The diverse profiles of post - 2000 entrepreneurs: some got exposed to business in high school, some had a million - yuan deposit upon graduation. Do they end up in the same place despite taking different paths?
36Kr's "Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
Will young people in this era still choose to start a business?
With the devaluation of academic degrees, the rapid iteration of industries, sky - high housing prices, and the "35 - year - old crisis"..., the post - 00s generation under 25 are already in awe of the workplace and instead pursue stability. "Witnessing the prosperity without participating; being in the midst of change but having little confidence to move forward" is the inner portrayal of many people.
In 2025, after two years of various examinations, Jiang Yiwen finally passed the provincial civil service exam in the last year of her "fresh graduate" status [1]. On this single - plank bridge of the civil service exam crowded with thousands of candidates, graduates from top - tier universities such as Tsinghua and Peking are not uncommon. According to statistics, in 2025, there were 18,948 civil service positions in the national exam, recruiting nearly 40,000 people, with 3.41 million applicants and an admission rate of only 1.1%.
The civil service exam is an option where "efforts can relatively yield some returns". For this choice, Jiang Yiwen suppressed another voice in her heart: "I actually want to start a business."
Following the footsteps of post - 00s entrepreneurs, "Workplace Bonus" has found the following examples:
Tian Yihao, born in 2000, started his business in his sophomore year and had over one million in savings by the time of graduation;
Sun Donglai, born in 2001, was inspired to start a business during a hackathon in the summer after being admitted to the University of Science and Technology of China;
Zhong Tai, born in 2002, showed strong content and operation talents in high school. He started the technology content media "Agent Universe" in his junior year and has now become a leading content creator in the AI field;
Vincent and Kay, with high - school educations, due to their growth paths outside the traditional education system, were exposed to real - world business at an early age, and their entrepreneurial paths are clearer.
Few people in their twenties can face uncertainty head - on. Without senior connections and a mature team's backing, yet still being able to break into the market - while we feel respectful, we try to find the spark of this era in them. What ignited them? Is it courage, tenacity, their respective memories and past experiences, or the grasp of new trends?
[1] The "fresh graduate" status refers to graduates who have graduated from school within a specific period and have not officially entered the workplace. In some provincial civil service exams, graduates who have not found a job within two years after graduation can apply as fresh graduates.
The deeper the trough one has seen, the stronger the desire for victory ╱ 01
It is important to have the ability to achieve things, but it is more important to believe that one can achieve them ╱ 02
I was in charge of operations in senior high school and started a business in junior year. I turned my strength into a career ╱ 03
Daring to think and daring to act are the most precious qualities of young people ╱ 04
After breaking out of the "good student" framework, starting a business was predestined ╱ 05
The deeper the trough one has seen, the stronger the desire for victory
Xie Zheng (Vincent), born in 2002, Founder of Bonjour
In junior high school, I was different from other students - I can't quite say exactly how. I only remember once, dozens of people rushed into my classroom and beat me up, and the teacher didn't show up in time.
This incident also made it impossible for me to go back to school for a long time. My parents were always busy and had no time to take care of me. In my world, there were probably only my grandparents. Seeing me bruised and battered, they felt very sorry for me. I felt extremely guilty.
At that time, I fell into self - doubt. Was it my fault that I was different from others?
Because I couldn't attend classes normally, I had to study at a vocational high school [2] in high school. At the vocational high school, I encountered the first turning point in my life.
In junior high school, influenced by the American TV series "Person of Interest", I developed a deep interest in programming. I admire Steve Jobs and always had some novel ideas in my mind. I firmly believed that I could create my own "Apple" like him.
The vocational high school gave me the opportunity to really start teaching myself programming.
I was selected by the teacher as a promising student to enter the "lab" and follow the competition path. The environment in the lab was relaxed, and I mainly had to study on my own. At that time, I would get up early every day and go to the lab to teach myself front - end and back - end languages page by page from the textbooks. I would return to the dormitory at 10:30 p.m. when the curfew rang.
My first programming practice was to make a Snake game. The Snake game is usually a project for beginners, but it took me three weeks. Although I couldn't understand it quickly, those hours of in - depth study excited me: writing code, debugging bugs, reflecting, and modifying code. Communication and learning platforms such as Stack Overflow, YouTube, and Juejin [3] became my inseparable "mentors".
My abilities grew rapidly, and I got my first job. In the first year of my job, I lived in the company for a year and a half.
When I first joined the company, I had to deal with the iOS system, which I had never touched before. I didn't want to hold everyone back, so I was willing to work harder. In the first year of work, I almost always slept in the company. I would go to bed at 5 a.m. and get up at 10 a.m. to continue working.
Although the salary was not high, I thought that the practical know - how I gained from hands - on experience was far more valuable than the knowledge in textbooks.
In the three and a half years at the first company, I grew with the company: I would try out my ideas and promote the company's business development; the business would also force me to make some novel attempts, such as learning some niche programming languages that I had to learn, or teaching myself product management and operation. To do a good job in product management, I once studied "Selected Works of Mao Zedong". The company gradually grew into a large team of fifty or sixty people; I also grew from a novice programmer to a product manager and half of a business leader.
● Vincent at the company's annual meeting
In 2023, AI opened up a whole new world for me. I was so excited that I decided to start a business.
I was determined to build an entrepreneur community. Because "communication" is a necessity in the venture - capital circle. There are many "introverted entrepreneurs" like me or novice entrepreneurs with few resources. They need a communication platform.
