Z Potentials | Plaud.ai CEO Xu Gao, A Serial Entrepreneur with four ventures, Creator of the globally popular AI voice Recorder
In today’s era of rapid advancements in AI and increasingly fierce global market competition, tech entrepreneurs are constantly seeking innovative breakthroughs, hoping to reshape people's lifestyles and work practices through technological transformation. PLAUD.AI is one such company with a global perspective, dedicated to providing efficient solutions for professional users through AI-driven innovative products. It has already delivered over 300,000 units, with an annual revenue of $100 million and a tenfold growth rate for two consecutive years. Founded by serial entrepreneur Xu Gao (Nathan), PLAUD.AI's first product, the AI-powered meeting note recorder PLAUD NOTE, quickly gained market recognition. Its latest release, PLAUD NotePin, stands out as a "wearable AI memory capsule," offering professional users a new AI-driven meeting and conversation note-taking experience with the tagline: "Hands-Free, Always By Your Side, Peace of Mind."
Xu Gao defines his entrepreneurial journey as an unwavering pursuit of the "optimal solution for technology and efficiency." From his early ventures in study abroad consulting platforms to investment engines, and later exploring smart hardware, he has consistently focused on a product-oriented approach, using first principles to deeply understand user needs and seeking breakthroughs at the intersection of technology and product. In this interview, Xu Gao shared profound insights from his over ten years of entrepreneurial experience, discussed how PLAUD.AI has stood out through product differentiation and a global strategy, and outlined his understanding of product innovation in the AI era and his vision for the future.
Let us step into the world of PLAUD.AI and listen to Xu Gao, a serial entrepreneur with 12 years of experience, as he shares his profound insights on entrepreneurship, technology, and product development, along with the story of his relentless efforts to build a company that aims to "change the world."
The toughest moment I’ve experienced was when I had to use coins from my savings jar just to buy food. Once you go through such an experience, it broadens your perspective on life. You become able to endure extreme hardship and crushing difficulties, and at the same time, maintain a calm mindset in moments of victory. In entrepreneurship, it’s this mindset and courage that allow you to start again, maintaining a better rhythm and balance along the way.
Our offering evolved from a hardware device that collects audio to providing transcription capabilities, and now to offering high-quality summarization, creating an all-in-one solution. Users no longer just look for a recorder or a transcription tool; they seek a comprehensive solution that fully meets their needs.
So, when we are able to help users easily collect voice data in real life, followed by transcription and summarization, the potential user base and application scenarios are incredibly broad. Although we had optimistic expectations for the product, we were still somewhat surprised when we finally achieved these capabilities, as its performance exceeded our expectations. Ultimately, it’s more about following first principles—it's crucial that you truly invest time to deeply understand user needs and think about how to leverage the most advanced technological architecture to develop the best possible product experience.
Back to our mission: to help users efficiently collect data in real life. For different user groups and scenarios, we focus on developing the product form that delivers the best experience. Our long-term vision for the company is to be an "AI as a Service Company That Connects AI with Real Life."
For users, the essence is to achieve a specific intention through the product. The likelihood of helping users fulfill their intention and the quality of delivery represents the positive value you provide. However, if the product is unreliable or fails to meet expectations, that leads to a negative experience, creating "negative points." Ultimately, the sum of positive value and negative experiences determines whether the product has truly achieved "Product-Market Fit."My intuition is that we should focus on solving a specific core problem for users, finding the optimal intersection of technology and product—what I call "Technology-Product Fit," or even "Technology-Product-Market Fit."
I have a strong impression of the book The Rose of Time by Dan Bin. In fact, there is only one sentence in the book that had a profound impact on me. On the very first page, it introduces a theme: Imagine you have only one investment opportunity in your lifetime, and you must invest all your pension savings. What kind of investment would you choose? His conclusion is that he would only invest in "companies that change the world" and "companies that the world cannot change."
01 Four consecutive ventures, always using technology to find the optimal solution for how things operate.
ZP: Welcome, Mr. Xu. Could you please introduce yourself to everyone?
