Ming Chaoping, the former core product leader of the dark side of the moon, enters the field of AI Coding.

Text by | Zhou Xinyu

Edited by | Su Jianxun

Since 2024, AI Coding has undoubtedly been the hottest startup track in the field of AI applications.

You may not be unfamiliar with many of the star products that have emerged in this area: Devin, the "world's first AI programmer" born in the United States in March 2024, Cursor, which gained popularity in August of the same year, and more recently, Windsurf, which was acquired by OpenAI at a staggering price of $3 billion.

In a sense, Ming Chaoping and his company "New Words and Codes", founded in September 2024, are latecomers in the Coding track.

However, this "late" company has sparked a wave of capital chasing at the end of 2024 when the AI track has returned to rationality. Less than half a year after its establishment, "New Words and Codes" completed two rounds of multi - million - dollar financing with a valuation of $80 million.

People play a crucial role in investment decisions. Ming Chaoping, a post - 95s entrepreneur, has the typical elements that convince capital: his work experience at OnePlus, ByteDance, and Dark Side of the Moon forms the most "model" resume in the eyes of investors.

The two products, CapCut and Kimi, have left a significant mark on his seven - year career. At ByteDance, he and his team increased CapCut's DAU from one million to 100 million. As the core product leader of Kimi, the flagship product of Dark Side of the Moon, the AI music video generation product Noisee, which he tested overseas, received an invitation from Silicon Valley VC firm a16z soon after its launch.

△ Ming Chaoping. Photo source: The interviewee

However, in the highly competitive AI Coding track, Ming Chaoping believes that he is by no means a late follower.

In his view, Claude, Cursor, and Devin are not his real competitors. He compares these products to SLR cameras: "Just as photography was once considered a profession only for professionals, coding today is also seen in the same light."

In contrast, Ming Chaoping's goal is to make Coding as popular as "mobile photography" among the general public.

The development history of "mobile photography" has inspired him: the lowering of the threshold for taking photos has not only significantly increased the frequency of photography but also given rise to communities such as Instagram and Snapchat.

"Like photography, Coding can be more than just a traditional programming activity; it can be a creative act, a scenario driven by inspiration." Ming Chaoping believes that, like photography, Coding has the potential to be popularized. "Once Coding becomes a creative activity for ordinary people, the commercial and social value it generates will increase exponentially."

The product YouWare, launched in March 2025, is a validation of his concept of "Coding as creation".

In his view, compared to pure Coding tools like Cursor, YouWare is a combination of "tool + community":

On the one hand, YouWare provides Coding tools for creation. Users can quickly generate high - quality web pages by having conversations or pasting code generated by any tool.

△ Generating web pages through conversations. Photo source: YouWare

On the other hand, users bring creativity to YouWare, turning their ideas into software such as web pages, games, or apps using the tools. YouWare has built a community where users can showcase their products, exchange ideas, and create derivative projects.

△ YouWare community. Photo source: YouWare

During the entrepreneurial process, Ming Chaoping has often been challenged by a question: Do ordinary people really have the motivation to use Coding for long - term creation?

"I firmly believe that Coding will be a skill that the general public needs in the long run, but many people are skeptical." He told "Intelligent Emergence", the lack of a clear answer means there is an "anti - consensus", "This is also our opportunity for entrepreneurship. Once you start a business within the consensus, you can never create a disruptive product."

Another question he has thought about the most during this entrepreneurial experience is: What indicators are the most important for AI products? In other words, do DAU and growth, which everyone is anxious about, still occupy a central position in the AI era?

In Ming Chaoping's view, the arrival of the Internet era gave rise to indicators such as DAU, user volume, and growth rate. "Because the trend of the Internet is closely related to the improvement of network speed and the popularization of mobile terminals, Internet products are naturally related to the number of users."

He began to think about the key factors that led to the arrival of the AI era in the same way and concluded that it was the improvement of intelligence. This conclusion led to his dimension for measuring AI products: "The important indicator is the speed at which you consume intelligence, or the speed at which you consume Tokens. The more Tokens you consume, the higher the value generated by intelligence."

Therefore, Ming Chaoping is more anxious about the growth of the number of creative projects than the growth of the user volume: "The growth of the number of projects means whether users are continuously consuming Tokens for creation."

In his view, today's Coding is similar to short - video creation, and users' motivations can be roughly divided into two categories: one is to get rewards, and the other is to be inspired by the community to create.

To encourage users to code, YouWare has launched a Knots (points) incentive system, allowing users to earn points through coding projects. At the same time, Ming Chaoping also plans to develop a self - developed recommendation algorithm to enable users to discover more interesting projects in the community.

He also has extremely high and almost obsessive requirements for product experience. For example, to reduce the 60 - second startup time of third - party services, the team developed a self - developed front - end Sandbox engine, reducing the code execution time to 5 seconds.

Another detail is that if you try to contact Ming Chaoping on WeChat, you may not get a reply. However, if you report a product bug in the YouWare Discord community, he will probably reply immediately.

However, the achievements of YouWare have allowed him to breathe a little easier. As of mid - May, the number of projects on the platform has reached hundreds of thousands. After a half - year of fast - paced entrepreneurship, the young team recently went on a team - building trip to Xiamen.

Recently, "Intelligent Emergence" had a conversation with him about his entrepreneurial journey filled with a gambler's mentality over the past half - year.

Here is a summary of Ming Chaoping's views by "Intelligent Emergence":

Startups should aim for monopoly, not competition

• My preference is to make complex and scarce things accessible to more people.

