Vol.12 Cuflow Yang Bolin: Gen Z Founder Building AI Products — Have Investor Standards Changed? | Y Transformers

Hello listeners. As the old year gives way to the new, we're launching a new column — Y Talk.

This is a series from Yunqi Capital's post-'98 investment initiative, "Y Transformers." We'll be inviting Yunqi's AI investors and post-'98 AI founders to sit down for real conversations, going back to where it all began. We'll hear why founders decided to start out, why investors chose to bet on them, and both sides' unvarnished views on what's certain and uncertain about AI.

This is a dialogue about Why — and a real record of how Y Transformers, embracing the AI wave, made their choices.

Our first Y Transformer is Yang Bolin, a 2003-born founder of an education agent product.

In third grade, inspired by a magazine story, he rode buses back and forth across his county town in Guizhou selling newspapers. At 16, while studying abroad, a family emergency brought him home to help manage the family business. He went on to work in brand globalization, online education projects — exploring different fields, getting results, then setting out again. These experiences forged in Yang an ability to decompose complex problems and a tolerance for uncertainty.

In 2025, Yunqi Capital's investment team met this "veteran teenager" with remarkable rapid-iteration capabilities. His product, Cuflow, became one of the first investments in Yunqi's post-'98 initiative, "Y Transformers."

In this conversation between a post-'03 "AI native" and Yunqi investors, we try to clarify two key questions: How do founders find the "soul" of an AI product amid a rapidly evolving tech stack? And how do investors, in an "era of great divergence," cut through the noise of model parameters to precisely capture a founder's "hunger"?

Guest: Yang Bolin (William) — Founder & CEO of Cuflow, an education agent product

Han Yi — Lead Investor, Yunqi Y Transformers

He Zeqing — Lead Investor, Yunqi Y Transformers

Host:

Linda — Managing Director, Yunqi Capital

Timeline

01:04 The Yunqi Y Transformers Initiative: Why are we committing 100 million RMB to support the post-'98 generation?

06:21 What investors see in post-'98 founders: AI Native, social-media native, and intense "hunger."

10:28 Yang Bolin's view: This generation of founders prefers "looking inward" — contemplating metaphysics in an age of information abundance.

12:38 The making of a "veteran teenager": Selling newspapers in third grade, handling crises at 16 — maturity as objective modeling of reality.

17:10 Three words Cobo uses to describe Yang Bolin: leverage, inner stability, youthful spirit.

24:47 Yang Bolin on the essence of entrepreneurship: "Chewing glass while staring into the abyss." Building is easy; serious entrepreneurship is hard.

32:59 Cuflow's vision: Why are great teachers hard to scale? How can AI deliver high-frequency "Aha Moments"?

37:45 The full-modal AI classroom: AI doesn't just answer questions — it possesses modal reasoning and scheduling capabilities.

43:52 Flow Notes: Solving the bias of opaque memory systems, returning editorial control to users.

49:56 Investment logic: In the era of great divergence, why is iteration speed more important than a perfect Day 1?

57:06 Why "Cuflow"? Inspired by Socrates — curiosity and flow state, protecting human curiosity.

58:39 "Ultimate either/or": Ship a rough version first or pursue perfection? Do investors value professionalism more, or trial-and-error capability?

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[Learn More]

🚀 Cuflow Hiring

Cuflow is always looking for senior AI engineers (Multi-agents/Memory). Reach out via Yunqi Capital (ID: yunqiparters)

🚀 Join the Y Transformers Initiative

If you're also a post-'98 AI founder, welcome to join Yunqi Capital's Y Transformers investment initiative. We don't just invest money — we're committed to helping you find your own "certainty" in the AI wave.

View episode transcript on Xiaoyuzhou