Xu Gao: Hello everyone, I’m Xu Gao Nathan, the founder of PLAUD.AI. I majored in finance during my undergraduate years, and the typical career path for a finance student is to graduate and join investment banking or consulting, which seems quite fancy. The turning point came during my senior year when I spent six months in the Netherlands as an exchange student. Amsterdam is a very unique city, known for its multiculturalism and freedom, and I wanted to explore what was different about the world. During that time, I had two important realizations. First, I found true happiness in myself. At that time, the minimum average salary in the Netherlands was 2,000 euros, and the living standard was quite high—it's a high-welfare country. I was spending over 1,000 euros a month, hosting many gatherings, and felt that my life experience was already very fulfilling. So, I realized that if life’s goal is simply happiness, wealth isn’t necessarily tied to it. This opened my mind to the idea that I didn’t have to pursue investment banking or consulting just for the highest starting salary. Instead, I should truly pursue what I wanted. The second realization was that technology has a profound impact on real life, bringing a lot of convenience and a huge boost in productivity. I took a course in 2012 where it was discussed that in 10 years, there would be 10 billion devices connected to the internet, and everything could be controlled through a smartphone. It seemed incredible at the time. Before leaving the Netherlands, I participated in a student competition. Although looking back now, it might seem a bit childish, we had a concept aimed at helping mentally impaired children in the Netherlands get to school autonomously by using a smartphone to hail a ride. At that time, we hadn’t heard of Uber or Didi. It was only after returning to school from my exchange program that I found out Didi was already becoming popular in China. At that moment, I thought it was truly amazing that you could use a smartphone to hail a ride.
Later, although I received an offer from the best business school in the Netherlands, I still chose to start a business with a classmate who had just been accepted to Peking University's National School of Development. To be precise, I joined the early-stage company founded by two of my senior brothers. At the time, the team was only two people. Although the conditions were tough, and we worked in a bedroom of a three-bedroom apartment, the product we were developing was still very interesting. The company later secured investments from IDG and Sequoia, and it grew a lot, offering us many valuable insights. This series of experiences stirred in me a vague impulse to create something—a product that could realize my ideas and make an impact on society, or even the world. So, I used the tuition fees my family had set aside for me to officially start my entrepreneurial journey. This was my first startup, and now, four ventures later, I’ve gone through various stints in VC and FA roles, all of which were preparations for entrepreneurship. After making several transitions, I began preparing my latest venture in mid-2021, and the new company was established by the end of that year.
ZP：What were the focuses of your past ventures? What do you think each of those entrepreneurial experiences contributed the most to your growth?
Xu Gao: Our first venture was at the end of 2012, when we created a Peer-To-Peer study abroad consulting platform. The product was quite good, and within three months of launch, we reached 2 million page views. At that time, we were focused on the web platform, and we had some influence within the student community. For example, if you were a Computer Science major at Beihang University and wanted to apply for a PhD in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, traditionally, you would have sought advice from a consultant. Our job was to crawl all successful application cases from the web, analyze them, and match them with consultants based on their backgrounds. Once students submitted their application background, our algorithm would help them identify the best service provider, rather than relying on the typical cold call methods that were commonly used to acquire clients back then, or the inefficient and costly methods like Baidu's ad network, which often led to a sales pitch rather than a true match with someone who could actually help. As a result, our product resonated well with students. However, we were still too young at that time. On one hand, we didn’t figure out how to monetize the platform, and on the other, we lacked the execution capacity. Ultimately, after burning through the tuition fees my family had saved up, I realized I needed to go back, learn more, and accumulate work experience to truly understand how the business world works.
My second venture came after I left Huachuang Capital, where I worked on a startup recommendation engine for the primary market. At that time, the approach was still to scrape websites like IT Juzi and Lagou to identify a company's business model, entrepreneurial team, and hiring patterns. To give a small example: there was a trend of former senior executives from large tech companies like Tencent or Baidu starting their own ventures, and the success rate and outcomes were quite promising. So, we decided to automate the process of scraping entrepreneurial team backgrounds and assigning scores. For instance, if a team member was a former vice president at Tencent, we would assign Tencent a weight of 8, and the vice president a coefficient of 1.5. Similarly, Baidu would have a weight of 6, and a director a coefficient of 1.2. By quantifying these factors, we could give companies a direct score and rank them accordingly. This product was developed and, even now, it feels relatively advanced. We could also capture dynamic data, like changes in the number of hires. At the time, I was thinking about how to monetize the product, and eventually concluded that working as a financial advisor (FA) was a better route because its conversion rate was higher. For investments, you can only invest in one out of 100 companies, but as an FA, you can work with 10 companies out of that 100. I had some good discussions with Xiaofanzhuo (a popular Chinese startup investment platform), and eventually joined them, treating it as an internal entrepreneurial project.
