Storming the "AI Startup Battle Zone": What's Medeo Thinking? | A Chat with Chenran on AI Video Products and Opportunities for Young People

Last week, Medeo, an AI video generation tool, launched. Users input a text description, and it automatically handles everything from splitting shots and generating scripts to adding music and producing the finished video. That same day, it triggered a minor "viral moment" across our WeChat feeds.

The product comes from ONE2X, founded in early 2024 by Guan Wang, former head of large-model products at Moonshot AI, with a focus on AI video. For this podcast episode, we invited Chenran, Medeo's product lead, to share the process of building Medeo, his thoughts on Agent + video, and his reflections on some current industry consensus.

Throughout our conversation, Chenran kept bringing up Cursor. Beyond describing the product inspiration it gave him, we also discussed his feelings about AI products today, and his habit of constantly building demos to experience the latest models and AI applications firsthand. What struck us was when Chenran said that in building these demos, he had no particular goal — he did it simply for fun.

"Fun" gave him abundant positive reinforcement. As he put it, "fun" is a rare and precious quality in this era. We believe there are many young people like Chenran, and that more and more such young people will emerge. To them, through this episode, we say: enjoy it.

🚥 02:10 Rapid-fire Q&A with Chenran, Medeo's product lead

02:59 Medeo video demo

03:34 The feeling of Medeo's minor viral moment on WeChat Moments after launch

05:14 One launch event + invite codes + KOL hype = the AI product launch template?

06:20 Why build Medeo?

08:11 It had to be video: modality ascension brings greater economic returns

11:28 With AI, can articles be easily converted to video? No

13:18 No video templates designed for the model yet — no bandwidth, plus belief in delegating to the model

14:30 Medeo effort breakdown: watching videos, understanding production workflows, imitating

19:14 Doing both content and R&D — how does that work with the team?

21:47 Medeo's fully remote team: lessons on productivity and team cohesion

25:45 Is Medeo just doing what competitors Veed.io and Invideo could do a year ago?

27:39 Medeo's vision: letting untrained people use tools to express what they want

30:25 "Video itself is a broad track" — no winner-take-all outcome expected

33:56 Agent + video: hard to edit after generation, also a problem

35:10 "I believe video should be 80% workflow and 20% agentic"

37:12 Cautious on MCP: it's a protocol, but doesn't solve real implementation problems

39:01 Solving user needs doesn't require using the optimal technology

41:29 Most-used tool: Cursor

43:50 Product thinking #1: how to solve the trilemma of AI products

46:34 Product thinking #2: for content, AI struggles to produce creativity that surpasses humans

48:24 How does an AI product lead spend their day?

49:41 "Cursor is the best product done so far"

51:12 Stable delivery is more a product-level problem; currently hard to solve because engineering is difficult

55:53 AI has disrupted traditional learning paths — everyone has more opportunities in this new era

58:29 Having the courage to try building demos is incredibly important

59:47 Many things are done randomly, just for fun — fun is a very rare quality

01:03:40 The reward of constantly building demos: feeling the fun, which is positive feedback

01:05:23 For young people facing shifting circumstances, maintaining emotional stability is already hard enough — preserving passion and creative drive matters

01:07:57 In college, thought my major was useless — then ChatGPT appeared

01:10:04 Behind Koji's AI Hacker House story: "finding your people"

01:12:16 Protecting creative drive: live somewhere quiet, reduce socializing, quit electronic devices, read books

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🚦 "Crossroads" is 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 founders and proactive actors in the AI era. Together with them, we explore and embrace the new changes, the new possibilities.

👦🏻 Host Koji: I co-founded Jiepang / The Fair / Tangdao, and started AI Hacker House, a community space for the new generation of AI entrepreneurs. I believe technology, especially AI, represents the greatest value-creation opportunity of our generation. Feel free to reach out to chat, bounce ideas, and connect on what's next. Koji on Jike | Koji's website

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