I recently came across the story of Zhang Xue Motorcycles and was deeply moved.
Zhang Xue builds motorcycles. Born in 1987, he dropped out of middle school at 14 to apprentice as a motorcycle repairman. At 19, he chased a Hunan TV film crew over 100 kilometers of mountain roads in a rainstorm on a broken motorcycle, just to show off his riding skills on camera. In 2013, he arrived in Chongqing with 20,000 RMB, later co-founding Kove Motorcycles and growing annual sales from 800 units to 30,000. In 2024, at age 37, he gave up his equity in Kove to start Zhang Xue Motorcycles, determined to build his own proprietary engines.
Many people see only the final results: in 2025, Zhang Xue Motorcycles hit 750 million RMB in revenue. This March, they won two consecutive races in the WorldSSP class at the WSBK Portuguese round, finishing 3.685 seconds ahead of second place. It was the first time a Chinese motorcycle brand won at this level, breaking decades of dominance by Ducati, Yamaha, and Kawasaki.
But what sticks with me isn't these achievements—it's a few details from his interviews.
I'll Cover the Eight Hundred Meters
One segment left a deep impression. They were working on improving the machining precision of a core engine component, from "five si" to "three si." One si is 0.01 millimeters, so going from five to three si means reducing tolerance from 0.05mm to 0.03mm—a 40% precision improvement. This isn't just changing a parameter; it requires upgrading cutting margins, tool control, material consistency, and the entire process chain, all while maintaining consistency in mass production. No one in the domestic supply chain had done this before. Suppliers refused to cooperate, deeming the risks too high.
Zhang Xue told these suppliers: I'll cover the R&D and trial-and-error costs. You don't need to worry. If we succeed, we share the rewards.
Think about that scene. He wasn't exactly a major player in the industry chain—just a downstream buyer, probably seen as a small client by these suppliers. But what he said followed no "buyer" logic.
What was it then? It was that the act of doing this thing itself held meaning greater than profit or risk. He was desperate to see it happen, willing to put himself on the line for it.
Ten Years Obsessing Over a Pair of Glasses
Zhang Xue isn't the only one.
Misa Zhu Mingming, founder of Rokid, was still at Alibaba in 2012 when he attended the Google Glass launch. Watching someone skydive while wearing the glasses, he was stunned. He later said only two thoughts ran through his mind: this thing will change the world, and we can do it better.
He decided to leave Alibaba to start his own company. Jack Ma personally talked with him for four hours, asking why he wanted to leave. He replied: "AI and AR will change human lifestyles, and eventually they'll become the same thing."
Rokid was founded in 2014. But the AR glasses supply chain was immature at the time, so they had to survive by making smart speakers first—the Rokid Alien and Moonstone. Then Baidu drove smart speaker prices down to 89 RMB, while Rokid sold theirs for 1,399. They couldn't compete with the BAT subsidy war. Misa publicly stated that the AI industry would enter a 12-to-18-month winter.
Once they stabilized slightly, he immediately plunged back into glasses.
By 2025, Rokid produced 49-gram AI+AR glasses—the lightest in the world, supporting real-time translation in over 50 languages. This February, when German Chancellor Merz visited Hangzhou, he personally tried on a pair. After experiencing the real-time translation, he said two words: "Accurate, fast." Seven or eight German business executives accompanying him placed orders on the spot.
The guy who posted on Moments ten years ago saying he wanted to make glasses today had the German Chancellor wearing what he built.
Misa still posts two or three product-related updates on Moments daily. It's not marketing—he genuinely thinks it's cool and wants people to see it. He once said something I find accurate: "Entrepreneurship is learning 99% of things you don't particularly like for the sake of 1% hobby and dream."
Not Businessmen
These people keep me thinking about one question: What's the difference between entrepreneurs and businessmen?
China has no shortage of people who know how to do business. From ancient times to now, there have always been plenty of people trying to figure out how to make money. Businessmen find optimal solutions within existing frameworks—doing whatever makes money, whatever is most efficient. There's nothing wrong with that; society needs them.
