GeekDance | Building Shenzhen's Most Trusted Tech Service Team for a Decade

Hello everyone, I'm the founder of GeekDance. Before founding GeekDance, I was an architect at Alibaba, deeply rooted in the tech field for many years, and later went through several entrepreneurial ventures. Perhaps the Alibaba experience left a deep impression on me, as I carried forward the good cultural values I felt at Alibaba—"Customer First," "Practical and Reliable," "Continuous Review"—into the development of GeekDance. This has become the foundation that allowed us to grow from an initial small team of a dozen people to where we are today.

In August 2015, a group of us—tech professionals from Alibaba, Tencent, and Google—came together with a simple initial intention: to build a company that "doesn't just sell technology, but understands business and is reliable."

At that time, digital transformation wasn't yet a buzzword in the industry, but we already realized that the future competition among enterprises is essentially a competition of "technology implementation capability." Our "big company genes" happened to provide a safety net for this capability—for example, Alibaba's technical framework, Tencent's product thinking, Google's global vision, and those proven excellent values all became GeekDance's "initial assets."

A decade later, our original intention remains unchanged, but we have added a clearer mission: to be a trusted digital strategy partner for enterprises, with the principle of "using technology to help businesses do business well and grow together."

I. Core Advantages: More Than Technology, Understanding "Solving Real Problems"

Over the years, people often ask us: "What are GeekDance's core advantages?" I rarely start by saying "how many technology patents we have" or "how many projects we've done." Instead, I first talk about "how we understand customer needs."

In my view, digital transformation is not simply "installing a system for a company," but "helping a company embed technology into every aspect of its business." It's like a doctor treating a patient—you can't just prescribe medicine; you must first understand the patient's constitution and the root cause of the symptoms. Only then can you cure the disease.

For example, last year we served a logistics company. Initially, they said they wanted "a delivery system." Our special team of solution experts and technical consultants didn't immediately start development. Instead, we conducted in-depth interviews with the customer's delivery manager, sorting team leader, and even frontline delivery personnel, gradually mapping out the entire process from cargo arrival, sorting and classification, order dispatching, to final sign-off. We also retrieved their delivery data from the past three months to analyze which steps took the longest and which areas had the most delivery complaints. We also recorded common issues raised by frontline staff, such as "route duplication during dispatching" and "after sorting, cargo doesn't match the delivery area, requiring re-adjustment."

Through this round of systematic research and requirement alignment, we discovered that the customer's real pain point was not "lack of a system," but "the gap in the 'sorting-dispatching' link in the existing process causing inefficient deliveries." So instead of building a complex full-process system, we developed a targeted "intelligent sorting-dispatching linkage" feature—when scanning cargo, it automatically matches the delivery area and recommends the optimal route based on real-time traffic conditions.

Half a month after launch, their delivery efficiency improved by 30%. The person in charge repeatedly said: "This is the most useful solution. And working with you is not simply 'we pay, you code'; it feels more like having a tech-savvy partner who understands the business."

This "practical problem-solving" approach actually comes from the "results-oriented" mindset of big companies—we never show off technology for its own sake; we only care about whether technology can create value for customers. This is what GeekDance has always insisted on: technology is a tool, and the essence of business is the goal.

II. Technical Deep Dive and Team Growth: From a Dozen People to Shenzhen's TOP3 Technical Service Provider

Over the years, we have invested over 80% of our resources in R&D. On one hand, this continues the big company's requirement for "technical depth"; on the other hand, it ensures technology can flexibly adapt to the needs of different industries.

For example, when integrating smart hardware, we don't just connect hardware like facial recognition and smart access control; we use Alibaba's "full-chain thinking" framework to help retail companies think about "how to optimize store traffic through access control data" and help manufacturing companies calculate "how to reduce downtime through equipment data."

When providing AI services, as one of the first teams in China to integrate ChatGPT, we don't simply connect APIs. Guided by the "customer first" philosophy, we help education companies design "how large models can adapt to teaching scenarios" and help customer service teams figure out "how AI responses can retain a human touch."

To date, we have grown from a small team of a dozen people to over 200 members. With this technical accumulation and service philosophy, we have ranked among the TOP3 technical service providers in Shenzhen. We have served over 100 enterprises and completed more than 100 high-end projects.

Seeing the average operational efficiency improvement of our clients, I am more convinced: Good technical service is never a "one-time delivery" but a "long-term companionship for growth"; a good partnership is never a "one-off deal" but a "mutually trusting technical partnership."