I spent less than three years at Xiaofanzhuo, and by the end of 2019, I chose to start my third venture. At that time, I was inspired by Luckin Coffee and wanted to build a business similar to Meituan’s group-buying and food delivery service, "Pin Haofan." Luckin had a highly efficient model of setting up production, delivery, customer acquisition, and fulfillment integrated outlets in office buildings. I thought, why not replicate this model for other restaurant brands like Coco, helping them achieve similar success in office buildings? We planned to widely deploy smart delivery lockers within buildings as the touchpoints for customer acquisition and order fulfillment. Then, we would build a logistics system for pre-ordering and centralized delivery, where we could consolidate orders in advance, and a single vehicle could deliver 50-100 meals, significantly reducing operational costs. However, we also encountered some difficulties. Our initial idea was to bypass the high user subsidy and merchant BD costs that platforms like Meituan faced, but in reality, we found that skipping those costs was extremely challenging, and it deviated from our original business model.
To sum up, none of these ventures were outright successful, but from a product perspective, they all made logical sense and were centered around the theme of maximizing efficiency. In other words, each venture tried to find the optimal way of operating by integrating technology. Looking back, they were meaningful. Whether it was the peer-to-peer study abroad matching platform, the company recommendation ranking in the investment field, or the group-buying and pre-ordering service, each experience led to valuable learnings and insights. Each time, I had the chance to work with highly talented people, and they were the most valuable asset. These individuals believed in my vision, my expectations, and my reasoning, and they thought the idea was worth trying. They joined me in starting these ventures. Even in my current venture, I was able to quickly find a few partners from previous entrepreneurial collaborations who trusted me and were willing to help build the MVP from scratch, going from 0 to 1.
Additionally, these experiences taught me valuable lessons on how to find entrepreneurial partners, build trust, and create a reliable early-stage team from scratch, which has been one of the biggest gains from my entrepreneurial journey. Beyond that, I’ve always invested personal funds in each of my ventures. The process of losing money and depleting my savings was painful, and I’ve gone through many real costs and so-called "lessons." These experiences have given me a deep understanding of human nature and shaped my perspective on it. A few days ago, I was having dinner with some investor friends in China, and they asked if my recent financial success had brought me any new experiences. I told them, "No." The hardest time I went through was when I had to use coins from my savings jar just to buy food. Once you’ve experienced something like this, it broadens your view of life. You become capable of enduring extreme hardship and frustration, while also remaining calm in moments of success. In entrepreneurship, it’s this mindset and courage that allow you to start again, maintaining a better rhythm and balance along the way.
ZP: From the results, what do you think were the reasons why the first three ventures didn’t turn out as ideally as expected? And what new insights have you gained from this current venture?
Xu Gao: It’s completely normal for startups not to succeed. True success requires a combination of many factors—what people call "the right time, the right place, and the right people." Looking back now, the first two ventures were probably hindered by a lack of experience, whether it was in monetization or sales strategies. The third venture was more about timing—whether it was the right moment, with the right momentum. Timing and momentum are crucial in a fast-changing and competitive market. Another point is that there’s a process from an entrepreneurial idea to validation. Some ideas, during the validation process, will prove not to work for us but may work for someone else, like Meituan, for example. This has to do with the entire ecosystem infrastructure, the scale of investment, and many other factors. Only through experimentation can you gain a clear understanding of what will or won’t work. This is why in entrepreneurship, we often talk about MVP. Even a potentially good idea has many pivots before realization, and many companies fail to make it through the critical 0-1 pivot stage.
