It’s as simple as taking Lego, Treelab uses “no code tools” to process cross-platform data｜GGV Investment Notes Issue 52

At the age of 20, Berkeley dropped out of school and founded Treelab. He wants to do things that minimize the cost of regrets.

Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account ” GGV GGV capital “(ID: GGVCapital) , author: GGV investment notes.

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Recently, the cloud custom collaborative office platform Treelab (www.treelab.com.cn) announced that it has won the Pre-A round led by GGV Jiyuan Capital, and the investment led by Wuyuan Capital (formerly Morningside Capital), GGV The Pre-A+ round jointly invested by Jiyuan Capital and Mingshi Capital totaled nearly 10 million US dollars in financing. This round of financing will help the team further promote product iteration, function expansion, and improve the sales and support team.

Treelab was founded in 201_c4b57763883942d1bc67f385e581cb25_img_000″ data-img-size-val=”750,163″ style=”letter-spacing: 0px;”>

The idea brought by a “beaten”

I started writing code when I was in high school, but the purpose of writing code and software at that time was to solve the digital problems faced by my family business.

My parents’ company is engaged in the clothing supply chain. There are many factories located in Vietnam, Shanghai, Shandong and other regions. Each factory has its own ERP system. On the other hand, we also do business with many American brands. Will also come into contact with various suppliers. At this time, we discovered that at that time, some of our colleagues were working on excel every day.

The use of data in the apparel industry is very diverse and flexible. Each brand, supplier, factory, and retail terminal requires different data. Nearly 100 employees are constantly receiving various PDFs, Excel, to organize the data, make a quotation, and send it to the supplier, not to mention the countless revisions in it, and every revision must regenerate excel.

After discovering this pain point, I wrote a piece of software when I didn’t know what to call it at the time, so I simply called it “data warehouse”. Its interface is like online excel, business personnel only need to enter data into excel, and the system will synchronize the data to the ERP systems of different companies. In other words, the front end of this product faces users like an excel, but the back end of the product is actually a database. During the opening process, it is not difficult to write code. The difficult thing is that I need to understand the entire clothing supply Chain Line Needs to communicate with each relevant brand,Time to investigate the Chinese enterprise service market. The main market in this market is Dingding, Feishu and other collaboration platforms, Teambition and other lightweight task management “Kanban” products, Funshare Sales and other management software based on a specific industry, also There are customized financial software such as Kingdee Yonyou. Finally, we found that although there are very few products that bind Airtable to their products, their functions are only to meet the needs of business managers and become very important. In my understanding, the ultimate form of “codeless programming” is to let users create it themselves.

In this way, I brought Derek back to China to start a business together.

Independent financing for “freedom”

Why are you so anxious?

We observed the development path of the benchmark Airtable: it was founded in 2012, and its early development was actually very slow, and it was considered by many to be a niche product. It was not really fast-scaled until 2018, and now it exceeds 4 billion. U.S. dollar valuation and preparing for an IPO.

I actually calculated it at the time: the years when most SaaS companies in China started their business corresponded to their beauty.When the national benchmarking company just reached the unicorn level, that is to say, almost 7-8 years later than the US benchmarking company. 7-8 years is the growth cycle of a SaaS product. But why is it exactly 7-8 years? This is related to capital. Once capital sees products like Airtable in the United States, everyone will look for potential mainstream tools in the Chinese market in the next 7-8 years.

In other words, if I don’t start a business today, the period of creating a codeless productivity tool is about 2-3 years, which is enough for a SaaS company to establish enough barriers to prevent new players from entering.

After returning to China, as a standard no-code productivity tool, Treelab’s strategy is to “synchronize” and find customers while developing products. I think working behind closed doors is particularly dangerous, especially since the threshold for using “codeless tools” is very low, ranging from a restaurant to as large as A major Internet network manufacturer is likely to use this product, so it needs richer scene experience support. But from the perspective of enterprise development, I want to try to focus on the field of supply chain management. Once Treelab can manage such a complex scenario, it verifies the potential of this product. On the contrary, for this group of Internet users, the willingness to try it out is high, so there is no need to worry too much.

