Quite an nteresting interview Dave! It's thought provoking to hear from the founder of a company who was very much involved with the design of his original products, and has now moved into new and different areas of responsibility. Many thanks to Mr. Qin for his willingness to visit the lab and speak.
That was really interesting to get some insight from Eric. What a really "down to earth" guy for a CEO! Thanks for the video Dave and Eric - I enjoyed the interview very much!
Great interview, very impressed with Mr Qin and his company and product knowledge, always good to see , and dare I say it , refreshing from upper management. Created a very favourable impression for me of the company as a whole.
I think this is great. Why is everyone bashing a Chinese company that is trying to have a social presence in the United States? The more involved a company is with its customers, the more inclined those customers are to buy a product and the more inclined the company is to provide a high quality product. My Siglent oscilloscope for the price is really a very decent quality. I praise this company.
It's great to gain a little insight into how these products are made. They are amazing value for money - so much complexity behind such a friendly interface.
I imagine his written English is fantastic but I have to admit; his accent was a touch too heavy for me to readily understand. I think however this is mostly due to the fact I do not talk to many native Chinese speakers; and I find I could understand him better the longer I listened. What I could catch of his conversation though was very interesting - 5 years to build his company up from nothing in 2006 to where he was competing with all the other manufacturers at the end of 2011 is pretty damn impressive. A 5 year sales life for instruments is cool. It makes sense but it is still surprising that it is that short considering how long these things tend to last in service life. Also I would love to see what Siglent would do in the handheld market; given their customer focus I think their handhelds would be in high demand.
It appear Tequipment no longer sells Siglent equipment, despite vouching for them during the EBay fiasco? Actually, there are no authorized distributors in the USA? At least Siglent's website indicates that.
my experience says: a person who has money and a company but no technical background thinks only money and underestimate and undervalue technical stuff; on the other side, technical backgrounded bosses know to give value to deserved ones.
+EEVblog the problem is for people that already have problem with English because is not natal language, after of years of hearing you now I understand Aussies. but this is almost imposible
+Mariano Gaston I'm a native English speaker (American) and trust me, it doesn't seem to be helping. I'm picking out a few words here and there. A transcript or subs would be great. I try to listen but I'm just missing too many words.
What a great interview to conduct Dave! Really interesting stuff. The fact that he would come to you is very impressive (not to down play your impressive stature in any way). To not speak through an interpreter is even more impressive on his confidence in his product & company, his personal ideas and his willingness to appear transparent and approachable. That's not lost on me as I have had plenty of meetings with business leaders in China to know just how difficult and closed they can be. From a marketing perspective, this move on Siglent's part is very forward thinking and inclusive. He gave plenty of detail on his technical approach without stopping you from asking anything proprietary. It's a very smart move and one I'm sure many will appreciate. I'm sure many will look at Siglent in a whole new light as a result.
SouthJerseySound Agreed. Especially impressive that he's talking about very technical things. I can ask how are you, where is the bathroom, and do you have any siblings in a handful of languages... I can only talk about bandwidth and sampling rate in one at the moment.
The CEO popping into the EEVblog lab for a chat! Respect! Lots of great off-the-cuff questions from Dave too. Seriously Dave, with >6 years of vlogging experience and your AmpHour podcasts I think you've mutated into something beyond an engineer. I've really enjoyed watching the evolution and am proud to be an EEVblog fan.
+ForViewingOnly Thanks, it was really a very off-the-cuff chat. I didn't get my calendar reminder in time and had forgotten!, and there they were knocking on my door! So I just hit record and made up some questions as we went along.
+Thiago Coura yes, its unfortunate that it's costing me a lot to fully understand him, in any case, i think it's very very cool that a CEO takes the time to visit a video blogger, shows how YT has become an important tool for manufacturers
It's great that you did this interview Dave. You did a great job at framing the questions in an easily understandable way without sounding condescending which is very difficult. I did have a hard time understanding him but it was interesting nonetheless.
I'm working for international company and his accent is acceptable comparing to my colleague's from china :D I got after two sentence's that's yellow is "you know" :D
+Jack Johnston I study engineering. I tried so hard to perfect my english, but from the looks of it, accent is not a really big issue in the industry. Well, it is a relief. Now I can just chill and focus on other stuff.