This time around, I’m more mature. The lessons I’ve learned from past work and entrepreneurship have provided me with a better understanding of how to approach strategy, make choices, and how to get started. The team and resources are also much stronger now. Although I’ve always used my own money to fund my ventures, I’ve accumulated a network of friends over the years who trust me and are willing to invest and support me. By the time I reached the later stages of this venture, I was much more at ease, and things have gone relatively smoothly this time.
ZP: It's common for serial entrepreneurs to become more mature over time. In what ways do you think this maturity manifests in the practical aspects of entrepreneurship?
Xu Gao: It’s necessary to look at this in stages. For young entrepreneurs, the primary reason for failure is usually a lack of experience. For example, in some cases, it’s due to insufficient resources. When faced with challenges, perseverance requires more financial resources and talent reserves—things that can be built up through continuous entrepreneurial experiences. But the key is that, in previous ventures, you have to put in your full effort and treat your collaborators or supporters well. Only then will they continue to support you in future ventures. This is a form of wealth that’s invaluable.
As for recognizing the right rhythm, besides running my own startups, I’ve also spent many years working in investment and financial advisory, which gives me a "God's-eye view." I've been able to see the rise and fall of various business models and companies. This broad perspective helps me form a starting framework for entrepreneurship, which includes how to identify user needs, research the industry to make informed decisions, and develop products and business strategies that ensure reliable survival and growth. In contrast, relatively inexperienced entrepreneurs often make a variety of mistakes. For example, after securing funding, many founders rush to build a team and begin spending without first finding Product-Market Fit, leading to wasted resources and ultimately burning through funds before achieving that fit. I’ve experienced this firsthand, having used my own personal funds for my ventures, which made the learning process much more painful and insightful.
ZP: You’re already a very experienced entrepreneur. What’s the driving force behind this new venture?
Xu Gao: I think the fate of serial entrepreneurs is simply to keep starting new ventures. There’s a passion within them, whether it’s driven by overconfidence or a genuine pursuit. As for why I chose this particular timing, it’s often a vague and gradual process. A serial entrepreneur’s radar is always on. They balance diligent work with curiosity, constantly thinking about opportunities, where the problems lie, what user needs exist, and what possible solutions could be. It’s a natural process, not every day is filled with exciting or solvable problems. But after a certain point, there’s this intuitive urge, this feeling that it’s time to go. At that moment, I start preparing, engaging in discussions, and slowly, the turning point comes: It's time to go.
02 Globalization + Product-Oriented Approach + Deep Integration with AI, Following First Principles, Resulting in the Breakthrough Product PLAUD NOTE
ZP: You launched your first product, the AI voice recorder, in 2021. What kind of opportunity did you see at that time?
Xu Gao: When I started this venture, I had a larger framework in mind. The first key decision was to build a global enterprise. During my time in venture capital, it became clear that China’s supply chain advantages and the opportunity for Chinese companies and entrepreneurs to expand globally were significant. This is a continuing blue ocean, with competition far less intense than in the domestic market, and it aligns with my personality traits, making it the right path for me. The second aspect was to be product-oriented. This meant focusing on creating a product that could become the global leader in its field. The conclusion was that I wouldn’t follow hot trends, but rather create something that others hadn’t yet noticed or something new. The product would require significant R&D investment to deliver an experience that was a leap ahead of existing solutions in the market. The third part was deep integration with software and AI. Many hardware companies looked great at first glance, but in reality, their business models were more like roller coasters. If I wanted to create a long-lasting company with real barriers to entry and sustainable growth, I looked to companies like Apple or successful SaaS firms. These companies leverage extensive user data, network effects, and the integration of workflows to create products that users rely on and are unlikely to switch from. Unlike some hardware products—like a power bank, where you just buy a new one when it breaks—software has a lasting impact and builds user dependence. At the time, I also had a strong, albeit vague, belief in AI’s ability to drive a massive leap in productivity and user experience.
