2023 is a year of economic recovery after the three-year transition of new crown epidemic prevention and control, China's economy has rebounded for the better, and high-quality development has been solidly promoted.
With the deep adjustment of the global economy, China's economy in 2024 stands at a new historical starting point. **The Economic Work Conference set the tone of "seeking progress while maintaining stability, promoting stability with progress, and establishing first and then breaking down", and pointed out that some difficulties and challenges need to be overcome to further promote the economic rebound.
Under the deployment of a series of work such as the first economic work conference, can economic expectations be raised?How can China's macroeconomic policies be more effective and effective?Will China be able to achieve sustainable growth next year and beyond?How confident are entrepreneurs?
On the occasion of the replacement of the old and the new, Beike Finance has launched an annual special report "Look at 2024", working with well-known Chinese economists, scholars and entrepreneurs to advise China's economy and help China's economic recovery and prosperity.
Deeply cultivate the technology of audio, launch digital humans, and march towards the ...... metaverseAlthough most of the main business is based on the online world, under the leadership of Lin Youyao, the founder and CEO of Jigou Technology, this national-level specialized and new "little giant" enterprise has taken every step very steadily.
Founded in 2015, Jigou Technology has focused on self-developed cloud-native RTC (real-time audio**) technology since its inception, and in 8 years, Jigou Technology has gradually grown into the world's leading intelligent real-time interactive cloud service provider, covering 212 countries and regions around the world, with a single-day duration of more than 3 billion minutes, adapting to the metaverse and AI large model tuyere.
In Lin Youyao's view, Jigou Technology has always pursued a pragmatic path: insight into the market, finding pain points, and solving problems. This is also the experience that Lin Youyao, the former general manager of QQ, summed up for entrepreneurs. As for the development of the audio industry in 2024, Lin Youyao believes that new gameplay and innovation to meet new user groups will generate more opportunities, and at the same time, China's Internet applications with high application level and many pan-entertainment gameplay "going overseas" may also become a hot spot next year.
Lin Youyao, founder and CEO of Jigou Technology, courtesy of the interviewee.
The moat of the enterprise is the technical strength of the entrepreneur should consider the market first.
Beike Finance: Since its establishment, Jigou Technology has focused on the RTC track, and in this field, what is the main "moat" of Jigou?
Lin Youyao: Around 2015, we had a hunch that the sound ** would become a hot business and a rigid technology in the future, so we chose this very wide track. When I was working at Tencent, in 2010, I began to rebuild a complete set of Tencent audio engine, which included Tencent's basic technology framework and application framework. Moreover, there are many applications in conference scenarios, and there are few other scenarios such as live broadcasting, so when formulating the technical framework, many people, including Tencent, are not optimistic. But in the end, it took us 5 years to build a complete set of audio ** engine in Tencent from scratch, and later applied it on QQ and even WeChat. In addition to the rigid application of conference classrooms, new varieties such as live broadcasting, telemedicine and blind date interaction have also been launched, as well as one-on-one meetings for daily use. Therefore, we are very confident to carry out audio technology services.
When we started our business, we chose a complete set of frameworks based on cloud native to provide real-time audio services, which can be applied to more customers in large quantities, cloud services are inherently lightweight and flexible, only need to call APIs, payment and other aspects are very convenient, personnel services can be accessed more quickly, and do not need to be docked for a long time like traditional software, so our first moat is technical strength. In addition, the company has its own concept since the beginning of its construction, the pursuit of technology plus service, there will be 5 roles to serve 1 customer, not only to provide technical framework or simple technical library call, but also to develop a supporting and more suitable business logic for their products, so since 2015, the loss of large customers we serve is almost 0.
Beike Finance: I just mentioned that you worked at Tencent and finally came out to start a business and started a successful business, what advice do you have for young people who are interested in starting a business from your own experience?
Lin Youyao: From my point of view, venture capital was very hot from 2013 to 2014, and I was nearing the end of the hottest stage when I started my business in 2015. In a good investment environment and a lot of hot money, it may be easier for investors to pay for creative ideas and start projects more easily.
