Gou

"Gou set up the officially accredited Foxconn University on the Shenzhen campus, [offering twenty-five majors](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor348), most of which were engineering related. Gou surrounded himself with deputies who worked nearly as relentlessly as he did, driving Foxconn executives to the factories six days a week and then to study sessions on Sundays. In earlier years, they studied engineering principles. One former employee told me that in more recent years, political education has been more prominent, meaning that they have to study the words of China’s top leader. The curriculum transitioned from “Steve Jobs thought” when Shenzhen was freewheeling a decade ago to “Xi Jinping thought” in the more disciplined present."

"Gou began by molding plastic knobs for TV sets, dropping off finished products by bicycle. Then he learned what they connected to and how, so he could make those parts, too. Instead of buying the components that made up a part, he would manufacture them; the more components he could make himself, the less he would have to buy."

"Gou wore a beaded bracelet he received from a temple dedicated to Genghis Khan. The thirteenth-century Mongolian conqueror was a personal hero, and Gou ran his facilities with a similar, military-like efficiency."

"Unbidden, Foxconn had orchestrated its own job interview and demonstrated a willingness to start that day. Hsieh and Gou took the Apple visitors on a tour, showing them a facility with capacity to build an immense quantity of iPods. “Terry’s like, ‘All this is at your disposal. We have all these great engineers. We’ve got all this stuff for you, and we’re here to help,’ ” says a person present."

"Foxconn began offering final assembly on the cheap for the same reason Costco sells hot dogs: It gets people in the door. Foxconn then upended the world of tooling by giving it away for free. That is, Gou would offer to pay the up-front costs of establishing the custom molds, dies, fixtures, and other equipment necessary to start building a product at scale. “That can be half a million or a million dollars,” says a former Apple engineer. “And that was absorbed by the manufacturer—by Foxconn. So Apple just paid for the production parts.” Then Foxconn would work to integrate all procurement, manufacturing, and logistics into a one-stop shop. It made its money back the same way a mobile carrier might—giving customers a free phone but earning fees in a two-year contract."

"As the PC revolution took off in the early 1980s, Gou got in on the ground floor and created a name for himself making reliable sockets and connectors—small components that facilitate communication between different parts of a computer. The *conn* in Foxconn—Hon Hai’s international name—refers to connectors. “Fox” is just an animal he likes."

"Ask Gou’s colleagues, subordinates, and rivals to describe him and there is often a pause. They hesitate to encapsulate such a figure in ordinary language. One rival executive praises Gou as “one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs” and “absolutely charismatic,” but also “scary,” “demanding,” and an “asshole.” He was so multifaceted that any adjective would be true; it just depended on the circumstance. “Any word you need to throw at him—it fits,” this executive says. “Any word.”"

"Another colleague joked, in the early 2000s, that Gou was “worth about $2 billion in nickels and dimes.”"

"But Gou answered to no one. He took a long-term view, knowing that if his team could please Apple, they could please any client."

"Cook, risk-averse by temperament, wasn’t so sure. But prior to the meeting, Gou had already met with Apple engineers in China, who were feeding him details and forecasts that were more optimistic than the views in Cupertino. So Gou made a handshake deal on the spot. He offered to personally facilitate the necessary actions to establish mass production, in exchange for taking all the orders when—he believed—they inevitably emerged. “Foxconn is going to underwrite the investment,” he told Cook. “I’ll build two campuses with Chinese government partners, along with the provincial and central government. And when your volume is there, I’m going to build the products for you.”"