After Selling His Company for $4 Billion: A Founder's Past, Present, and Future Plans | A Conversation with Moonton Co-Founder Justin

For the new year, the Crossing podcast plans to keep covering AI-related topics while adding more interviews focused on personal stories — we believe AI will transform every aspect of life, just as every previous wave of technology has profoundly reshaped how people live. And every individual navigating these changes, through their own growth and choices, repeatedly arrives at life's "crossings." We hope these personal stories will bring inspiration, encouragement, and insight to more people.

For our first episode of the year, we invited Justin, former co-founder and CEO of Moonton — founded in 2014, Moonton released games including Magic Rush: Heroes and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB), which became well-known in gaming, with MLBB in particular becoming a phenomenon across Southeast Asia. Moonton was acquired by ByteDance in 2021, with media reports putting the deal at over $4 billion.

We recorded this episode sitting on the floor of Justin's living room — by then he had already left ByteDance and founded his new company, Pilot. Justin shared his career journey with us: from an employee who "didn't feel like I was trying very hard" to co-founding Moonton and selling it, experiencing what he calls "a highlight moment of life from every dimension," then starting over with the ambition to build "a business company run by gamers" that balances commercial logic with multi-dimensional positive feedback.

In this episode, you'll hear a serial entrepreneur discuss how he makes business decisions, reflect on his career and how to make the right choices, and share his thoughts on competition and self-reflection after experiencing intense commercial competition, a successful acquisition exit, and all the ups and downs in between.

Listen on WeChat:

Listen on Xiaoyuzhou:

From Gaming Industry Employee to Entrepreneur

🚥 Koji

First, please introduce yourself and tell us what a typical day looks like for you now.

👦🏻 Justin

I was born in 1980, so I'm kind of an old-timer. After graduating in 2002, I've worked in the gaming industry the whole time. I was at some big companies first — Shanda, then Tencent. In 2014 I left to start Moonton[1], so last year marked exactly ten years since I left.

Moonton always focused on games for global markets. Our best-known title is Mobile Legends: Bang Bang[2] (MLBB), one of the biggest mobile games internationally. It's probably among the Chinese-made games with the largest user base globally, and in Southeast Asia — Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore — it's basically a national game.

This product was the signature achievement of our startup years. In 2021, the founders and investors decided to sell the company to another big corporation. I chose to stay on at the time. I didn't actually leave Moonton until 2024, when I quickly moved into my next entrepreneurial phase.

🚥 Koji

Everyone must be curious — what does your day look like now? Do you have something like a regular routine from morning to night?

👦🏻 Justin

I usually plan out the coming week in advance. Which days to go to the office, which days to work from home or meet friends near Jinxian Road, or handle personal errands out and about. If there's nothing particularly necessary, I might not go to the office — I'll meet some friends at home instead.

I generally stop working in the evenings and start my social life, or what you might call my non-work life. The switch between day and night happens pretty quickly. I've actually kept this rhythm for several years now. Even at Moonton, I packed my days tight, scheduling in half-hour blocks with maybe seven or eight items a day. But evenings were completely free — dinner with friends, or watching movies, consuming things, enjoying my own time.

🚥 Ronghui

That sounds slightly different from what people might imagine an entrepreneur's life to be like.

Could you talk about your earlier experiences? What was it like when you first started working, and you mentioned the fast-paced life when you first founded Moonton.

👦🏻 Justin

Gaming was different back then. Today China's game industry has Steam, more variety in game types. But when I entered the industry at Shanda, it was mainly online games. They weren't pure games in a sense — we were essentially working at an internet company whose product just happened to be games.

Because online games ran 24/7 after launch, everyone had to maintain service around the clock. When I first joined Shanda, around 2002–2003, Shanghai had the SARS outbreak. Our lead told us: other people can go home and avoid infection, but not you — every project team needs one or two people on duty. We did 12-hour shifts, handing off to another team member, with core staff rotating through. I remember clearly: as long as users were online, you had to answer customer service calls.

In online gaming slang, there's a term GM, Game Master. Many years ago it carried real authority — we were called "gods." I remember when I was a GM for Legend of Mir, someone privately messaged me saying, "I really admire you as a GM, can we meet offline?" But of course we couldn't respond — that was our professional identity.

Back then, it wasn't really a game creation state. It was an internet service provider state. Your schedule followed users and products. That went on for years. When I first started my own company, the shift was to waking up every morning thinking: what can I do for the company today?

The entrepreneurial state is definitely different from employment, because employment is passive, habitual high-intensity work. The gaming industry's work intensity is roughly comparable to major internet companies, or maybe higher — especially for successful live games, because the complexity demands are greater.

Entrepreneurship is grinding for yourself.

When you're employed, you always think about whether you can slack off a little. The only difference with entrepreneurship is losing that layer — you're constantly, even during rest, thinking about what else you can do for your company. That state persisted for a long time.

One thing I had going for me: we succeeded relatively quickly. I think we were profitable by year two, and quite profitably. So my partner and I gradually started enjoying life, and the grinding eased up.

🚥 Ronghui

When you were a student or just entering the workforce, did you have a career plan?

👦🏻 Justin

I just didn't want things too comfortable — I wanted to go in a more market-economy direction.

My initial expectation was to become a department manager within three to five years at a company I felt good about, then enjoy what felt like a white-collar lifestyle. Getting off work and relaxing at restaurants or bars in Lujiazui. That vibrant life you see in TV dramas — roughly that.

Choosing gaming may have been a kind of inner calling. Everything else felt wrong; this felt slightly more right. What I'm trying to say is, when I graduated and came from Changzhou to Shanghai, frankly it was about finding decent work, having a professional state that let me live reasonably well in this city.

🚥 Ronghui

Were you a grind-type person when you started working?

👦🏻 Justin

No, I was always especially lazy. At Shanda, in my first and second jobs, I could always sense that my boss — my direct supervisor — was pretty dissatisfied with me.

🚥 Ronghui

But lazy — you might need to explain. Is it that you weren't willing to do pointless things, or...?

👦🏻 Justin

That's a really good question. For a long time, actually, because I had to test into a good middle school, then a good high school, and the school was especially competitive. I competed in academic contests and won awards, and my class was one of those advanced classes. From childhood I was made to feel: you need to do well among a group of people. Looking back, I think I was dissatisfied with myself then — why wasn't I working harder, why wasn't I outperforming others, why wasn't I more recognized by leaders and the company. That's how I saw it.

Later I realized: I just don't want to do things that I don't find mentally stimulating, or exciting enough to immerse myself in.

If I can't figure out how to approach something, or I find it boring, I want to go online and look at other things. Back then at work, whenever I felt stuck in a state that didn't excite me, I'd probably slack off, want to do something else.

I analyzed this later, and over many years came to accept that this is how I am — and I actually quite like myself this way. I think this became a driver of my self-growth for a long time afterward.

🚥 Koji

So it's easy to zone out when there's no challenge.

👦🏻 Justin

Exactly, very easy to zone out. Either wanting to rest, or wanting to look at other things — when there's no challenge, I'd rather enjoy life and be lazy. There's that employee state where you're browsing other webpages, or sneaking glances at other things. It makes people think you're not focused on your job, not a good employee. I was often in that state when I first started working.

The First Peak of Business Success: When Daily Revenue Broke a Million

🚥 Koji

A lot of people dream of being acquired, and Justin, as someone who experienced acquisition — and a massive one at that — what did it feel like in that moment?

Did you feel like your career was complete, your dream realized?

👦🏻 Justin

I think there were several peaks in my life. What's the most exciting, the freshest? A lot of friends have asked me that, and I've thought back and summarized it. Actually, the happiest, freshest milestone during the startup phase was when our first game hit $10 million in revenue: at its best, something like a million RMB in cash flowing into the company daily. We had so few people back then, just that small team, and I'd do the math — holy shit, we're making this much money?

Because that number hits different from a salary. When you're working for someone else, you know the deal: you look at your pay stub, settled once a month. But when that kind of cash starts coming in, you and your team suddenly feel like you don't need to obsess over whether the number's high or low anymore.

The employee mindset is actually pretty tortured — how many months of bonus did the boss give me this year, will my salary go up, did I get a bigger raise than the other guy, where do I rank among my peers. A lot of people get stuck in that state of caring too much. But that moment just liberates you.

When you know that much money is hitting the company account every day, you feel like you've made it. And this thing — you thought you'd need to become a department manager, or grind as an employee until you're 60 to achieve it — suddenly, in your thirties, you realize you don't need to do any of that. So that was genuinely happy, genuinely joyful.

