Seeing Silicon Valley in Shanghai | This Saturday's ToC AI App Meetup — Coming?
Saturday Jam @Shanghai (9/21)
🎉 This Saturday (9/21) in Shanghai — join us for a conversation with friends from Silicon Valley about the latest "battlefront" in consumer AI apps.
Those following the Generative AI startup space have likely noticed that most innovation in the United States has centered on infrastructure and B2B. Beyond chatbots from large model companies in the ChatGPT mold and AI companions pioneered by Character AI, other consumer AI apps still seem to be in very early exploration.
- After mobile internet, what opportunities remain for consumer AI apps?
- What kinds of innovation can AI still bring to the consumer space?
- In the U.S. market where B2B commands most of the attention, where does consumer innovation still happen?
- Zooming out to AI broadly, discussions around large model investment and commercialization have been heating up — how are U.S. investors thinking about this?
- What can Chinese startups going global learn from these frontline experiences?
In this wave of entrepreneurship, people-to-people ties across the Pacific have remained remarkably strong. OnBoard! and Crossing have been creating, and remain committed to creating, more cross-border dialogue opportunities. This time, we've managed to invite two American entrepreneurs and investors who live in the United States and happen to be traveling in China — bringing you the most authentic perspectives possible.
They represent the hottest Gen Z consumer apps in America and a mainstream, active VC in AI investing. This is a rare chance to engage directly with frontline participants in the U.S. market.
👫 Hosted by
OnBoard! Podcast hosts:
- 👩🏻 Monica, investor at ZhenFund, former AWS AI North America GTM, founding team at AI startup AiFi
Crossing Podcast hosts:
- 👦🏻 Koji, serial entrepreneur: Jiepang → The Fair → Tangdao
- 👩🏻 Ronghui, dollar fund professional, former Silicon Valley correspondent for CBNweekly
🎙️ Speakers
Our featured guests are based in the United States, firsthand participants in Silicon Valley's AI startup and investment scene, ready to share their most direct observations and thinking:
- @TZ Tiffany — Founder of Noplace, the #1 Gen Z social app on the U.S. App Store; VC at Pineapple Capital
- @Kevin Zhang — Author of deep AI investment blog "East Wind," former VC at FirstMark
- @EveWang — Head of Overseas Publishing at Zeus, former Googler
Note: Given our guests' backgrounds, portions of the discussion and Q&A will be conducted in English.
📅 Agenda
2:00 – 2:15pm
Check-in
2:15 – 2:30pm
Hosted by Ronghui
Opening welcome by Monica, Michael, Harry, and Koji
2:30 – 3:00pm
Keynote by Kevin: Investing in the Age of Generative AI
3:00 – 4:00pm
Panel Discussion: The State of Consumer AI Right Now — A Silicon Valley Perspective
4:00 – 4:30pm
Demos from the SuperBrain AI Incubator's young talents
4:30 – 5:30pm
Networking
Bonus! 6pm Invite-Only
Speaker dinner! (Only 6 seats — indicate interest in the registration form)
Detailed Speaker Bios (AKA Why You Can't Miss This Meetup)
Tiffany Zhong
Founder @Noplace, Founder @Pineapple Capital
The U.S. consumer app market has been genuinely quiet for years. Noplace stands out as one of the most talked-about Gen Z social apps to emerge in the past two years. When it opened from invite-only this July, it shot straight to #1 on the App Store!
We rarely get to hear directly from the founder of an American social app. We're pulling Tiffany in during her brief China trip for this special share.
Tiffany's background is remarkable — she's a genuine voice for American Gen Z. She dropped out of UC Berkeley at 19 to join Binary Capital as an early-stage investor focused on consumer. She later founded her own early-stage fund, Pineapple Capital.
In 2023, amid the AI wave and a U.S. VC landscape that had long favored B2B, her Noplace emerged as a dark horse, raising over $19 million in total funding. Interested readers can check out this TechCrunch profile [1] and her VC reflections written at age 20 [2].
Kevin Zhang
Blogger @East Wind, ex-VC @FirstMark Capital
They say every U.S. VC has a blog — Kevin is the real deal as a deeply committed writer. His Substack, East Wind, has published several recent pieces [3][4] offering substantial analysis of AI and capital markets. Links below — strongly recommended!
Kevin happens to be in China right now, and we quickly snagged him for a fresh-off-the-press share of his recent observations and thinking from both sides of the Pacific.
Kevin's path is equally fascinating. An engineer by training, he spent three years at Salesforce before pivoting to VC, doing early-stage investing at Fusion Fund and then FirstMark. You may not have heard of FirstMark, but anyone following AI knows their annual MAD (Machine Learning, AI & Data) Landscape — the 2023 edition [5] was Kevin's handiwork. Having entered the industry in 2021, he's lived through some of the most turbulent years in U.S. capital markets. With a deeply data-driven approach, he moved on from VC to a GenAI startup stint himself. Such diverse perspectives are sure to spark fresh thinking.
