杭州顶鼎网络科技有限公司 was founded on 9 June 2014, in Hangzhou. The work has not really changed in that time: taking things that used to need a trip, a queue and a form, and making them a few taps on a phone.
Two WeChat mini programs. Between them, more than ten million people have used them.
QunXiaDan (群下单) is for community group buying. A group leader opens a round, neighbours order, goods get collected the next day. It sounds simple until one of four things falls out of sync — orders, stock, sorting, refunds — and the leader spends the next morning apologising to people one by one.
YueKeMao (约课猫) is for classes and venues: booking, and checking people in when they arrive. Get a schedule wrong once and both the coach and the student pick up the phone.
The lesson both of them taught us is the same one: the smaller the screen, the more carefully the books behind it have to be kept.
Our CEO is 夏天, a founding employee of Alipay, with more than ten years across Alibaba and Alipay. He was there before Alipay became part of daily life, and stayed for the decade that followed.
Working on payments leaves a habit that is hard to shake: either a flow closes correctly, or it is not done. We kept that habit when we moved to other things.
The team is small.
An AI initiative. Concretely: taking work where the rules are clear and the steps can be pinned down, and handing it to a system with a model in it — on the condition that the result can be checked afterwards, and undone.
We are also trying web apps: nothing to install, send a link, it runs. This site is one of those attempts.