Lu Qi didn't start a business this year: he didn't do "OpenAI", but he wanted to vote for "OpenAI"
陆奇不做“OpenAI”，但想投出“OpenAI”。
Text: "Chinese Entrepreneur" reporter Kong Yuexin
Edited by Ma Jiying
Image source: Respondents
In March 2019, Sam Altman loudly announced at the "graduation ceremony" of the YC (YCombinator) spring roadshow, "I'm leaving YC and going to a great company!"
Now we know that this great company is none other than OpenAI.
As an old friend who has been friends with Sam Altman for more than ten years, Lu Qi chose another path: to be the investor behind the entrepreneur. Four years ago, in December, Lu Qi announced the establishment of a new brand, MiraclePlus, and led the original YC China team to operate independently. MiraclePlus' incubation and investment ideas follow the model of a global startup accelerator, focusing on early-stage venture capital.
At the beginning of this year, the large model triggered a "tsunami" in the technology industry, Wang Xiaochuan, Li Kaifu, Wang Huiwen and others have said that they will start their own businesses, as the "most powerful Chinese executive in Silicon Valley" in the past, will Lu Qi become the next person to come to the front of the stage?
Until April this year, Lu Qi demonstrated his "large-scale model worldview" to the outside world, and as an evangelist, described the turning point of the times and the impact of large-scale models on everyone to the students of MiraclePlus.
Why doesn't the person who is most likely to build another OpenAI start a business?" Qi wants to focus on Qiji's (investment) business. Miracle responded internally.
A miracle student told China Entrepreneur: "At the current stage of life, I feel that he may be in a state where he is more willing to achieve others. ”
In June, when Lu Qi gave a speech in Silicon Valley, he announced the achievements of MiraclePlus in the past three years, which has invested in a total of 258 entrepreneurial projects, of which 136 are AI-driven startups and 25 are in the field of artificial intelligence and large language models. In the two roadshows of MiraclePlus this year, AI-related projects accounted for the majority.
Will there be a company as "epoch-making" as OpenAI?
In the eyes of an entrepreneur who has received early investment from MiraclePlus, Lu Qi is particularly emotional, far-sighted, and extremely diligent, and is a true Silicon Valley style investor, "He basically only invests in technology-driven companies, which are generally not successful and blockbuster."
In 2023, go all out to catch up with the big models
Although he did not start his own business, Lu Qi was unprecedentedly resolute in following up AI and large language models this year.
Judging from the published data, MiraclePlus is one of the most "aggressive" institutions investing in AI and large models in China.
On the afternoon of November 24, before the start of the 2023 Autumn Roadshow Day of MiraclePlus, dozens of staff wearing MiraclePlus' iconic blue cultural shirts shuttled through the crowd to maintain order. After the team or individual got the identity card, they got together in twos and threes to communicate.
According to the official statistics of MiraclePlus, a total of 67 companies participated in the roadshow day, of which 51 belonged to the field of artificial intelligence, which were related to large models and agents (agents that autonomously understand, plan decisions, and perform complex tasks). At this year's spring roadshow day, there were as many as 82 projects related to artificial intelligence and large language models, more than 1/2 of the total number of projects.
Source: MiraclePlus official website
Throughout this year, most of the energy of Lu Qi and the MiraclePlus team has been invested in discovering new AI projects and helping the team grow.
In order to support the entrepreneurs of these new large-scale model tracks, MiraclePlus has made a lot of moves this year, including Lu Qi himself, the Miracle team and the entrepreneurs of the Miracle Ecology to share privately or publicly. In the past month alone, MiraclePlus has launched 4 open online forums on topics related to large model multimodality and agent applications, and invited more than 10 entrepreneurs from MiraclePlus to share.
After OpenAI's DevDay on November 6, Lu Qi quickly made a private sharing, talking about his judgment, cognition, and research on the origin of the technology and the underlying logic.
In addition to sharing from time to time, Lu Qi also asked the team's interns to collect and sort out information to make a "big model daily", on the one hand, to learn and update information within himself and the team, and on the other hand, to share it with all entrepreneurs in the miracle ecosystem. This action has been persisting since it came out of the large model.
Miracle is not only accelerating the incubation of new AI or large model projects, but also some teams are carrying out the "transformation" of large model + for existing projects.
In June this year, MiraclePlus received the Pre-A round of financing, and its business mainly focuses on the marketing transformation scenarios of enterprise customers in the IM ecosystem, using conversational RPA technology to solve the problems of customer acquisition, conversion and repurchase, and improving the efficiency of private domain operations.
Li Jiarui, founder and CEO of Sentence Interactive, said that in 2019, because AI technology was not mature enough, although Sentence had been a chatbot for many years before that, in order to prevent the company from becoming an AI outsourcing company, the company had made a transformation, downgrading from intelligence (AI) to automation (RPA). After ChatGPT came out at the beginning of this year, they re-upgraded their strategy, upgraded from automation to intelligence, reconnected AI, cooperated with Microsoft Cloud and major large-scale model manufacturers, combined with large models to create a conversational marketing cloud, reshaped the intelligent dialogue business module, and introduced Agent to let the system make decisions and marketing actions. The addition of AI has accelerated the efficiency of the company's signing of orders with large customers, and the sentence interaction has now achieved breakeven.