Eve Wang
Head of Overseas Publishing @Zeus AI, ex-App Growth @Google
With perspectives from our two American guests in place, we need someone to connect with what Chinese entrepreneurs care about most: going global. Eve (Eve's Jike [6]) previously led app growth for developer出海 at Google. This year she joined Zeus AI to help more Chinese entrepreneurs expand overseas, focusing on publishing for social and utility apps abroad.
However creative the concept, when it comes to overseas user acquisition, there's still too much operational know-how that can save tool developers enormous trial-and-error time.
Eve has already helped many early-stage Chinese AI startups go global. Her insights, challenges, and opportunities make the perfect complement to our first two speakers. Reference: App出海投放篇 [7].
❤️ Special Thanks
🏠 Venue: Shanghai Jiao Tong University Engineering Research Institute @Jialiang Wang (Michael), founder of TouchPal and SuperBrain AI Incubator
☕️ Coffee: Abotify co-founder @Harry Zhou. Abotify defines advertising for the AI era. The world's first company to offer a complete, ready-to-use AI-native ad monetization solution for AI-native applications, dynamically embedding ads into real-time AI conversations and content generation. Partners include c.ai and many other top AI-native apps on a16z's global traffic rankings.
🏡 Location
The event is free. To ensure quality of interaction, we're capping attendance at 50. Please scan the QR code to register!
Registration deadline: Friday 9/20, midnight
Notification: Friday 9/20, 5pm (we'll notify via text — please ensure your mobile number is correct and check for messages!)
We'll prioritize AI and social domain entrepreneurs and practitioners.
P.S. Our guests traveling from afar specifically expressed interest in connecting with product and growth folks from Xiaohongshu, ByteDance, Bilibili, and Pinduoduo, as well as practitioners working on international AI applications. We'll prioritize these backgrounds while maintaining diversity — thank you for understanding~
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About SuperBrain Incubator
SuperBrain AI Incubator is an innovative educational experiment launched in summer 2023 by Jialiang Wang, founder of a NYSE-listed company, together with entrepreneur friends and startup mentors from the tech community. We recruited a cohort of primary and secondary school students, grouped them with mentors, and taught them to use AI tools to solve real-world problems. The goal: to discover China's "young Elon Musks" and cultivate globally-minded, AI-era innovative talent through an entirely new model.
🎉 Hey hey! So excited to introduce the speakers for this Sat (9/21) consumer AI meetup.
👫 Host Onboard! Podcast Host：
- 👩🏻 Monica, VC @zhenfund, ex-GTM @AWS AI, founding team @AI startup
Crossing Podcast Host:
- 👦🏻 Koji, serial entrepreneur
- 👩🏻 Ronghui, work at VC, former Silicon Valley correspondent for YiMagazine
🎙️ Speakers @TZ Tiffany, founder of Noplace, ex-VC
@Kevin Zhang ex-VC@Firstmark, author of https://eastwind.substack.com
@EveWang ex-Google, Head of Oversea Growth @Zeus
📅 Agenda 2-2.15pm check in
2.15-2.30opening by Monica & Koji
2.30 -3pm presentation by Kevin
3-4pm panel: what's happening in consumer AI - views from US
4-4.30pm demos from AI incubator (all teenagers!)
4.30-5.30pm mingle and social
❤️ Special Thx to 🏠 Venue sponsor: Shanghai Jiao Tong University Engineering Research Institute, @Jialiang Wang (Michael), founder of TouchPal, and AI Incubator
☕️ Coffee sponsor: @Harry Zhou, co-founder of Abotify.com
🏡 Venue The event is free. As the venue can only accommodate 50 people, please scan the QR code to register. We will notify you of the registration results and the specific location on Friday.
References [1] TechCrunch profile: https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/03/noplace-a-mashup-of-twitter-and-myspace-for-gen-z-hits-no-1-on-the-app-store/
[2] VC reflections at age 20: https://tzhongg.medium.com/55-things-learned-as-a-19-year-old-vc-6c54af2f0f89
[3] Recent piece: https://eastwind.substack.com/p/investing-in-the-age-of-generative
[4] Another piece: https://eastwind.substack.com/p/a-deep-dive-on-ai-inference-startups
[5] 2023 landscape: https://mattturck.com/landscape/mad2023.pdf
[6] Eve's Jike: https://m.okjike.com/originalPosts/64ec86d98425e0dd3bf3f827?s=eyJ1IjoiNjEyY2ViYzNjNzM4MzMwMDEwMTFmNTE3IiwiZCI6MX0%3D
[7] App出海投放篇: https://ociojnpco9.feishu.cn/docx/XewvddHe9oL01KxFjSxcPOGPnOg