The founder of Shenzhen’s billion-dollar unicorn company was “dismissed”!

Nut Projection, a big company in the projection industry, recently underwent a personnel change. Its founder suddenly "left due to illness." However, people in the industry have different opinions about the truth of the matter.

The chairman of Nut Projector was dismissed due to business failure and unpaid wages of one million?

This is not the first time in the industry that a board of directors has kicked a founder out of a company. Previously, due to Apple's declining performance and chaotic corporate management, the 30-year-old Steve Jobs was voted out by the board of directors he founded. Now the same situation seems to be happening.

Some time ago, JMGO Projector Co., Ltd. issued an announcement: the founder resigned from the position of chairman due to health reasons, and wrote a paragraph affirming the role of the chairman in the company in recent years. It seems to be a scene of a good meeting and parting, but the fact is not the case. The real reason for the founder's resignation has also been widely rumored.

Before the company's announcement was issued, some media reported that the chairman was dismissed, and this statement was also recognized by industry insiders. Some even reported that the founder himself was kicked out. Even though the founder emphasized in his WeChat Moments that everything was fine with Nut Projector and that he resigned as chairman only due to health reasons, asking netizens not to over-interpret, it still failed to convince people.

Instead, more inside information was exposed. An internal employee revealed that the dismissal of the founder of JMGO Projector was related to the previous VR startup project, Shanghai Jinglan Technology Co., Ltd. He said frankly: "The Shanghai Jinglan project failed, the product was not launched, and the company began to lay off employees due to poor management, and also owed wages, compensation and payments to suppliers to many employees."

As we all know, VR is a high-capital, high-tech project, and the time, money, and R&D required are naturally a huge investment. However, Shanghai Jinglan took too big a step. An internal employee revealed that the company had already started marketing, commercial advertising and other businesses before developing a prototype, and even hired a lot of sales staff. However, in the end, the product was not launched and it was left with a lot of debts. This may be an important reason why Shanghai Jinglan is in such a mess.

On the relevant website, you can see that Shanghai Jinglan is affiliated to Shenzhen Blue Whale Century Technology Co., Ltd. In 2022, Shenzhen Blue Whale added the founder of Nut Projection as chairman, and then withdrew a year later. Although Shanghai Jinglan and the founder of Nut Projection have no direct relationship on the surface, according to internal employees, all decisions of the company require the approval of the founder of Nut.

The editor learned that Shanghai Jinglan is involved in many labor disputes, personnel disputes and compulsory executions, and the company currently has no property available for execution, but the founder of JMGO Projector has promised several times to cover the company. However, industry insiders generally speculate that the current public opinion and litigation of Jinglan have affected JMGO Projector, which is in the sprint stage of listing.

There are rumors that the investors of Nut Projector collectively want to sell the company, but the founder does not want to sell Nut at this time. However, after the founder is dismissed, Nut may also be sold jointly by investors, and the founder will use the sale of Nut Projector shares to solve the problem of overdue wages owed by Shanghai Jinglan.

So what is the current development status of Nut Projector?

After 12 rounds of financing, can Nut Projector successfully IPO?

As one of the top three manufacturers in terms of market share, JMGO belongs to Shenzhen Huole Technology Development Co., Ltd., which was founded in 2011. The company has been focusing on the research and development and production of smart projection equipment. JMGO is a unicorn brand under the company. It has not only achieved impressive results on domestic platforms such as Tmall, but also made a name for itself on Amazon overseas with its high-priced pricing strategy. Some industry insiders have said that its total number of users ranks first in the world.

In 2022, the shipment volume of projectors in China reached 5.05 million units, and JMGO Projector ranked third in the category. In 2023, JMGO Projector was in a state of rising against the trend, and its market share increased from 10.1% in the first half of 2022 to 16.1%. Smart projectors have entered a fast-growing lane, and the JMGO Projector, which has been singing all the way, has also been favored in the capital market.

It is understood that JMGO Projector has a round of financing almost every year, and the amount of financing is usually over 100 million yuan. At present, JMGO Projector has completed 12 rounds of financing, and its investors include IDG Capital, Alibaba, OPPO, Yuanda Venture Capital and other well-known investment institutions in the industry, with the highest investment amount reaching 1 billion yuan.

Obviously, investors bet heavily on JMGO Projector in the hope of giving it a boost and making it go public successfully. However, after a long time, JMGO Projector still has no substantial progress, and investors have lost patience.

From 2019 to 2022, the market share of JMGO Projector was 8.1%, 10%, 7.5% and 7% respectively, with a slight rise and a sharp decline. The performance of JMGO Projector obviously did not meet the expectations of investors. The online sales share of JMGO Projector also gradually declined from the peak of 20.6% in the first quarter of 2020. Even if it rebounded in the fourth quarter of 2022, the share was still low, with a market share of only 9.1% in the first quarter of 2023.

At the same time, the sales volume of projectors in the first half of this year was 2.791 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 7.3%; the sales revenue was 5.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 15.4%. The decline in both sales volume and sales revenue also made many industry insiders believe that the industry has reached a turning point and the heyday of the projector industry has passed.

The sluggish industry market and declining market share have obviously dealt a heavy blow to capital. The important point that made capital completely lose patience was that the company was at a critical stage of going public, and the founder was still in the mood to develop his own VR industry, which obviously distracted the attention from the company. At that time, Xgimi Technology, which was in the same period, had already landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board as early as 2021, and its shipments were also higher than those of Nut Projector.

According to Qichacha, the industrial and commercial information of JmGO Projector has not yet updated the information of the change of chairman. It is still unknown whether the recent events will affect JmGO Projector's listing. However, it has been a long time since the last round of financing, and JmGO Projector has not yet made any substantial IPO moves, which inevitably makes people wonder whether it is as rumored: it is going to sell JmGO Projector.