I remember after that, my partner and I would sometimes take partners out and say, "Let's go to Wandao" — Wandao was a pretty nice Japanese buffet back then. You want to eat there, you just go. That feeling, you know, it's great.

When the acquisition day came, I had this feeling that this must be the peak of my career.

For an entrepreneur, for someone in the games industry, this is probably the pinnacle of your career, or at least a hugely important milestone. To outsiders, it's undoubtedly enviable; personally, it's a very significant marker. From any dimension, you should recognize this as a pivotal moment in your life. So that awareness was actually stronger than my own feelings.

🚥 Ronghui

You mentioned that in your second year of entrepreneurship, the company already had a very popular game.

That actually feels pretty lucky and relatively rare in entrepreneurship. Is there something special about the games industry, or what?

👦🏻 Justin

The games industry, first of all, has extremely low odds of success, especially online games — basically the lowest of any startup category, in my view. But second, when it succeeds, it happens incredibly fast and explosively.

We had former colleagues, same team, who went out and made their first game called Soul Clash — Lilith Games' thing. We were already good friends, and they became number one in China, even more fierce, famous at 27. This industry has that miracle effect, where a window of opportunity arrives and suddenly you're skyrocketing.

After my first game was done, there were already some A-share companies approaching us — because A-share acquisitions were still trendy then — saying, for example, would you want to be acquired for a billion RMB? So theoretically I could have sold the company in my second year.

🚥 Ronghui

Looking back, at what nodes did you do the right things at the right times — any reflections?

👦🏻 Justin

My style, or our team's style — first, low ego. Second, we don't treat entrepreneurship as a one-shot deal.

Back in the mass entrepreneurship era, there was a style that encouraged everyone to start a company. Not necessarily wrong, but our style wasn't quite that. Our style was about accumulating, developing according to the stage you're supposed to be at.

For example, my partner and I had already bought cars and apartments in Shanghai, already made quite a bit of money. We could go years without income and our families would be fine, no major burden. So for us, entrepreneurship was actually about minimizing pressure, not letting ourselves get distorted. I actually prefer entering that kind of state.

🚥 Ronghui

I feel like a lot of classic startup stories are about making something, maybe having done a lot, accumulated a lot, constantly trying, and at some point it clicks.

👦🏻 Justin

If you put it that way, we first accumulated our own wealth and professional capabilities.

We accumulated a lot, pursued more stability, wanted to succeed in one go — faster, or make the first game our survival. We happened to catch a good era, with mobile internet plus going overseas as dual buffs, so we succeeded very quickly. Later when I reviewed this with my partner, I felt luck and timing played a huge part in our story. But truly attributing it to my own working style, we did accumulate more, trying to gather more conditions for something with very difficult uncertainty.

For example, our company is called Moonton. We had this concept of the "bucket principle" back then.

What ultimately determines your height is actually your shortest plank.

So we wanted every plank to be solid, with many excellent people on the team. That's why over this decade, except for one or two years when growth slowed, we've basically grown every year.

To elaborate a bit: my partner and I had already made a decent game at Tencent, something like Tribe Clash. Around 2012, 2013, on QZone, back when it was still browser games, we were basically getting first place all the time.

That was year one of mobile internet, and our game had a mobile version too, hitting top five on the iOS grossing charts. Tencent had WeChat as a traffic platform then, but because we were in the wireless business unit, we didn't get on WeChat — we published it ourselves, so the team had strong autonomy. When we started our own company, we went fully overseas, didn't do domestic at all.

The domestic situation then was traffic is king, channels are king — 360, Xiaomi, they controlled a lot of game traffic.

We saw a major problem: as a product company wanting to last many years, if you start out led by traffic, you probably can't accumulate your own competitiveness, can't control your own lifeline.

But overseas, we saw Google Play and Apple as open platforms, with Google and Facebook as advertisers. We felt this ecosystem was better for product companies, especially B2C product companies. Because your revenue, your traffic are both free — to survive you just need to capture some users, and the overseas market is so huge, so we went that direction.

On this point, I've always felt that in terms of career choices, I worked on PC MMOs early, including on the business model — BnB was among the earlier free-to-play games in China, which was pretty pioneering. Later at Tencent we actively transitioned from MMOs to browser games, to mobile games, then to going overseas when we started up. I've always felt we had pretty good judgment on direction, always looking toward the future.

🚥 Koji

That's actually not easy. Because you didn't just make one big correct call on direction — you made many.

So what do you think are the reasons behind this, what ways of thinking or habits, or what environments or atmospheres you put yourself in — what exactly led to consistently getting the big judgments right?

👦🏻 Justin

I think I have this trait: for a long time, I didn't really believe in myself that much.

Now when I explain this, or when I'm at peace with myself, I'd say it's actually low ego.

Later when I went to ByteDance, I saw how much they emphasize low ego, and I gradually felt that objectively viewing yourself and the outside world is actually a strength.

But for a long time, when you don't feel like what you've accumulated before is that important, you actually have a sense of urgency. You feel like what you've done might not be that impressive, your own experience isn't that impressive, so you need to look at what's better in the future, how to do it. So I've always paid attention to looking outward, plus I like reading, like history. Not sure if it's talent.

I found that different industries can be reference points, you can see some patterns. For example, you can see things about the games industry from film and TV, from movies. Because we're all content industries, so I can often roughly predict from past information how the rise and fall will play out. You see enough and you get a rough sense of prediction, so I combine this and become more willing to look at changes. Once it becomes habit, after a few cycles of reaping benefits, you develop some understanding and philosophy about the industry. For example, I believe this industry is a bit like creative work itself. After developing to a certain point, it's hard to keep the old things going forever. So you must constantly let new things in, which later becomes almost instinct.

Like with this new startup of mine too — basically not doing the old tracks, but not completely abandoning them either. I definitely think about which parts of my original accumulation are useful for the future, how to combine them? But what might future directions be? How to combine them, including looking at whether others in the market are supplying such products and games. Considering more dimensions.

So once this becomes habit, you can make better judgments and decisions.

🚥 Koji

Still massive input.

👦🏻 Justin

Yes, but one prerequisite, I think, is that mindset — don't think too much about yourself when doing this.

Why? Because even when you're facing the future and seeing many opportunities, you'll definitely wonder if you can do it, right? Someone like me, who didn't think that highly of himself for a long time — the less confident you are, the less you'll assume that just because an opportunity looks great, you can definitely do it. It's not like that. You see the opportunity, but you also think about what accumulation you have that's suitable for it. Later when I read strategy articles, I felt like I was unknowingly hitting the mark.

First, when you're restarting something, a lot of the time you need to empty out, zero out, broadly look at what the current market is, what space you should be in. But in this process you still practically look at what you have.

Because if you assume you have nothing, then no matter how good the opportunity is, it has nothing to do with you. So you look at what you can do. Combining these two points, you're already doing well in choosing future-facing directions. If you have better vision, like strategy, some information input, and you look at who in the industry is providing this service.

If you can understand all three of these points very clearly, you'll likely make relatively high-quality decisions on direction.

🚥 Koji

Do you feel like after selling the company, after achieving so much, your state changed? Did your ego change?

👦🏻 Justin

I was just chatting with an old colleague the other day, saying I'm slowly feeling more and more that we're actually pretty good.

My old style was being pretty demanding with the team, often using industry benchmarks for professional standards. Like according to this standard, to what degree did you get — I think I trained the team into a state where, whether it's low ego or our internal self-evaluation, it's actually not high.

But in recent years I feel I've changed on this front — slowly gaining self-recognition.

So when a colleague asked me about this, I had to say: yes, yes, I do think I was too harsh back then, that I didn't give you enough credit. That ego wasn't even too high — it was actually a bit too low. Now I feel like letting ego return to something more genuinely objective is about right.

🚥Ronghui

I thought Koji's question earlier was a good one. Most people look back at the mobile internet era from today's vantage point and talk about all those success stories. They'll say people back then were riding an elevator that was already going up, capturing the tailwinds of the times. Compared to today, it feels like those tailwinds have disappeared.

But I think there's one point here — what we mostly see are the stories of people who actually got results and captured those tailwinds back then. There were actually far more people who didn't capture that dividend, far more people who made ordinary or bad choices. Successful people were still the minority.

👦🏻Justin

I like reading history, and what I read is always about people. This industry moves fast. Look at China's internet, including gaming — the first generation was importing Korean MMOs. The second generation, by the time we were doing MMOs, started with domestic self-developed titles, then commercial reform, shifting from the old point-card model of 0.4 yuan per hour to time-based subscriptions. Then came browser games. With browser games, people didn't need to download clients anymore — just open a webpage and play. Then mobile phones, then going overseas, doing this kind of content experience on phones... the changes came too fast.