This was also the case when we developed CapCut. Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro are tools for professional users to create at the movie - industry level. At that time, people thought that not many people would create videos. However, you can see that in today's short - video era, everyone can create videos.

So my first thought was that Coding should be made available to a wider range of users. It will bring greater value both commercially and socially.

I provide the technology, and users provide the creative ideas. Some people create games, some create apps and websites. Coding is no longer just a traditional programming activity but a creative act, a scenario driven by inspiration.

• A key aspect of developing an AI Coding product is to give users a continuous motivation to code. This raises a question: Do people really have the long - term motivation to create?

I think it's normal to have this question, and the existence of this question is also our biggest opportunity for entrepreneurship because there is an "anti - consensus" here.

If everyone believes that users have the motivation, then it's too late to start a business. Currently, most people think otherwise, so I believe that Coding has even greater value.

• What we're betting on is that today's Coding is similar to photography.

Initially, photographers were defined as those with SLR cameras. It wasn't until the iPhone 4 that a group of "mobile photographers" emerged. This led to an exponential increase in the number of photos taken every day.

The development of "mobile photography" over the past decade has given rise to platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok because photography has become increasingly convenient.

Coding is similar to "mobile photography" in that it is also an infrastructure, a technology.

However, we don't just want to create a tool. So we're also thinking about how to give Coding its own "moment", similar to the value that "lip - syncing" brought to short - videos in Musical.ly.

• I think generally, people have two main motivations for creating: one is to get rewards, and the other is for entertainment and social interaction.

So our current ways to stimulate users' creative motivation are, first, to provide incentives (Knots points), and second, to offer good inspiration. An important reason for building YouWare as a community is to provide users with creative ideas.

△ The platform supports users to create derivative projects based on existing ones and allows creators to set whether derivative creation is permitted. Photo source: YouWare

• If a startup faces competition from day one, it's definitely not a good way to start a business. As Peter Thiel (founder of PayPal) said, startups should aim for monopoly, not competition.

Devin, GitHub, and other projects that people think might be our competitors are not really competitors in my eyes. The community or the group of creators we want to build is completely different from theirs.

• I really dislike competitor analysis. When you list three products in a document and tell people about your advantages over them, it means your product is just a follow - up product and can't be disruptive.
• I can't prevent large companies from competing with us; it's inevitable. There are many food - delivery and e - commerce products today, and I think the ones that survive can be divided into two categories: those with a high upper limit of output results and those with relatively low costs even if the output is not perfect.

Different competitive dimensions determine different choices and strategies.

• Compared with the initial demo, our current product has added an Upload function, allowing users to paste code generated by products such as Cursor, Claude, and ChatGPT.

As a startup, it would be too disruptive to users' habits and perception to tell them not to code elsewhere and only use our platform. Currently, the default scenarios for coding are still ChatGPT and Claude.

So a smart approach is to become their downstream rather than competing upstream. The addition of the Upload function has been quite helpful to us, and now one - third of our users upload code through this function.

△ The platform supports users to upload or paste HTML/TSX code generated by any AI tool (such as ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, etc.) and automatically generates an accessible web - page link. Photo source: YouWare

Don't blindly follow established methodologies for going global and growth

• The PV of YouWare increased by 1000 times on the second day, reaching one million. This was a pleasant surprise because I saw its strong disruptive power.

However, I also feel a great sense of responsibility. There is a lot of user - generated content in our community, and we need to take on the responsibility of platform review. To be honest, this is quite a big pressure for a startup.

• I think achieving such growth was an accidental event. However, from this experience, we can learn which categories have more consumption value.

For example, some users create anime - themed games and "pain walls", and others create "call - for - idol" tools. These all have high dissemination value.

There are two post - 00s girls on our team who create many things that I don't understand, such as Genshin Impact - related games, but they have high consumption value.

• Currently, I only focus on one indicator for the product's growth: the number of new projects added to our product every day. This indicates whether our users are continuously creating, which is more important than DAU and user volume.

If users' motivation to create becomes stronger, the number of new projects will increase, which will naturally lead to more consumption by other users.

• The Chinese market is currently the most challenging market globally, and Chinese AI users are the most discerning. I will definitely enter the Chinese market, but I need the product to meet my high expectations.
• Startups shouldn't take on too many heavy tasks. Things that creators don't need at this stage can be skipped. This is an important judgment logic. For example, invitation codes seem to be an important growth method, but creators don't need them.

However, creators need incentives, so we have launched a points - like system called "Knots". Users can earn "Knots" by uploading projects. Even though there is currently little connection between "Knots" and cash, some users are still willing to create for it.

• We are very cautious about advertising. We only cooperate with some KOLs on YouTube and X. Mainly because I think the product is not yet satisfactory, and it's not necessary to spend money on growth at this stage.

I have ambitions for growth, but not through buying traffic or advertising. I aim for organic growth.

• We are currently facing a problem: how to provide good regional user services. We have a large number of Japanese users, and the content they create may affect the experience of users from other countries.

So we plan to adjust our distribution strategy, for example, reducing the amount of English - language content shown to Japanese users and vice versa.

Developing a self - developed recommendation algorithm is a "heavy" task for a startup, but since users need it, we have to do it.

• I think the strategies for going global from scratch are similar for everyone. The key lies in whether each step is implemented effectively. For example, the main channels for communication overseas are X, Discord, and YouTube.

If you are developing an