Tragedy of Wang An: $3 billion a month in the 80s, killing Microsoft, and what was hidden after the failure

Tragic Hero Wang An

After World War II, the world entered the era of the 3rd Industrial Revolution, with computers as the core technology, and computer research and development became the pioneer of science and technology, and whoever mastered the computer technology stood on the wind of the times. As the saying goes, as long as you stand on the wind, pigs can fly.

Microsoft's Bill Gates, Apple's Steve Jobs, and these computer giants are the very people who stand in the center of the wind, but they are actually standing in front of a Chinese person, who is called Wang An.

He had created his own computer and storage hardware and other equipment to dominate the world of computers, 1986 peak wealth value of 2 billion, the United States ranked fifth, Wang An company known around the world, creating a Chinese in the United States of America's scientific and technological miracle. But Wang An, like Don Quixote, has been in a one-man war with the IBM computer giant, and finally lost the battle due to poor decision-making, in an extremely sad way.

Bill Gates has recognized that if Wang An can make the right decision, seize the opportunity to transform the success of the words, there is no Microsoft anything. Wang An is like a meteor that crossed the technological night sky, gorgeous, but short-lived, he is a sad hero.

The genius

Wang An was born in Shanghai in 1920, and spent his teenage years in his hometown of Kunshan. He was born in 1920 in Shanghai, and spent his teenage years in his hometown of Kunshan. At the age of 16, he was admitted to the Electrical Engineering Department of the Shanghai Jiaotong University with the first place.

At the end of his career, he met the Battle of Songhu, which led to the total fall of Shanghai.

In 1941, Wang An was forced into exile in the southwestern part of the country, where he was not willing to be left behind, and seven of his classmates used their professional knowledge to design radio equipment for the national army, which was also considered to be a contribution to the country's suffering.

After the end of the Second World War in 1945, the government of the Republic of China sent Wang An as an official student to the U.S. to learn the technology to support the post-war construction.

Wang An was sent to the United States as an official student to study technology in order to support the post-war construction.

When Wang An arrived in the United States, he took a different path. While other foreign students chose to work in American technology companies, he chose to go to Harvard as a graduate student to learn more advanced technology. Vision and thinking determine the height of a person's life. At this point in time, Wang An has only a bachelor's degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University in his hand, but he has set his sights on the world's top university, Harvard University.

The sky likes to favor people who are prepared and bold. Wang An carefully prepared an application for Harvard's graduate program in computer science, and found Harvard University with an attitude of trying.

Inventor of Magnetic Core Memory

At Harvard, Wang met the greatest inspiration of his life, Howard Aiken, the designer of the world's first universal computer. Wang received his doctorate for his extraordinary ingenuity and stayed on to work in his mentor's lab. After that, he had his own patented invention, magnetic core memory.

This is an epoch-making invention, as the original computer storage is made of vacuum tubes, which are both power-hungry and prone to computer crashes, and once the power goes out and the computer crashes, all of the original computer's storage will be gone.


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Magnetic core memory quickly became the standard for new computers. Wang An was not only a technophile, but also very business-minded, and he immediately thought of registering a patent for his invention. But because his experimental program was funded by the US Air Force, Harvard could only apply for a patent on public ****ing health.

Furthermore, Wang An's research results also belong to his mentor's research program, and his mentor did not agree that he should apply for a patent, arguing that computer inventions should be openly offered to the public. Instead of applying for a patent, Wang hired a professional attorney to help him, and eventually he was able to obtain a patent for the use of a portion of the magnetic core's memory.

Wang An's company came out of nowhere to take on IBM

Wang An resigned from the lab after getting the patent, rented a small office for $600 and $70 a month, and set up his company, named Wang An Labs, which started his tech startup. Wang An wanted to change the traditional impression of Americans on Chinese people, had to do something in the front of the technology, to prove to Americans that Chinese people are not only able to open restaurants and laundromats.

But Wang An is not a rookie, back and forth with IBM negotiated more than a dozen rounds, the price can not be negotiated. IBM made a killer, to "pending patent applications" case to blackmail Wang An, Wang An was forced to sell its patent rights to IBM at $ 500,000. This is the beginning of their fight.

Wang An went to the top

Through this encounter, Wang An captured IBM's weaknesses, and as the big companies were slow to respond to the rapid pace of the computer industry, Wang An realized that his small company had a chance to take down his rivals. Many people thought it was a joke that Wang An was competing with IBM, the world's number one computer giant, and that all the other computer companies in the world had less than 1/4 of IBM's market capitalization, not to mention Wang An's hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a small company.

Wang An is just so ballsy. As the Chosen One, Wang An, after more than a decade of lying in wait, finally turned the joke into reality. With the issuance of 2.5 million g-tickets, the market capitalization of the rapidly expanding Wang An company soared by virtue of Wang An's prestige in the computer world and the quality of Wang An's computers, not only paying off its debts, but also dramatically expanding its scale.

In 1975 Wang An pioneered the world's 1st system with the ability to edit and retrieve text, and it was this core technology that allowed Wang An to separate itself from IBM. Since then, Wangan has launched new products such as card recognizers, automatic typewriters, and radio printers, each of which has quickly taken the world by storm and captured the market.

To the early 80s, Wang An has branches in 105 countries and regions around the world, the U.S. headquarters staff reached 30,000 people, annual turnover reached 3 billion dollars. At this time, Bill Gates led the Microsoft is still just a computer world of the little brother, worse than Wang An 18,000 miles, Steve Jobs started Apple's monthly sales of computers only 400 units, the two people are Wang An as the industry leader.