So at every stage, the industry had plenty of success stories. You'd see people who couldn't sustain their success, see the kings of one era fade into obscurity in the next.

For instance, among the first generation of companies listed on NASDAQ, some endured, while others aren't doing so great now. You also saw the second generation — browser game companies, some of whose founders ended up quite wistful. You've probably heard all kinds of stories. This is generally how it goes across China's internet, especially in gaming.

There's another interesting phenomenon: in every wave of the internet, gaming was always the first to develop, because gaming is closest to monetization.

For example, in the PC era, once I made a game I could monetize it well. It had the shortest cycle. Ordinary stuff needed VC investment, lots of capital, cultivating user habits before you could make money — but games were fast. So gaming was generally the earliest to succeed.

So in this industry, if you pay attention, like I've been here for over twenty years, I'm quite happy — it's like living several lives. You might live through an ordinary era where your whole life just passes by. But I feel like these 20 years of mine, I've seen so much. So what you just said — I actually feel quite emotional about it. I have indeed seen so many similar stories.

🚥Ronghui

But you said it rises fast — does that also mean it falls fast?

👦🏻Justin

Yes, exactly, it falls fast too. Some people keep at it and still don't make it. But others just keep accumulating, building up until they break through.

🚥Ronghui

Is it that stories of overnight stardom and getting rich quick are relatively more visible in the gaming industry?

👦🏻Justin

There are certain situations. For example, back then we had some very well-made games, hit games. Because the industry had gatherings every year, those game teams would become industry stars. At every gathering, people would want to meet them, want to learn about them. Just like in our mobile internet era — me and my friends around me, because many friends built great companies, I experienced it myself and also saw what they went through.

For example, before we were famous, watching some good friends' companies become famous — we used to hang out together, but suddenly they'd appear at industry conferences with so many people wanting to meet them, so many people thinking they were amazing. As a bystander, you'd find it quite interesting — it changed in an instant. So once you've seen that scene, when you encounter something similar yourself, of course you'll be happy, you'll enjoy that feeling.

But there's a certain spirit of self-reflection. These things don't entirely come from who you are — it's just that your company, your product happened to be that year's hit. So on another level, this is part of why I feel my ego is relatively low, fairly rational, or comparatively objective — I seem to have always maintained a bystander's perspective watching these things unfold.

Other people's evaluations of you, your company, your product — I'd break them down across many dimensions: how much of this is recognition of the product, how much is attitude toward that overnight-success phenomenon, and what about me personally is actually being seen.

🚥Ronghui

When you made money in the second year, did you have that "hey, it's my turn" feeling?

👦🏻Justin

Our first game was Match Rush, and it blew up in the second year.

That money was essentially the resources we saved up for later making MLBB. That was the second year, when the company was valued at 1 billion RMB, and we'd earned some cash flow. When we were making MLBB, I put all the company's money into it — it was a gamble.

When we were making MLBB, the competitors we faced were extremely formidable. Because Honor of Kings was also going overseas, America's biggest game company Riot was making a League of Legends mobile game, and we were already quite popular in Southeast Asia. But actually, the publisher for Honor of Kings going to Southeast Asia back then was Garena — Garena is now Southeast Asia's biggest internet company Sea, known as "Southeast Asia's little Tencent."

Sea's core business actually grew out of Garena's gaming operations; now they're doing well in e-commerce. They were the gaming overlord of Southeast Asia, responsible for publishing Honor of Kings. So we were basically going head-to-head with these global giants in the biggest sub-category of mobile gaming. That's why I didn't particularly want to emphasize the glory when talking with people. Sometimes I was even trying to downplay those things. But when you really talk about MLBB's success, it was indeed very difficult. It was also very lucky.

🚥Koji

Where did you find the resolve to bet all that cash the company had worked so hard to earn?

👦🏻Justin

Because the opportunity was too good. Our first version, when we published overseas, the retention and user data, plus knowing how big a category MOBA was in PC games — we had some foresight about the future. But one big problem with MOBA back then: on mobile overseas, was there a paying habit? Could people actually make money? At that time it was just investment, not necessarily making money — mostly losing money as you put it in.

So actually, having the guts to do this later, to compete with giants — it wasn't about having some grand ambition from the start. Moonton is different from other startups, and I still want to downplay this, not mythologize it. For a long time we were thinking about financial freedom, or letting this team's professional accumulation and capabilities find expression — call it monetization or whatever. But why was that opportunity so hard? This is a really good question — it was simply that the opportunity was too good.

As we kept going, getting caught up in commercial competition was brutal. It wasn't just product competition, overseas publishing competition — we also encountered legal warfare. We actually had various legal disputes with the giants. I won't go into too much detail on these. What I want to express is: if you really look at this, it was because the opportunity was so good that we went all in. And because we'd already gone all in, you had no choice but to get caught up in this extremely intense, even brutal commercial competition.

🚥Ronghui

Did you have times when you were so worried you couldn't sleep?

👦🏻Justin

So many. I remember back then, a few months before my child was born, I talked with my partners, including our investors — we said, let's agree on the order: if someone loses their personal freedom, how do we arrange things afterward. Because we had some legal competition back then, worried about suddenly getting caught up in something. So we'd decide who would be left behind to keep the company going, and to take care of family members. That was the state we were in.

We were quite pessimistic then, thinking that since we were fighting giants, worst case we'd just run off to some small island in Southeast Asia and keep making games. And at the most serious point, our company's normal operations were actually being affected.

🚥Koji

What kind of danger were you talking about? Dangerous enough to make you want to flee to a Southeast Asian island, dangerous enough to entrust your family to others?

👦🏻Justin

Looking at it now, it probably wasn't that dangerous.

But at the time, you could see many problems in commercial competition. For instance, intellectual property wasn't clear enough, some startups might have similar situations in the same category — our industry had other cases like this.

I want to clarify: I'm saying this not to mythologize that experience. Actually, because we were relatively weak then, we definitely magnified that worry and fear in the process. From the final outcome, I'm actually full of confidence in the law, especially Chinese law. Because we had a lawsuit with Riot in the US, and we were quite pessimistic about litigating in America at first — lawyers told us it could easily cost tens of millions of dollars. We twice found lawyers in California courts to dismiss Riot's lawsuits. And at Moonton, the way I do things — I handled those lawsuits myself back then. We didn't even have dedicated legal staff at first.

In this process, it was like starting a second company. You know, litigation is just breaking down knowledge bit by bit, finding arguments, taking it step by step. What the court recognized, what they supported in their rulings, how to deconstruct that — from jurisdiction to first trial to second trial, what to do at each node. I feel like I could be a part-time lawyer now.

But through this process, your awareness of law, including your trust in it, including seeing how the whole legal system operates — you actually gain more confidence. Why am I still quite motivated to do a second startup? Of course some people are pessimistic now, but I'm still relatively optimistic inside, or rather, going through these things gave me deeper understanding of rule of law. I actually believe more in China's legal system now, or global legal systems. I'm more willing to use legal weapons to protect commercial competition, rather than thinking giants can just do whatever. Precisely because there is law, I'm not afraid of giants at all — I'm more willing to engage in commercial competition.

Facing Giant Competition: A Founder's Survival Wisdom

🚥Ronghui

Looking back at the business decisions, what do you think you did right in competing with giants back then?

👦🏻Justin

So many things, let me think.

🚥Ronghui

List the most important ones.

👦🏻Justin

First, I think giants aren't scary. Back then the fear came from thinking giants were so powerful.

But I later realized, giants have their core interests or products, and they also have dispersed ones. So when a giant really engages in commercial competition with you, it's probably just a small part of the giant.

But who are you? You're a startup team, life-or-death, the lives of everyone in the company are on the line — so you're giving this your all. So in absolute terms, the giant doesn't actually have more resources than you. It might just be one business line in the company. Second, the giant's interests might lie elsewhere too; not all of its interests are here. It might even have departments or other interests that constrain it, preventing it from competing with you wholeheartedly.

So later I came to understand, big has its advantages, small has its advantages too — smallness is also a form of power. Small isn't only disadvantageous, because we often think being small means we should fear the big. Actually, I don't think that's the case. I think the small need to recognize the power of being small, and flexibly apply it, make more use of that smallness.

So I actually came to really enjoy the power of being small. Even as we reached different scales, I hoped our company would be composed of different small units.