In the first month of starting the business, I slept on the floor at my senior's place for nearly a month. Later, to save money and to accompany my grandparents, I went back to my hometown to continue working on the product. But perhaps the entry point was wrong, and it didn't target the right group. The product couldn't be commercialized.
By this time, I had very little money left. Many people advised me to give up. I had to make a decision.
Steve Jobs had a profound influence on me - so much so that I thought if I gave up this project, I would regret it for the rest of my life. But if I continued with the entrepreneur community, the product needed to be innovated.
In January 2024, I flew to Hangzhou to continue my business. I changed the entry point of the community to social business cards and officially started the "Bonjour" project.
The first half of 2024 was the most difficult time in my more than twenty - year life: the product hadn't been launched yet, I took out loans to support the project's expenses, I timidly occupied seats at Starbucks, and I went back to a tiny rented room at night where I could only enter sideways...
In my twenties, I was in debt of more than a hundred thousand. I didn't have the money to buy a plane ticket to go back for my grandfather's birthday, and I didn't expect that it was my grandfather's last birthday.
The turning point came in July 2024. At the hackathon, I enthusiastically recommended our product to everyone, and the entrepreneurs loved it. Bonjour was popular from the first day to the last. On the last night of the event, I told our team's story at the product exhibition area. Some investors and clients were touched and immediately invested and placed orders.
● The Bonjour team at the hackathon
In 5 days, we got 100,000 in sponsorship, and then the incoming investments kept coming. Bonjour received an investment of 2.15 million yuan from Miracle Plus.
In March this year, Bonjour launched its community function. It took 4 months for the product's user count to grow from 0 to 10,000. After the community was launched, it took less than half of that time to grow the same number of users.
The business situation is gradually improving, and I'm still gradually paying off my debts. Looking back on this journey, I'm very grateful to myself for not giving up in junior high school. I'm also grateful for the experience of doing product management in my first job, which helped me regain my confidence. I'm thankful for my colleagues who still stuck with Bonjour for three months without pay last year.
[2] Vocational high schools belong to the category of secondary vocational education and are an important part of senior high school education. They complement regular high schools and provide different paths for students' growth and development. They focus on cultivating students' professional skills and practical abilities, enabling students to directly enter relevant vocational positions after graduation to meet the society's demand for various professional and technical talents.
[3] Stack Overflow is the world's largest programming and technology Q&A website, founded in 2008 by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky; Juejin is a domestic technology communication community developed from a front - end and back - end technology community, covering many technical fields such as Web front - end, mobile development, product design, artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing. It is committed to providing a platform for developers to learn, communicate, and grow.
It is important to have the ability to achieve things, but it is more important to believe that one can achieve them
Tian Yihao, born in 2000, CEO of Turing Marketplace
Although I graduated from a junior college, I earned nearly a million by the time of graduation.
Our school in Zhejiang is known as the place where "students ride in on bicycles and drive out in BMWs". I majored in e - commerce. When I entered school in 2018, the e - commerce market was booming. The seniors who were doing business on Pinduoduo were extremely busy - no exaggeration, the trucks delivering goods to the school were "in an endless stream". Seeing everyone so busy and happy, I also wanted to find something to do.
But I wanted to do something different from others.
I chose the "international trade" direction. In my sophomore year, I discovered the Shopee [4] platform and uploaded a few products to test the waters. Unexpectedly, a customer from Southeast Asia placed an order in the afternoon after I uploaded the products in the morning.
Later, I found out that I was one of the first merchants to enter Shopee and caught the wave of the platform's early - stage benefits, so I got off to a relatively smooth start.
After deciding to officially start a business, I began a series of systematic operations: optimizing product detail pages, optimizing product information, studying the platform's algorithm mechanism, driving traffic, and focusing on conversion rates... Three months later, the orders of my store skyrocketed. Building warehouses, checking orders, and staying up late to send express deliveries became my normal routine.
Because I was too busy to eat, I suffered from intestinal bleeding from over - working and was hospitalized three or four times.
● The warehouse that Tian Yihao and his juniors and seniors built together while staying up late
But this bonus period only lasted for about half a year. By the time I was about to graduate, the platform's rules were no longer very suitable for novice merchants: The platform would assess and recommend merchants from multiple aspects, forcing merchants into price - cutting competition, and the profits were much lower than before.
After a failed business venture, one will have an even stronger desire for victory. After graduation, I continued to start a business and switched to live - streaming e - commerce in cooperation with my seniors.
The performance of live - streaming e - commerce was quite astonishing, or perhaps it was because we didn't do well enough - At the peak, we had a GMV of over 10 million yuan in a month, but when calculating the annual profit, it was less than 5%. Behind the 10 - million - plus GMV, merchants not only have to bear many costs but also face risks in capital utilization. After dividing the profits, there wasn't much left for everyone after a busy year. E - commerce is tough.
● Data from a live - streaming session
By this time, many of my peers around me were already married and had children. My parents also urged me to go home, but I refused.
In 2023, with the popularity of going global and AI, I wanted to give it a try in these two fields.
Because I was a bit of an outsider, I was scammed out of more than a hundred thousand yuan by others in the name of investing in the "overseas version of Douyin" and "AI hardware". However, I got the opportunity to work on the "AI voice recorder".
The demand for the AI voice recorder had already been verified by Plaud [5]. After realizing I was scammed, I urgently contacted the employees of my previous... (The original text seems incomplete here)