Dialogue between Qin Tianyi, Director of ZhenFund, and Wu Yujun, Founder of Qbit: to be a Growth Partner for Brands Going Overseas
2022.08.11

"Qbit is Yujun's third venture. If "founding a company" is regarded as a discipline, Yujun already has a lot of experience and his own sense of rhythm. For this venture, Yujun chose the FinTech field with the most intense competition and the highest density of talents in the global market. It was destined to be a challenging journey from the very beginning. Let us listen to the story of Yujun, and hope that the storms he encountered and the choices he made can inspire you."


——Investor of Qbit

Qin Tianyi, Investment Director of ZhenFund



Qin Tianyi : How did you choose this entrepreneurial direction?


Wu Yujun: I have started several businesses before, and what I have learned from it is that to make a great company, you should choose a track with incremental growth and a high ceiling. At the same time, this thing should be suitable for you to do and match your ability model. Basically, it is to choose the direction of entrepreneurship according to these two criteria.


In the second half of 2018, it is judged that the domestic mobile Internet dividend is basically over, and the domestic market continues to roll in. At the same time, a large number of outstanding talents, product operation capabilities, and supply chains will inevitably go to overseas markets. Digitalization and globalization will be one of the major trends and important entrepreneurial themes in the next 10 years.


My hometown is near Yiwu. There are many cross-border sellers in Yiwu. At that time, many bosses did Amazon a few years ago, and they also achieved a scale of 100 to 200 million. During the communication with them, I also learned about the dividends and some pain points they are still facing. They're both good seed users for a cold start. I have studied, lived and worked in the United States for 8 years, and I still have some understanding of the banking system in Europe and the United States. The team is also relatively international, which makes me feel that we have the capability model needed to do this.



Qin Tianyi :What is Qbit’s thinking on creating and iterating products?

Wu Yujun : The difference between Qbit and well-known financial companies such as PayPal and Stripe is that we are actually a neobank that moves traditional banking business from offline to online, that is, a digital bank. Our most significant advantage is to help customers achieve one-stop management of global funds conveniently, efficiently and at low cost.


At the beginning, there were almost no such products in China, so our goal was to make this product from 0 to 1 first, and let customers use it. The most difficult stage at the beginning is to connect with the bottom of the bank. Our product construction is based on many traditional banking basic capabilities. To integrate these capabilities, we need to obtain some licenses first, and then pass the bank's layers of audits, reach cooperation, connect to APIs, and so on.


It takes a long process to connect each module. We will choose to run in small steps. In 2020, it will be the first to launch the "Quantum Card", which is an overseas spending management product featuring virtual cards. Cut into the market segment through it. Instead of fully accessing all banking functions, start entering the market.


In addition, we pay great attention to "differentiation", which includes product differentiation and customer group differentiation. For example, the most common cross-border e-commerce group on the market is Amazon sellers. Some companies are offering Amazon's payment collection function. And our product focus will avoid these customers, and we will not want to make similar products and enter the market through price wars, which is meaningless. Taking the "quantum card" as an example, compared with cross-border collection companies that make products for Amazon sellers to get money back. After we understood the pain points of independent website sellers, we made products that allow independent website sellers to "spend" money .



Qin Tianyi : Can you share with us the best example of Qbit products helping customers solve problems?


Wu Yujun : Many crowdfunding customers have found us.The pain point is that the crowdfunding platform requires that the project must have an overseas company entity and a corresponding local


As for overseas bank accounts, anyone who opens an account knows that opening an overseas account requires a corporate legal person to handle it in the counter, and the whole process is very cumbersome. Crowdfunding projects are equivalent to being stuck in the neck.


The global account we launched last year can solve this problem. Customers can register an overseas bank account through our pure online, and it can be opened within 1 day at the earliest. And the account we open is a real bank account, which is the same as the account opened by the customer offline at the counter. Compared with the common virtual accounts on the market, the funds of the real account are stored independently, which is more secure in terms of security, and there are more paths for receiving and paying. The Qbit global account is equivalent to an enhanced version of the bank account. As long as it is within the scope of compliance, there are no geographical and scene restrictions for receiving money. In terms of payment, we can not only satisfy multi-currency payments in different countries, but also directly settle foreign exchange in RMB.


We have also considered customers who do not have an overseas company entity. Qbit can provide company registration services. Customers can directly register companies online with Qbit, and open a global account directly after completion, which is very convenient.



Qin Tianyi :FinTech is a traditional strong field for European and American companies. How will Qbit establish its own competitive advantage on the global stage in the future?


Wu Yujun : In the past two years, a large number of shopping patterns of global consumers have shifted to online shopping. Cross-border e-commerce has developed from a new format of China's foreign trade to a new normal, and the cross-border e-commerce industry has also entered the stage of brand development.


In addition to overseas brand marketing, overseas logistics, fiscal and tax compliance and other services, overseas capital flow has always been one of the most critical elements of new infrastructure, which is closely related to the target country's financial system (including financial formats, clearing and settlement systems, payment environments, etc.), in many areas such as economic development and cultural consumption (payment methods, payment preferences, etc.) are interlinked.