When looking for opportunities, there were some clear pieces of evidence. For example, as early as 2019, companies like Sogou and iFlytek in China had already launched AI voice recorders, which were actually very popular. However, I realized that the overseas market had zero presence—almost no one was doing it. The background is simple: both Sogou and iFlytek are tech companies with a broad user base and strong AI capabilities. They wanted to find breakthroughs in combining AI with practical applications, so they invested in R&D and produced good products. However, in the overseas market, giants in the recording industry like Sony, Olympus, and Philips hadn’t updated this product form in over ten years. With China already having these products and technologies, I wondered if I could find people to help develop a similar product and achieve success in international markets. This was a guess, and there was still much to validate. At the same time, Google had an app called Live Transcribe, with over 1 billion downloads—quite impressive. But the app couldn’t store audio or text, and the combination of both was only available on Google Pixel devices. I felt that users still really needed this feature, so with all this data, facts, and best practices in hand, I thought, "It might be worth a try."
Before officially starting, I did more thorough preparation. For example, I consulted with the development teams of the most widely used recording chips in the industry to understand the technical principles and the level of performance that could be delivered. I also communicated with factory owners and brand leaders to better understand user needs. After conducting a large amount of research, I personally reviewed over 5,000 user reviews to gain a deeper understanding of the unmet needs and pain points of non-AI products in overseas markets, who was using them, and what feedback they provided. This allowed me to gain more first-hand insights and perceptions, and after making the decision, I officially began to move forward with the project.
ZP: Did you see new opportunities brought by generative AI at that time?
Xu Gao: We first captured the demand when AI recording pens were already very popular in China. Many journalists were still using traditional recorders and had to manually transcribe the recordings into documents. An AI recorder could at least help convert speech to text. Even though speech-to-text had already been called AI at that time, it was a significant improvement compared to manual input. The emergence of GPT provided a huge boost to this process.
In fact, we launched a product back in August 2022 in the overseas market — our first smart recording pen, which could be controlled via mobile and had IoT capabilities. This was a clear innovation, and by early 2023, the company was already profitable. After the emergence of GPT, we quickly incorporated it into our ongoing product development. Our goal from Day One was to create AI-driven products. Although we were initially constrained by limited funding, the first product laid a strong foundation for integrating AI later. Even before AI was applied, our product had already been well received in the market, and consumer feedback was overwhelmingly positive. As a result, the company quickly became profitable. Once AI appeared, we further refined our new products based on our existing experience and user needs. By June 2023, we launched the new product, and by the second half of the year, our business started to grow rapidly.
ZP: So, even without AI integration, PLAUD.AI Note already brought a significant improvement in user experience compared to the existing products at the time?
Xu Gao: Yes, our positioning at the time was to create the world’s first smart recording pen that could be wirelessly controlled, whereas previous products required settings on a computer. You can think of it like how wireless headphones replaced wired ones—our product concept was similar to that. Additionally, in terms of pricing, we set our product price at three times the industry average, yet we still managed to achieve the highest sales in the entire category.
ZP: Who do you consider the core user group of the product? What is the core need that the product meets for users?
Xu Gao: The core user group is knowledge workers who are highly reliant on conversations. Although it sounds general, you may need more details to repeatedly validate or identify subtle differences.
I believe that for users, what they really seek in the product space is to solve a specific need, which we refer to as "Jobs to be Done." Recording is just a means; what users truly need is to accomplish a task. For example, after a conversation, they might need a proper summary for easy review or to share with their boss or colleagues to communicate certain insights, or to record important information from the conversation. So ultimately, our product is designed to help users achieve these goals. Our experience has expanded from a hardware device that collects audio to offering transcription features, and then to providing high-quality summaries, creating a one-stop solution. Users are not simply looking to buy a recorder or a transcription tool—they are looking for a comprehensive solution that meets all their needs.
ZP: Did PLAUD NOTE becoming a bestseller fall within your expectations?
Xu Gao: To some extent, we could anticipate it, but seeing the product become such a hit was still quite a surprise. We were very confident in the product’s usability and the experience it could offer. You see, when ChatGPT was first released, there was a news story where a journalist asked Sam Altman, “What do you think is the best use case for ChatGPT?” He answered that it was summarization. This shows that the core strength of large language models is extracting the most useful information from large volumes of random text, which is a form of information retrieval. So when we were able to help users easily collect, transcribe, and summarize speech in real life, the potential user base and application scenarios were incredibly broad. While we had optimistic expectations for the product, we were still pleasantly surprised when these features actually came to life, as its performance truly exceeded our expectations.
