5Y News｜Agora x 5Y Capital, RTE 2020 Real-Time Internet Startup Challenge Wraps Up!

On October 25, the "RTE 2020 Real-Time Internet Startup Challenge" — co-hosted by Agora and 5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Capital), with MiraclePlus as strategic partner — held its final pitch competition in Shanghai.

As the world's first startup challenge in the real-time internet space, the competition sought out companies and application scenarios "using real-time interaction technology to innovate" on a global scale.

After three months of intense competition, Oasis from the virtual social space, vipSing from vocal music education, and Notta from collaborative office software emerged from over 100 applicants to take the top three spots.

Founded in 2013, Agora is a pioneer and enabler of the real-time internet industry. As one of Agora's early investors, 5Y Capital has been a driving force behind it. Through their joint efforts, the real-time internet track has gone from zero to one. Making this industry more prosperous, discovering more unicorns, and finding innovative companies that create value across industries — this is the shared goal of Agora and 5Y Capital.

Top 10 finalists and four judges at the RTE 2020 Real-Time Internet Startup Challenge

01

Scene Richness and Industrial Diversification

Will Be the Major Trends in Real-Time Internet

In his opening remarks at the finals, Agora founder and CEO Tony Zhao said, "In this era, the real-time internet industry has grown to a stage where there are ample opportunities and space for everyone to pay attention to this field's development and seek future business opportunities. With 5Y Capital, MiraclePlus, and Agora coming together to host this startup challenge, we believe it will further promote and accelerate innovation and growth for entrepreneurs in this direction."

Agora founder and CEO Tony Zhao

At the RTE 2020 Real-Time Internet Conference's offline "Innovation Ecosystem" forum on October 24, Agora announced that registered application developers globally had surpassed 210,000, with daily active API calls exceeding 10 billion. Zhao believes that "under the broad trend of offline life and the economy gradually going digital and online, preserving people's most natural interactions and collaboration in real-time online formats has inherently massive demand. I believe the ten startups that made it to the finals today are all standouts who have been refining and exploring their respective industries. I hope they give their best today and achieve great entrepreneurial success in the future."

Qin Liu, founding partner of 5Y Capital, said in his remarks at the competition, "We were moved by the vision Tony (Zhao) laid out back then. This vision aligns with both the overall industry development trend and the massive trend-driven entrepreneurial opportunities facing Chinese entrepreneurs today. Agora is a booster for this industry. Through this challenge, we hope to discover more leading companies in this track and, together with capital backing, drive the development of the entire real-time internet ecosystem."

Qin Liu, founding partner of 5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Capital)

MiraclePlus, the strategic partner for this competition, was founded by Dr. Qi Lu, former president and COO of Baidu Group, former executive vice president of Microsoft, and former executive vice president of Yahoo. Though Dr. Lu couldn't attend in person, he sent remote congratulations, stating, "I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with Agora and 5Y Capital to discover entrepreneurs with growth potential and innovative capabilities in the real-time internet track, and to promote the continuous development of early-stage innovation in real-time internet."

Qi Lu, founder and CEO of MiraclePlus

02

Top 10 Finalists Full of Highlights

Judges Offer In-Depth Commentary

The top 10 projects came from multiple different fields, each with distinctive team backgrounds, product forms, operational philosophies, and business models — every one of them full of highlights. During the pitching process, judges offered insightful commentary. Liu noted, "The biggest difference from what we expected in this challenge is the diversity of fields, richness of scenarios, and international flavor — there are impressive applications across all kinds of scenarios."

Zhao also mentioned the respective highlights of the ten competing projects: "Bosowei has spent eight years grinding and growing in the education industry, constantly pursuing its dreams — its future potential and space are enormous. Yuanquan transformed from programmer assessment to exam assessment, seizing post-pandemic opportunities with considerable commercial potential. The smart musical instrument project has a clear commercial path and operating strategy, and its founder has a unique style and passion — essential qualities for outstanding startups. Oasis represents a massive future direction as a virtual online world; if positioned correctly going forward, the space will be huge. Zhishangzhijue has very strong technical capabilities and background, with an excellent foundation. Notta had a global market vision from day one, and Saturn Vision also has significant opportunities in the current context of informatization and intelligentization."

When discussing the topic of "how to use real-time interaction technology to innovate and what innovation opportunities exist," Liu stated, "Real-time interaction may be the internet's next biggest trend because it achieves a media and interaction upgrade. The highest form of media is audio-visual, and the way we interact shifts from mouse and keyboard to simply speaking and having the other party receive it. This could lay the groundwork for a wave of consumer internet innovation in the next five years, containing a massive inflection point that aligns with natural human interaction patterns."

