Inside a Thousand-Person "AI Manga Drama" Factory: Wild Growth and Creative Ideals | A Conversation with Jiangyou

🚥 This week's Crossing guest is Soy Sauce (Huang Haonan), one of the fastest movers in the chaotic early days of "AI manhua dramas," an entirely new content species.

A vocational school graduate who made his first fortune through web novels, Soy Sauce founded "Soy Sauce Culture" and achieved financial freedom.

In September this year, after deciding to go all-in on AI manhua dramas, his company grew explosively in just a few months — expanding to a 1,000-person team with revenue exceeding 50 million yuan.

Of the 22 manhua dramas that surpassed 100 million views on Douyin, five came from Soy Sauce.

In this episode, he breaks down the operational details of this thousand-person "AI factory," sharing his views on the investment value of AI tools, the "digital fast food" controversy, the new job category of "card pullers," visual democratization, the strengths and weaknesses of large models, moats in the content industry, and the ambition of "becoming the Pixar of the AI era."

Finally, Soy Sauce shares his remarkable story: as a "swimmer against the current" of his era, he leveraged his instinct for content and extreme execution to seize an opportunity for ordinary people to rise, riding the wave of technological democratization that AI has brought.

Truly fascinating!

📒 The transcript will be published shortly on the @十字路口Crossing WeChat public account.

🟢 01:01 Lightning Round: Age, alma mater, zodiac sign, one-sentence description of what he's doing now, fundraising status, revenue and profit, team size, pre-entrepreneurship experience

🟢 01:49 The Thousand-Person "AI Manhua Drama" Factory

"He can never steal what's in my head, and I can never steal what's in his." Why did AI manhua dramas explode? What does a complete AI manhua drama pipeline look like? In a thousand-person team, which roles are most numerous? Which are hardest to hire for? New jobs emerge: "AI artist" and "AI card puller." Even with a thousand-person team, script and storyboard remain the "soul" that must be hand-polished by humans.

🟢 10:29 When the World Is Rejecting AI

"Obviously AI, too much AI flavor... They seem to use AI as shorthand for shoddy work." Finding people willing to "swim against the current" and pioneer a new visual era. "Too much AI flavor" has become synonymous with poor quality, but those working with AI know: it improves every single day. A brutal fact: AI output has already surpassed that of 80% of veteran animators with ten years of experience. Hayao Miyazaki said "lines drawn by computers have no soul," yet 90% of animation worldwide is already computer-generated. "My partner made 300,000 yuan a year ago. Next month he's picking up his Rolls-Royce."

🟢 16:57 Content Methodology: The Three Layers Behind Hit-Making

"Make something great around life and death, human existence, society — and if it flops, so be it." Layer one: web novel logic, giving 18-year-old boys an outlet to decompress. Layer two: visual spectacle, using AI to create god-demon war scenes on the scale of Creation of the Gods. Layer three: IP-worthy content, making a Coco that resonates with the whole world. Why is the idea of Chinese film and TV "going global" a false proposition? The culture runs too deep; nobody outside gets it. AI's greatest value: giving you infinite room to fail — 200,000 yuan per production, who cares if it flops.

🟢 19:20 Costs, Models, Good Content

"We don't want to make a quick buck on this trend and wait for the next one. We want to keep building, keep pioneering at this intersection." Industry average: 1,000 yuan/minute; we charge 1,500 — because others generate 40 images, we generate 160-plus. Cost breakdown: labor 60%, compute 20%, script 15%, voice acting 5%. Our most-used video model is Shengshu. Keling AI, Dreamina, Sora... we take the best from each and integrate them. Why we don't cut costs: only quality endures; those who cut corners for quick profits eventually get eliminated.

🟢 23:51 From Vocational School to Financial Freedom

"You'll never get rich working for someone else. People like us probably only get one shot in a lifetime." No computer? Spend all night at internet cafes writing code. First month writing web novels: over 10,000 yuan in income. Six months later: annual income of 1 million. Then opened the nation's first offline web novel incubator. Doing short dramas: 150,000 yuan cost, 7 million yuan revenue in one month, 50 million yuan pre-tax annual income — financial freedom. Why pivot from short dramas to all-in on AI manhua dramas? 1% talent matters more than 99% effort. Effort only makes you money; it doesn't make you successful.

🟢 31:06 Managing a Thousand People

"Who actually enjoys working? But I need them to compare this place to others and think, this company's actually not bad. That's enough." This isn't talent management, it's factory management — employee, team lead, supervisor, tasks distributed down the chain, clock out when done. Rank-and-file never work overtime, only six actual hours a day; but team leads and above work 365 days a year. Why? Someone earning 5,000 yuan a month has a right to their nightlife; high earners owe everything to the company. Biggest risk? Doesn't exist. Content drives production; as long as the content works, whoever produces it is interchangeable. "There are no competitors in this track" — are the companies behind Crayon Shin-chan and Detective Conan enemies?

🟢 37:37 Becoming the Pixar of the AI Era

"I want to go public. I want to become a global AI application concept stock." If it's this profitable, why raise funding? Plans for next year: disrupt the domestic animation market, go global, build IP ecosystems, make games... "We're going to upend the entire domestic animation market, stir things up." We're working on a "top-secret project," announcing after New Year, that will send massive shockwaves through the AI market. "(Do we use AI tools?) No. Not a single one." "(Are AI tool startups investable?) Not at all. Zero value." Any bold predictions for 2026?

Welcome to subscribe to Crossing: 🚦 We track the industry transformations and entrepreneurial opportunities brought by the new wave of AI technology.

🚦 Crossing takes its name from Steve Jobs' metaphor for Apple — standing at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, where great products are born. AI is transforming every industry. We seek out, interview, and bring together a new generation of AI entrepreneurs and active participants in the AI era. Together with them, we explore and embrace the new changes, the new possibilities.

👦🏻 Host Koji: I founded Crossing and launched AI Hacker House, a community space for a new generation of AI entrepreneurs. I serve as Venture Partner at ZhenFund. I believe technology, especially AI, represents the greatest value creation opportunity of our generation. Koji on Jike | Koji's website

👧🏻 Host Ronghui: I co-founded Crossing. I've worked at a dollar-denominated VC and spent five years as a Silicon Valley correspondent, tracking technological development and business stories. Feel free to reach out and chat. Ronghui on Jike