Treelab’s first customer is Decathlon, in fact, I needed to talk about my “data warehouse” The first external customer of Decathlon was Decathlon, and they were already using the “data warehouse”.

However, I quickly realized that customers who use Treelab to manage complex supply chain fields usually have a lot of requirements, some of which are extremely vertical, and even ERP or BPM products should do. Although we have carried out some vertical functions to meet the needs of some customers, we have also made a lighter product more and more heavier-just like some SaaS companies that we have surveyed and seen, compromise in order to acquire customers.

So I made another decision at the time: to raise funds. Financing means that I do not need more income from the product at this stage, but can safely improve my product. If we want to make Treelab’s product as flexible and lightweight as imagined, we must have enough time to persist, not to customize for customers, and to think about problems from the perspective of users, not from the boss Think about the problem from a different angle, accepting that customers pay less or not, and change from “customization” to “standardization”.

Although the SaaS market in China is different from the United States, I still believe that in China, a general-purpose software like Treelab can gain a market. WeChat is our example. Its product complexity or “thickness” is very well controlled. A novice user can only chat without using a small program, and a deep user can use many of its additional functions.

And I believe that young Chinese people’s perception of software is changing. Why do many people learn python? Their core purpose is not to write software, but to improve their skills. In the future, using software to analyze data, carry data, and build databases will become a skill. Especially when the post-85s and post-90s gradually become managers, they will attach importance to the skills of their employees, will also choose new management tools, and will no longer purchase which products because of their good sales relationship, but choose Software that can really solve your pain points.

However, another consideration for financing is that If you really want to create a cross-epoch product, you must have enough courage and get the approval of the capital side.

We started financing at the end of 2019. Although many people came out of Berkeley to start their own businesses, for someone like me who is an engineer, I have hardly been exposed to VC. After returning to China, I began to search for financing. Because my network was too narrow, I could only upload the rudimentary business plan to the “Upload BP” button on those VC websites. I even called the front desk of a famous VC to remind the other party to check it. My BP. But I waited for two or three weeks, only one VC respondedmail.

Although we were very anxious, my partner and I didn’t think too much at the time, nor did we regret that we gave up a lot of things. Now that this matter is in the right direction, all we can do is not let ourselves regret it.

When “the second generation” becomes a real entrepreneur

As a “second generation”, subconsciously, I think I will definitely start a business, and I should always start a business. My parents are multiple entrepreneurs and have sold the company twice. Now they are working on some new projects. Interestingly, they are also in the financing stage recently.

Family background gave me the courage and courage to drop out of school and start a business. When I mentioned to my parents about dropping out, I also thought about what to do if I failed, but they asked me: What is the purpose of going to school? Just to fix these courses? Will taking a few more courses really help you better find what you want to do?

Indeed, I admit that going to school is fun. University is a highly free place where we can learn whatever we want with our best friends, but it may be a waste of time for those who already have clear goals. . I remember my mother said to me: No class can be taught about entrepreneurship. The best class is the pit you stepped on. The business case of business school is difficult for entrepreneurs to truly believe, only oneself People who do the wrong things and recruit the wrong people will gain experience.

When I returned to China, I gradually felt the difficulty of starting a business. Management is the biggest “pit”. At the beginning, I didn’t spend enough time on recruiting people. I was busy writing code every day because I thought it would be faster if I did it by myself, and I didn’t need to explain it to others. Later, I found that if I find the right people, the company will develop much faster.

There is also recruitment. I once thought it was a waste of time. Sometimes I talked with myself three times, but the other party still didn’t want to come. But now I realize that recruiting is very, very important.

I even want to establish a management SOP and management process as early as possible to ensure everyone’s work arrangements, but this is not right for early-stage startups, because the startup’s strategy may change.If you establish an SOP today, your reporting line may change tomorrow. But conversely, a good corporate culture is very important to a startup company. It allows everyone to focus on the company’s strategy and mission, and the development will be smoother.

For me, every day I start a business, I feel new things. China’s data ecology is relatively closed, and it is also an ability to gain the trust of some important potential customers and to obtain data interfaces. But access to resources is also a barrier, and what we can do is to build our barriers and run as quickly as possible.