Thread by @therealjpk

⚡️ Many of you won't recognize the man in this photo.

Or the young man in this photo.

This guy in the center? Pretty sure you have it now. Many years apart, this was Xiaomi's co-founder, Lei Jun.

In just a decade, Xiaomi became the 2rd-largest global smartphone seller. For context, Apple is 45 years old, Samsung is 83. In my last thread (bit.ly/3iZ1nOb), I talked about market conditions that led to Xiaomi’s founding. This one is about its iconic founder Lei Jun.

Much of Xiaomi's success can be traced back to its founder, who nearly gave up on entrepreneurship after several bruising battles. Here’s a look at his career and life. Now, at 51, he’s worth over $25 bn and one of the richest men in the world.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. In fact, as a young CEO at Kingsoft, aka the Chinese Microsoft, he failed to create a successful product.

But they were all stepping stones. At the age of 40, Xiaomi was his last bet, a last roll of the dice before he called it quits on entrepreneurship.

He’d built up a hunger to taste truly lasting success. Those are just some of the things that drove Jun’s manic focus on Xiaomi.

Lei Jun was born in 1969 in Xiantao, part of central China’s Hubei province. Doing well in studies was his ticket to a better world. So he worked hard. Jun took just two vs four years to undergraduate degree in computer science from Wuhan University.

Reading the book ‘Fire in the Valley’ changed his outlook. It inspired him to begin a world-class firm.

And while getting early access to computing transformed Lei’s life, it was computer programming that offered him a chance to escape the grim reality of the outside world.

During his sophomore summer vacation in Aug '89, Lei co-wrote his first commercial software, the BITLOK on encryption to battle piracy.

Later, his founding team sold it for 1 million yuan. Or in his words, "his first bucket of gold". He ran a few other ventures which failed.

Lei also had a competitive streak in himself. In his biography, author Chen Run writes that Lei gave up his habit of taking an afternoon nap.

‘I am particularly afraid of falling behind. Once I fall behind, I cannot catch up,’ Lei is quoted as saying by Chen Run.

After a chance meeting with Qiu Bojun, the founder of Kingsoft, he was instantly captivated by his aspirations. Lei, all of 23, was offered a job at Kingsoft as the head of its R&D department in ‘92.

That role was instrumental in moulding him into who he is today.

But he also suffered severe setbacks there. For instance, he could not revive the doomed product called Pangu Office, an office management product on which Lei and his team spent nearly three years.

By 29, he became Kingsoft's CEO. But the firm continued to face competition.

Software piracy was bleeding cash at Kingsoft. Despite trying to diversify its products into gaming or antivirus software, Lei's efforts did not pay off.

He ultimately stepped down in 2007 after helping file Kingsoft's IPO, which was challenging in nature.

He missed fulfilling his founder Qui's dreams of becoming the best in the software industry.

But ultimately, Lei’s ideas and gathered wisdom did not go to waste. In a few years, he once again put these ideas into motion as he prepared to launch Xiaomi.

There was a bright spot from this tenure. IIn 99', backed by Kingsoft, Lei launched Joyo, an e-commerce site selling mainly books and software.

He gained first-hand experience in e-commerce, slowly familiarizing himself with the nitty-gritty of handling huge online demands.

Was Jun preparing himself for future flash sales that would see Xiaomi phones fly off digital shelves in seconds?

Joyo's rise soon caught the attention of the American e-commerce giant Amazon. For Bezos, the CEO, it was the key to help Amazon unlock the Chinese market.

In 2004, Amazon acquired Joyo for $75 million. Major shareholders, including Kingsoft, Lenovo, and Tiger Management, cashed out.

Amazon’s Chinese fairy tale may not have had a happy ending, but its $75 million acquisition of Joyo certainly propelled Lei into the big league.

His ambitions weren't limited to the companies he founded or invested in. Rather, from a very early age, Lei was focused on bigger goals.

Lei, Alibaba's Jack Ma & Tencent’s Pony Ma, have been called ‘China’s disruptors’ for radically changing how China is perceived today.

He devoted his energy to angel investments but had also been grappling with the idea of the internet for some time. By the early noughties, Lei figured that the future was going to be about the mobile internet. With that intuition, Lei began to invest money in internet firms.

By 2008, Lei was dabbling in angel investments but didn't feel fully prepared to take the plunge & become a full-time investor.

He helped many start-ups get on their feet, creating an ecosystem that fostered growth in the field of e-commerce and the mobile internet.

As an angel investor, Lei picked winners including Vancl, UCWeb & Lakala. His mantra — If ‘the big direction is good, the small direction is verified,’ then ‘the ROI is high’.

Eg: Funding YY Inc, a video-sharing social media platform took it to be listed on the Nasdaq.

In 2010, Lei started a venture capital firm called Shunwei Capital with Tuck Lye Koh to help China’s fresh crop of internet companies with early and mid-stage investments.

Lei was restless after Kingsoft, despite being a successful investor. He still wanted to build a company large enough and successful enough to match his outsized ambition.

So in 2010, Lei founded Xiaomi Corporation. By then, he had become a veteran.

Even though Xiaomi started at a time when China’s domestic mobile phone industry was booming, it had the unique edge of Lei’s enterprising genius & nearly two decades of experience running a company. When the moment came, he was like an elite athlete with plenty of practice.

Lei’s years at Kingsoft had taught him the virtues of customer feedback. In Kingsoft’s R&D department, he was always surrounded by engineers. With no marketing department, the job of answering customer calls fell on Lei.

That rigor drives weekly OS updates to users today!

For Lei, the switch to hardware was as exciting as it was daunting since this was unfamiliar territory. It also gave him the chance to build a team to integrate hardware, software, and the internet.

Over time, Lei convinced the best minds in each field to join him at Xiaomi.

Lei gave his team a promise of succeeding in four years, after which they could depart if they failed. Luckily, the occasion to quit the game never arose. Xiaomi became Lei’s dark horse, exceeding everyone’s expectations and becoming a much-loved smartphone brand.

If you got so far, you might like my book on Xiaomi. You can pick up a copy here: therealjpk.com.