During this period, Li Jiarui has been in communication with Lu Qi and has received a lot of suggestions. Hu Yating, founder and CEO of AVAR, also said that there are a lot of sharing of miracle achievements, especially when the inflection point of the large model is coming, Lu Qi gave a lot of pertinent suggestions.
Although MiraclePlus' investment in the AI field this year is very "radical", in the eyes of some outsiders, Lu Qi, who once led the Xiaoice project at Microsoft and proposed All in AI at Baidu, is hidden behind in this large-scale model entrepreneurship boom, which seems to mean some kind of "retreat".
A person who was close to Lu Qi told "Chinese Entrepreneur", "I feel that Qi was a little less optimistic or not very confident in AI in the past few years, at least judging from his actions, Miracle has invested relatively few AI projects in the previous phases, and it was not until ChatGPT came out that he began to invest in a large number this year." However, referring to the development path of OpenAI, the real early layout of large models will start at least in 2016~2018, and I think it is too slow to enter the market now. ”
In 2018, when Li Jiarui met Lu Qi for the first time, the latter shared with her his early attitude towards AI, "Because of the appearance of Xiaoice, he felt that he was too optimistic (about AI)."
Although Lu Qi did not do a large-scale model entrepreneurship project, in Li Jiarui's view, he is doing a large-scale model in another way, "I think he supports more young entrepreneurs in the field of large-scale models, and the value to society is higher", "Qi is very convinced that AI must be the future, and he is very firm in the evolution of technology".
"Entrepreneurship Mentor"
In the hearts of the entrepreneurs of Miracle Ecology, Lu Qi plays a role similar to that of a "mentor".
Lv Cheng, founder and CEO of Raven Technology, called Lu Qi a "life mentor". He has a deep relationship with Lu Qi. In 2017, after Baidu announced the wholly-owned acquisition of Douya Technology, Lv Cheng and his team joined Baidu, reporting directly to Lu Qi, who was the president and COO of Baidu Group at that time. In February 2019, Lu Cheng participated in the YC Demoday roadshow with his new project rct studio, and received tens of millions of dollars in TS on the spot.
Lu Cheng believes that Lu Qi is not a mentor in the traditional sense, "he rarely interferes with you".
When preparing for the RCT Studio project, Lu Cheng once asked Lu Qi whether to choose to B or to C, "He usually doesn't tell you the answer directly, he will say what opportunities are available to B in the short term." But the more he talked about the benefits of to B, the more I felt that I didn't want to do it, and it was a good thought process, and he would help me figure out what I wanted."
With the continuous expansion of the Miracle Roadshow program, Lu Qi's ability as an "entrepreneurial mentor" has also become more prominent, and he often gives different suggestions or help for different teams or founders.
In Hu Yating's view, when they are faced with a problem that actually needs to be solved, "he usually gives us a clearer judgment".
"For example, when we are faced with the choice of AB in some strategic development, some investors may analyze the advantages of AB in both directions with us, and we have to choose A or B according to the goal we want to achieve. But Qi will directly analyze with us which one we are more suitable for, or that if we want to achieve a certain result, we must choose this direction. In Hu Yating's view, Lu Qi's answer brought more inspiration.
Hu Yating and her team are currently working on the virtual content generation track, through 3D procedural framework, AI generation, XR interactive technology, in the past two years, has accumulated many young people's favorite virtual human IP, digital fashion brands, digital fashion toys and other products.
This year, when facing the impact of large models, she and her team had hesitated in multiple development directions such as consumption and technology, and after communicating with Lu Qi, she got an unexpected answer.
Before starting this conversation, Hu Yating almost held the premise that Lu Qi would definitely let himself do technology or platformization, "Everyone thinks that Qi is very fond of large models, and Qiji's investment is more technology-oriented, and we all think that he has no feelings for consumer goods." But Lu Qi's advice is: "If your advantage is technology combined with art, then it is very suitable for consumption." ”
In the miracle entrepreneurship camp, Lu Qi's most common question is, "What is your longest longboard?" Hu Yating carefully thought about her team's longboard - art + technology, if you simply spell technology, they really can't roll up the big factory. In the end, they decided to choose the consumption track that combines art and technology.
Therefore, under Lu Qi's suggestion, Hu Yating maintained a high-end positioning based on the team's original advantages in the fields of art and digital human IP, on the other hand, relying on large models and AI technology to build her own tools and platforms to help users better realize personal personalized design, and finally relying on the full-color 3D printing supply chain to produce and sell consumer goods such as physical toys.
In addition to absorbing AI technology knowledge such as large models, Lu Qi has never let go of his research on the industry.