ZP: Looking back now, what lessons or experiences can you share in going from a decent or excellent product to a breakout hit?
Xu Gao: I don't think there are many so-called exclusive experiences to share. It's more about following first principles. The key is whether you've truly spent the time to deeply understand user needs and think about how to use the most advanced technology architecture to develop the best product experience. These things are very clear. It's not about simple decisions like whether the product is white or black. But when you have a breakout product, it means you've done something that others haven't done. I think, at least in the tech field, it's very straightforward. Before launching our product, we did thousands of user surveys, and users directly told us their needs. There's no guessing involved. You just need to conduct in-depth user research, and users will tell you what they need and whether they need that function.
ZP: I noticed that our website launched a second product, NotePin, with the slogan "The Wearable AI Memory Capsule." This positioning is quite interesting. What kind of user needs are behind this?
Xu Gao: In fact, we have always followed this approach: once a new product is about to be shipped, we begin the development process for the second product. This is because the time from product concept to final launch is a long process, especially by our standards, which demand perfection. This leads to a significant amount of time spent on the entire R&D process. But once a product successfully hits the market, it means the core R&D phase has been completed. At that point, we start thinking about what the next product will be, what problem it will solve, how it will differ from the existing product, or what functionalities it can offer that we currently cannot achieve.
Returning to NotePin itself, we were thinking that mobile phones would naturally evolve and may eventually incorporate some of the features we had in mind. For many scenarios, a wearable AI device truly offers unparalleled convenience. It's a "Hands-Free, Always By Your Side, Peace of Mind" solution. Professions like dental and veterinary doctors, doctors making rounds in hospitals, or salespeople selling houses or cars—all of these roles, which often require mobility, are perfect for such a device. So, we decided to focus on wearable devices, as they offer unique advantages and can create high value for users.
ZP: It sounds like the user profiles for the two products are quite different. How do we view the user profile for NotePin?
Xu Gao: NotePin is more geared towards "on-the-go" scenarios. It's a wearable device that you can easily attach to your clothes. For many users, such as doctors in pet hospitals, real estate agents, or construction project managers, this type of use is very natural and convenient because it provides a "Hands-Free, Always By Your Side" experience. Additionally, PLAUD NOTE has a unique feature—call recording, which NotePin doesn't have. So, there is a distinction in terms of user groups. PLAUD NOTE is more of a meeting efficiency tool for managers, while NotePin is better suited for professional users who are constantly on the move.
We are covering both demographics and use cases. Theoretically, the target audience for these two products is similar, but PLAUD NOTE has certain limitations in product form and the types of scenarios it can serve. So, it’s not just about expanding the user base, but rather optimizing the existing coverage. We're actually targeting a very broad group of people—those who heavily rely on conversations to get their work done. This group is already quite large, and we look for the best solutions in specific scenarios. For example, in "on-the-go" situations, a wearable device is the optimal choice. As we mentioned earlier, doctors, salespeople, project managers on construction sites, digital nomads, and professionals in the luxury goods industry, among others, will find this product particularly useful.
ZP: What are PLAUD.AI's plans for further optimizing and expanding its existing product line in the future? What is the company's long-term vision?
Xu Gao: Our approach is like this: logically, you can expect that we currently have PLAUD NOTE and PLAUD NotePin, and we will later introduce products like PLAUD Air, PLAUD Glass, and more, which will eventually form a complete PLAUD Family. Going back to our mission, it’s about helping users efficiently collect data in real life. For different user groups and scenarios, we will develop product forms that provide the best user experience. Our company’s long-term vision is to become an "AI as a Service Company that Connects AI with Real Life."
03 Pursuing Extreme Innovation, Committed to Becoming a "World-Changing Company"
ZP: There is also a divergent perspective that the AI recorder category is too close to smartphones and should be an opportunity for smartphone manufacturers. How do you view this viewpoint?
Xu Gao: Actually, it doesn’t have much of an impact. Think about Meitu, for example, which has hundreds of millions of active users every month. It helps people, especially girls, take better photos or add fun emojis. For Apple, launching a similar app would be as easy as playing a game. But why don’t they do it? Because for these giants, their goal is to serve billions of global users, and their offerings are very general. On the other hand, we focus on providing professional-grade experiences for professional users. From every feature to every detail of the product, we make sure the user can feel the difference. Our users are able to perceive these distinctions, and that’s the core difference between us and more generalized solutions.
