Slash Youth Ruff: Blockchain is Just Natural for It
Slash Youth Ruff: Blockchain is Just Natural for It
Applying IoT OS to IIoT, implementing customized solutions, launching Ruff Chain, Ruff rising high … Ruff seems not like a serious start-up company, and Roy Li seems not like an entrepreneur struggling for the survival of its firm at all; instead, he is quite fit for a trending term: slash youth.
Different from ordinary technical entrepreneurs, apart from labels such as a hacker and tech pundit in the tech circle, Roy Li appears more like an “internet celebrity” in the tech circle. He is followed by 100,000 fans at zhihu.com, worked as the person in charge of OVI open platform of Nokia Symbian system, and then founded Ruff. From cellphone OS to IoT OS, he has accumulated knowledge and understanding of OS ecosystem over a long period, and thus developed Ruff naturally.
In contract bridge, Ruff means to “play a trump card”. Roy Li is a member of Canadian youth team of contract bridge, hence the name of “Ruff”. At the initial stage, Ruff was dedicated to the development of IoT OS, defining hardware with software and bridging software and hardware. And now, with “Ruff Chain”, it has been extremely popular in the circle of blockchain and token. In such an age when ideas like “changing the world” are likely to be laughed at, it seems that Ruff follows the trend to span industries, but, upon thorough consideration, it just continues with the concept of “doing what you think of and making visible what you’re doing” in another way.
Ruff has been engaged in IoT OS, implementing IIoT, customized IoT solution, access to factories, robots, energy and PV, and extended to seamless connection with blockchain. It is really a slasher now, but still, it has never forgotten why it started; instead, it makes it more concrete and visible to more people.
Thus, for Ruff, blockchain is a quite natural thing for it. It is so explained in the white paper of Ruff China: the blockchain-based distributed ledger may provide Ruff-platform IoT applications with support of trust, ownership records, transparency and communications. With the gene of IoT, Ruff is born to be a medium for blockchain.
Apart from at the business level, Ruff itself is a firm with its own “background music”. There are several questions and answers about Ruff at zhihu.com and lagou.com, all of which are long articles full of deep love and natural praise, indicating that the company has really high requirements of its employees’ writing skills.
Exercising with planks for males and swan arm gymnastics for females are common midday activities in the company, not distinct from standing-style working in big companies. Also, the nearby gyms are exclusively used by the company’s female employees. Not only the company, but also all employees are ready to be strict with themselves at any time, just like those who are just about to start their careers. I have to mention that, it is a long-term policy for the management to devolve the power over time. Only with good health can employees work better for the company.
In such an age of emphasizing balance between input and output, Ruff will absolutely not only consume physical strength. Monthly birthday gatherings, TGIF monthly summaries and the status of cabinets full of snacks remain to be daily welfares 365 days a year, which results in blatantly undermining of social stability in joint-work environments. I have been frequently asked by counterparts from other companies: “Why are guys in Ruff always eating?”
Instead of changing the world, change our meals first. After all, the boss — Roy is also such a person whose work efficiency is supported by snacks.
In all, employees’ welfare is the first productivity in the long term. In this company, where the recruitment passing rate is only 1%, the leave of one employee will cause great loss to the company. Since its foundation, new forces have been continuously added into Ruff, but almost no old employee leaves.
Nowadays, it seems to be an unavoidable path for so-called celebrities to be labelized after attracting public attention. To be an entertainment company, IoT company, technology company or internet company? — it seems difficult to labelize Ruff, since you’ll never know what Ruff will do in the next step, which may unavoidably surprise you.
Similarly, the life experience of Roy Li is also hard to ponder. A legend has gone like this in Ruff: Roy was among the first trainees to South Korea. If not due to his gift for hacker, there would have possibly been an awkward-sounding name on the list of idols years ago, probably on the same page with “Han Geng”: Roy Li. After that, he worked as director in Nokia North America and later went back to China, starting Ruff and engaged in something that seems amazing and yet incomprehensible to outsiders.
For Roy Li, Ruff has been like an obsession. From the initial intention of breaking the barrier between internet and IoT, to proving the applications of IoT in different fields with his practice, and to copying and utilizing the gene of IoT in the field of blockchain — it seems that, Ruff has never deviated from his own track, and still advanced with a thinking ahead of others. Perhaps, in the world of clever guys, no one can really see clearly, but they constantly create surprises.
And, as bystanders, we also expect new changes in the world to be brought about by Ruff.