But at present, investors will not simply pay, but need to consider many factors, consider how to withdraw capital from the business and how to make money, entrepreneurship needs to become more pragmatic, pragmatic approaches include first considering the market in the first place, otherwise it is difficult to output after input. I believe that entrepreneurship should first consider the buyer and the market, and then find the pain points and rigid needs of the market, and at the same time, it is also necessary to do things more pragmatically for the pain points and really help others solve problems. In addition, it is necessary to have its own highlights, and it is very difficult to make money just by reproducing one thing. Whether we can come up with bright spots is closely related to the entrepreneurs' own capabilities, ideas and concepts, for example, Jigou Technology chose to take the cloud service route at the beginning, this is our idea, and we know that these will become bright spots and features.
In the current startup environment, I don't recommend entrepreneurs to rush into forming a team to get funding, which will be very stressful. It would be much better to start a little lower, and it is recommended that a few people do something first. If it is only a simple combination of AI application and business verification at the beginning, it does not require many people. With fewer people, they can pay for simple resource consumption and do something. The future of entrepreneurship may not really be very thoughtful, a lot of knowledgeable people, but should be a small starting point to try, more pragmatic focus on market demand and funding, when you complete the project and get the market verification, you can roll to scale up.
To achieve "ubiquitous" AI, more entrepreneurs need to apply technology to practical scenarios.
Beike Finance: Since the end of last year, artificial intelligence large language model technology has been very popular, what do you think of this outlet, what opportunities exist there, and what misunderstandings may exist?
Youyao Lim: From an AI perspective, I think people may have high expectations for new things. At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, I met some excited investors who were optimistic and idealistic that AI was going to disrupt everything and gave me advice on starting a business. Investors are theoretically very rational, with all kinds of calculations and thinking for themselves, but they all behave like this when AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is on the rise, and I think that's where human nature lies. AGI is still far from implementation, and there will be more and more problems that will take time to solve, for example, it is difficult to avoid ethical issues involving people, so it is quite challenging to achieve an AGI that can be used everywhere.
We will implement the application of large models in vertical segmentation scenarios, rather than directly considering AGI. For Jiwu, we do not pursue comprehensive AI implementation, our opportunity is to use extreme engineering capabilities and execution to show results in more scenarios. When I communicated with some investors at the beginning of this year, they felt that AI will be ubiquitous in the future, but before it becomes ubiquitous, more entrepreneurs need to apply AI technology to practical scenarios little by little, and finally realize ubiquity, which is not something that can be achieved by a simple algorithm.
I've noticed that companies like Google are already moving towards small algorithms, low-power, and convenient chips, which is inevitable, because while large language models can organize data and potentially replace searches, each search also costs more computing power, and the cost is very high. Therefore, it requires a lot of conditions for its final implementation, and only after the proper use of each subdivision scenario will everyone gradually feel the role of AI.
Shell Finance: Since last year, the metaverse has become an outlet, but this year, there are many fewer voices mentioning the metaverse, what do you think of the development of the metaverse?
Lin Youyao: The concept of the metaverse was actually mentioned in the "low tide period" and amplified by Meta (formerly Facebook), and at the same time, investors are also looking for new investment opportunities. Moreover, there are many difficulties in the landing and actual business, and everyone is accustomed to simple and direct interactive operations, and there is a big gap between transforming pure reality into pure virtualization, which is not friendly in terms of landing. Meta is moving in that direction, but there is still a gap between people and people being able to change their habits. Therefore, there will be fewer and fewer voices mentioning the metaverse after this year, but this does not mean that the metaverse has no chances.
I don't think the metaverse will "die", and in the end no one mentions it, it will definitely gradually blossom and bear fruit in some places, but it will require more patience, more resources and support from many parties. This tuyere is blown up, and it is normal to be fast, but it is indeed an advocacy of new technologies and new experience methods, and it is one of the directions of future development.
Beike Finance: The branch applications of the metaverse include digital humans, and even the construction technology also has digital human business, what do you think of the digital human product?
Lin Youyao: We regard digital humans as interactive carriers and expressions, rather than pure technology or single products, because digital humans are ultimately just rendering generated images, first-class pictures and supporting sounds, and there are many technical points behind them.
For digital human products, we will build from several aspects, digital humans have the ability to communicate, answer questions and communicate together, and are still doing more things, gestures, expressions, clothing, hairstyles and other aspects can be changed, and the interaction will be more comprehensive and exciting in the future. In addition, we need to interact with the business itself, for example, we will understand the needs of our partners, for example, in the news broadcast scenario, we discuss with the customer at the co-creation meeting how to produce the image and manuscript, and how to connect the production process. Therefore, for the digital human business, it is not simply a digital human can be used, but to open up the entire production process.