Now, starting another company, I still hope to make more use of smallness. I don't really like that state where, once an organization gets big, everyone becomes a kind of machine in the organization, a cog in the gears.

🚥Koji

At its largest, how big did Moonton get, in terms of headcount?

👦🏻Justin

Nearly 2,000 people.

🚥Koji

Did you feel at that point it was so large it would spiral out of control?

👦🏻Justin

No. What I'm proud of, or happy about, is that I think Moonton always maintained that quasi-startup state.

Of course I can't say everyone, but I think a large portion of people — including what our users and partners felt, or what employees with this philosophy felt from each other — was exactly this kind of state.

🚥Ronghui

So why did you decide to sell the company back then?

👦🏻Justin

My partners and investors wanted to exit. In that exit process, their share of equity was larger.

Making decisions from a business perspective, respecting the board or other decision-making bodies — this was a business decision. As for me, if it sold, whether I would continue — that was my personal choice. Whether to sell wasn't up to me.

🚥Ronghui

But did you have that ego? Like, I want to build a big company, I want to build a great company.

👦🏻Justin

Well, that depends on how you define big and great.

🚥Ronghui

Like you just said, you went through such intense commercial competition later on, and you could say you succeeded. That kind of success really gives you confidence.

👦🏻Justin

Yes — the series of commercial dealings with Tencent and Riot, I think that was a major source of my own growth later on, because I went through all that.

🚥Ronghui

Does that confidence make you feel like, I want to take this company to some next level?

Rethinking "Big" and "Great"

👦🏻Justin

Every founder has those expectations to some degree.

So that's why I asked that question earlier. In the purely literal sense of "big" — more profit, for example — of course you want that, and it's a good thing. Because it makes everyone happy — you're happy, employees are happy, the team is happy, investors are happy. But I think the further along you go, the smaller this portion becomes.

You mentioned "great." To me, the greatest gaming company is Nintendo, even if it might not be number one in market cap. I don't think number one in market cap equals greatest. The definition of greatness is different. It's not about being number one in market cap, or profit, or anything else. Other dimensions become more important — its philosophy, its contribution to the industry, various other dimensions. These are what matter to me. So later on, we certainly had our own mission and vision for what kind of company we wanted to build. I would communicate this mission and vision, but probably not using the words "big" or "great."

🚥Ronghui

I read your interview with Game Grape, where you mentioned really liking that book about Nintendo.

The book talked about Nintendo's philosophy — not just bringing people joy, but letting families play games together, influencing many people, bringing people happiness. Back then, did you set yourself a mission like that, wanting to build what kind of Chinese company?

👦🏻Justin

I developed step by step. When we first founded the company, we had no mission.

I remember this vividly — in 2018 or 2019, I went to Hupan University for classes, all entrepreneurs. Hupan started right off talking about mission, vision, values. People asked me, and I said we don't seem to have a mission or vision. What we want to do is make money. If we had to state a goal, it would be maximizing profit per capita, because I think profit per capita represents a kind of capability. Everyone was shocked — "How could you not have one?" But we genuinely didn't at the time.

Later we encountered challenges. And I understood that a commercial company's mission certainly includes making money — if you don't make money, you're a fraud. But if we're talking about making more money, we definitely couldn't compare to companies in the industry that made more. If I said the company mission was to make money, my employees might think: your company isn't even the most profitable in the industry, shouldn't I go somewhere else? I realized this seemed problematic. I started thinking, why did I and core employees need to stay at Moonton? I understood there had to be something unique.

Later we explored together, excavating our inner feelings. Our second-generation mission became "serving 1 billion global users, letting them experience the joy of games." Something along those lines. We realized we really cared about users. Why did we come to this realization?

Because we were making games in Southeast Asia at the time, where the gaming soil was barren, economic conditions were poor, people didn't have gaming habits. We started from zero — whether doing esports or other things — many of our users' first game ever was MLBB. We were educating users. Looking back, when we chose Southeast Asia, a Southeast Asian user's payment might be one-twentieth of a Japanese or American user's. But did we treat them differently? No.

What we cared more about was where there were more users, where users needed us more — we were drawn to this, rather than considering which users were more valuable.

We realized, so Moonton itself has this DNA, I have this DNA, my team has this DNA. We gradually realized this was important and distilled it. Later on, after the acquisition, those of us who stayed were thinking: we already have money now, what are we doing this for, what else do we want to do? We were excavating what was inside. For example, why did I still want to make games after leaving Moonton? Constantly digging into these thoughts. Actually, what I really want to do — I have strong feelings about this industry — is what I said:

I want to build a game people's commercial company.

My mission: many people in this industry are pursuing that star-like overnight wealth, and I think that puts everyone in a bad mindset. But talented people should bloom. So I hope new-generation gaming talent can bloom — that's my mission. It gradually became concrete. For someone rational like me, there wasn't an innate sense of mission from the start. I especially dislike overly dramatic narratives. This question is actually quite weighty for me; I think it's important. But if I had to describe it, I could only say I'm someone who started as a certain kind of professional, initially wanting to make money, because the opportunity was good, entering a massive field, and gaining some realizations along the way.

In our transition from "making money" to "why we need a mission," there were some negative experiences. Back then Shanghai had many good gaming companies. That year our business stalled a bit, some employees left for other companies. I was interrogating myself internally — this seemed like a sign of company decline. Important employees weren't staying, so what was the problem?

We reflected again. People asked what kind of company we wanted to build, and I couldn't answer. If you don't have it, you don't have it — I had to be honest. But later I excavated the answer.

This is a process of self-growth, a process of internal interrogation until things become clear enough.

This question has accompanied my career, or my life — I've been thinking about it constantly. But for a long time I wouldn't ask myself questions like "want to build a great company." I asked myself more: why should I keep doing this? What do I want to do next?

🚥Koji

Right, so why are you still doing it now? Because when we chatted before, you said you wanted to do another 40 years. What's the motivation to keep going, or the new mission you've found?

👦🏻Justin

First, it's not persistence, because doing this brings me joy.

The word persistence implies suffering, so I don't persist. I often think this way: after the acquisition, the team asked how many years I'd do this, and I said let's do five years, then later said ten. Why? Because I'm happy doing it. I'm quite pragmatic, because now I have significant influence over the team and company — whatever I say, people will listen — but if I ultimately can't deliver, people will say you're bullshitting them. So I try to be precise in what I express, not wanting to mislead people. I think step by step.

On this matter, Charlie Munger influenced me quite a bit.

In Poor Charlie's Almanack, there's an essay on old age, which says wisdom is the most important thing — even as one reaches senescence, one continues accumulating this weapon.

After reading it I thought: this is brilliant. Why? I shared this in that Game Grape article too — I fear death, life ends at death. Actually what you fear about death is that aging state, that senescent condition without life experience.

But then I realized wisdom can play such a huge role even as the body ages, so I want to accumulate wisdom. When you understand you need to accumulate wisdom, and look at Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, you find they not only lived long but maintained excellent cycles with the outside world in their final decades, influencing the world with wisdom — fantastic. After the acquisition, I had a period of confusion, of being lost. After reading some philosophy and psychology books, I felt you can actually remain in a state of doing what you love, and that's wonderful.

Life is actually quite simple. First, establish an anchor point called wisdom. Wisdom can extend into many things: cognition, philosophy, or using ideas to influence others. This is the anchor I want to grasp, because it lets me keep shining until life ends.

Second, do what you love, what you're enjoying right now. You need to think through what in this thing contains lasting wisdom. You need to grasp what you love, what has lasting wisdom, what accumulates cognition. Once you string this thread together, you roughly understand what you can still be doing in old age, and what you're doing now makes you happy. Once you can string it together, why not do it for 40 years?

So for me, it's about adjusting my time allocation early, letting myself be both happy and doing things that motivate me. Like I said earlier, I love intellectual stimulation — I'm very happy when my brain is excited. Chatting with you guys makes me happy; I hope to be in this state every day. I roughly judge that running a gaming company, being in the gaming industry, doing it with good partners around me and new partners I develop — that would be happy. I also judge long-term whether this can sustain, whether AI will replace us. I think we should still have ways, so let's keep doing it (laughs).

🚥Ronghui

Listening to you, the impression I get is someone quite steady and measured, not someone with dramatic emotional swings, those extreme highs or lows.

That lawsuit issue — didn't that affect you quite a bit? Because something like that requires such caution, your performance in court, or your interactions with them, where you couldn't say a single wrong word.

👦🏻Justin

Yes, I think you raise a good question. From the perspective of my life reflections, it's about the rational and emotional dimensions of people.

