This smart hardware that investors “can't understand” has an annual sales volume of over 1 billion yuan.
Text | Wang Fangyu
Editor | Su Jianxun
In the recently popular dating reality show "Love at First Sight Season 4", Liang Tian, a former host of Hunan TV, appeared as a female guest. In the first episode of the show, to liven up the atmosphere, she took out a somewhat "strange" guitar and sang the song "Belonging" by Fish Leong with another male guest.
Liang Tian doesn't know how to play the guitar. The guitar she used is the "Stringless Guitar" from the brand LiberLive.
Although it looks similar to a guitar, the LiberLive actually has no strings. Instead, its fretboard is composed of nine silicone pads, which light up according to the melody of the song. Users just need to follow the lights and press the silicone pads to produce the effect of guitar chords.
The LiberLive Stringless Guitar played by Liang Tian Source: Screenshot from the variety show "Love at First Sight"
This simple operation and novel design have quickly made LiberLive a hit.
On the Douyin platform, videos of stringless guitar performances often receive hundreds of thousands of likes. Relying on social media and word - of - mouth spread from users, the sales of LiberLive have been rising steadily.
Videos of stringless guitar performances have attracted a lot of attention Source: Screenshot from Douyin
The LiberLive C1 product was launched in April 2023 and became a big hit in the musical instrument category on Tmall that year. The following year, it quickly joined the ranks of "billion - yuan brands" and ranked first in the musical instrument categories on platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin.
According to data from Frost & Sullivan, from June 2023 to June 2024, the sales volume of LiberLive products ranked first in the global stringless guitar market.
"LiberLive is one of the most successful smart hardware products in the past two years," Li Chen, an investor from an FA institution focusing on smart hardware, told Smart Emergence. The revenue of 'Unknown Planet', the company behind the LiberLive brand, exceeded 1 billion yuan in 2024, a figure that many projects with large institutional investments can hardly achieve.However, the LiberLive, which now ranks first in global sales, was rejected by most investors when seeking financing at the beginning.
Smart Emergence learned that at two critical development time points, 2019 and 2023, LiberLive sought financing from investment institutions. In 2019, the founder had just launched the stringless guitar project, and in 2023, it was just before the product's mass production and launch. But no investment institution was willing to invest either time.
Judging from the equity structure of 'Unknown Planet', the company behind LiberLive, the project has completed two rounds of financing so far. The investors include not only the incubation institution, the XBOTPARK Fund co - founded by Li Zexiang, but also upstream and downstream industrial players such as Weil Co., Ltd. and Z·Pilot. There is no sign of other investment institutions. However, relevant sources told Smart Emergence that in 2024, a first - tier investment institution acquired some old shares of 'Unknown Planet'.
Many investors told Smart Emergence that investors who had looked at the LiberLive project generally said they 'didn't understand it'. It is rumored that Tang Wenxuan, the founder of LiberLive, was so frustrated by the repeated setbacks in financing that he was disheartened by external investment institutions and didn't want to see investors anymore. Tang Wenxuan has never been interviewed by the media.
An Alternative Innovation after Four Years of Hard Work
Indeed, LiberLive doesn't quite fit the project profile that investors usually favor.
Founder Tang Wenxuan is neither a senior executive of a large company nor an industry veteran. He graduated from Hunan University with a bachelor's degree in automation and from the School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States with a master's degree. He once worked as an algorithm engineer in the navigation department of DJI.
In 2016, Tang Wenxuan left DJI to start his own business and founded Unknown Planet. In 2018, Unknown Planet launched an intelligent robot for art enlightenment early education and the 'Planet Racer Somatosensory Racing Game', but the market response to these two products with more AI attributes and a sense of the future was mediocre.
In 2019, Tang Wenxuan began to develop the stringless guitar LiberLive and sought financing from investment institutions, but no institution was willing to invest in this new product idea. After that, Tang Wenxuan spent four years researching and refining the stringless guitar product. He even had to pay out of his own pocket when funds were tight until the product was launched in April 2023 and became an instant sensation.
Tang Wenxuan's LinkedIn profile Source: Screenshot from LinkedIn
When talking about the inspiration for developing the stringless guitar, LiberLive told Smart Emergence that founder Tang Wenxuan loves music and learned to play the guitar in college. However, he deeply felt that it was difficult to learn the ordinary guitar and the entry threshold was high. He wanted more people to experience the fun of singing and playing with a sense of ceremony, which led to the birth of LiberLive.
