Is Luo Yonghao, famously dubbed "the Industry Curse", choosing to "illuminate" others this time?
On August 31, Luo Yonghao dropped three "bombshells" on Weibo.
The first one is that the "Crossroads Annual Technology Sharing Conference" at the end of this year will be held in Shenzhen, and his company does not rule out the possibility of relocating to Shenzhen next year.
The second is that this conference will open up more docking opportunities for technology startups, but Luo Yonghao said, "This time, simply giving money is useless. I want to be your shareholder."
Finally, Luo Yonghao also put up a "reward": before the end of the year, if any manufacturer can make a smart TV that the elderly can turn on and watch immediately with extremely simple operations, he will advertise for it for free and bring goods via live streams for a whole year.
Later, Luo Yonghao further stated that if there is no TV that allows the elderly to turn on and watch immediately by the end of the year, his software team will develop a solution on their own, and then seek OEM cooperation with traditional TV enterprises.
As soon as the news came out, the topic "Luo Yonghao says he wants to enter the TV industry" quickly became a trending search, but Luo Yonghao immediately refuted the rumor, saying that he was only "creating a demonstration project for the market".
Looking back over the past 20 years, Luo Yonghao has been involved in many fields such as English education and training, smartphones, live streaming e-commerce, AR, and AI, with a very wide span of industries. But the only thing that has not changed is probably the "stubbornness" that made him swing a hammer to smash refrigerators back then.
Luo Yonghao intends to build the "Tech Spring Gala" into a "Startup Accelerator"
The "Crossroads Annual Technology Sharing Conference" that Luo Yonghao is promoting vigorously on Weibo this time is a brand event he first launched in December 2025, which was once called the "Tech Spring Gala" by the outside world.
Public information shows that "Crossroads" is a podcast program hosted by Luo Yonghao, whose name is inspired by the product philosophy of Apple founder Steve Jobs, that is, "the intersection of technology and humanities". And the "Tech Spring Gala" used to be the synonym for Apple's September press conference for a long time.
According to Luo Yonghao, the success of the "Crossroads" podcast gave rise to the "Crossroads Annual Technology Sharing Conference". The guests of this podcast program include well-known public figures from many fields such as entrepreneurs, directors, singers, hosts, and internet celebrities.
By the end of last year, the total number of plays of the main episodes of this podcast across all platforms had exceeded 300 million, with an average of more than 20 million plays per episode.
Last year, the first "Crossroads Annual Technology Sharing Conference" was held in Shanghai. It is reported that a total of 11 products were recommended at this conference, including 1 consumer-grade mechanical exoskeleton from Shanghai, 2 large model products from Beijing, and the remaining 8 products all from Guangdong.
According to Luo Yonghao, last year's "Crossroads Annual Technology Sharing Conference" increased the valuations of at least three startups by four to five times.
This year, Luo Yonghao chose Shenzhen as the host city for the second conference. Luo Yonghao said that Shenzhen is "the only magical city in my mind where entrepreneurship is still thriving everywhere".
With the successful experience of last year, Luo Yonghao also made a bold statement this time — "The goal of Crossroads is to become the most practically effective and valuable technology startup accelerator in China."
Luo Yonghao even criticized the common rhetoric in the tech startup circle: "Many investment institutions will tell the CEOs of startups that 'apart from providing capital, we can also provide a lot of resource support'. Generally speaking, this is just pure bragging, and everyone who knows it understands it."
But Luo Yonghao said, "We are different. In the early stage of a startup, as long as the product is really good and innovative, Crossroads basically acts as a rocket booster."
It is worth mentioning that this year Luo Yonghao may support high-quality tech startups through equity participation, "This time, simply giving money is useless. I want to be your shareholder."
Uncovering the Ups and Downs of the Entrepreneurial History of the Leading Man in the "Debt Repayment Legend"
Looking back at Luo Yonghao's entrepreneurial history, some of the projects he personally led did not end well. He was once teased by netizens as the "industry curse", and he himself once mentioned this title.
However, in Luo Yonghao's view, the statement of "industry curse" lacks logical support, which he completely disagrees with, and it is mostly just a coincidence in timing.
Public information shows that in 2000, Luo Yonghao was admitted to New Oriental to teach English through special admission. With his humorous and witty class language, Luo Yonghao quickly became popular on the Internet.
In 2006, Luo Yonghao resigned from New Oriental and founded Bullog. In the era when countless blog platforms emerged, Bullog quickly accumulated a large number of popularity with its unique style. However, in 2009, the domestic servers of Bullog were shut down.
In 2012, Luo Yonghao entered the smartphone market with the Hammer Phone that he had poured all his efforts into. Although Hammer Phone still has a large number of fans on the Internet to this day, it is undoubtedly a commercial failure.
In 2018, the capital chain of Hammer Phone broke, and Luo Yonghao was burdened with huge debts as a result.
Later, Luo Yonghao summed up the reasons for Hammer's failure many times, such as resources and public relations, but what he reflected on the most was the team — it took too long for him to build and run in a core team.