In 1986, Wang An reached the peak of his life, he returned to China was also received by the chief architect of the reform and opening up, Deng Gong shook Wang An's hand and said, "You started from nothing, the family is big, all rely on personal struggle ah" , Wang An at this time has been the richest Chinese.

Wang An, who was in the thunder, also published a book called Lessons Learned, which is the most famous sentence is, as long as you pick up the stone will not smash their feet, over time, will be considered a genius.

Wang An's first mistake

Who would have thought that Wang An's autobiography of the name of the book became the greatest irony of the end of the Wang An company, prophecy. 80's computer industry is the industry's wind mouth, but the industry's market changes in a flash, a little bit of a decision-making errors will be the company The company's success in this area is a result of the fact that it has been the richest company in the world for over a decade. Bill Gates, who has been the world's richest man for more than a decade, has hung on to the phrase that Microsoft is only 18 months away from extinction.

Wang An company in the thunder, from the peak to its bankruptcy in just six years, Wang An's two strategic decision-making mistakes will be the world-famous Wang An company into the land of doom, their own lifted the stone really smashed their own feet.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, both IBM and Wang An produced computers for enterprise and military use, and after the 1980s, personal computers became the new wind, IBM and Wang An are faced with the problem of transition.

IBM, always conservative and slow, took the lead in opening up this time, uniting a group of small manufacturers of personal computers in a group production. These small vendors had limited technical scale and business scope, but they had the advantage that the devices were compatible and easy to use, and had their own software development camps.

In the year these very inconspicuous small brain small producers, one is Apple, one is Microsoft, and the other is ARM. IBM stood firm in the new wave of computer market innovation by holding the group. Wang An, on the other hand, misjudged the direction; he saw no future in developing personal computers, and he strategically positioned the company to develop high-priced machines that were incompatible with personal computers.

Wang An's company produced computers that were incompatible with computers produced by IBM, Microsoft, and other companies, and even monitors were incompatible, which immediately caused Wang An's many customers to complain. This mistake led Wang An to miss the windfall, higher costs and a shrinking market, which severely depleted Wang An's company.

What's worse, Wang An didn't have its own software team. Wangan missed out on the PC boom. After being hit hard by the market, Wang An finally gave up on his lifelong pride and joy of making Lohse desktops out of electrostatic crystals, and went with the flow and started to move to PCs.

The second mistake Wang An made

With Wang An's strong influence in the computer world, the personal computers Wang An produced sold well, and the company gradually rebounded. Blindly optimistic, Wang An thought it was only a matter of time before the company was back on top, and he wanted to fight IBM to the bitter end.

IBM is the U.S. official support involved in the technology and economic lifeblood of the behemoth, a small Wang An technology company, how to fight against the terrible strength of the giant, Wang An is indeed a bit of self-importance. Wang An actually encouraged Bill Gates and Grove, who were working with IBM, to leave IBM.

This is a bit too whimsical, as Bill Gates's mother is an IBM executive, and Grove was once humiliated by Wang An, who rejected him. To add insult to injury, Wang suffered from cancer, making it difficult for him to stay at the helm. Wang An had a lot of computer talent under his belt, but he made the mistake of letting his son, Wang Lie, take over despite the opposition of the Chinese.

This was the second and biggest mistake Wang An made in his life, and it sent his company straight to the brink of bankruptcy. Wang Lie is a Brown University student with solid skills, and has advised Wang An to decisively switch to personal computers, which shows that he still has a certain vision, but what he lacks compared to Wang An is the ability to manage a business from the heart and bring it back to life.

After Wang Li took over, the rough management forced a large number of computer elites, led by Chambers, to leave. Wangan's market capitalization plummeted, losing $400 million a year, after which Wang Lie adopted the strategy of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. He raised the price of his products so much that customers were actually charged $175 for a single consulting call. This move directly killed Wangan, bringing down both its reputation and word of mouth.

Lessons from Wangan

On his deathbed, Wangan replaced his son and put Edward Miller, known as "the business fixer", in charge of the business, in a desperate attempt to save his life. Miller accepted and was credited with reducing the company's debt from nearly $600 million to $12 million.

But Miller did not understand computer technology, stopping the loss at the same time, did not organize manpower for new product development, coupled with the Wang family to Miller doubly guarded, key information is hidden from reporting, resulting in Miller's constraints, the company's new initiatives are always a step slow, ultimately leading to the complete bankruptcy of Wang An in 1992, at which time Wang An has been dead for two years.

Wang An was undoubtedly the most likely candidate to become the world's richest man, but in the end, he fell on his way to the top.

Wang An is a genius, but also a hero, he did not have any background, alone in the U.S. technology sector, mixed with the wind, among the world's rich and top inventors, but he is also a tragedy, the main reason is that he is headstrong, not self-centered, have to hit the stone with the egg, did not feel the pulse of the market, went the wrong way, the difference between the next step throughout the Steps will be messed up rhythm, never catch up.

Going the wrong way to adjust in time is not to the company's bankruptcy, but Wang An confined to the Chinese family concept, can not boldly choose the outstanding manager to helm, resulting in a large number of scientific and technological talent loss, which is Wang An company was the biggest lesson of the latter wave beat to death on the beach.