Actually, before the invention of LiberLive, there were already smart guitar products on the market. The startup VisionTech launched the smart guitar Poputar in May 2016. Poputar retains the original appearance, strings, and complete body of a guitar. It uses indicator lights to tell users which strings to press, thus improving the efficiency of users learning the guitar.
Compared with previous smart guitars, LiberLive is more revolutionary. It completely eliminates the strings and changes the way of playing the guitar. It is more like a new musical instrument in the shape of a guitar.
For this reason, even the LiberLive team was not sure about the market acceptance of this new species.
"We conducted some user surveys before the launch, and the small - scale test results gave us quite a lot of confidence. But when the number of users increased, we were not 100% sure about the users' feedback," a person from the LiberLive marketing department told Smart Emergence.
But ultimately, the popularity of LiberLive after its launch exceeded everyone's expectations. The above - mentioned marketing person said that the LiberLive C1 was out of stock soon after its launch in 2023. It was not because the company was doing a scarcity marketing strategy, but because it was unexpected. To meet the market demand, even LiberLive employees went to the factory production line to tighten screws and speed up production.
Why was LiberLive able to succeed beyond previous smart musical instruments?
The minimalist product style is the basic factor that makes LiberLive appealing to users. An industry insider shared with Smart Emergence that there are many players trying out smart musical instruments in the market. Some want to disassemble, create unique shapes, collaborate with celebrities, and add numerous chords... Only LiberLive has the simplest shape and is the most user - friendly for beginners.
"There are a lot of copycats and imitators, but in the end, LiberLive sells the best," the insider said.
"Emotional value for young people" is a key reason. Li Chen believes that LiberLive gave up the niche group of traditional guitar users and instead embraced a more general group of music lovers without a guitar foundation. It allows them to perform in more scenarios such as on social networks, family gatherings, and couple/friend get - togethers, bringing greater a sense of achievement and emotional value.
The report from Frost & Sullivan shows that young people have a higher acceptance of stringless guitars. The main consumers of traditional smart guitars are middle - aged people aged 30 - 45, while the main buyers of stringless guitars are people aged 18 - 30, accounting for nearly half of the total.
Lessons from Smart Hardware: A Victory for Non - mainstream Entrepreneurs
LiberLive is an atypical, and even completely opposite, business story to the mainstream.
During the stage of looking for a product direction, Tang Wenxuan once tried smart robots, but he finally chose the less - glamorous musical instrument field. While smart hardware entrepreneurs generally pursue rapid product upgrades and iterations, Tang Wenxuan was willing to spend four years refining a single product.
Also because of this "non - mainstream" growth path, this smart hardware project that grew into a billion - yuan - a - year business with global - first sales volume in just two years was collectively overlooked by a group of investment institutions.
"Maybe what LiberLive wanted to do was too far - sighted, and no one had done it before, so investors still had some concerns," a person from the LiberLive marketing department recalled the company's roadshow experience to Smart Emergence. The most common feedback from investors to the company was "not very interested."
A hardware investor told Smart Emergence that LiberLive reminded him of Pop Mart back then, which was also collectively missed by large investment institutions. "The prediction of consumer products can't be clearly explained by surveys or knowledge. It's all related to the changes of the times," he said.
But in Li Chen's view, it was understandable that LiberLive failed to get institutional investment in 2019. At that time, Tang Wenxuan's two product explorations had both encountered difficulties, and the new product, the stringless guitar, was still in the concept stage. However, when seeking financing just before the product's launch in 2023, the product had already been refined, but still no investor recognized its potential. "This is worth reflecting on."
Li Chen believes that hardware investors may have over - focused on the "virtual" parts such as the team background, popular concepts, and track prospects, and ignored more substantial things.
The same principle applies not only to investment but also to entrepreneurship.
Currently, many AI hardware entrepreneurs are in the awkward situation of "holding a hammer to look for nails." They regard the large AI model as the core, and their main work is to find hardware forms and scenarios for AI to be implemented. However, they often easily ignore the real needs of consumers. Either they can't find the Product - Market Fit (PMF), or they simply cobble together an AI + product and launch it.
For example, a Shenzhen - based AI hardware company, after seeing the trend of AI glasses, cobbled together an AI glasses product in just a few months with the help of its supply - chain advantages to occupy the industry's mindshare early. But after its release, it received a lot of negative reviews, and even the most basic function of "making calls via Bluetooth" couldn't be realized.
"LiberLive doesn't have a particularly glamorous background or popular AI concepts, but its success just shows that meeting the real needs of consumers is more important than other factors," Li Chen summarized in his review.
(At the request of the interviewee, the name of investor Li Chen is a pseudonym)