In May this year, Luo Yonghao mentioned in a podcast that he had reflected on the Hammer Technology incident far more than the outside world could imagine, and it was a 100% commercial failure. His persistence in aesthetics and products made him stay true to himself, but he still has no answer whether it was the right choice for the company's employees and investors.
After suffering a setback in the mobile phone industry, Luo Yonghao staged the plot of the "Debt Repayment Legend" that is now well known to the public.
According to a report by National Business Daily in June this year, an insider from Hammer Technology revealed that Luo Yonghao has paid off nearly 1 billion yuan in debts in total, the repayment of the remaining debts is steadily advancing, and he is also fully committed to his work to speed up the subsequent repayment plan.
The main way that helped Luo Yonghao quickly advance the plot of the "Debt Repayment Legend" is live streaming e-commerce. In 2020, he partnered with Huang He to enter the e-commerce live streaming industry.
In April of that year, Luo Yonghao's debut live stream achieved a transaction volume of 168 million yuan, breaking the highest record on the Douyin platform, and later once became the top live streamer on Douyin for product sales.
However, in June 2022, Luo Yonghao's Douyin account announced that it would be renamed "Jiaoge Youpeng Live Studio", and Luo Yonghao himself announced that he would leave the management team of Jiaoge Youpeng.
After Luo Yonghao faded out of the business, Jiaoge Youpeng was taken over by Li Jun, whom he called the real "boss". The Hong Kong-listed company Century Ruike, which is helmed by Li Jun, was later renamed "Jiaoge Youpeng Holdings".
According to the latest financial report of Jiaoge Youpeng Holdings, in the first half of this year, its revenue reached 771 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.51%; the attributable net profit increased by 50.8% to 87 million yuan, almost catching up with the profit of the whole of last year.
After greatly reducing the frequency of live streams, Luo Yonghao turned around and founded Beijing Fine Line Technology Co., Ltd., initially setting his sights on the booming AR industry at that time.
After its establishment, Fine Line completed a $50 million angel round of financing in less than 4 months, with a post-investment valuation of up to $200 million.
However, later due to setbacks in the project, Fine Line fully shifted its focus to the AI track. At the "Crossroads Annual Technology Sharing Conference" at the end of last year, Luo Yonghao launched an AI reading app called "Listeni", which is a product of Fine Line.
In addition, Fine Line also launched the AI assistant software J1 Assistant, but these two products did not make much splash in the consumer market, and the company's overall AI commercialization process still faces many challenges.
Luo Yonghao Refutes Rumors of Entering the TV Industry, and May Personally Create a Demonstration
It is worth mentioning that while warming up for the new year's conference, Luo Yonghao did not forget to mention the "elderly-friendly TV" incident.
Luo Yonghao said boldly: "Before the end of the year, if any manufacturer really makes a smart TV that the elderly can turn on and watch immediately with extremely simple operations (this is purely a software issue, and there is actually enough time to finish it), I will advertise for you for free at the year-end conference."
Luo Yonghao said that he will also help this manufacturer sell the TV for free for one year through his personal live streams, at a frequency of about once a week.
Luo Yonghao may even get personally involved: "If there is still no TV that allows the elderly to turn on and watch immediately by the end of the year, our own software team will develop a solution, and then seek OEM cooperation with traditional TV enterprises."
Later, the topic "Luo Yonghao says he wants to enter the TV industry" sparked heated discussions. In response, Luo Yonghao refuted the rumor, saying, "What I mean is that if no manufacturer can make an elderly-friendly TV that turns on and plays immediately, I will make a TV software solution, and then produce some OEM models to create a demonstration project for the market."
Luo Yonghao also said straightforwardly, "The whole world knows that TV is a declining industry. Why on earth would I 'enter' the TV industry? Now even my investors are getting nervous, thinking I've gone crazy..."
In fact, Luo Yonghao's starting point for the "elderly-friendly TV" issue is very practical. In July this year, he posted on Weibo that he had changed TVs twice for the elderly at home, but the elderly still could not figure out how to use them.
Even the so-called "elderly mode" launched by manufacturers did not solve the related problems well. Helplessly, Luo Yonghao finally had to install an IPTV set-top box for the elderly.
Luo Yonghao also lamented that there are endless TV dramas on online programs, but due to the complicated operation, the elderly can only watch traditional TV channels in the end.
Regarding the product design of TV manufacturers, Luo Yonghao even said unsparingly that "they really don't deserve to go to heaven".
Such public calls to a certain industry or enterprise are not rare in the more than 20 years since Luo Yonghao became famous, and in a sense, they have even become part of the core of his public persona.
As early as 2011, Luo Yonghao once held a hammer in front of Siemens' headquarters in Beijing, smashing 3 Siemens refrigerators into pieces, to express his dissatisfaction with the quality problems of Siemens refrigerators.
Last year, due to the pre-made food issue, Luo Yonghao and Jia Guolong, the founder of Xibei, fell into a much-talked-about "war of words". Affected by this incident, Xibei was "seriously injured" afterwards.
Can the elderly-friendliness problem of TV that Luo Yonghao is now tackling relentlessly get a proper solution in the future? Radar Finance will continue to pay attention to it.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Radar Finance", author: Ding Yu, editor: Meng Shuai, published with authorization from 36Kr.