"Dokie is no match for ListenHub"

"The GenSpark Homework Contest Has Begun"

My latest source of joy comes from an article titled Dokie: The Way AI Lights You Up Doesn't Have to Be Just About Efficiency:

"During an internal team sharing session, I tried various AI PPT products. The half-baked results were more painful to fix than just finding a decent template and starting from scratch with traditional tools. Later, I tried discussing and refining content back and forth with AI, then used a vibe coding agent to build it, communicating with the agent to iterate continuously. In the end, I produced something that exceeded my own abilities in content, logic, and design. In that moment, I felt lit up by AI."

I almost lost it reading this. Getting "lit up" by making PPTs? Has work fried your brain? They should create a dedicated PPT-making position just for this person, so their life would never know darkness again.

Then I saw it's Zhang Yueguang's new product. Out of respect for a star founder, I figured I'd check if there's anything actually impressive.

Landing on the official site, my first impression of Dokie was: zero highlights, not even anything worth mocking. If I had to say something, the design aesthetic is decent.

And it really only has one feature — PPT generation. What's going on, everyone says GenSpark is a PPT generator wearing an agent costume, so Dokie just decided to do PPTs and nothing else?

Out of options, I tested the PPT function. I fed it my sharp take on Ant Group's investments, and this is what it gave me:

Pure text layout with simple images. Clearly no Nano banana involved. If you're making PPTs without multimodality, what's the difference from other one-click PPT generators besides having more templates? Feels like they just saw GenSpark and Gamma doing well and got jealous.

Wonder what BlueRun Ventures thinks, having invested in both: your portfolio company is attacking your portfolio company.

Though honestly, at this level it doesn't even count as an attack 😭

Zhang Yueguang said on a podcast that he doesn't use Nano banana because "the images are very pretty,图文并茂, the design looks beautiful, but a lot of information gets omitted. You can't fit many words on each page. The second problem is, it looks AI-made at first glance."

But bro, yours also looks AI-made at first glance.

Meanwhile, I pulled out the PPT that Zhuang Laoshi Minghao generated from the same material using NotebookLM:

Self-explanatory. Speaks for itself.

I also had a corporate drone friend who makes PPTs daily test Dokie. Her verdict: "Completely unusable in a workplace setting."

However, Xianyu thinks Dokie's design is decent, and the content restructuring is pretty good.

No comment from me on this. Someone who never makes PPTs suddenly using an AI PPT product — it's like an old man suddenly discovering macarons. Can't figure out the product, so they can only praise the design.

I hereby summarize the three great VC-assigned essay topics of China's AI circle: vibe coding, video agents, and AI PPT.

The competition has already converged on three themes: Lovable knockoffs, Sora2 wrappers, and GenSpark imitations. Keep at it, contestants — oh wait, I mean star founders.

There's also something extremely funny here: a Baidu defector (Kun Jing) is making PPTs, Baidu itself is making PPTs (Oreate AI), and a Baidu portfolio company (Zhang Yueguang) is also making PPTs.

Is Baidu a PPT factory? Does everyone love making PPTs to report to Robin? How can you build emerging technology when you're surrounded by PPT insects 😠

I declare that Baidu is temporarily in an absolutely dominant position in this direction.

To the friend above who got "lit up" making PPTs, I sincerely suggest you send Baidu your resume. I've even got the job title ready: Special PPT Assistant to Robin.

Semrush shows Dokie's traffic is pure vertical takeoff

Someone actually told me "Zhang Yueguang is no match for Juzi, Dokie is no match for ListenHub."

I strongly condemn such remarks. How could you say that about our star founder? Yueguang raised hundreds of millions — how much did Juzi raise? His valuation isn't even as high as Yueguang's funding. Can you even compare team size and headcount?

And every founder is an independent individual. Regardless of current circumstances, they shouldn't be compared. The reason for this headline is mainly to criticize this friend of mine — let this be a warning to all.

Though Juzi has indeed been persistently grinding away. ListenHub has somehow stubbornly raised another round and even dared to come out boasting $3M ARR. I'm happy for him.

Pivoting was the right call. AI podcasts is the funniest赛道 I've ever seen. ListenHub was able to switch tracks, using Nano banana to generate科普 PPT videos — not bad. Unlike ChatPods, which has silently gone cold.

Oh right, Zhang Yueguang also responded on the podcast to ChatPods shutting down: "I didn't feel defeated by this project, because expectations weren't high from the start."

And regarding Dokie's future: "Just on PPTs alone, I never imagined this would be a爆款 product. At best, this could never be Manus. At worst, it probably won't even be a Miaoya."

Mutual respect — I'm also a pessimist. Expectation management, we out here 🤝

Of course, Zhang Yueguang said Dokie will launch a bunch of agent features. Hopefully when he comes out to shoot the promotional video, he won't have dark circles under his eyes. Don't follow big brother Kun Jing's path.

Another observation: why does Zhang Yueguang keep occupying the indie developer生态位?

From Miaoya to ChatPods to AI PPT, including出海 camera products like Coladapic that also love cosplaying as indie developers on Xiaohongshu. Always likes placing small bets to see the cards.

I'm serious, he might as well have taken the 300 million RMB he raised and started a fund. Being a GP doing incubation and M&A of indie developers might not be a worse position than where he is today. Recommended reading: ChatPods Reminds Me of Yuanfudao.

Happened to see this on Jike yesterday, posted by Wa Zong:

So Jike is actually what Zhang Yueguang dreams of becoming. Might as well pack up and join them. If the skills aren't there, he can always buy his way in 😭

Finally, a few words from Xianyu:

I don't understand why Muqiu published two consecutive pieces on Zhang Yueguang. When I questioned why he loves YueTV so much, besides confessing his love, he said he wants to stand with Yueguang.

This is all too crazy.

(Images in this article generated by ChatGPT, purely human-written, writing for star founders 😭)