A Chat with Xiaoyezi Founder Ye Bin: How to Learn an Instrument Painlessly? Try Going Smart!

If you've ever been intrigued by LiberLive's stringless guitar, then I have to recommend The ONE's sing-and-play piano to you. You may not know that this music tech company, founded by a Tsinghua engineering grad, was the pioneer of China's music education and smart instrument hardware market — and has remained an industry leader ever since.

With the mission of "letting more people enjoy the fun of music," Ye Bin founded Xiaoyezi (Little Leaf) in 2013 and soon launched The ONE smart piano. At that time, "smart piano" was a term that had never appeared before. Over eleven years, Ye Bin explored many directions on the path of piano education — from smart pianos to offline piano classrooms to AI practice partners — ultimately arriving at what he calls his "most satisfying piano product in ten years" when the sing-and-play opportunity came along. "How to balance something toy-like with serious instruction has been a challenge we've always faced," and this long-standing challenge seems to have found a clearer answer today.

In this episode, we invited Ye Bin, founder and CEO of Xiaoyezi, to hear his answers amid the new wave of smart hardware and AI opportunities, as well as his insights from Xiaoyezi's ongoing exploration toward better music education paths. You'll hear the journey of an entrepreneur who started during China's internet 1.0 era and lived through the golden decade. Subscribe and tune in~

[Guest] Ye Bin, Founder and CEO of Xiaoyezi Technology

[Episode Highlights] From LiberLive smart guitar to industry changes over the past decade

• 01:59 Not a智商税, but innovative product design using sing-and-play to balance the music playing experience
• 03:52 Making a toy is great! But The ONE's mission and vision lean more toward music education
• 04:48 Eleven years since founding, The ONE opened up the smart instrument hardware market
• 07:38 Who doesn't love music? The emergence of smart pianos brought new growth to the market over the past decade

What The ONE, still #1 after ten years, got right

• 09:28 A typical engineering guy who found learning piano painful, approached smart digital pianos from a fresh angle
• 13:58 From mobile internet to AI, what matters most for tech entrepreneurs is grounding yourself in user needs rather than technology
• 15:59 The survival and breakout logic: precise grasp of user needs, finding the pain points and delight points of learning music

Facing the unavoidable dilemma of balancing concepts in music education: serious education vs. quick interest-based results

• 21:04 Smart pianos face much skepticism and challenge from traditional piano learning notions, but The ONE never aimed to be a toy
• 27:33 After ten years of exploration along this主线 of balancing serious education with quick interest-based results, The ONE arrived at its most satisfying product
• 30:01 Multi-directional exploration: expanding into offline smart piano classrooms and AI practice partner businesses
• 36:35 Adult users represented by sing-and-play will continue growing; sing-and-play is the right entry point for music education
• 38:09 Noticed the sing-and-play approach as early as 2019, but a short-video-era product-logic smart piano needs to get users actually playing

How technology can assist music education in becoming more "intelligent"

• 47:05 The ultimate goal of "smart" is to have technical difficulties better solved, ultimately leading to artistic, emotional expression
• 52:34 "Traditional piano learning is like Chinese people learning English"
• 56:16 Achieving a better music education path through The ONE: learning through music and interest
• 59:31 Using AIGC to motivate users to keep "playing on" when facing piano learning

Surviving the "golden decade" of internet entrepreneurship

• 01:02:57 Personal entrepreneurial experience sharing: lessons from serial entrepreneurship and cross-domain entrepreneurship
• 01:04:48 Perspectives and help gained from venture capitalist experience
• 01:08:19 Didn't build a bigger business during the past golden decade of entrepreneurship, but staying true to passion and refining products brought good mindset and sense of value

[Staff] Producers: Jiafen, Stone

Post-production: Keyone Studio

[About ZhenFund] True Words is a general business podcast produced by ZhenFund, where the ZhenFund investment team will share the latest hot topics and industry insights with leaders from various fields.

Founded in 2011, ZhenFund is one of China's earliest angel investment institutions. Since its inception, ZhenFund has been actively seeking out the most outstanding entrepreneurial teams and era-defining investment opportunities in artificial intelligence, chips and semiconductors, robotics and hardware, healthcare, enterprise services, new energy, cross-border expansion, consumer lifestyle, and other fields.

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