Just to clarify things up... In central China (Hubei, Henan, etc.), people often have trouble differentiating L and N sounds. So what happens is that they pronounce N sounds as L. This is just their dialect. It is noticeable not only when they speak English, but also when they speak Mandarin. That's why he's pronouncing You Low, instead of You Know.
This is exactly the attitude, direction and foundation that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started out with. All my gear is HP, Fluke and Hitachi but I will certainly examine & consider Siglent products if this guy is for real.
Excellent Interview. This guy is inspiring. I love the fact that his success is based on engineering knowledge and hard work, not just on being ignorant employer. Yolo from Poland.
Dave, excellent interview. Have become aware of Siglent capabilities thanks to your videos. Upgraded my lab with Siglent DMM, AWG, and Scope for my HW design consulting business. Also recommended a Siglent scope to a customer to perform their own measurements. Previously, I've been in 3 startups and only one had a CEO that reminded me of Mr. Qin. Interestingly that was the only successful one. We went public in 2007 and then was bought out by a competitor (behemoth) in 2010 that took 5 yrs to get us off the market while recovering their investment. Gives me hope that not all CEOs are cynical greedy sociopaths.
First of. Thank-you Dave and Thank-you Eric Qin. I really liked the interview. Yes as an English only speaker it was not perfect. However the products are great and I can not speak Chinese so this was a 1000 x better than me learning or trying to understand his native tong. Mr. Eric Qin I truly respect all your effort and wish you the best of success, thank-you again.
Love how there's always some people that freak out about an accent. Enjoyed the interview thank you. It was very interesting that all his engineers were Chinese, and he seemed surprised when you asked about foreign engineers. Also the wages going up, boom time in China!
I got out of the business of purchasing test equipment in 2005, and wasn't familiar with Siglent until seeing your tear downs. This was an interesting change of pace. It would be great to see you interview hardware or software engineers in the future.
Great video! He has a strong accent but hats off to him for speaking english quite well - My wife is learning Chinese and the two languages are very different. Anyone that is a CEO, electronics engineer, and can speak another language as well is inspirational in my mind.
Nice and interesting interview. I own a Siglent scope and the only complaint so far is - please hire tech writers from the area you plan to distribute in. Manuals are sometimes difficult to understand. Other than that I like my Siglent scope.
Well done Eric on coming on the EEVBlog and talking about Siglent. It was an interesting interview and you did a lot better with your English than we would have done with our Chinese. He certainly comes across as a very genuine 'engineer' type - customer focused, understanding what he is selling. I thought he gave a good answer to the 2nd hand market question..
Dave, thanks for this interview. Very interesting that as CEO, Eric Qin is not concerned about possible revenue loss due to firmware hacking to enable better performance.
I am very impressed with the amount of gross being spent on R&D, I also have respect for people who have a strong engineering background in what ever they are selling. Hope they do well, I will be taking more notice of their products.
Since this man has the moxy and guts to be interviewed, plus the fact that he has opened his US presence right here in Ohio, giving employment to Ohioans means it's a slam dunk for me that I will be buying his equipment.
By 2020 30% of all engineering graduates will be from China. We should all maintain an awareness of how China's electronics industries are growing -- the amount of R&D dollars spent, the amount of intellectual property developed, patents, academic research papers, etc. Hopefully Mr. Qin has a quality evangelist (a Chinese version of Dave) pushing the envelope on product quality and innovative design.
Nice visit :) Is the first time when any CEO is come to EEVBLOG? He is so smart! He know where his company can get some reviews and what else. Btw, He give You some original "do not open label" ? :))) Just for the future teardowns :) Greetings from Berlin ! Guys please stop the gigling around his accent and Yolo. Try to speak on his language. They will laugh on You :)))
If you want to understand why there is such a thing as software limitations given a single hardware platform, imagine producing something complex like a scope. You buy components in bulk to reduce cost. By limiting bandwidth in software, you allow say a 50MHz scope to sell at a lower price point for the hobbyist market. At the same time a company can sell the same hardware to another high end market at a higher cost... How else do you cover all bases and recover r and d cost? 100+ engineers working around the clock for several years? Yeah, it adds up. Put yourself in their shoes. They're not out to screw anyone, they're in a business to make money and I think they're doing a damn fine job catering to the hobbyist market with a modest profit margin. Good for you Dave in having him on the show.