ZP: As a product manager, how do you find PMF in the age of AI?
Xu Gao: I think there's a key experiential tipping point here. The magic of AI lies in the "magic" moments it creates. It offers users product experiences they didn't expect, like pressing a button and it speaks, or talking to it and it plays music, or even taking a picture and it immediately tells a story. This kind of interaction feels incredibly natural and is full of magic.
For users, the essence is to achieve a certain intention through the product. The probability of helping users achieve that intention and the quality of delivery represent the positive value you provide. However, if the product is unreliable or fails to meet expectations, it results in a negative experience, which generates "negative points." Ultimately, the sum of positive value and negative experience determines whether the product has truly achieved "Product-Market Fit." Even if the product has many seemingly cool features, if it frequently fails at key interactions, consumers will lose trust. For example, if you initially think the product deserves a score of 70, but due to frequent negative experiences, it actually only scores 50, that’s a failure.
So, my intuition is that you need to focus on solving a core problem for users and find the optimal intersection of technology and product, what I call "Technology-Product Fit," or even "Technology-Product-Market Fit." This combination allows you to reliably provide the experience that users truly need in certain niche markets or segments. As technology and product evolve, you can gradually deliver more reliable and superior experiences, which is a natural development path. In contrast, some companies might launch more radical product forms to cater to investor interests or market attention. While they may get a lot of initial focus and support, the challenges they face with users are also quite evident.
ZP: Could you share with the readers a book or a person who has had the most significant impact on you?
Xu Gao: One book that left a deep impression on me is The Rose of Time by Dan Bin. There’s one line in the book that had a huge impact on me. On the first page, it introduces a thought experiment: if you only had one chance to invest in your entire life, and you had to invest all your pension funds into it, what would you choose? His conclusion was that he would only invest in "the companies that change the world" and "the companies that the world cannot change." This really resonated with me because it’s a very serious topic. When you realize that investment should be approached this way, it also makes you reflect on how to invest your limited time in life, and what kind of career or mission you should pursue. "The companies that the world cannot change" are usually the ones that are hard to create from 0 to 1, like Coca-Cola, KFC, McDonald's, or even monopolistic century-old brands like Nongfu Spring or Shell. These companies have strong survival abilities, even in the most turbulent environments. These are "the companies that the world cannot change." On the other hand, "the companies that change the world" are companies like NVIDIA, OpenAI, Apple, and Google, which through technological innovation, define the limits of technology from 0 to 1. These companies have enormous survival and sustainable development capabilities, and have the potential to become timeless. They have a significant technological gap between them and their competitors.
For me, this line of thinking drives us to pursue extreme product innovation and technological breakthroughs, striving to become "a company that changes the world." Why are we exploring the B2B direction? Because we want to become, like Apple, a user’s data center, or a tool like Slack that has network effects and even reshapes workflows, becoming an integral part of users' habits.
The so-called "the companies that the world cannot change" are those that have the opportunity to resist change. Most companies, however, are neither "the companies that change the world" nor "the companies that the world cannot change," but rather those "the companies that are constantly changed by the world." So, this makes me reflect often: if we want to achieve the goal of long-term sustainability, we must have a long-term path in place. How do we get there? This perspective encourages us to plan and act with a more long-term vision.
PLAUD.AI has R&D and business teams in San Francisco, Shenzhen, Beijing, Tokyo, and Singapore.
We welcome experts in AI Agent, API Integrations, Agentic Workflow, and other related fields to search for PLAUD.AI on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/plaudai) and submit your resumes.
Positions in Shenzhen and Beijing are also available on Boss Zhipin (https://m.zhipin.com/gongsi/job/24e57694a2a658651XR72d-0ElQ~.html?ka=company-jobs).
Please note that the content of this interview has been edited and approved by Xu Gao, and it reflects the personal views of the interviewee. We also welcome readers to share their thoughts on this interview through comments and interactions. For more information about PLAUD.AI, please visit their official website at https://www.plaud.ai
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