Ex-ByteDance And DJI Veterans Build Ski Sensors. Vertical Beats General. Obvious, Really.
Heygo, founded by Wu Dezhou in 2022, placed two sensors on ski equipment to deliver AI-assisted training feedback. The founder, previously a partner at Smartisan and general manager of Huawei Honor's product line, concluded in 2024 that general-purpose AI glasses belong to smartphone manufacturers and startups cannot compete there directly. His team, staffed by former employees of ByteDance, DJI, and Tencent, pivoted toward outdoor sports scenarios following an embodied intelligence approach with mobile robots.
This illustrates the principle of domain narrowing as competitive moat. When incumbents control the horizontal platform, the rational strategy is to dominate a vertical niche where their generalized advantages become irrelevant. The mechanism is vertical specialization. It is Strategy 101, yet somehow lost on most founders chasing broad AI.
Heygo, founded by Wu Dezhou with a team drawn from ByteDance, DJI, and Tencent. They chose outdoor sports over general AI hardware after determining the latter belongs to phone manufacturers.
- Pick a consumer fitness app with sensor integration, such as Strava paired with a phone accelerometer, and record a run. The goal is to see what basic motion data capture feels like.
- Review the automated splits and cadence analysis the app generates. Notice which metrics feel useful and which feel decorative.
- Write down one sport-specific feedback gap the app misses, like ski turn timing or swim stroke symmetry. That gap is exactly the kind of vertical niche Heygo exploited. You have just done market research without spending venture capital.