A Market That's Not Trying Too Hard | Vital Young

In October 2022, when we saw open-source Stable Diffusion, we caught the scent of a new era.

Two months later, while still recovering from COVID, we marveled at ChatGPT's brilliance and realized this was an industrial-grade transformation.

When a transformation is a linear extrapolation of acceleration, the innovators tend to be the industry's most experienced players. But when it's a new continent, the innovators are usually frontier explorers living at the margins.

It was this belief that led us to Junjie (born 1989, founder of MiniMax), Gaoyang (born 1991, co-founder of Spirit AI), Zonghuang (born 1995, founder of Inx), Yachen (born 1997, founder of VAST), and Chaoyu (born 1999, founder of Qingmao Intelligence).

As we marveled at their age and the courage they displayed, we looked around and saw that it wasn't just China — the entire world was undergoing this magnificent revolution led by young people.

Over the past two years, in deep conversations with these young founders, we've learned so much from them.

We've come to realize that youth isn't an age.

Youth is a mindset and a paradigm — a new way of interacting, a new worldview.

Then we met more and more young people returning to China from all over the world to start companies around AI and embodied intelligence. These forces of vitality hungered to collide and connect.

And they wanted to connect on their own terms — which, if we had to define it, would be: genuine, simple, direct.

Or even more directly: a space where introverts feel comfortable. Frank, straightforward, no pretension.

We thought long and hard about how to build such a space, making elaborate plans. The irony was, the moment we tried to plan, we fell back into old paradigms. New paradigms aren't planned. New revolutions aren't orchestrated. They grow.

So a good event is actually about negative space.

Leaving room for free growth.

And so Vital Young was born.

A market. A market where you can be frank, direct, and unpretentious.

We invited some founders, KOLs, and users — to share their products, their original intentions, their worldviews.

Vital Young is an experiment. There are no participants and organizers here — only co-developers of this new form.

"This market is so chill. I've never felt this relaxed at other events."

— Bonjour

"I almost didn't come. Who knew a user I chatted with would go home and buy our full product suite — directly adding several thousand in revenue."

— Fuzzi

"The vendors are all fun people. The vibe is super young, really matches your theme."

— Ragnar

"Gives off a very comfortable, clean feeling. That Vital Young thing is pretty special too."

— Troy

As the market wound down, a few left together, still wanting more — saying they'd grab hot pot and keep the night going.

But the event has just begun. There are still plenty of bugs. We invite everyone to help fix them.

Come join the market.