"影石 Insta360": With a 67% global market share, based on intelligent imaging technology, from a campus startup to an annual revenue of 4 billion.
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
In 2024, "finding a reliable job" and "recruiting reliable people" remain mutually troublesome problems. We firmly believe that, aside from traditional large companies, there are still a large number of employer companies in the market that are in line with the dividends of the next era, waiting to be discovered. The potential of the track, business logic, personnel situation... Mastery and insight into this information determine the vision of job seekers in choosing a company, as well as the quality and depth of interview communication.
Anonymous company gossip may be helpful for job seekers to avoid risks - but those career opportunities with scarcity and growth potential should not be missed because of an aimless comment on the Internet. In the spring and autumn seasons with a large volume of recruitment, 36Kr @Workplace Bonus uses a professional scoring model to screen out a batch of "dividend companies" that are recruiting for on-site factory visits, combining multiple perspectives of investors and headhunters to ask questions to employers, bringing you a "one-article understanding" of the recruitment reports of dividend companies.
"Come to the office wearing sandals" ╱ 01
The recruitment team with double the staff ╱ 02
About 「Insta360」, you can also learn these ahead of other job seekers ╱ 03
Workplace Bonus has learned that the intelligent imaging technology company 「Insta360」 (hereinafter referred to as "Insta360") is currently conducting its autumn recruitment in 2024. Both campus recruitment and social recruitment positions are open, covering multiple positions such as algorithms, technology, products, marketing, and e-commerce. Among them, production and research positions are the key demand positions, and the recruitment quantity ratio of R & D positions to other positions is approximately 1.5:1. This year's campus recruitment positions have opened the SP offer special session for the first time, and the academic qualifications and abilities of job seekers will be comprehensively considered. Social recruitment positions are open throughout the year, and the work locations include Shenzhen, Shanghai, Zhuhai, and Dongguan.
From a small start-up company with dozens of people to the current scale of more than 2,000 people, Insta360 is about to usher in its tenth year. In 2023, Insta360's revenue was nearly 4 billion yuan, achieving a doubling growth for two consecutive years, and the proportion of overseas sales revenue was as high as 80%, mainly in the European, American, Japanese, and South Korean markets.
Adhering to the concept of "helping people better record and share life", in 2015, Liu Jingkang, who had just graduated from university for one year, led the entrepreneurial team to establish Insta360, focusing on the research and development of panoramic imaging technology, and committed to creating the best 360° panoramic camera. At the beginning of its establishment, the panoramic camera was still a relatively niche market. With the development of VR technology and the increase in the demand for panoramic content, the panoramic camera market has gradually attracted attention. At that time, the domestic electronic consumer market was highly competitive, and even some large companies crossed borders to make cameras. For this reason, Insta360 decided to go overseas to find the market.
From initially making panoramic cameras to deeply cultivating the vertical field of sports cameras, Insta360 has also experienced the pain after the product sales growth. When making panoramic cameras in the early stage, although the product had a certain sales volume, like Samsung and Ricoh at that time, Insta360 did not thoroughly study when customers most needed panoramic cameras, and what the target population and target scenarios were; in addition, facing a strong competitor like GoPro, the product line of Insta360 at that time was relatively single, and the brand awareness was low.
Since 2018, Insta360 has invested in the research and development of AI automatic editing technology, and independently developed AI imaging functions including AI editing, automatic framing, and depth tracking. The development of its anti-shake technology FlowState has made the company more competitive in the process of expanding the product line.
During the interview with Insta360, we saw some relatively fresh situations: When it was lunch break, the lights in the entire company were turned off, and some employees would gather in the meeting room to have a meal while watching "Empresses in the Palace"; some employees would find an open space in a room, put a camp bed, put on headphones and start enjoying the lunch break (there would be a unified light to wake them up)... It is reported that the company has also held some unrestrained activities, such as "rewarding employees who lose weight with a 1 million yuan bonus pool" and "giving engineers gold keycaps on Programmer's Day" - this is also an embodiment of the "Think Bold" concept in the workplace of Insta360.