III. Values in Action: Embedding "Reliability" in Every Service

Our team is our most valuable asset, and the team's foundation is the big company values we have inherited and refined—this is also the confidence that earns customer trust. Among GeekDance's over 200 members, more than 60% have over 8 years of software development experience. What is most valuable about them is not their "big company resumes," but their "ability to implement 'customer first' in every detail."

For example, Alibaba's "review culture": after each project, we gather the technical, product, and business teams to review "what went well and what can be improved," and we document good strategy frameworks for reuse in the next project—not to save time, but to provide customers with more mature solutions.

Another example is "customer first." We often say, "Professionalism is an obligation, but service is the barrier to winning the future." This is not just a slogan on the wall but a principle reflected in concrete actions: when a customer has a limited budget, we help them identify "which features are essential now and which can be iterated later," rather than recommending the most expensive solution; after a project goes live, we proactively follow up on its effectiveness and even remind them, "There are new compliance requirements coming up; would you like us to help optimize the system?"

There was a startup in pet supplies that wanted to add a "nearby pet hospitals" feature to their app but lacked resources. We remembered that a medical company we had previously served had relevant channels, so we proactively connected them—these things seem "beyond the contract scope," but in our eyes, it's about helping customers solve real problems and accompanying them through the transformation hurdles.

Once, a team was working overtime until 2 a.m. on a system upgrade for a client. The client messaged, "No rush, you can do it tomorrow." Our technical lead replied, "You're launching a new business next week. We'll work a bit harder to not delay your progress."

IV. Keeping Up with Tech Iteration: Using "Foresight" and "Responsibility" to Maintain Reliability

Over the years, we have established three R&D offices globally and set up a "technology lab" with one goal: to ensure our "reliable" capabilities keep pace with the speed of technological iteration. After all, to help customers navigate their transformation journey, we cannot let them fall behind due to outdated technology.

For instance, when ChatGPT first opened its API, our lab conducted three months of testing, mapping out "adaptation scenarios for different industries" and "data security boundaries" to help customers avoid pitfalls. When smart hardware emerged, we proactively connected with over a dozen reliable hardware manufacturers, using big companies' supply chain management thinking to help customers avoid the hassle of "hardware-software incompatibility."

In this era of rapid technological iteration, "continuous learning" is not just a personal requirement for employees but a survival rule for the company. One of our core values is "dare to be first." In my view, it doesn't mean "dare to do what others haven't done," but "dare to take responsibility for the long-term interests of customers": rejecting solutions that yield short-term results but are useless in the long run, willing to spend time helping customers polish truly implementable systems, and even proactively offering low-cost optimization solutions when customers adjust their business. This is key to how we grew from a dozen people to over 200 and became a TOP3 player in Shenzhen.

V. Customer Trust and Future Blueprint: From "Partner" to Pursuing Shenzhen's TOP1

Someone asked me, after running a business for so many years, what am I most proud of? It's not the growth in scale or the rise in industry status. It's that last year, when a client from Shandong invited us to their annual meeting, the boss said on stage: "GeekDance is not our service provider; they are our own digital team, a technology partner we can walk a long way with." Another client told me: "We've worked with many tech companies before, and it always felt like 'the project ends and we part ways.' But with GeekDance, it's different. You proactively ask if we need to adjust the system for subsequent business, and you help us think about how to use technology to reduce costs and increase efficiency—that's what a long-term partner should be like." This feeling of being trusted as a partner is more precious than any performance metric.

But our goals go far beyond that. In the future, we aim to rise from Shenzhen's TOP3 to TOP1, expand our team from over 200 to over a thousand, and ultimately take the company public. But these goals are not just fantasies—"Being Shenzhen's most reliable technical service team" has never been an empty slogan; it's something we practice in every project. From understanding the business during the first requirement alignment, to following up after project launch, to adjusting together when business changes, every step solidifies this trust.

I believe that with this commitment to "reliability," in the next decade, we will not only achieve breakthroughs in scale and industry status but also make "GeekDance" synonymous with "the trusted choice for enterprise digital transformation," helping more companies achieve real growth through technology.

VII. To Enterprises Undergoing Transformation: What We Offer Is a "Reliable Path Tailored to Your Business"

If your company is also considering digital transformation—whether it's just starting from scratch or needing to break through bottlenecks—feel free to talk to us. We may not offer you the "most dazzling technical solution," but we will definitely provide the "most business-aligned, reliable, and practically implementable solution." We don't just want to be your "one-time technical service provider"; we want to be a long-term partner who can navigate market changes and achieve business growth together with you.

After all, this is the original intention we inherited from Alibaba—to treat customers' affairs as our own and customers' growth as our goal. This is also the foundation for us to thrive in Shenzhen and the industry in the long run—to exchange sincerity for trust and reliability for the future.