When Sentence Interactive added AI to its IM marketing business again this year, Lu Qi discussed with Li Jiarui that language is a very special subconscious space, which is the widest and most important bridge between people and the physical world. Fundamentally, it is more of a generalization and thinking tool, and communication is just a by-product. Especially after the advent of GPT, there has never been such an ability in human history that allows enterprises and users to communicate with each other in a variety of ways, but the large model makes this a reality, which is also what all enterprises are pursuing. Therefore, in marketing, Li Jiarui's team can do a lot of things, especially to reshape a lot of business flows.
After doing it for a while, Li Jiarui gradually understood what it meant to reshape business. "After the big model appeared, everyone was shouting to reshape the business, but only when you really started to do it can you really understand what you are doing. ”
This year, Lu Qi, who claims to be unable to keep up with the pace of large-scale model updates, still maintains a "desperate" work rhythm. A former intern told China Entrepreneur that Lu Qi gets up at 6 a.m. every morning and is often busy until 12 p.m. in meetings. 'He's very energetic and we all admire him. ”
idealism
Most of the entrepreneurs in the miracle ecosystem are post-90s, post-95s, and even some post-00s.
Compared with the portraits of entrepreneurs invested by other funds, the invested projects of Miracle are somewhat different. This makes Lu Qi and MiraclePlus seem a little "out of place" in the domestic investment environment.
Source: Interviewee
In the eyes of people close to Lu Qi, Lu Qi is betting that young people are the future, "very similar to YC's philosophy".
YC's philosophy is that it doesn't teach people how to succeed, but it tells entrepreneurs how others fail. "At YC, as long as they feel that an entrepreneur can do it, they will give him the opportunity to try, and if he fails, he will fail, and the lessons of failure will be shared with everyone at YC. I think this method can promote the innovation and development of the whole society, and it has its public welfare attributes. A former YC student told China Entrepreneur, "I think Qi is working in this direction. ”
In order to gather the latest generation or the youngest ideas around us, MiraclePlus has recruited a group of very young interns, including their fellows outside are also very young.
Lu Qi's appeal among young people is indeed "unparalleled".
In May this year, when the Beijing session of the "New Paradigm, New Era, New Opportunities" speech was held, the conference hall of the Zhongguancun Exhibition and Conference Center was full, most of them were young people, and many of them were even college students from the surrounding area. Even when they were standing, they listened attentively, and many of them showed great concern and entrepreneurial enthusiasm for AIGC. In the interactive session, a sixth-grade child asked Lu Qi how to learn under the impact of the large model.
"The positioning of Miracle is a bit similar to that of an entrepreneurial university, because many young people need the guidance of entrepreneurial mentors. Li Jiarui said.
However, in Li Jiarui's view, although Lu Qi is very supportive of young people, he is not "brainless" support.
A former Miracle intern also said that one of the important reasons why they gave up signing up for the Miracle Camp when they started their business this year was that the whole process was very difficult. Every year, a large number of projects are signed up and queued, and during this period, a project screening period of 3~4 months is required. "If we're lucky enough to get past the primaries, we'll only have 15 minutes to have a formal conversation with Dr. Lu Qi. Not only is the process tiring, but there is a high probability that our project will not get the (miracle) investment. ”
"The acceptance rate of Qiji is very low, and what Qi does can be summed up simply, is to select a group of the best young people. Li Jiarui believes that this requires a very strong ability to recognize people.
During his time working at YC China, Lu Qi said in an interview with the media that he most wanted to establish a new generation of entrepreneurial system. "I'm worried that we're focusing too much on business outcomes and ignoring the impact of each company on society, especially technologies like artificial intelligence, which have a huge impact on society. One of the things I especially want to do is that YC China and YC America can become a new generation of entrepreneurial systems, and every entrepreneur we choose not only builds good products and builds great companies, but more importantly, these companies have a very strong sense of social responsibility and bring a lot of positive impact to society. ”
Until now, Lu Qi's ideal of being a Chinese version of YC does not seem to have changed, and he does not exclude the outside world from continuing to associate him with YC. In his Baidu Encyclopedia character introduction column, it is still written: The current founder and CEO of YC China, and the president of YC Global Research Institute.
Li Jiarui also believes that although many funds now want to be China's YC, or claim to be China's YC, she feels that at present, only the miraculous style of play is the real YC systematic play.
"YC has a very strong bookface system, which has a large number of knowledge bases, but only YC founders can enter, that is to say, almost no fund companies have really had an account to enter, but Qi was a partner of YC before, and he is a person who has completely used the whole system. In addition, YC has a very active forum for continuous communication between all parties, and no company or fund has yet made such a thing, and now Miracle is also learning, but others don't even have the opportunity to learn. Li Jiarui said.
Under this wave of AIGC entrepreneurship, can Lu Qi, who is fully involved as an investor, win by idealism and create a "big model" of China?
Resources:
"Calling Lu Qi a "Life Mentor", a Post-90s Entrepreneur Leaves Baidu "Crusoe"", Chinese entrepreneur
"Why doesn't Lu Qi start a business?", alphabet list
Lu Qi's Latest Speech: My Large-scale Model Worldview, Tencent Technology
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