YouSaid · the spoken record

Steven Yang

lines on the record: 76
first: 2021-11-09
most recent: 2021-11-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Generation of kinships. And it's unique as well. So we launched Gantu middle of this year. It's a 65 watt size was like, again, a fraction of the competition now. The reason we're able to do that was actually based on power innovations latest, the newest generation of Kanship. So we've been the sole partner for almost a year developing that. So you'll not be seeing similar products like at least three to six months coming from other brands because we're just working together solely.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when a ship is first developed, a lot of effort or a lot of hops you have to jump through to actually really just make it into a product. And these are not entirely material science knowledges, but like, you know, application knowledge, system architecture knowledge, knowledge about managing heat and other things. So it's almost like a system effort. I think we sort of accumulate knowledge in that end and then just couple that together with the gala nitride chipset manufacturer to just together build it into products. You've seen the gAN2 this year at that size, the 65 watt size and the 30 watt size we've been working with actually power innovations PI for actually almost a year on that. It's the latest generation it's a brand new”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anchor was the first to actually introduce Gallum Nitride on consumer electronics charging. And the way we're able to do that was actually we partnered with the frontier chipset manufacturers who actually developed the Galenitride charging chip. And then we're almost their alpha customer or the first customer.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Gallium Nitride is this key enabling technology, it hit the market three ish years ago. You're already talking about the third generation. Is that something that you have to invest engineering resources in? Is there a supplier pipeline? Is there a material science pipeline? How do you manage that investment?”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this year, for the dual port product, we announced it was mostly 65 watt or up to 90 watt, and we feel that's enough. But looking forward, we feel the multi-port product would probably have to be like 150 watt or 200 watt or even 250 watts because we'll have to support like, for example, a 60 watt phone, like 120 watt laptop. A few other things. That's quickly adding up to 200. So at this powers rating, you really need gallium nitride to reduce the size of that charger. Because I'm not sure if you remember the chargers, the adapter that's coming with the gaming laptops, the big bricks. That That was like 200 watt ish, right? You don't want to carry that 200 watt brick everywhere. So with scallum nitride, we can just make 200 watt in a very small fraction of that size.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talking about charging time. So, the charge time used to be like three hours ish, so it's been brought down to like one hour and 20 minutes-ish with the 20 watt. And then to about 30 to 40 minutes with the 40 to 60 watt. And there are even like more sort of adventurous brand doing like 120 watt, which will get the phone fully charged in less than 20 minutes. And so that's on the phone side. And you're seeing that sort of that competition going on and the phone manufacturers really just sort of escalating on that charging power rating. And then reducing the charging time. That same competition has been moving to laptops too, like super books. It used to be like 30 watt. So now it's ramping up to 45, 60 and up as well. And gaming books, like again, that powers rating were all like going up.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we sold a lot of gang chargers already in the past years, few years, right? And then we launched the second generation, we call them Gantu, earlier this year. So you can now do 65 watt in, again, very small cubic space as well. About actually to launch scan 3 next year, which will bring the size even smaller and to get the power shing higher as well. So as you probably could see, devices are becoming like, you know, Power hungry and charging at a higher speed. So Fonz ten years ago was like five watt. Later it was 10 and Apple has brought it up to 20 and the other Android brand has brought it up to like 40 to 60 watt. I think talking about wattage is like a Not customer friendly approach, right?”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think over time that percentage will go lower because people already get charges hopefully get equipped with anchor charges in different live occasions or scenarios that they need to use charger on. So they could happily skip the bi charger part and just enjoy the devices.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we learned about the fast charging, which could charge from 50% in less than 30 minutes. That's really practical and that's really helpful in our daily lives, right? So when it's not coming in bucks, you've got to get it somewhere. So you go online, you either shop the Apple Charger or you can come to Anchor and get an anchor charger. We're just like a fraction of the size of an Apple Charger. Some people come to us for that sort of efficiency.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, when there's no charges in the box, as already a lot of savings. Right. And then let's say for 100 people we saved 100 charges already And then a large fraction of them, again per survey will be like 50% or even more. So they'll just buy nothing more. But then there are still a fraction of them, especially the chargers that they have were slow charging chargers.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is kind of the e-ways question, right? The idea was we're going to stop putting the chargers in the box. You probably have a charger already. You probably have already had a phone. Might still have a charger. Mandate, or otherwise get the manufacturers to take the charger out of the box. The idea is you're going to use your existing charger and we're going to save the e-waste. You're saying consumers are responding to this by buying a lot more chargers. Do you think that there's been a meaningful effect on e-waste?”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of our charger, the small size, the high power, the durability, as well as the ability to just charge devices from all the brands well.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot more Because the charges is actually a new category for a lot of users. Because for this users previously, there's no categories such as the charger because they just get whatever is coming from the device and they just use that. They don't just buy a charger by themselves. So now as there's no longer charging the box per our survey, about 50% of them still just rely, go back to use their old chargers. Because, I mean, over the years, they've saved some, right? But more and more people start to really just shop and, you know, individual ones. Of course, a large fraction of them will go to the device brand, right? For example, they'll go to buy an Apple Charger or Samsung Charger. But still, that gives us a chance as a third-party charger brand to reach them and to really just inform them the superiority.