Li Kaiwen, Being a Normal Person in a World Full of Oddballs | elselier

Guo Yunxiao @PitayaK_

1. Li Kaiwen is the co-founder of ChatCut. Born in 1992, he moved to the US after middle school and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2015. He started out making documentaries at Vice, then Discovery, and began shooting commercial ads during that time. In 2024, he self-funded his first narrative short film, Seed of Sin (Nie Zhong), which earned a Golden Horse nomination.

2. ChatCut is a fully conversational AI editing tool. By talking with AI, ChatCut helps you quickly clip the specific parts you describe — "cut the filler" or "pull the highlights." Unlike Sora-style AI video products built primarily around generation, ChatCut is designed specifically for editing existing footage, with particular strength in long talking-head videos and conversational content.

3. The product idea grew out of Li's long experience in documentary production. Traditional editing is paper editing — a text-based workflow. In 2023, he realized ChatGPT could transform this process.

Antler later discovered the idea and invited him to move to Vietnam to start the company. The initial version was built through vibe coding with his co-founder — neither had any prior programming experience. Two months ago, they announced the completion of a seed round led by ZhenFund.

4. I first noticed Li because of his funding announcement video. Unlike any typical product launch or funding announcement, the video uses a dual narrative structure: the voiceover mainly discusses his understanding of editing, with a single line about securing funding, interwoven with the team's journey from Ho Chi Minh City to Shanghai.

Many people commented that the video has an indescribable vibe — Li said this is exactly what they wanted to convey. They had originally written a standard, formal funding announcement, but their investor said they should make something better.

5. As a director with modest success myself, I assumed he'd be either extremely picky about tools or largely indifferent. But ChatCut is actually a very mass-market product. He wants "both popular and good" — this philosophy ran through our entire conversation. When we discussed avant-garde cinema, for instance, he believes good work is naturally recognizable as such; it shouldn't require explanation from others.

In his view, the barrier to shooting video is already low, but editing workflows remain stuck in the 1990s. Today's mainstream editing software (Premiere, DaVinci, Final Cut) are all modeled after flatbed film editors — a format that's unfriendly to modern video creators.

6. He believes editing boils down to three core needs: group by topics, show and tell (cut to what you're talking about, point and shoot), and make it good (remove flaws). These satisfy 99% of needs. The remaining 1% is make it awesome — which often requires breaking the rules on top of a solid foundation, a negation of the first three principles that no tool can achieve.

He also admitted that ChatCut couldn't directly produce a video like theirs; it took a long time precisely because they needed to make it awesome. But even for a professional director like himself, ChatCut can quickly surface different editing possibilities, like AI4S accelerating experimental efficiency. It's a creative partner and brainstorming companion.

7. When asked "What if CapCut does this?" he said: "When I was fundraising, I had a good answer for that." He sees CapCut as a mature product where AI features are like a carpet — the more stuff (functions) you have on top, the harder it is to swap it out. Editing is like building a skyscraper; both the person and the tool need to know what good structure looks like.

8. Li is from Anshan, Liaoning, with no Northeastern accent but a pronounced nasal quality from years of speaking English. He has medium-length black hair, wears glasses, a casual blazer and jeans — his uniform at recent AI events. But in older social media posts, his hair was bleached blond, with glasses, a beanie, and conspicuous red Beats headphones.

9. Li has no particular fixation on Northeastern themes. He said he made a real effort reading Shuang Xuetao, Ban Yu, and Zheng Zhi during his screenwriting period, and tried shooting in that vein, but ultimately realized "that's not my life." Seed of Sin was the most "completable" of many short scripts he attempted, because it's easier to mobilize resources and finish shooting in your hometown.

This steel city has a small enclave of garden villas standing apart from everything else, called Dongshan Guesthouse. Li kept bringing it to mind.

10. After shooting Seed of Sin, Li posted on social media: "I have worked with many talented people on my commercials, and for my personal projects, I bring on only the best." So he reached out to the best actors he'd collaborated with, and with "You owe me a movie," brought the Oppenheimer gaffer to Northeast China.

When I asked how he recruits people, especially those with technical backgrounds, he said they don't want "session players" who can only play sheet music perfectly. They want Jimi Hendrix, who can make a guitar soar. ChatCut's team now has 9 people, with subsequent hires coming from CapCut, MiniMax, AIPPT, and "Hello Teacher I'm He Tongxue" (Lao Shi Hao Wo Shi He Tongxue), among other teams.

11. He's left hundreds, even thousands of reviews on film sites, with no fewer than 50 perfect scores. Some reviews of Seed of Sin detected traces of Diao Yinan and Xin Shuang; Li hasn't particularly studied them. His investor called Wild Times an elegy for cinema; he didn't particularly care.

He prefers Soderbergh and Nolan because they made the highest-grossing commercial films while also creating top-tier art. "Are you gonna tell me that's not NIUBI?"

12. On the relationship between director and founder identities, he has a theory. History's greatest creators have often also been inventors of creative tools — Da Vinci, George Lucas, James Cameron; all made profoundly influential products.

In his first film class, his teacher told him: whatever you would do if you weren't a director, that's what you should make films about. He uses this to illustrate that as a director you need a "second thing" you truly love; founding a company similarly requires loving a "second thing." The two identities happen to be a beautiful combination.

「elsewhere」commentary:

He self-assessed his ego at 4, probably meaning he demands "make it awesome" of himself. What I sensed more in our conversation was a tendency toward understanding and satisfying the 99% of needs when it comes to external things. The other quadrants basically align with my views, but the long, arduous test still lies ahead.

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