun would still be a good business leader, but not outstanding enough. He would be the person that have only one step to success. When he was destined to be thrown at the crossroads, he had the most drastic courage in his life, which is starting up Xiaomi.

One year after Lei Jun’s start up, he held a small media communication at a quiet place in the Houhai, announced two things, one was the completion of MIUI, the other was Xiaomi will launch a smartphone next month. At that time, Lei Jun repeated to the audience twice: I am a bit afraid of failure.

A month later, Lei Jun stood in the center of the stage, used a similar form as Apple, completed a two-hour conference, which was the official launch of Xiaomi 1. After the speech, Lei Jun hid outside the door to smoke, news reporters asked him: are you ready to face challenges? Lei Jun replied, no problem.

Xiaomi smartphone is considered to be the most innovative products in Chinese smartphone market. Before the launch of Xiaomi smartphone, Chinese domestic smartphone market had only two types of phones, one was phones that have high performance but charge high price, such as Apple and Samsung, the other was low-cost and low-performance phones, such as Coolpad and Huawei.

After Xiaomi smartphone was launched, Lei Jun attracted numerous followers, but these followers only learned the fur of Xiaomi, not the essence. The essence of Xiaomi is the MIUI system. Lei Jun called it "live system", it is like an ecosystem, it could receive user’s feedback to update rapidly. It is beautiful, easy to use, interactive and strong.

Xiaomi’s co-founder Li Wanqiang said Xiaomi‘s the perfect embodiment of Lei Jun’s spirit of the product. Just picking the picture of lock screen, he saw more than 100 million photos. Lei Jun's product philosophy is to return simple, but simple means not only to wipe out the messy things, but also to explore the depth of complexity, find laws behind the complexity, so that you can control the product and let them obey you.

Among all Chinese entrepreneurs, Lei Jun behaves like Steve Jobs most. From the beginning to the present, Lei Jun's dream has never changed, he wants to have a great company just like Apple. By having such unique talent and crankiness, Steve Jobs is still that Jobs, however, if Lei Jun did not have such setbacks, he may not become today’s Lei Jun.

Lei Jun never gives up in adversity, instead, he has the courage to change. He understood that in order to overcome the fear, the best way is to face up the problem to become a habit. This is the reason why he could never be abandoned by times.

References:

[1]Forbes Welcome. (2016).Forbes.com.Retrieved 20 October 2016, fromhttp://www.forbes.com/profile/lei-jun/

[2]Lei Jun’s startup history. (2016).Mp.weixin.qq.com.Retrieved 20 October 2016,fromhttp://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?src=3×tamp=1476952487&ver=1&signature=3E6YFDfAFyMy7NAMEW-ohPIun5Q9K-DcBq0Rg44YefFmpLvLQXIUGbraJ8Uj3VKFuh3C0Ew*dSMGR6nXwo*TWmaFMc2k1uXsJ25hnnQEHJLDrXOcOAa9IrMofIJbbl51GAtD*fw-VL3VakOPPsJ5uA==

[3]Lei Jun - Asia Game Changer. (2016).Asia Society.Retrieved 20 October 2016, fromhttp://asiasociety.org/asia-game-changers/lei-jun

[4]Lei, J. (2016).Lei Jun’s Weibo.Weibo.Retrieved 20 October 2016, fromhttp://weibo.com/leijun

[5]Rowan, D. (2016).Xiaomi's $45bn formula for success (and no, it's not 'copy Apple').WIRED UK.Retrieved 20 October 2016, fromhttp://www.wired.co.uk/article/xiaomi-lei-jun-internet-thinking