+Liam Baker I can see that. In practice it makes sense to maintain one branch of hardware and/or software development to keep things simple. I work on a global software team using an svn server to update and commit code and we always try to keep to a single trunk and never branch without good reason. We work on dozens of different hardware platforms (robots) with different kinematics and its just easier to maintain with a single core or kernel. Same goes for hardware - luckily I'm the only hardware dev guy, but even then I have a hard time keeping track of all the changes. I try to keep the same core across all products. Those chip designer guys I'm sure follow the same logic. It takes a couple of months to get a design through the fab, maybe a month if they run a super-hot prioritized lot, and typically a lower yield until the process is dialed in. That's a lot of cash, so better to design in options from the beginning! And its worth mentioning that some of those lower yield chips towards the edge of the wafer can still be useful, though they might be slightly out of spec. I heard back in the day that Radio Shack used to resell edge yield stuff (eh crap) that would otherwise be scrapped. Don't know how true that actually is, but I wouldn't be surprised at fabs trying to squeeze every last penny out of a wafer.
I think it is awesome for Mr Qin to come on here for what seems to have been an impromptu interview. I find it nice to learn a little more about how a company came about and grew to a successful international business. Great job on the interview Dave. Thank you.
Dave amazing job, superb question. You are a inspiration to many... Thank You very very much for all the videos, and please keep them coming Zdenek (Slovakia)
That was really very nice. Makes me immediately look up SIglent products and it was informative! This is a whole new level for the EEVBLOG! Excited to see what comes next!
Thanks Dave for this interview. I allready have Siglent scope, and after this im even more interested of their products. Most likely im going to buy Siglent Spectrum analyzer next
He's an exec but really he's a tech geek and that's the cool part. Nice products. Just read through the comments on our guests English. How's your Mandarin or oscilloscope building skills? No way to treat a guest. Very good English.
Thanks for the interview, I just stumble on this video you had with the CEO of Siglent, I feel very confident to buy my first Siglent scope when I see the CEO him self back then is a designer and now he trusts his engineering team to move forward. I have a hard time with his english so subtitle was accurate helpful, yours questions were gracefully dismissed but overall the guy spoke in truth because as an engineer myself, I can smell BS miles away.
I'm glad to see a successful tech company like this. We could see that this honourable man is very humble and transparent. I wish to him and his company all the best!
Any manufacturer who has a legit after sales service center AND provides customers with a service manual including schematics get my vote!!! I think Siglent is doing a damn fine job, I cant say the same about Hantek!!!
Very informative. I would be happy to speak Chinese as well as he speaks English (still, I haven't gotten used to traditional Chinese cuisine. Good, I'm sure!)
Very interesting interview. It's always a good sign when a CEO comes face to face for his products in a simple way, as did Mr. Eric Qin. After seeing this interview I consulted siglent's website in Europe and ordered a laboratory power supply. Congratulations for your initiative.
Very interesting insight to Siglent, thanks for the interview Dave! Great to see that CEO has time for this kind of interview. For those commenting his thick accent, you should hear when Finnish businessmen try to speak English ;)
(Late now, I know!!!). I was most impressed that a person in his position was willing to explain as much as he did. Unlike companies I used to work for that would 'give away' nothing, in the belief they are 'protecting' themselves from competitors..... Instead of doing what Eric did, which was to be quite open, and 'Set The Bar' for others then to follow or try and match !!! (P.S. No tongue-in-cheek "O.H.L." comments by Dave HERE!! xox)
What an excellent and fascinating interview, Dave. Eric comes across as a genuinely nice bloke, and I thank him for sharing his time and insights with us.
I just ordered a 1202x-e yesterday because of the value.. The thing that put me over the top wasn't the 200mhz, it was that the decoding features that others charge for were included. Best decision they made. And thanks to EEVblog for all the information Dave provides in his videos. Having videos like these certainly play a large role in Siglent's success. Not sure I would have even heard of Siglent if it wasn't for this channel.
I love your videos. I have learned a-lot from them. I am here to inform you that the geekgroup is sending you something to autopsy. Boden is Sooo in need of publicity it kinda saddens me! Please throw him a bone!! He needs to pay his Heating Bill!
