The Volcanic Stone Podcast, produced by Volcanic Stone Investment, is a relaxed yet in-depth venture capital chat show. We not only focus on business and technological innovation but also hope to share the unique perspectives and profound thoughts of founders as industry pioneers through conversations, exploring the underlying logic and social needs behind the industry. We hope that regardless of your field, you can find content worth pondering.The wave of AI is no longer just a software revolution. As models move to the edge and computing costs continue to decline, hardware is becoming the epicenter of the next wave of AI innovation. Meta AI scientists predict that the edge AI market will grow to $143.6 billion in the next eight years. In turning algorithms into products on terminal devices, China has a natural advantage—from supply chains to engineering capabilities, and the rapid implementation speed of small teams.
This is why many AI hardware blockbuster products emerging on Kickstarter, TikTok Shop, and overseas e-commerce platforms come from Shenzhen, China. From voice recorders and cameras to conference equipment and pet cameras, they all enter through very small scenarios, reshaping experiences with AI, turning seemingly minor needs into rapidly growing global businesses.
In this era of continuous creativity, a real problem persists:“Can small teams survive when big companies can do whatever they want?”
EMEET, a member company of Volcanic Stone Investment, has been deeply engaged in overseas AI hardware for nine years. In this episode of the podcast, we invite the founder Wyman Chen Mingwen to share his genuine feelings from nearly a decade of entrepreneurship—about competition, opportunities, the space for independent intelligent imaging products, the essence of innovation, and how startups can grow in a world surrounded by giants.
His answer is very candid:“There will always be space; this has always been the case.”
In this episode, you will see the real logic of hardware entrepreneurship, as well as the certainty and resilience from the front lines of the industry.
The content is very exciting; be sure to subscribe and listen!
Guest Introduction:Wyman Chen Mingwen, Founder of EMEET Technology, with 25 years of extensive experience in the electronics and communications industry. He has a background in electronic and communication engineering from Zhejiang University and graduated from the China Europe International Business School with an EMBA degree. In the early stages of his career, he held engineering, R&D, and management positions in several technology companies, accumulating cross-domain technical and operational experience. He later joined a publicly listed company under TCL Group, serving as General Manager of the Innovation Business Center, General Manager of the R&D Center, and General Manager of the Acoustic Business Center, gaining rich industry experience and strategic vision. In late 2016, he resigned and founded Shenzhen EMEET Technology, focusing on the AI imaging field, committed to promoting industry innovation through technology accessibility.
Timeline:
00:01:57 From BYOD to Digital Nomads: How EMEET Captured Remote Work
00:05:13 Actively severing to survive: Transitioning from audio equipment to the video sector
00:07:46 The organizational efficiency and product compounding brought by “doing subtraction”
00:12:51 Can big companies just copy? Don’t mythologize big companies
00:18:15 Core capabilities of small teams: Learning ability, flexibility, and deep accumulation
00:23:14 The barriers of smart hardware are not just technical
00:25:24 Start first, then upgrade: Many great companies have continuously reversed from low-end products
00:31:57 Breakthroughs in AI-native hardware: Incremental innovation vs. disruptive innovation
00:35:07 From voice recorders to birdwatching gadgets: Niche opportunities in the AI era
00:42:50 The ever-present opportunities in the incremental market for intelligent imaging
00:53:05 The long-term dividends of Chinese smart hardware going overseas
00:54:16 Talent is hard to find; learning ability is more important than experience
01:00:49 Humanistic care and sense of responsibility: What can a small and medium-sized enterprise offer its employees?
01:04:04 The beauty of technology and long-termism: The spiritual force that supports entrepreneurs to keep going
Text Summary:
New AI+hardware innovations are emerging constantly, but big companies are also copying faster. Once a niche category becomes popular, big companies can usually produce similar products within months. In this case, do small teams still have a chance to win in the large market?
Wyman Chen: We have experienced the most typical scenario: before the pandemic, we had conference audio hardware and online meeting software products, one of which was a video conferencing app that was doing quite well. However, the pandemic suddenly amplified this market, which might have taken ten years to mature, to a “super scale”. Big companies, in the face of such opportunities, invest almost without limits, spending ten to twenty billion in a year, a scale that startups cannot compete with, so we gave up on this product. If it were in a normal industry development cycle, big companies might not have invested so aggressively.
We gave up on making communication software similar to “Tencent Meeting” because those capabilities are the core competencies of internet giants, and of course, we cannot compete. But if I were making something new that no one else has done, big companies might not be able to replicate it easily.
Many people believe that big companies have money and resources, and once they focus on a direction, they can immediately assemble a team to produce it. But the reality is that they may not be able to recruit truly outstanding people.. When you try to poach employees from others, you often don’t get the best. Additionally, big companies won’t send 100 people to work on a product that we can do with 10; their organizational structure cannot support it. The mistakes made by startup teams are also made by big companies; however, big companies have a more limited tolerance for error. Startup teams experience life-and-death pressures, and their will to learn, iteration speed, and deep understanding of the product cannot be matched by a temporary team assembled by a big company. So you cannot assume that “big companies are naturally superior”; most people are just ordinary.