The corporate culture of "Think Bold" seems to be in line with people's impression of the founder Liu Jingkang. This founder, known as the "product 'hacker teenager'", graduated from the Software Institute of Nanjing University and was awarded titles such as "Technology Emperor" and "Standard Brother" during his school years. And the corporate values that recognize innovation and exploration have also become one of Insta360's expectations for recruiting talents.
In recent years, with the continuous growth of the company's business, its number of employees has also shown a rapid expansion trend, and "the rapid expansion of the company's scale" is almost the physical feeling of all Insta360 employees. Jane, the strategic recruitment of the Human Resources Department, told Workplace Bonus that the company's demand for talents will still show a growth trend in the future.
"We like people who are creative, have a strong sense of purpose, and have a challenging spirit." Jane told Workplace Bonus that the company is looking forward to the top talents in imaging-related technologies, and experts related to algorithms, embedded systems, hardware, software, and products to join.
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
"Come to the office wearing sandals"
In August 2022, Jane switched from the headhunting industry to the client side and joined Insta360 as a recruitment HR. In the past two years, the number of employees in the company has increased from the initial 1,000+ to the current more than 2,000. "The growth rate exceeded 50% last year," Even she laments the rapid expansion speed of the company, "It feels like we have to move floors every few months."
Ten years ago, when Insta360 was first established, there were less than 50 people. "When I first came, there was nothing. It was a pure college student entrepreneurial team." Alvin, the deputy engineering director, joked. He joined Insta360 in September 2015. Recalling the situation when the company was just established, Alvin admitted that at that time, Insta360 still had problems such as imperfect systems and incomplete personnel, and even many office tool-like things, as well as the product testing process, had to be developed from scratch.
"Tired" and "bitter" may be the common impression that the label "start-up company" gives people, and Insta360 is no exception. "In the early years of the company's establishment, the founder often sent messages in the group at three or four in the morning, and it was normal to work overtime with everyone." At an annual meeting one year, the photos shown by Liu Jingkang recorded the scene of everyone sleeping on the floor in the company during the sprint period.
In Alvin's eyes, Liu Jingkang is not only a young and reliable helmsman, but also the kind of founder who "will come to the office wearing sandals" and is pragmatic in handling affairs. This is also one of the reasons why he chose to leave Huawei and join Insta360. When the number of personnel was still small, the company structure was flat, and almost all major and minor decisions needed Liu Jingkang to make the final call, and even the salaries of core personnel needed to be managed by him uniformly.
"Hacker teenager" Liu Jingkang became popular on the Internet for cracking the password of the chairman of 360 Company through the phone keypad sound during his school years. Although he had heard about the founder's deeds earlier, during the one-hour interview and communication, Alvin still couldn't help but sigh, "He is very smart and very interesting."
Perhaps it is also because of the early "one-person decision-making" management mode of the company that there is an inseparable connection between Liu Jingkang's own characteristics and the corporate culture of Insta360. Surprisingly, in addition to the positive adjectives commonly used to describe Liu Jingkang such as "smart", the description of him by old employees also includes "willful" - or more precisely, it is also a whimsical idea, which is the cultural gene of "Think Bold".
"There are many young people in the company, with a high degree of freedom, and a strong atmosphere of innovation and exploration, which provides a lot of space for personal growth." Different from being a "screw" in a large company, here, Alvin can truly perceive the close connection between himself and the product and realize his own value. This is another important reason why he chose to join Insta360.
Another senior imaging algorithm engineer, Carl, described to us the mental experience of creating products with heart: Part of it is your hard work, as if your soul is injected into its soul.
Since 2020, the company has been continuously expanding. If decisions always rely on the founder, it is destined to affect the decision-making efficiency and communication between the upper and lower levels. After realizing that the management mode must be reformed, Liu Jingkang gradually delegated power. Now, on the one hand, Insta360 begins to focus on using quantitative data for decision-making, and on the other hand, it also pays more attention to whether the technology can be implemented and bring substantial improvements to the competitiveness of the product.