But that's not what Zhang Xue and Misa are doing.
I later came across the Austrian School economists and realized they spotted this difference long ago. Mises called entrepreneurs "the driving force of the entire market system," distinguishing between entrepreneurs and managers: managers optimize within given parameters, while entrepreneurs change the parameters themselves. Schumpeter put it more strongly—he said what entrepreneurs do is called "creative destruction," dismantling old structures from within to create new ones. He even believed the primary driver for innovators wasn't profit, but a "will to conquer."
Looking back, Zhang Xue bearing suppliers' trial-and-error costs wasn't because he calculated the ROI and found it worthwhile—he just had to see three-si precision become reality in a domestic motorcycle engine. Misa spent ten years obsessing over glasses and nearly went under, yet in 2014 when Google Glass had just failed, everyone thought AR was dead.
These people aren't running in the race; they're building their own track.
Wang Xingxing of Unitree is the same. In 2016, he worked at DJI for two months before leaving to found Unitree. At the time, quadruped robots were almost all hydraulic—expensive and clumsy. He bet on electric drive and built core components himself. In 2021, they launched the Go1, priced under 75,000. Today Unitree holds over 60% of the global quadruped robot market. Liang Wenfeng went from quantitative finance to building AGI, hiring based on passion and curiosity rather than degrees. He once said: "The phase of following is over. It's time to lead."
What Exactly Does AI Amplify
Back to AI.
I used to think AI's value lay in amplifying skills. Programmers code ten times faster, designers generate images ten times faster—skills multiplied by a coefficient. That sounded reasonable.
But in the process of pushing this within teams, I realized that's not the case.
The bottleneck isn't whether AI can help you do something. It's whether you know what to use it for.
Previously, measuring someone's ability meant "what are you good at"—finishing tasks was the standard. Now the threshold for finishing tasks has been drastically lowered by AI. What becomes scarce then? It's your ability to consistently do something well, to do it differently from others.
The answer comes from passion.
I've observed a clear divergence within teams. Some people progress rapidly with AI, not because of strong technical foundations, but because they know what they want. Their direction is clear—they might be orchestrating ten AI agents running different tasks simultaneously, staring at one thing for the long haul. Others have decent skills but just don't know what to do with AI. Their previous work mode was waiting for assigned tasks, completing them, getting feedback. Now that loop is broken—you have to find your own direction, drive yourself. During the process, no one might cheer you on; you have to judge for yourself whether it's worth continuing.
Previously, this judgment mattered less because organizational structure made decisions for you. Now it's different.
Builders and Promoters
Thinking further down this path, I increasingly feel that the corporate form will gradually weaken.
The future might look more like MCNs. Two core roles: Builders, who focus intensely on building products, turning what they see into reality; and Promoters, who have influence and can make good things seen.
Many Builders are themselves Promoters. Zhang Xue's interview stories spread naturally; Misa promotes his products on Moments daily; Wang Xingxing's robots performed at the Spring Festival Gala. These creators are themselves distribution nodes.
Between these two roles, the loop might close. The remaining organizational form might resemble MCNs—providing infrastructure, taking a thin slice of profit, offering some incubation support.
Find Your Passion
My mindset is quite different from before. Things I used to value—position in an organization, amount of resources, whether others approve—now feel less critical. Instead, there's a greater sense of freedom.
What AI gives people, ultimately, is the possibility of landing your passion. Previously, having passion but no team or capital meant many things were simply impossible. Now one person plus AI can accomplish more than a small team could before.
So the better question isn't "Will AI replace me?" It's "Where exactly is my passion?" Do you want to build something, or do you want good things to be seen by more people?
When anxious, it's easy to overlook one change: AI is enabling more Zhang Xues and more Misas to emerge from unexpected corners. These people might not have big company backgrounds or many resources—just a direction they absolutely must pursue, then pushing forward with AI.
I don't know exactly where, but within six months we should see quite a few.