Zhao added his own perspective on this view: "Real-time interaction essentially provides tremendous convenience and participation opportunities, dramatically improving production efficiency and the convenience of life and work. It has disruptive potential in certain domains."

From Agora CFO Jingbo Wang's perspective, using the pandemic as an opportunity to explore overseas markets represents a new opportunity for real-time audio and video. He noted, "Overseas, many users hadn't even used livestreaming before the pandemic — when it hit, they started using real-time audio and video directly. For domestic entrepreneurs, simply replicating existing domestic approaches overseas could already be more advanced."

Kai Liu, managing director at 5Y Capital, believes real-time interaction is a form of connection, and that the value of connectivity will be visible across all industries in the future. He stated, "The biggest opportunity everyone faces is that many vertical industries and scenarios currently lack connection — take industry, for example, where machine-to-machine and machine-to-human connections can create many possibilities."

On the topic of "advice for entrepreneurs in the real-time audio and video track," Liu offered three points: first, have consumer insight and observe consumer needs; second, pay attention to the potential ceiling and commercial returns; third, focus on your technology stack and think about how to combine it with business to build commercial moats.

In Zhao's view, as an entrepreneur, you can't have fatal weaknesses — you need to learn yourself or strengthen your team — while also maximizing your strengths, which is key to entrepreneurial success.

Kai Liu believes that rapid iteration in technology entrepreneurship is extremely difficult, so he advises entrepreneurs not to reinvent the wheel and to leverage others' professional capabilities and services whenever possible, because "the most expensive thing is time, and this cost becomes negligible in the long run."

From a financial perspective, Wang also offered three pieces of advice to entrepreneurs: first, entrepreneurship requires enduring loneliness and sitting on the cold bench; second, raise enough funding to give your team a sense of security; third, find investors who understand your business.

03

Top Three Winners Emerge,

Covering Virtual Social, Vocal Music Education, and Collaborative Office Scenarios

When presenting the championship award to Oasis at the "RTE 2020 Startup Challenge," Wang stated, "We see tremendous disruptive potential in this project. It has VR-based technology, representing a new experience, plus many social elements with strong network effects. It also aligns very well with the challenge's theme of 'real-time interaction.' We hope this project can truly disrupt all human interaction and life experiences, enabling people to truly have a second life."

RTE 2020 Startup Challenge champion Oasis

The second-place winner of the RTE 2020 Startup Challenge was vipSing. Kai Liu remarked in presenting the award, "In early childhood vocal music education, we've always felt there's no market in China, especially for early education commercialization, which is extremely difficult. This team has a very strong vision, inspiration, and infectiousness — completely aligned with the proposition of today's real-time internet startup challenge. We encourage this kind of crazy dream, this fanatical idea, and we believe vipSing has this possibility."

RTE 2020 Startup Challenge second place vipSing

The third-place winner was Notta. The judges' affirmation for this project came from its future symbiotic opportunities with many existing products and its potential to genuinely transform how people collaborate in meetings. Though still very early-stage, the judges wanted to encourage this bold attempt.

RTE 2020 Startup Challenge third place Notta

Additionally, the competition established two Special Contribution Awards for outstanding social service value: Bosowei Cloud Classroom, which provided free resources and bandwidth to multiple educational institutions during the pandemic, and Qiming New Vision, which offers multi-dimensional assistance systems for the visually impaired. These two Special Contribution Awards represent that technology not only creates commercial value but is increasingly creating value for people and society.

RTE 2020 Startup Challenge Special Contribution Award winners: Bosowei Cloud Classroom and Qiming New Vision

Winning companies in this real-time internet startup challenge will receive the Agora Startup Program benefits package, including: 1 million minutes of free usage, green channel technical support, and promotional resources. On the investment side, advancing companies also have the opportunity to receive tens of millions of RMB in investment from 5Y Capital, as well as training and mentorship from 5Y Capital's star investors. For business development, advancing companies have the opportunity to receive one-on-one guidance from Dr. Qi Lu of MiraclePlus.

Founded in 2013, Agora is a pioneer and enabler of the real-time internet industry. As one of Agora's early investors, 5Y Capital has been a driving force behind it. Through their joint efforts, the real-time internet track has gone from zero to one. Making this industry more prosperous, discovering more unicorns, and finding innovative companies that create value across industries — this is the shared goal of Agora and 5Y Capital. The Real-Time Internet Startup Challenge was born in this context, leveraging capital power to push the real-time internet track from one to many, bringing more enablement and innovation.

5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Capital) currently manages approximately $3 billion in USD and RMB dual-currency funds. We believe the world would be a better place if the crazy you that others see starts to be believed.