From another perspective:Can small companies only wait to be beaten? Corporate capabilities can be extended, and small companies also have flexibility. New startups have their vitality; their ability to pivot and learn is very strong. A small ship can turn quickly; you can fight like in a war, not head-on, but attack from the flanks. If A doesn’t work, switch to B; if B doesn’t work, go to C. The market is like a battlefield. From our observations, there are actually very few cases where small companies are “completely killed” by big companies. More often, it is internal factors, such as insufficient learning ability or growth motivation, etc.
Therefore, we are not pessimistic. In the face of competition, we remain ambitious and have enough flexibility. I believe many startup teams feel the same way; some may even be more combative than us.
In the past two years, many AI hardware products have emerged in the US. When launched, they were stunning, and people even called them “next-generation AI hardware”. But after one or two years, many turned out to be more noise than substance. What do you think about the opportunities for truly breakthrough products?Wyman Chen:I think we need to distinguish between two types of innovation. One is the “creation from nothing” innovation that everyone expects, which you refer to as “new species”. The other is the more common and pragmatic—incremental innovation.
As a business operator, I am more concerned with the second type. Because truly creating a disruptive product that no one has ever seen is extremely difficult, with immense pressure and a very low probability of success. Looking back at those companies that have become very large, they almost never succeeded solely because of “new species”.
Huawei’s early switches were in a category that European and American manufacturers had been working on for decades. BYD’s products are also not the first of their kind. These companies succeeded not because they invented completely new species, but because they did better, stronger, and more robust in existing categories.
Therefore, I hold a reserved attitude towards “geek-style products”. The geek spirit certainly has value, but its value is more about “inspiration” rather than “scalable commercialization”. Geek products rarely sell tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of units. They are more like the source of a waterfall, bringing inspiration, but the parts that can truly become mass-market products are the results absorbed by others.
Startups must first survive and be responsible to the organization. Investors give you money, and you need to tell a story, but the story cannot be detached from reality. Ultimately, it still relies on revenue and products that truly solve problems. As a business organization, we need to ensure continuity—how to proceed in the short term, how to expand in the medium term, and how to build capabilities in the long term, all require a combination of strategies.
For example, we also keep up with various cutting-edge technologies internally; they are more like “geek projects” within the company, used to judge future product directions, computing power needs, and component choices, rather than products that need to be sold immediately.
Many listed companies produce very ordinary products, perhaps just making a power bank or a small appliance, but they still achieve billions in revenue and successful listings. The business opportunities you can truly grasp often come from meticulous observation. You may only be solving a small problem, but if there is long-term value behind it, it could become the starting point for you to enter a larger market.However, the startup journey itself is highly accidental—what you observe, coincidentally, this industry is large, all carry an element of luck. But regardless of the size of luck, as long as your capability radius continues to expand, you will definitely reach a larger space.
Now, mobile imaging has become very powerful, and in many scenarios, it can basically replace cameras. Is there still a need for these new smart imaging devices?
Wyman Chen: I think we can compare it to a phenomenon everyone is familiar with: every so often, chip companies (like Qualcomm and Huawei) release new generations of chips, claiming lower power consumption, stronger computing power, and more transistors integrated. Battery energy density is increasing, and endurance is getting stronger; theoretically, we shouldn’t need power banks, but the reality is— the stronger the phone, the more demand there is for external power sources and accessories. Because our usage needs are also increasing in tandem: watching high-definition videos, gaming… the “savings” in power brought by chip and battery advancements are quickly consumed by new demands.
Imaging devices are the same: Mobile phone cameras will become stronger, but user expectations are also rising; while phones can “do a little bit of everything”, they find it hard to excel in any specific dimension. At this point, the value of specialized smart imaging devices will become prominent.
So there’s no need to fear that mobile phones are a “steel flood” that will crush other industries. As the mobile phone industry matures, it will drive the development of the entire industry chain, including optics, acoustic devices, sensors, automation, upstream and downstream supply chains, and talent. These capabilities can be “transferred” to categories like cameras and camcorders.
From this perspective, the more competitive the mobile phone market becomes, the more beneficial it is for us. As long as it continues to advance, and as long as the industry chain continues to upgrade, we can “capture” some of that capability to serve our products.
For more exciting content, please click on the “Read the original text” at the bottom of the article to listen
About the Company:
In August 2016, with the mission of “communication without constraints, a better world”, five passionate engineers gathered in a small workspace, hoping to leverage the power of technology to create an intelligent mobile collaboration space for every value contributor; this was the beginning of everything.
Today, EMEET has transformed into a global leader, primarily engaged in the R&D, production, and sales of AI-driven intelligent audio and video communication products and cloud services.
As of now, EMEET has obtained over 200 core invention patents and other patents in the audio and video fields in China, the United States, Japan, and Europe, with business operations spanning the globe, serving over 3 billion people.
Please leave a comment to tell us about an interesting AI hardware you recently discovered.For entrepreneurial projects related to hard technology and biomedicine, please send your BP to [email protected]