Here's my view: purely emotional expression and passion, I think, is rather individualistic. It's simple — personal expression, whether others appreciate it or not. But if you want to do business, or do something that influences people, I think rationality is indispensable.

My upbringing — I was good at math from an early age, won first prize in the Math Olympiad, and so on. I studied computer science, which is also STEM. In fact, including when we first started making games, making internet products, what we received was that kind of rational training. I think in my personality, or in my family upbringing from childhood, rationality actually dominates. These things are like a floor, constantly helping you weigh various matters.

What about my emotional side? Maybe because I liked playing games from a young age, liked reading wuxia novels, and so on — there are also some more emotional dimensions.

I've now realized I should be someone who values both rationality and emotion equally, but rationality has always been the foundation of my life, and my rational capacity keeps accumulating and iterating.

So my emotion either needs to be released and liberated, or it has to challenge rationality — it has to overcome rationality, prove itself valid, before it can emerge.

That kind of unthinking, purely emotional stuff is probably similar to human dopamine, or primitive animal traits. That's how I understand it myself. So your rationality has to think: do you let this emotion express itself and influence everyone? Do you do it or not?

Later, my understanding of rationality and emotion became: emotion helps you see direction. Without emotion, you don't have something like "what do I want to do," what is my desire and drive.

Usually if you're just calculating things, that energy and mental strength isn't that strong. But if you only have emotion, and don't verify and reason through it with rationality, that emotion is unsupported. You'll easily get a lot of negative feedback, or give up because you don't know what to do, or your choices won't last.

So I now believe that the important decisions and directions in my life are guided by emotion, with rationality doing the reasoning and verification. If after doing rational reasoning and verification based on all available information, you still feel this is what you want, then do it. So with wanting to do Pilot — these past few years, many things have been constantly verifying, I've been constantly verifying whether I should live my life this way, I've been trying various things, and I feel I still want to do it, so I'll do it.

🚥 Koji

Is there a possibility that, say, Pilot goes two, three, four years without making a game people love? Have you considered that possibility? Would that scare you?

👦🏻 Justin

Yes, Putao asked me this question too. I definitely don't want that situation to happen, because it means a lot of negative feedback. But I feel whether a good game comes out is an important milestone. If there's a good game, of course everyone would be very happy.

But if not, my habit is this: when doing something difficult and long-term, break it down into different milestones and different feedback systems.

For example, has the team grown? Have we had fun in this process? Including whether my financial situation supports me continuing to do this? Are there other forms of external support, and so on. If these elements are present, or a considerable portion of them are, then I feel that positive feedback is guaranteed, it's OK. So I'm using rationality to articulate this, this is also a method. I'm breaking down why to do long-term things, or rather, I'm sharing where mental strength comes from.

You just asked whether there's no positive feedback — my scale is actually this: keep breaking it down, find some factors of positive feedback. And these factors of positive feedback actually ultimately promote achieving the goal. So it forms this kind of cycle. Basically you're aiming for that long-term thing, your beautiful wish is to have some kind of game in five years, and you make an attempt. But in the ongoing process, positive feedback actually comes from whether I've grown in this track, whether my team has better synergy, and so on.

When would I stop? When I feel I can't find any positive feedback at all in this. I think completely losing positive feedback roughly has several aspects: maybe I don't want to do it anymore, maybe I've had some cognitive shift about this direction, the team doesn't want to do it either. There must be major changes. When such major changes occur, breaking them down with wisdom, cognition will undergo major changes. With changed cognition, then think about this question again. So generally speaking, if there aren't major cognitive changes, those positive feedbacks shouldn't disappear simultaneously.

🚥 Koji

You mentioned this growth is also one of the positive feedbacks. For you, having already made so many successful games, and even successfully selling the company at a high price. What dimensions of growth do you think could still feel like positive feedback?

👦🏻 Justin

Last time we chatted more about people, today we've talked more about business.

My feeling these past few years is that even for an entrepreneur like me, business may occupy a larger proportion, but it's still just one part of life. Friends, please don't let this be the only thing in your life.

A few days ago I watched a Xiaohongshu clip of Li Dan, where he said many people only have effort in their lives, so when they encounter many things, they only respond with effort. But he said, "Let me tell you, effort isn't the only thing in my life," he said he also adjusts his emotions, also faces things in other ways.

🚥 Koji

He also runs away (laughs).

👦🏻 Justin

Makes himself happy, and so on — there are many other dimensions. I think this resonates with what I just said. I think life has many aspects, because the current business path, I think it has a characteristic.

If limited only to the business path, my thinking wouldn't be like what I just discussed with you. In business, as a company, I later discovered a difficult point: you do a company to be profitable. Employees have expectations — doing a job, they hope their salary keeps increasing. So what do you do about increasing salaries? You definitely have to make business revenue and profits higher and higher. So I discovered in business, everyone doing a company can't avoid the topic of growth, you find you can't avoid it. So I feel this thing easily traps you.

As an entrepreneur, as a company CEO, without some other supplements, you can't avoid it. I think this is terrifying. Why? Because others may still have a lot of room for growth. I've had too much good luck — when we did Moonton back then, I already sold the company for so much money, made it so big. And I still have to tell myself, "Buddy, I want to work for 40 years, and I want to say I'll reach another level in those 40 years" — isn't that driving myself to death?

I look at my life, my friends around me, they're so young and smart, so much younger than me, with strong learning abilities in every aspect. The broader space belongs to them. Am I going to compete in this dimension again? Make competition the dominant thing? I don't want that.

🚥 Koji

But wouldn't this make the team following you to continue with Pilot, to start another business, a bit worried? That your ambition and desire seem different from when you were doing Moonton.

👦🏻 Justin

So this is what I think is a very important point — look at my expression just now, including when I said earlier about letting a new generation of game talent bloom and so on, I never said I want to build a, say, $5 billion big company, right? I never said that.

I'm this kind of person: I say what I have, if I've figured it out I'll tell you. So I actually find it quite interesting. Our generation grew up against the backdrop of China's rapid economic development those years — almost all of us said we wanted to succeed in business, right? Many of us, but now many people indeed feel the same as I have these past few years, they don't think this way anymore. Making games is for their own happiness, we make some games that can move ourselves, have some users who appreciate them and that's enough, I don't need it to be big, let me happily make the games I want to make, have some user feedback, and be able to support myself, that's great.

So my feeling these years, if there's anything I want to advocate, this is what I truly want to advocate. I rarely use words like advocate or influence, but this is what I truly want to say. As I mentioned earlier, the year I was born, the family education I received, school education, and the atmosphere in society all told you to be the best competitor.

🚥 Koji

Wolf culture.

👦🏻 Justin

I watched that episode of Thirteen Invitations with Xu Zhiyuan and Lin Xiaoying recently.

🚥 Ronghui

The one where she went to a school.

👦🏻 Justin

Right, the one where she went to a school. She's a vice dean at Peking University's Graduate School of Education. Previously from Changsha, she returned to her alma mater, and students asked her, I'm confused, I study more than ten hours a day, but I found my ranking dropped, what should I do? I think the question itself is what shocked me most. Many Chinese students think this way, I thought this way back then too. What I had going for me was maybe talent, I was relatively smart, good at math, so my grades were decent, I could get into the university I wanted for the gaokao. But now seeing kids today think this way, where's the problem? The problem is wanting to surpass others — if others also think this way, you'll fall behind. If someone's ranking rises, someone's must fall, this is a zero-sum game.

Now this zero-sum game is harder because previously China's economy was developing rapidly, everyone had space, but these past two years it's slowed. Slowing means competition is fiercer. Everyone is still on this track, and it's more intense than before. In our time, parents couldn't control us that much, didn't put this much pressure on us. Now many people are middle class, meaning everyone spends more energy on grinding.

This is terrifying. My life has come this far, I've experienced so much, and my feeling is that actually a better way is like a good friend of ours, he studied art, or other friends, everyone is different. Many friends we know now, it seems not everyone is walking the path of "exams — gaokao — big company." Many people have many paths. Looking back, what do these different paths often come from?

They come from everyone spending a lot of time on "useless" things during their growth, and that "uselessness" is their interest.

Why do I make games? For a STEM student like me, it's because when I was seven or eight my parents bought me games, bought me Nintendo, and I started playing. Then when I was thirteen or fourteen I got a computer — our family circumstances were very ordinary then, that computer was two years of my mom's salary. Some might say I'm a rich second generation, no, because we bought the computer, and later as computers depreciated, I cried under my blanket, I felt I wasted our family's money.

