Lightstone debuted today, and a former roommate from university has been working inside for many years, leading the hardware development of a particular product.

Regarding expertise, Lightstone’s core business is sports cameras, which is most closely related to his undergraduate major: Automation. Automation is a broad field; during his sophomore year, it was divided into smaller specializations. Regarding his former roommate, there were two groups – the first group were freshman roommates, and the second group were sophomore roommates, who were re-assigned when the majors were split up. Our specialization covers embedded systems, engineering automation control, and circuit design—basically a very diverse range.

Overview

After graduating from university, four people went in four different directions. Although they were all majoring in automation, each person’s choice was unique. It happened to be a fortunate coincidence that the four roommates – myself and three others – had briefly reunited in Shenzhen for two years. I was assigned to the Shenzhen branch.

• Myself As I’ve written in previous articles, I started working in financial IT immediately after graduation, always focusing on Hong Kong and US stocks. The related business content updates on the site are relatively infrequent. To put it another way, while I understand the business and have some knowledge of it, it’s not deep enough. I’ve consistently done transactional-related work, and later expanded to maintaining and monitoring system bottom-layer communications, doing a lot of miscellaneous tasks.

• Roommate A It seems he started in Ningbo, working on HVAC hardware sales, then moved to Shenzhen. I don’t know the details of his previous jobs, but he jumped to ZTE once, leaving during his probation period before it even ended, and then worked at Yijing Technology for several years, leading the R&D of a certain sports camera’s hardware.

• Roommate B I don’t know his background experiences, currently involved in automotive hardware R&D in Wuhan, having done so for many years.

• Roommate C Currently working at Vanke in Shenzhen, doing construction supervision for real estate.

Life Choices

I’m not really sure about the regrets of the other two, as we haven’t been in much contact – the last time I spoke to them was when they were leaving Shenzhen. We had a chaotic dinner with three “idiots” (a playful term) for our friend from Wuhan, and I made him a video call.

Back during university, several of us always said, “I shouldn’t have gone into automation; I should have gone straight to the computer science department. I really loved writing code here, and we won’t go into detail about why I didn’t choose computer science – I’ve written about it in previous articles.”

Now that I’m this age, money is an unavoidable topic. When I left Shenzhen, it was because of the high housing prices, with the intention of settling down in Hangzhou. Due to a lucky coincidence, I never settled in Hangzhou and instead worked in Shanghai for income. It was fortunate that I didn’t buy a property at a high level when Hangzhou’s houses were being absorbed. When I left Shenzhen, it coincided with the hottest period for Chinese-American stocks. I jumped from one company to another and received a salary increase, but lacked clear industry understanding: domestic lead flow is a gray area, with policy risks. Simply put, I circumvented the Hong Kong Connect and traded directly in Hong Kong and American stocks. In 2021, the government abruptly shut down domestic lead flow, causing Chinese brokerage firms to transform and their Hong Kong and American stock businesses to shrink significantly. Basically, in finance, you must comply with regulations.

Regarding the reason for writing this article, Jieson Group surged dramatically – 270% – leading to an offer from within the company to subscribe. The specific amount here is not discussed. I can only say that Roommate A’s down payment on a house in Shenzhen was likely secured. Although we didn’t delve deeply into this subscription matter, I was also tempted to subscribe through his channels, but the scale of the investment was too large and I couldn’t handle the risk. Ultimately, Roommate A chose a safer subscription scheme.

We don’t have much capital, so we can’t withstand large losses; even if we could endure it, what good would it do to throw in fifty and try our luck? This kind of opportunity might not come around again in a lifetime.

Life Choices

To say I haven’t made any money in the past ten years is a lie – I do occasionally envy those who make more, and this decade has been happy because I’ve done what I wanted to do, without experiencing any workplace bullying or manipulation.

Real estate inevitably brings up the topic of money; after all, a 30% down payment is sitting there, and whether you can make money depends not only on your effort but also on the industry’s cycle and whether it can trend upwards. That would have been an opportunity to invest in Jushi (影石), as they were early on, focusing on overseas products while their domestic reputation was still lacking. The circle of Hong Kong-American stocks had become accustomed to a relaxed lifestyle, and I’d essentially given back most of my specialized skills to the school.

It’s a rambling mess; it’s hard for young people to understand an entire industry, let alone formulate ten-year career plans.

Going Global with Products

To make money in foreign trade, the same products can sell for 1,000 RMB domestically, 3,000 RMB abroad, and even more. Considering the current intense price competition within China, it’s even more advantageous. Jingjie (JingShi) and DJI have already started focusing on the panoramic camera sector.

Both Jingjie and DJI, aside from leveraging the advantages of the Shenzhen industrial chain, product going global is also a crucial factor. The domestic market is fiercely competitive with severe price wars, while foreign markets offer higher prices and larger profit margins, making it easier to survive in the early stages.