Building Tools Is Building Traffic

A friend I’ve known for ten years grew his tool’s user base from zero to 20 million in just one year. Every time I meet him, I listen to his lighthearted boasts—and more importantly, his latest experiments. Those conversations consistently spark real insight.

  • Building tools is building traffic.
  • Promoting tools can be done by hiring young people to run teacher-focused self-media accounts—on Xiaohongshu, WeChat Video Channel, etc.
  • Roughly 20,000 new users arrive daily via this self-media channel. Their job? Run accounts and embed the tool into short videos, comments, and captions—generating steady sign-ups.
  • Once users move from the tool to WeCom (WeChat Work), no ads are sent for the first month. After that, one personalized ad per week—never repeating within a month.
  • WeCom users from free tools receive no high-touch support. If they leave, they leave.
  • Free tools rely purely on traffic-driven growth.
  • Comparable free tools include BanXiaoEr, QunJieLong, QunDaKa, and BanJiXiaoGuanJia.
  • If your commercial efficiency outperforms theirs, you’re engaging in dimensional competition—and can easily displace them.
  • Xiao Yang Ge earned over ¥100 million in one year from branded video interstitials. The education sector can borrow this logic too: repurpose decades of archived teaching materials—results are already proving strong in early tests.

Management Is Always a Big Problem

This educator has held senior roles at multiple major Chinese internet companies—and is also a top-tier academic. We shared lunch and talked candidly.

  • With free tools monetized via traffic ads, the biggest risk is over-indexing on acquisition while neglecting long-term user value: retention, optimization, and deep engagement.
  • Once full-time headcount exceeds 50, management becomes visibly hard—but truthfully, it’s always been hard.
  • You need clear hiring standards, documented processes, and scalable management mechanisms—and must refine them continuously.
  • At 50+ employees, founders must dedicate at least half their time to management—including recruiting.
  • Before hitting 50 or even 100 staff, the founder must personally interview every full-time hire. It’s exhausting—but essential. That direct connection shapes cohesion, shared identity, and cultural grounding.

When the Right People Are in Place, Many Problems Disappear

On Monday in Hangzhou, I consulted three mentors. One—widely respected in the industry—has captured multiple internet waves, giving him sharp intuition about live streaming and platform logic. I deeply admire and learn from him. Our time was brief, so I captured only fragments.

  • In live-streaming rooms, two things matter most: script and emotion.
  • Operations teams add value in two key ways: refining scripts and delivering emotional resonance.
  • The host’s on-camera emotion, however, comes primarily from the host—not operations.
  • Handheld (manual) streaming is low-efficiency but also low-cost. Because it’s easy to replicate, both hosts and ops staff tend to leave quickly—the model’s biggest vulnerability.
  • Signing an IP isn’t just paperwork. Its most critical step? Finding the right teacher. Get that right, and many other problems simply evaporate.
  • Build high-leverage models—like IP-driven, light-asset operations—where unit economics stay lean. Once you validate one teacher’s path, returns scale fast.

Do It Yourself

In The Tencent Story, there’s a telling episode about Zhang Xiaolong.

When he first took over QQ Mail, progress stalled. A core reason? He’d drifted from frontline work. He wasn’t immersed in daily product iterations or interface details—so many of his ideas never translated into real implementation.

Only after returning to the front lines—reviewing every button color, approving every UI tweak before launch—did QQ Mail take off.

If you lead a business—or run a company—and aren’t deeply familiar with frontline realities, aren’t hearing raw, unfiltered field feedback, the risk is severe.

How Relationships Stay Healthy Over Time

How do relationships deepen and endure? It hinges entirely on how you interact—and whether both sides keep adding “points” to the relationship ledger.

Human nature has two stubborn traits: we crave novelty, and we often treat those closest to us with less respect—until friction builds, mutual criticism escalates, and the bond fractures.

So sustaining a healthy, resilient relationship long-term is rare—and requires conscious effort.

Both parties must continuously contribute positive points.

At its core, this is an act of resisting human nature.

What counts as a “point”? Self-reflection. Refraining from casual put-downs. Offering genuine, timely feedback. Growing steadily. Maintaining respectful distance. Honoring boundaries. Keeping promises. All of these build relational equity.

The opposite—neglect, condescension, unreliability—erodes it.

How Long-Term Trust Is Built

I once interviewed a key candidate who asked: “Why did you choose to trust me—and how do we sustain that trust over time?”

My answer: My values and cognitive framework determine whom I’m inclined to trust.

So my process is this: Through early, in-depth conversations, I assign an initial trust score—say, 80 out of 100.

Sustaining mutual trust is then a joint project. Breaches—missed commitments, stagnation, disrespect—chip away at that score. When it falls below the threshold needed for continued collaboration, the relationship naturally ends.

To earn lasting trust, focus on generating positive points: integrity, competence, empathy, consistency, humility.

A Simple Logic for Earning Money

Here’s a straightforward formula:

First, find any activity—no matter how small—that you genuinely enjoy and don’t resist doing.

Then, make that activity your anchor—and accumulate two things around it:

  • Resources: Position yourself so tightly with the work that others instantly associate you with it. (“Oh—you’re the person who does X.”) Simple. Effective.
  • Cognition: Systematically develop your own frameworks, principles, and mental models—until you become the go-to expert on that domain.

After that? Let time do the rest.

Human Nature, in Two Words: “Admire Strength” and “Pursue Gain”

At its core, human nature rests on two impulses: “mu qiang” (admiring strength) and “zhu li” (pursuing gain).

In any context—work, friendship, negotiation—if you want respect, you must either:

  • Be demonstrably strong (in skill, judgment, character, or impact), or
  • Help others gain—whether materially (money, opportunity) or emotionally (recognition, safety, belonging).

That’s why “snobbery” isn’t a flaw—it’s just unvarnished human instinct.

A personal reminder: Focus on becoming useful—to your team, your users, your community. If people don’t respect you yet? Keep growing. Keep serving. Respect follows utility.