🚥 Koji

So when you cried, you felt you wasted mom's money.

👦🏻 Justin

Right, I felt very bad. On one hand my desire to play was very strong, on the other hand there was this discipline that wasting was bad or whatever.

🚥 Koji

When you were a teenager?

👦🏻 Justin

Sixteen or seventeen. But looking back to summarize my life, I think the most important point is that fortunately I did some useless things when I was young, and understood my interest. That thing guided me — I did so much rational thinking, but my emotion was always guiding me. When I graduated I chose games, and after all these years I'm still in this industry, it really was useful.

So looking back, I don't want to talk about macro trends anymore, I want to break it down now. I want to encourage everyone more to do some useless things, and let useless things accumulate over the long term.

It might become photography, might become art or some other things, it can also become your means of livelihood. And because it hits closer to your heart, it will resonate with your inner self, forming a self-consistency and cycle.

And from a rational perspective, I really enjoy traveling around the world. For example, looking at a country like Japan — when its economy stopped growing, it actually gave rise to a lot of subcultures and niche industries. If you don't squeeze into the most crowded track, but instead look ten or twenty years ahead, you're more likely to find a way forward, because that other path is just too packed.

It's the same logic as business competition — can you choose some other approach? You might be a small branch right now, but as you accumulate more and more, that niche industry might grow bigger and bigger. And it's something you genuinely love. Isn't that good? Isn't that appealing?

The Positive Cycle Within: From Useless Things to Life Direction

🚥Koji

Actually, a few years ago, people would mock the phrase "996 is a blessing" because of a certain teacher's blessing theory. When I first started working, it was ten in the morning to ten at night. Back then working as a product manager with Xing Wang, it was six days a week too, but I never felt it was hard at all.

Looking back now, I feel like every day was pure joy, absolutely joyful. So at times like this, I can really feel that state — if you can genuinely pursue it, it's not necessarily about being stronger than others, or about proving yourself. It's that you find something you love. And that might matter even more today.

But wouldn't some people challenge you — you're in games after all — wouldn't parents say you're equating games with happiness, like you're encouraging my kid to be unproductive? That kind of question must come up pretty often. What do you think?

👦🏻Justin

I think the phrase "unproductive" carries a very strong value judgment. Like what I just said — studying is "productive," everything else is "unproductive." Usually when I encounter this, I think it's fine for everyone to just keep their own views. Because what I'm saying is subjective too; it doesn't mean I'm the most correct. So everyone can just maintain their own perspective, no problem.

It's just that what you mentioned earlier, I have something I really want to share. It's not that I think competition making you better is completely useless. I'm not antisocial, it's not like that. What I mean is, we need to be aware that the path of competition might get narrower and narrower. Like I've been competing too. I'm just being practical — I've brought my company to where it is now, and I honestly feel there's less room to compete further. How big would I need to make the company, right?

Looking back, I think what you just said was really good — I think the more fundamental question is whether you have a positive cycle.

Because the "useless" things you like, that you're interested in doing — they're actually a kind of inner drive. This drive makes you unconsciously spend more time on them. And in this direction, whether you do well or not, the outside world gives you feedback. That's also a positive cycle.

Back when you were doing those things with Xing Wang, there was a positive cycle — then ten hours a day was great. Because of that cycle, your time, your mental energy, your focus would intensely converge. Your life would have experience. This experience might have a beautiful process, and the results accumulate too. Isn't that great? Pulling back even further, what I'd encourage more is doing things where you have a positive cycle, where you have flow.

🚥Ronghui

I feel like what you're saying is, during periods of rapid economic growth, everyone's standards were actually very singular. This positive cycle was growth. From childhood we were playing this competitor's game, and when we grew up everyone was a competitor, and everyone had to win.

I think what you're saying is that in this era, this positive feedback, this positive cycle, can be broken down into many more different things — and not measured by a single standard.

👦🏻Justin

Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to say. I think that's exactly right. And honestly, including the podcast audience, including us — we should all be pretty excellent. People who can have this leisurely exchange on Julu-Fumin-Changchang in Shanghai, most of them are actually the elites of this society. I don't know if people like hearing this, but I actually think so. Because I've been to Southeast Asia, seen very poor places. I've been to the Middle East, seen many different situations. Many of our users buy drinks in plastic bags. Our Philippine users buy cigarettes by the stick. And we Chinese buy game skins hundreds of yuan at a time.

From my perspective, I want to say something else — in this world, or among the Xiaoyuzhou audience, everyone is excellent. Many people probably play this competition game quite well. But if we look at more people, there are actually many who, even from elementary school, weren't great at competing. So where does their positive feedback come from?

What I actually hope is — you can't change how you interact with the outside world. Whether you can accomplish something definitely requires an external cycle. Like whether you study well depends on whether the test is well-designed, whether you test well, right? You have a job, whether you have proficient skills comes from the demands of the work itself.

But pulling back to the bottom line, I think the only thing we can adjust is ourselves — our own time, our own thoughts. I think in this regard, ourselves are our most important weapon.

🚥Ronghui

When did you start having this awareness? Like understanding yourself as someone who no longer wants to be a competitor?

👦🏻Justin

I roughly understand your question as — why have I thought and felt so much about this non-competitive domain? It stems from my core.

I later discovered that a lot of what I said was the rational part. Let me talk about what interests me most. You see, I just mentioned discovering next-generation talent, or building a business company for game makers — but the keyword in both is "people." At Moonton, for example, some teams we invested in at the time, later brought in — they've always been entrepreneurial partners. I feel our company's colleague relationships have always been very good. Because as the company founder, I've done many things in the middle, and I discovered I'm very good at uniting people. They give me very strong flow-energy feedback.

I've been able to do what I do now, because beyond what I just mentioned, to a large extent it's the strong energy cycle from my colleagues. They affirmed many things about me, they supported me, provided me with lots of help. I just feel working with such a group of people is absolutely wonderful, truly beautiful. So over time, they give you energy — it's like in this entrepreneurship, including Southeast Asian users, our MLBB users gave us very strong feedback. I feel these users are truly amazing.

We have many small stories. For example, one year at the company anniversary I shared a story. We had a streamer in Indonesia, a guy. When he was young, going to school required crossing a single-plank bridge, a very long walk. Once he slipped off the bridge, but afraid his parents would worry, even though it hurt badly, he ignored the pain and forced himself to walk to school. But this delay in getting treatment, dragging the injury — eventually he became paralyzed. Including after paralysis, some nerve issue occurred, and he could only move one hand. He could only live in this state, with no entertainment facilities.

Gradually, when MLBB was just starting out, mobile phones were emerging in Southeast Asia. He got a phone, and because we have custom key mapping — our controls can be self-configured. We later even held a tournament in Southeast Asia for people with disabilities. We saw many people playing with their feet, some with one hand. This streamer was in that situation. Through playing this game he met many friends. Others were amazed — you really play with one hand? Later he became a streamer, showing others how he played. Many people supported him, and he could make a living from this. His life gained brilliance because of this.

When we brought this up, our employees and I were very moved. We deeply recognized the value of what we're doing.

In the process of making MLBB, of building Moonton, we could feel that you did something, you moved someone. What they give you — your users, including what I mentioned about the feedback from employees — is very strong, very satisfying.

Actually many people at Moonton are like this, and I'm like this too — realizing that what we care about most is people, that our biggest positive cycle, our energy source, is people. So when you realize this, because entrepreneurship, because users and employees gave me so much energy, I have excess energy. After having excess energy, I then want to use this energy to see other people, to look at other things. So doing Pilot is somewhat this meaning too.

I feel things toward people, emotions toward people — I didn't quite understand before. But I seem to naturally, because I feel things toward people, when you see different people, all kinds of states emerge. For example, sometimes you think about student aid, about helping some children. That's natural — you see it, you feel you have the ability to do it, you might just do something. It seems to naturally form this cycle. And in this cycle, what can you do, what do you most want to do — it naturally emerges. It constitutes another part of my emotional state. This part combined with games or content, it produces other focal points in my life, other points of concern.

🚥Koji

Let me ask an on-topic question. Speaking of Crossing, can you recall a time in your life when you once stood at a crossroads? What kind of crossroads was it? And what choice did you make?

👦🏻Justin

I remember reading that Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger — they always say roughly every five years there are some important life choices.