Compared with traditional FinTechs, Qbit is a company that engraves the concept of global localization in its development genes. In order to better adapt to the trend of Chinese brands going overseas, Qbit will make full use of FinTech innovation capabilities, adhere to the concept of openness and win-win, and integrate world-class global network architecture, industry-leading risk control technology capabilities, professional localized service experience, etc. Open output to enterprises, so as to accelerate their globalization process and help them seize the opportunities of digital industrial transformation.


I have always believed that China's going overseas is a particularly good thing, and Qbit also hopes to release its FinTech capabilities. At present, Qbit's product layout has been extended to the entire chain of global payment, supply chain financing, overseas financial management, BaaS services, etc., which can meet the personalities of different types of customers, such as cross-border DTC sellers, small and medium-sized foreign trade customers, and large enterprises at different nodes It provides a one-stop safe and convenient global financial infrastructure to help Chinese enterprises make steady and long-term progress on the road to globalization.



Qin Tianyi :What are your expectations for the globalization of Chinese companies?


Wu Yujun : In fact, the epidemic has actually promoted the overall thinking and desire of manufacturing companies for digitalization. After quite a few customers were locked at home, they calmed down and began to think about the company's long-term development strategy, so they found us to do digital layout and transformation.


Compared with the United States, the globalization of most Chinese companies is still in its infancy, especially China's new economy companies. Because of the big waves of the mobile Internet, it has only been ten years. However, the global market is giving back to young Chinese companies.


Let me talk about two things first. One is that China’s cross-border e-commerce big sellers have accounted for 40% of Amazon’s big sellers; the other is that Shopify, an independent e-commerce site, has increased from 1.1 million merchants to 1.7 million last year alone. , the newly added merchants are mainly engaged in cross-border e-commerce. We can intuitively see the determination and belief of Chinese enterprises on the road to globalization.


"Globalization is localization" Concurrently, build a new generation of multinational enterprises. In this process, Qbit also hopes not only to play the role of a pure service provider, but to fully empower cross-border e-commerce companies with accumulated global localization capabilities, and become a growth partner for brands going overseas. We believe that it is precisely because of the many long-termists who believe in "globalization" that Chinese companies will advance bravely in the tide of globalization.



Qin Tianyi :Who is your most admired entrepreneur?


Wu Yujun : When it comes to this content, I admire the persistent entrepreneur, "Silicon Valley Iron Man", Elon Musk. From PayPal to Tesla, to SpaceX, SolarCity,The Boring Company, Neualink, OpenAI...Elon Musk is used to looking at development from the perspective of engineers, and can always disrupt "high-energy innovation".


From the perspective of universal value, Elon Musk hopes to stimulate the public's interest and make people regain their enthusiasm for science, technological innovation and the unknown. From a personal point of view, what has influenced me the most is the "first principles" emphasized by Elon Musk. I really appreciate his words, "Everything is possible, don't worry about success or failure, attack with all your strength, ordinary people can also choose to become extraordinary people."


Every year that Qbit has experienced, we have used an innovative and differentiated product function to complete the puzzle of Qbit digital banking. We paranoidly believe that the future cross-border ecology is no longer limited to selling goods on the platform. The existence of Qbit Neobank is not only the need for modernization or mass production of applications, but also the result of rethinking the banking model, which is  a microcosm of FinTech trends and innovations.


Qin Tianyi :On the road to entrepreneurship, what kind of self-learning and error-correcting habits do you have?


Wu Yujun : The most effective way to constantly reflect on every step of verification development is to communicate with the outside world: communicate with outstanding entrepreneurs in different industries, and learn from each other regardless of industry and company scale.


Internally, we have an extremely candid communication culture. I will communicate with the project leader one-on-one on a regular basis to communicate some problems, challenges and recent thinking. I will also report the progress of my OKR (objectives and key results) at the monthly business meeting, and inform all employees of the company about their completion, so that the goals are clear and transparent.


In addition, I also like to pay attention to all kinds of cutting-edge technology, not necessarily related to my current field. Daily news, sometimes read some papers, and write code to realize it by yourself.



Qin Tianyi : You often bring your company colleagues to exercise together, what inspiration does exercise bring to you?


Wu Yujun : It is a cliché that starting a business is a long-distance race, so what if you are not in good health. So bring your colleagues to exercise together, so that programmers don't just write code all day long, and can work in good health for 60 years.


In fact, the most painful point for CEOs is the need to "delay gratification" at work. Most of the time, the CEO is dealing with the most difficult things, and the things that others can't handle are left to you. The company's progress is also staged. For most of the month, I may not feel any progress, let alone any sense of satisfaction. And many things will feel out of control.


At this time, I think exercise is a good way to adjust my mentality. For example, fitness can be completely controlled by oneself, and with dedication, there will be good results. I can feel some good changes every week, which can well make up for the sense of accomplishment that I didn't get at work.