First Principles

First Principles (第一推动) is a Chinese-language podcast produced by Monolith砺思资本, the venture firm founded by Cao Xi. It debuted in 2024 as the firm's inaugural podcast series, with its name drawn from the concept of "first principles" thinking—though Monolith's own name references the black monolith from *2001: A Space Odyssey* . The show profiled entrepreneurs and builders in depth: one episode featured Zhilin Yang discussing innovation and long-term thinking, while another traced a robotics engineer's twelve-year career from developing window-cleaning robots at Ecovacs to founding a pool-cleaning robot startup inspired by the *Zima Blue* story . The podcast went on hiatus after its early run; as of February 2026, Monolith attributed the pause partly to the team's workload and partly to founders' preference for staying out of the spotlight during early stages .