Later I traced back through my own life. I've summarized this question, and I think it's pretty much like this. First, when I took the college entrance exam, I'm from Jiangsu. About a dozen in my class got into Nanjing University. At the time I remember my family asking me, should I try for Shanghai? What they described to us was Shanghai. Later I chose Shanghai. Actually the younger you are, the more you're influenced by others — there's some luck involved. I think that luck was pretty good. I'm very grateful I came to Shanghai. Not that Nanjing is bad, but Shanghai probably better fit my later development needs. This thing I think is very important — that really was luck.

Then second, what should I do after graduating? Actually I had other options then. For example, I could have gone to some schools or done some other industries. At the time I remember going to Fudan University for campus recruitment. There was NCTY and Shanda. I sent resumes to both companies, later went to Shanda. I think this was a very important choice. Later when I chose to go to Shenzhen, around 2002, four or five years later going to Tencent — that was also a big change for me. I was doing fine in Shanghai, my family, my whole circle was in East China. But I went to Tencent too. I feel Tencent was my second growth — many things were washed anew. I'm very grateful to Tencent.

Then when I came out to start a business, it was with Xu Zhenhua and a group of partners where I needed to choose. Starting a business at the time — our investor was Binsen Tang, founder of Genki Forest. He described some things to us, we believed him, we said let's do it together. I think at the time many people had various choices, and we chose together.

Looking further ahead, when Xu Zhenhua felt his life purpose didn't want to be CEO anymore, I told him, then I'll be Moonton's CEO. I think that time was basically related to who the company should eventually be sold to. Actually there were several buyers then. In the end we chose ByteDance.

I think, broadly speaking, there are choices that come up every so often, and I've been pretty lucky in life. Of course, one of my core life philosophies is to never have regrets. But looking back, it's probably because of these moments of serendipity and the choices I made at each one that my life changed so dramatically.

🚥Koji

Do you ever wonder what a parallel life might have looked like if you'd taken a different turn at some fork in the road?

👦🏻Justin

There's a story I can share. Back when I was at Tencent, there was an early choice I had to make.

My boss came to me — he was a fairly important person in IEG — and said I had a few options. At the time, I didn't join a particular project. That project ended up becoming Tencent's most successful game, the biggest business. The person who led it went on to have tremendous opportunities and rose very high within the Tencent system.

Honestly, I was doing okay at Tencent myself. But after that, for a long time, I wondered if I'd made the wrong choice. For several years, especially right after making it, I felt pretty depressed — not just a little, but genuinely unhappy, quite depressed, often regretful. Because in situations where you don't have many options, each choice is precious. It could be a major turning point in your life. The earlier you are, the fewer resources you have, the more precious that choice becomes. So I regretted it.

Later, after some time, as I grew, I realized I'd made the best choice I could have at the time, and I stopped regretting that one thing. That's when you start to grow. So I focused on understanding why I'd made that choice. And I discovered that what I valued more was the team. I made that choice because I wanted to stay with that team. I wanted to walk a long road with them.

I realized: in a big company, am I someone with sharp market instincts? No. My partner, for example, he's someone with keen instincts for market opportunities. But I realized I'm not. So I thought, maybe I'm better suited for long-term things. I'm not quick or clever, but what am I good at? I understood myself better — being with the team, and so on.

The second thing I concluded was: choices matter, so when a choice comes, don't rush it. Take time to study it. When you recognize it's a major choice, consider it carefully. That was an important lesson from that point in my life.

The bigger the decision, the calmer you need to be. Taking time is fine.

So later I found that when you've gained enough from it, when you dig into something that felt a bit stifling, a bit depressing, a bit regretful — when you dig deep enough to find things that are useful for facing the future — I think you move past it.

About three years after that happened, once I'd thought it through sufficiently, it was behind me. By then I was actually grateful. I felt I understood myself better, and understood better how to face these things going forward.

Balancing Commerce and Ideals: A Long-Term View of Entrepreneurship

🚥 Ronghui

I just thought of two questions. One is, I think what you said about these positive feedback loops you pay attention to, and how you hope your current company can provide them to more people — how do you balance that yourself?

First, I think you also mentioned earlier that many of your choices really respect business fundamentals. Can I understand it this way: what you want to do now is more of a balance, respecting business while hoping to provide more people with more diverse forms of positive feedback?

But how do you do that? It seems very hard.

👦🏻Justin

Here's the thing — what's the logic of a commercial company?

The logic is: one unit of input, five units of return. Even when you buy wealth management products, it's like this. There's a variable: how long do you want? If I'm chasing annual returns, I look at each fund's annual return data. So you see, when users choose which fund to buy, they look at last year's returns, which causes fund managers to chase annual returns.

Essentially, the way money chooses leads to the mindset of practitioners. But look at Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway — is it like that for them? No, because it's their stock, their voting rights follow a certain logic, they have their own arrangements, they don't need to. It's their own capital. So I think, when I spoke with Game Grape, I mentioned something called a commercial weapon. I think this is actually a methodological question.

I think first, for example, you definitely need to make money. What's the first thing this incubates? It's money that I myself earn. I have a family office that helps manage investments — I put what I earn into it. Second, I hope to have a baseline of at least not losing money, because the important thing about not losing is that if you don't lose, whether this money goes to an investment team or whatever, it can keep running. Then it always has the foundation to keep iterating, to keep improving its products, to keep running the team better. So that's enough.

If you keep putting more of what you earn into it, and assume you don't lose, then that ammunition keeps cycling.

Some people in this will do well, or they'll get an opportunity and do well, and then they'll amplify — amplify in a business sense. So as we grow, maybe one game or one team explodes after five or six years. Something like that.

But what lets this business or this organization keep running is trying our best not to lose money.

So I have several layers of insurance.

1. First layer: my own family office keeps making money, so I have capital to deploy.
2. Second layer: try not to lose, so these things can keep operating. Some project investments are just methodology, and we achieve this.
3. Third layer: there might be a hit product. If a hit comes, there might be even better development.

Going back, with each of these things, just try to run the floor a bit higher. Under this approach, if we abstract and summarize, if we look rationally at how many companies grow — some might say a project with less than 2x return doesn't get approved. My baseline might be lower: if it can sustain itself, it gets approved, and we do it.

So what am I pursuing? I think this philosophy fits the patterns of the content industry.

The pattern of the content industry is really small content growing big, niche stuff.

For example, there wasn't ACG gaming before, but after ten-some years there is ACG gaming, and so on. What I actually hope is to cultivate these things, and in five years when they grow big, they'll still have good commercial returns. So to summarize, I think the content industry is suited for long-term thinking. It's not a short-term, intense market competition. It's an industry suited for long-term thinking. And long-term thinking seems to fit long-term patterns, and because it fits long-term patterns, I can lower my demands for short-term returns. So my short-term commercial return is the floor — just try not to lose money.

🚥Ronghui

Do you feel like people around you are all focused on AI? Seeing everyone around you care about AI, do you worry about missing information, about having that information anxiety that people in this industry already have?

👦🏻Justin

At first I did, but now I think this way. You can probably sense that I'm relatively open to embracing market and directional changes. But what I'm good at isn't technology-driven, so for me it's about application.

This is also how I see my relationship with AI: pay constant attention, make it the most important weapon in your toolkit or arsenal.

But for it to become a weapon, you need to deepen your understanding and knowledge of it — you need to use it wisely, whether you're using it as a tool or using it wisely.

Using it as a tool wouldn't be me. I just said I'm not good at that, so I find people to iterate my knowledge and understanding of this space. For example, last time you all and I talked, we mentioned DeepSeek, right? Recently, because a good friend of mine is friends with one of their partners, I found one of their founders and I'm talking with him tomorrow afternoon. Maybe also because they started from a quant fund, I'll invest in their quant fund too. I'll deepen my understanding of it, and just use it.

Once I understand that this is my characteristic, what I'll do is: beyond AI, how to use AI — I still hope that humans, or more of us, use it well. So I'll try to be among those who use it well. Compared to people who make AI productivity tools or AI creative tools, some make it directly, some use it to make things. But I choose to do applications, so what I need to strengthen is just my understanding and knowledge of it.

🚥Koji

Actually you probably represent 99.99% of people in the world. Because the scientists who truly do AI research are a tiny group.

👦🏻Justin

Looking back, after I've thought and felt through this, I don't seem anxious anymore. I haven't been swept up in that anxiety.

But I face it squarely, I take it seriously, I choose not to be anxious, and I use it in the way I want to use it.

Game Science and Black Myth: Wukong: What It Means for the Industry

🚥Koji

Let's end by talking about Pilot, this new company you founded.

