Tech giants start by disassembling systems

Chapter 45 Qingyuan's Fields

Next Wednesday, Qingyuan.

The experimental field Ding De'an described was located on a farm in the suburbs, about two acres in size, irregularly shaped, and divided into several different areas by ditches and field ridges. It was surrounded by grape trellises and lychee hills—a real southern farmland environment.

The weather was bad. A level 3 wind, occasionally whipped up by stronger crosswinds. The sky was leaden, and the distant mountain peaks were shrouded in a thin mist.

Ding De'an personally attended the event, accompanied by three more people besides the young man from last time—the head of Toyota's technical department, the regional operations manager, and someone who surprised Su Chen—the owner of a Hunan agricultural machinery factory, surnamed Guo.

Ding De'an himself brought in a potential hardware partner. Su Chen was slightly annoyed—this person was more serious than he had imagined.

Mr. Guo, in his early forties, is thin and smokes a cigarette. He's been in the agricultural fogging equipment business for twenty years, with an annual output value of over 30 million yuan. The market is nearing its ceiling, and he's been searching for new growth opportunities. Agricultural drones are a field he's been observing for a long time, but the flight control problem remains unresolved.

Zhang Lei and Xiao Chen had already set up the HY-AG on the ridge of the field.

Su Chen didn't say anything more: "Mr. Ding, please specify the plot of land."

Ding De'an pointed to the most difficult piece of land—an irregular trapezoid with a field ridge cutting through it; it was actually two plots of land joined together.

Su Chen inputs the coordinates. The algorithm generates the flight path.

"start."

The HY-AG took off, hovered, and began operations in a level 3 wind.

A gust of crosswind hit the middle of the plane, causing it to shift about 20 centimeters, and then it automatically corrected itself in less than a second.

The cigarette in Boss Guo's hand stopped in mid-air.

A little over three minutes later, the operation was completed. The machine returned and landed.

Ding De'an walked to the edge of the field, squatted down, and touched the watermarks on the ground with his hand. Then he walked to the other end and checked again. Two minutes later, he came back.

"Mr. Su, can you sell this flight control system separately?"

Su Chen's lips curled up slightly. This was precisely the reason he had come.

"Sure. We can license the flight control module and its algorithm, and sell it as a standalone product to third-party hardware manufacturers. They buy it, install it on their own racks, and ship it under their own brand. We charge for the module plus the algorithm licensing fee."

Ding De'an turned to look at Boss Guo.

Boss Guo dropped his cigarette. Su Chen recognized the light in the eyelid—it was exactly the same as the one Liu Gang had seen in the demonstration years ago.

"Mr. Su, I've been making fogging machines for twenty years. I can build the frame, the fogging head, and the medicine box. All I lack is a brain to get the machine off the ground. How much does your flight control system cost?"

"Standard flight control module plus one-year algorithm license, 3,500 yuan."

Mr. Guo did the math in his head. The cost of making the frame and the spray bottle himself was about 9,000 yuan, plus 3,500 yuan for the flight controller, bringing the total cost to 12,500 yuan. He set the selling price at 18,000 yuan, with a gross profit margin exceeding 30%. DJI sold it for 25,000 yuan. The price difference was 7,000 yuan.

This account can be thoroughly calculated.

"Mr. Su, I'd like to order fifty sets."

Su Chen looked at him.

This is the first order since the release of the flight control SDK.

Fifty sets. 175,000 yuan.

The number may be small, but its significance far exceeds the number itself.

"Deal." Su Chen extended his hand.

On the way back to Shenzhen, Su Chen sat in the back seat with his eyes closed.

Sitting next to Su Chen, Zhang Lei could sense a faint smile playing on his lips.

"Mr. Su, aren't you excited? Our first SDK order!"

"Excited." Su Chen opened his eyes. "But what excites me even more is that Ding De'an brought a hardware manufacturer with him. He's not just examining our flight control system—he's testing whether the entire business model can work. If Boss Guo's fifty units sell through Toyota's channels, Ding De'an will replicate this model with more hardware manufacturers."

Zhang Lei thought for a moment: "In other words—Ding Dean isn't just buying our clients. He's helping us with marketing."

"To be more precise, he's building an ecosystem. Toyota provides the distribution channels, hardware manufacturers provide the racks and components, and Foxconn provides the flight controllers. Each party gets what they need. DJI's closed model only allows one company to compete with the entire market, while our open model allows dozens or even hundreds of companies to compete together."

Zhang Lei didn't speak again, but Su Chen could sense his blank, vacant movements—this was how he looked when he was contemplating the technical pressures he would face. If the number of users of the flight control SDK increased from one to ten or twenty, the workload for technical support and version management would grow exponentially.

"Therefore, the expansion of the R&D team must be accelerated," Su Chen said. "I've already spoken with Fang Xu, and the stock option plan will be distributed to everyone next week. At the same time, we need to hire two more people—one for technical support of the flight control SDK, and one for version control."

"Understood," Zhang Lei said.

Su Chen closed his eyes again.

Outside the car window was the morning light of Guangdong in February, the sky carrying the damp gray-white hue characteristic of early spring in the south.

He counted the plums in his mind.

Chen Hongyuan's paper is about to be published—the academic endorsement is already there.

Xiangtian's first batch of commercial products has been delivered—a sample customer has been secured.

Mr. Guo ordered fifty sets of SDKs – his first third-party hardware customer was secured.

Toyota’s more than 300 stores will become distribution channels – channel partners are already in place.

Four dominoes—academic endorsement, model clients, hardware clients, and channel partnerships—were all set in motion within the same month.

Next, all we need to do is wait for the first agricultural machinery to be sold to a farmer, for the first real-world operation to be completed in the field, and for the first positive review from a farmer.

Then the dominoes will start falling in a chain reaction.

Su Chen knew that this day wouldn't be long.

The crop protection season is approaching. Early rice planting is about to begin in Guangdong and Guangxi, and farmers' demand for crop protection products will surge in March and April.

This coincides with the delivery window for Mr. Guo's fifty agricultural machinery units.

This coincides with the window of opportunity when Toyota's more than 300 stores began stocking the products.

This coincided with the time window for Chen Hongyuan's paper to be published.

All the timelines converge in February and March.

Su Chen was not a gambler. He knew the rhythm of the plant protection season, the purchasing habits of farmers, and the speed of information dissemination in the agricultural machinery industry. These were memories from his previous life, as well as judgments accumulated over the past eleven months.

Outside the car window, a corner of a distant mountain peak peeked out from the mist.

Su Chen opened his eyes.

He still has a lot to do.

The F3's architecture design is still underway. The target for consumer-grade units in March is to exceed 3,000 units in monthly sales. The dealer network is still expanding. The patent litigation against Tianying is ongoing. The R&D team needs to recruit two more people.

Everything has its own rhythm and timeline.

Su Chen's job is to synchronize all rhythms, make all timelines intersect, and concentrate all forces at the same point.

This was the second most important lesson he learned during his fifteen-year career as a product manager in his previous life:

A company's most powerful moment is not when one line reaches its peak—but when all lines reach their peak simultaneously.

Su Chen took out his phone and sent a message to Zhang Lei:

"After returning, the architecture design of F3 will be accelerated. The first draft will be completed before March."

Zhang Lei replied with a single word: "Received."

The car continued heading towards Shenzhen.

The sky outside the window is slowly getting brighter.