Really use digital people to operate dynamically, after a period of time to change the image or do different action libraries, gestures and so on need to change, we are also adding more emotional voices. That is, when carrying out digital human business, we are more inclined to combine digital people with real-time interaction, and the audio technology points we originally developed will also be reflected in digital humans, such as realizing the mixing of background sounds, eliminating reverberation and echo in empty squares, etc. The metaverse also has virtual scenes, so in the future, digital humans will also combine virtual effects in the metaverse, whether it is dynamic effects or backgrounds.
In 2024, the internationalization of domestic applications will show a boom.
Beike Finance: As an enterprise, what relevant policies have you been most impressed by by the state since the beginning of this year?What kind of policy support has the technology received?
Lin Youyao: In July this year, the "Opinions of the Communist Party of China on Promoting the Development and Growth of the Private Economy" was promulgated. Subsequently, Shenzhen issued the "Several Measures to Promote the Private Economy to Become Bigger, Better and Stronger". * Local governments have intensively introduced policies and measures to promote the development of the private economy, which has greatly boosted the confidence of our private entrepreneurs. As an enterprise with characteristics in the field of artificial intelligence, Jigou Technology is a key industry cultivated in Shenzhen, and the city has also given us great support and help this year. The main focus is on the combined application of RTC and AI, and the ** level attaches great importance to artificial intelligence, we have a certain construction in this area, and there are also customers using it, starting to generate revenue and have a certain influence. The policy and the pragmatic practical support of the local government are very crucial for us and will also bring us more confidence.
Beike Finance: In 2024, what do you think is the development trend and market opportunities of the industry?What are your new expectations at the corporate level and at the individual level?
Lin Youyao: I think the opportunity for the pan-entertainment industry in China lies in satisfying the various novel gameplay and innovation of new user groups, which will involve content integration, such as watching movies together, which is in line with the original mission of Jigou Technology - to build a real-time interactive world. Real-time interactions include a lot of content, and co-creation with customers creates a lot of opportunities to become more frequent, more intimate, more large-scale, and more real-time. There are many opportunities in the industry this year in singing, watching movies, short plays, etc., and this combination of different fields may be the form that will continue to take place in the future. Therefore, we believe that there are many development opportunities in China in terms of the combination of diversified content and gameplay innovation. Construct technology will provide solutions in more detailed, pragmatic, and specific scenarios, whether it is digital humans, RTC, or more diversified content.
On the other hand, China's application level is very high, there are many pan-entertainment games, and the product complexity is very large, so the probability of success in carrying out international business in the world is very large, I think the Internet going overseas is a hot spot, and it will be more prosperous in 2024, and Chinese enterprises have the ability and good product and operation experience, and may go overseas to do internationalization.
As far as the company is concerned, as a TO B service company, we will continue to serve customers well, work hard in the main business, find more integration points in the main business track, and explore the growth points in the segmentation scenario. I look forward to more support for private enterprises in 2024, both the entrepreneurial environment and the economic environment can become better, and our enterprises will also benefit.
Q&A. 1.**The meeting emphasized the importance of scientific and technological innovation in promoting high-quality development. How has your company used technological innovation to promote its development in the past year?What are your plans or strategies for technological innovation in 2024?
In 2023, Jigou Technology will increase its investment in the research and development of AI technology and manpower, and release new products and solutions such as one-stop digital human solutions and a new generation of real-time audio AI engine, combining AI technology and real-time audio RTC technology to promote real-time interaction more intelligently and make work and life more interesting. In 2024, Jigou will be committed to promoting the implementation of AI applications, combining large language models with real-time interaction, launching more intelligent audio interaction solutions, and using technology and services to help the intelligent transformation of thousands of industries.
2.The meeting mentioned the need to deepen supply-side structural reform and expand effective demand in order to promote the economy to achieve qualitative and effective improvement and reasonable quantitative growth. What are your company's specific plans and strategies in this regard?What are your expectations for 2024?
We have observed that Chinese companies have become an important force in the global market, especially in the field of pan-entertainment and social networking. In 2024, we will continue to help Chinese enterprises go overseas by providing technology and cloud services, focusing on the field of pan-entertainment, social networking and cultural going overseas, so that people's interaction can be more real-time and intelligent, so that they can achieve high-quality growth. It is believed that the development of enterprises will be of higher quality in 2024.
Wen Luo Yidan.
Edited by Song Yuting.
Proofread by Lucy.