We also know that Yocar from Black Myth: Wukong — you two were colleagues back in the day, when everyone was just starting their careers. So what did you feel seeing Black Myth: Wukong? And is there any direct or indirect connection between that and what Pilot wants to do?

👦🏻Justin

Back at Tencent, Yocar and I joined around the same time, and we were basically in brother projects. Because we both reported to the same boss, his talent and gifts — including his team — we knew about early on, and it was widely recognized in the industry. We also started our companies around the same time; it's just that we always did things very commercially, while they slowly did some mobile games and then shifted to PC.

If you really ask me, at various points in time, would I have believed they could pull off something this incredible, this amazing? I think even knowing them as well as we did, the current result still exceeded expectations.

But there was a foundation: I felt that what Game Science wanted to do, if they did a single title, they could do it well, quite well. For example, I'm also fairly good friends with their investors, and we've chatted.

At the time they might have had sales expectations of around 15 million copies or so. Now it's definitely exceeded that. So I think what might be shocking to the outside world is that it broke out of the gaming circle — it became a social representative of Chinese cultural products. But for us in the gaming industry, we deeply know this team's capabilities and this product's capabilities. So from my perspective, with Black Myth, I think everyone should be grateful to Game Science.

I mean us people in the gaming industry. Because the gaming industry, as I later described it, is incredibly deep. It makes a lot of money, but the outside world doesn't understand it much. The player base isn't that large, and some people would rather watch more film and TV — everyone probably understands film and TV better than games. So it's because of Black Myth that people realized a game could have this kind of influence, that it could impact foreign audiences, that it could reach so many people. I think this is a fortunate thing for our industry. Otherwise, more people might still think of games the way you just mentioned — as something that harms kids' studies, as a waste of time.

At least now people can feel that it has this kind of influence, and that's a very good thing. So I think including how it connects with so much of China's history and culture, with tourism and so on — I think that's all good too. Including how it faces overseas audiences and can introduce Chinese games to the world, and how it brings confidence to people in the industry. So from my perspective, I feel its social significance and industry significance are enormous.

🚥Koji

Let's say, Justin, if we talk about five or ten years from now, what would Pilot have to achieve for you to feel like you've hit that milestone or that you've made it — that this thing is a success?

👦🏻Justin

Actually, some people around me know me and say I'm willful with money. Or people might think that maybe as I keep doing this, I'll end up being KPI-driven too. Because when you're running a commercial company, you still need to hit targets, you need management science. I can't deny that.

My first level is: I hope that in five years, Pilot presents itself to everyone like this — there are games in development, games already launched, users playing them, and the company's operations are stable. That would be enough.

Because what I want to do is indeed somewhat idealistic for the current industry. So as long as it survives as a sample, as long as it can operate coherently on its own terms, that's good enough.

🚥Ronghui

The basic shape stays the same.

👦🏻Justin

Yes, I think I'd already be very happy.

New Company Pilot: The Meaning of a Unique Living Being's Existence

🚥Koji

Is this also because you believe the value to be delivered isn't just commercial success, or massive success in user scale, in revenue scale? That the value to be delivered is likely just continuously creating within a relatively healthy, sustainable state?

👦🏻Justin

Yes, I personally feel that a company is also a living being.

People in this world are inherently diverse in their existence, and the forms companies take should also be diverse in their existence.

I really admire Pang Donglai. With how successful Pang Donglai is now, if you look five or ten years ahead, can they scale bigger? They might just stop where they are.

This is a single case — maybe the Pang Donglai boss just personally likes doing things this way.

But he exerts such strong energy, radiating to his employees, radiating to consumers. When he has this much radiating power, how many years did that take? And now he can still radiate outward to influence some peers in the same industry. I think he achieved this by trading time for it.

I'm not saying I need to have as much influence as Pang Donglai. My point is, achieving that would certainly be great, being able to influence more people. But I feel that as a unique living being with its own philosophy, its very existence is already tremendously meaningful.

🚥Ronghui

What you're saying reminds me of a podcast I listened to a couple days ago with the founder of Suno, that AI music tool. The founder compared Suno to a game — he said he hoped Suno could become something more like a game company, high interactivity and high content value, something that brings people joy. He didn't compare Suno to a product like ChatGPT.

👦🏻Justin

I'm someone whose ideas might keep changing, and I personally feel my philosophy isn't the type that's very emotionally expressive. Usually my philosophies are quite rational, like the conversation we just had, and I pursue relatively authentic communication.

My own feeling is that what I'm saying is roughly what I'm thinking right now, and it will likely keep changing. I mean, I don't necessarily feel that I'm very mature right now, or that I represent a lot of other things. It's just my subjective thoughts at this moment in time. It was the same when I was at my previous company — frequent communication, but if I did something wrong or said something wrong, I kept summarizing and reflecting.

Because Crossing invited me, I felt a bit like "well, might as well come out and say something." But actually I'm still a bit worried about saying something that might mislead people or be misunderstood. So what I want to say is, what I just said represents my feelings at this moment.

Maybe every six months or a year from now, I'll be in different places, and when I have feelings, I'll chat about them. I think whatever you're doing at this moment in time, whether right or wrong, if you record it, it might form a meaningful chain when strung together. Actually sometimes we take something that grew out and make it into a story when it succeeds, or make it into a story when it fails — both involve some subjective re-creation.

But actually the state I want more is to record the authenticity of each moment in time, and to have countless authentic moments recorded as time flows on. I think that's actually very powerful.

Maybe what I want in each expression is this thing — maybe a single expression is just what it is, but strung across different times and occasions, it becomes quite interesting.

🚥Ronghui

I think it's very normal for people's ideas to change.

🚥Koji

Yes, the only constant is change.

🚥Ronghui

We did a podcast episode with Li Nan before, and I asked him — I was surprised that he's still posting on Weibo. And he said Weibo is just a tool to record his thoughts at that time, and he said he goes back to look at what he was thinking then.

🚥Koji

And he doesn't delete Weibo posts. Yes, and he was MEIZU's CMO, and in the phone circle there's also a pretty strong fan culture. So their comment sections are often pretty wild, but he never deletes Weibo posts. Yes, a very special person.

🚥Koji

Yes, and today we sat in Justin's house basking in the sun and talked for a long time. At first we were curious about life after financial freedom, but unexpectedly ended up talking a lot about past experiences. Whether you're a working professional or a younger student, if you can get some inspiration or strength from this, we'll be very happy with this episode.

🚥Koji

And today I also had a strong feeling — that we've all gone through being small-town test-takers, gone through rapid economic development, gone through mobile internet, when many people advocated 996, advocated wolf culture, advocated competition.

But recently, including myself with Tangdao, at that time I would also say that we need to allow for diversity in this world, to allow people the freedom to be wolves, and to allow people who just want to rest properly from time to time the freedom to be sheep. And to allow some people, like little birds, who just want to be free and be little birds.

But whatever kind of self you want to be, I hope everyone can find the thing that gives them the most positive feedback.

Because when you find something that gives you positive feedback, you can enter a virtuous cycle. You can connect with more people, with more things that exist in this world, and live each day fully. Alright, thank you Justin today, and hope you can come back as a guest on Crossing.

👦🏻Justin

Sounds good sounds good ❤️

Subscribe to the "Crossing" Podcast

🚦 We focus on new industry changes and entrepreneurial opportunities brought by the new generation of AI technology waves. Crossing is Steve Jobs' metaphor for Apple — describing it as standing at the crossroads of technology and liberal arts, where great products are often born. AI is bringing change to all industries, and we seek out, interview, and unite "active actors" of the AI era. Together with them, we explore and embrace new changes, new possibilities.

👦🏻 Host Koji: Co-founder of The Fair/Tangdao. I believe technology, especially AI, will fundamentally transform society and empower humanity in the future. Welcome to chat with me, bounce ideas, and link to the next possibility. Koji's Jike, Koji's Website

👧🏻 Host Ronghui: Works at a tech VC, former Silicon Valley correspondent for CBNweekly. Ronghui's Jike

---

Join the "Crossing" Membership Group

☀️ First-hand AI news and insights

👫🏻 Encouraging everyone to date/make friends/find future companions

🦀 Add the assistant on WeChat to join: Rwkfbcianvd, or scan the QR code below

References

[1] Moonton: https://cn.moonton.com/

[2] Mobile Legends: Bang Bang: https://m.mobilelegends.com/

[3] Garena: https://www.garena.sg/

[4] Sea: https://www.sea.com/

[5] Koji's Jike: https://okjk.co/0JSUes

[6] Koji's Website: https://koji.super.site/

[7] Ronghui's Jike: https://okjk.co/0cbnYV