In addition to the reform of the management mode, employees are also constantly adapting to the new changes of the company. "Before, when the number of people was small, everyone worked together, and the boss could manage everyone by himself." Alvin noticed that after the company's personnel scale expanded, the company's processes and systems were also gradually supplemented and improved; and in the process of independently undertaking a certain technical section, he also had the opportunity to lead the team, share management and decision-making.
The once "willful" founder Liu Jingkang is also changing with the growth of the company. "Now, most of the company's decisions need to be based on data, and decisions cannot be made relying on personal judgment."
Interestingly, even though the work is busy, Liu Jingkang still finds an outlet to be "willful" on the product: This year, the Mid-Autumn Festival gift box given by Insta360 to employees is full of a strong sense of technology, with a black cube appearance, and a box interior landscape with holographic projection and data interface. The whimsical idea of the gift is not without a special kind of warmth and blessing.
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
The recruitment team with double the staff
The expansion of personnel is a sign of optimistic development for the company; for the internal recruitment department, it means many challenges.
The recruitment team where Jane is located has doubled the number of staff compared to when she first joined. Not only that, the main task of the original team was to solve the urgent business manpower needs, and now it is gradually shifting to recruiting "higher-value and high-priority roles". "In the past, the majority of external recruitment needs were to serve the manpower gap of the business. In the past two years, the company has also added many high-level recruitment needs, and there is an urgent need to introduce talents who can raise the company's ability ceiling and bring high value to the business."
Such talents usually require a lot of effort to recruit.
Jane still remembers that not long ago, she finally found a very suitable candidate. In order to help the other party successfully join the company, she spent 1 - 2 months communicating patiently with the candidate, and also provided free consultation and guidance when the other party encountered various problems before joining the company. "The entire recruitment process lasted for 3 - 4 months, and it felt like a tug-of-war." Recalling this, Jane sighed that this is also a psychological training for HR. During the process, they need to constantly adjust their mentality. In the face of high-level excellent talents, the human resources department needs to position itself on an equal footing for communication, so that the evaluation of candidates can be fair enough.
According to Jane's recruitment experience, the portrait of high-level recruitment candidates for Insta360 is "creative, with a strong sense of purpose, a challenging spirit, a clear career cognition and planning, and a very strong value orientation." In addition, job seekers with an entrepreneurial background will be more favored by Insta360.
Although the company is constantly growing, compared with large companies, "Insta360" is still a relatively unfamiliar name. Despite the objective situation of competing with large companies for talents, Insta360 will not lower its standards for talents. Carl explained, "We insist on better to have fewer but better-quality talents, and we have high requirements for people."
Rarely, as a start-up company, Insta360 has always maintained a relatively low turnover rate. "Less than one-third of the employees who joined with me at the same time have left." Alvin told Workplace Bonus that many colleagues who joined the company at the beginning of its establishment have an 8 or 9-year length of service and are still in the company.
Employee benefits are one of the important conditions for personnel stability. However, in addition to the immediate project bonuses and year-end bonuses, the ideas of Insta360 employees are also highly valued. "Every year, the company conducts an enterprise satisfaction survey for employees and will make improvements based on the employees' feedback." Jane added. She still remembers that once, a colleague commented on the company forum that they wanted dolls, and the administrative colleagues saw it and immediately added a claw machine in the company. In addition, each office floor of Insta360 has a free snack cabinet, coffee machine, ice machine, beverages and alcohol with unlimited supply, and various creative activities such as the "Million Bonus Weight Loss" and the "Creative Slipper Contest" are held from time to time.
With the expansion of the scale, the recruitment orientation of Insta360 is also beginning to change. Jane revealed to Workplace Bonus that the company previously focused more on business-oriented talents, and starting this year, management talents are also equally important.
About 「Insta360」, you can also learn these ahead of other job seekers
● Workplace Bonus Factory Visit to 「Insta360」
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)