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Apple doesn't have chargers in the box. Samsung doesn't have chargers in the box anymore. There is this sort of international regulatory pressure. We should talk about e-waste, but I'm curious from nuts and bolts level. No chargers in the box. Does that mean you're selling more chargers?”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In that room, actually talking about how USB-C is going to take over the world and how people are going to really just use a single charger to charge all of the devices and how, because of that, we're going to save like 300,000 tons of e-waste every year. Gladly actually over the years, we're seeing this becoming true year after year, right? So last year, Apple decided to take the inbox chargers out and this year actually European Union is pushing that envelope even more. And in China, there's regulations being established to enforce that the chargers, the protocols are interchangeable as well. So I think this is becoming a really Common sense, or like a common practice to really just have interchangeable charges to feed or our consumer electronics products, which is super.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Start with charging. I have to because we are literally talking on the day that the European Union proposed that everything be USB-C, including the iPhone. You have been on the front lines of USB-C for years. What do you make of that announcement that the European Union is going to mandate this charging standard?”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The non-charging part is growing faster than charging. And last year charging was already like less than 50%. So this year probably around 40-ish percent are charging. And then we have, I think around 30-ish percent in audio, slightly less than 30%, and then a little bit more than 30% in smart home products. It's almost like 333. So charging audio and then smart home.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we're again getting more popular in the China market as well, going listed in there actually definitely helped us to just raise up the awareness part. And also in terms of recruiting that help as well because people now understand that this is, hey, oh, this is a listed company instead of a company that I don't know where it's coming from. Anecdotingly, we're actually much more well known probably out of China than in China.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so for me, it's really no difference. We have a president DP, he handles all the reporting and so on and so forth. So for me, it's like life stays on the same. I don't check our stock prices. Never, ever actually. It's not in my stock app and I've never looked at it. I'm just acting as if we were to steal the good old days.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's pretty good. The other kind of big thing that's happened to Anchor recently, a year ago, you went public on the Chinex stock exchange in Shenzhen. You're a public company CEO now that changes the job. What has changed for you now running a public company?”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which could empower the people from all the world to actually do the categories, you know, do the regional sales work, do the brand work that they would like to accomplish. So, my time actually now is, I would say 80% of my time is spent on this company as a product, rather than individual products. So I was joking, you know, sometimes I discover new products in our press release too.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's actually a great question. And really, I spent a lot of thought on that, so I can share a bit of that. So we are in 15-ish categories till this moment. Complexity among the different categories are just really increasing fast. And also the complexity from multi countries as well, because we're in 30, 40-ish countries and increasing as well. So that complexity is increasing too. So if you multiply that number of category and number of countries together, the complexity becomes really, I would say, hard to impossible to be managed by a single person or even a small team. And realizing that we did much internal discussion and Answer was there's no way we could just manage every category and the business in every region. We have to turn our roles from managing to empowering. So essentially just build a company as a product.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I hope we are still keeping that momentum, but actually, yeah, it's a new categories take a lot of effort to really just get into and do welling.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We like to sink Anchor as a global company. A large part of us is in China actually working on product development, but there are also hundreds of us everywhere in the world. So we have offices in Seattle, in Los Angeles, in Tokyo, in Australia, Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe, and so on and so forth. Product-wise, so we started from charging portable chargers, that's almost the beginning categories. And so expanded into everything charging under the Anchor brand. And later we added audio into our portfolio. So under the SunCo brand, we have Bluetooth speakers and Bluetooth headsets. From 2017 on, we added smart home. So now under the Yuffie brand, we have Cleaning robots as well as actually home security products. And also we have a smart projector subbrand called Nebula. So that's our three plus one brands.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I have talked before. I've interviewed you on the Vergecast a lot of things have happened since then. That was three years ago now. So a lot to talk about. But for the decoder audience, let's kind of start at the beginning. Anchor is one of the more successful companies that makes accessories for phones and computers. You've expanded into other categories like soundbars and projectors and home goods. Tell us a little bit about Anchor, where are you located? How many employees do you have? What are your biggest markets?”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil Patel, editor in chief of the Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week I'm talking to Steven Yang, the CEO and founder of Anchor. Now Anchor is one of those companies that's endlessly fascinating to me. Stephen founded it in 2011, and since then it's turned into a 3,000-person company that operates all over the world by selling phone chargers and battery packs on Amazon. And it's since expanded to other categories like webcams and Bluetooth speakers and smart home products. Along the way, Anchor has pioneered a major advancement in charging technology. You know that little white brick that takes forever to charge an iPhone? It's made using silicon, and it puts out about five watts of power. Anchor made a big bet on using a material called gallium nitride, or GAN, and now it has a charger the size of that iPhone brick that can put out 30 watts of power, enough to charge a MacBook Air.”
2021-11-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why charging phones is such a complex business, with Anker CEO Steven Yang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT