极限挑战第三季'I felt like I just started my career again': British Elvis revivalist finds his voice in China_我的网站
A | 作者｜陈伊凡 头图｜AI生成 一家顶尖的 AI 原生公司该有怎样的基因？一位卓越的年轻 AI 领军者又该具备哪些核心能力？ 在《最有潜力的 30 岁以下 AI 领军者・Top20》榜单报名收官之日，我们与多位评委深度对话，梳理出他们眼中年轻一代AI 创业者的关键评价维度。 “动手能力” 是所有评委的共识性首选项。作为伴随 AI 技术成长的原生一代，许多年轻创业者在 ChatGPT 问世后，就自主开发出首个小程序。  Elliot James Reay could have copied every other Western act and sung a Taylor Swift cover. Instead, he took 1950s rock'n'roll to a live TV show where autotune is switched off and discovered a version of fame that Britain has forgotten. Elliot James Reay was traveling in the US, trying to finish a song, when his manager called. There was an invitation to join Singer 2026, a prime-time live music show in China. Reay didn't hesitate. He had traveled the world before he was a full-time musician, but had run out of money before reaching China. "I went everywhere but China," he said while sitting for an interview with the Global Times, sitting in the office of his label in Beijing, from which the Palace Museum can be seen not far away. Reay is, in the West, a very 2020s kind of artist. He began posting short covers on short video platform TikTok in 2019; during the UK Covid lockdown, he chose to focus on growing his fan base. He now has millions of followers across platforms, and his debut single notched 10 million views before it was even released. In the British industry, this is both a leg-up and a trap. "You can have all the followers," he says, "but they don't guarantee people will buy tickets." In China, that equation flipped.  Nervous again The Chinese show, Singer 2026 is broadcast completely live, with no pitch correction. For Reay, who had played enough small gigs to feel comfortable in his own skin, it was a shock. "I haven't felt nerves in a long time," he says. "But I've never been in a competition before. To have my singing judged against other people made me really nervous." He watched Week One's performances from the wings and saw why. "The standard was terrifying," he says. But the format, he admits, is something the UK no longer has: a televised singing contest that treats vocal ability as a public event, not a pre-packaged product. "It made me feel like I just started my career again." Reay's lane is retro. Not as pastiche, but as lineage. He wears the silhouette of Elvis Presley, sings in the grain of 1950s pop, and writes songs that sound like they were cut from a Sun Records demo. He could have sanded it down for Chinese audiences, but he didn't. "Someone has to start the wave before you can see it," he says. Among the songs he performed were "Unchained Melody" and his original track "I Think They Call This Love," which he co-wrote with his girlfriend. He points out that the Beatles still sit next to Taylor Swift on the radio, and that pop started in the 50s. "It's the foundations of pop," he says. Learning to feel the words In the final, Reay performed a bilingual version of the Chinese song "Hou Hui Wu Qi" (The End of the World). It was his first time singing in another language. He spent five days learning the Chinese lyrics, listening to the original on loop. "There are sounds in Chinese we just don't have in English," he says. "I couldn't hear the difference at first. I'd say it, and Helen (his translator) would say, 'No.' I thought I was saying the same thing." Eventually, he stopped trying to hear it and started trying to feel it. "It became more about how it felt to say it. How I place my tongue in my mouth," he says. He didn't understand the meaning until day three. "Helen gave me a card with the Chinese characters and the English translation. It's very poetic," he says. The performance received a strong reaction, with it being called an attempt at "cultural fusion." He had saved his own original, "I Think They Call This Love," co-written with his girlfriend, for the same final. He had held the song back deliberately. "I knew that any week was my last week," he says, "but I knew that if I made it to the grand final that I had to do it then." He had no idea it would become the last song of the entire show. When he finished, he walked straight off stage, took his girlfriend's hand, and the two of them left together, a moment that trended on Chinese social media that night. The song is about the exact point they realized they were in love; it was also the first track of his career he fully believed in and pushed into the world. Having her there to watch it live, after weeks of her only seeing performances on a phone in a hotel room, "tied the whole thing in a bow at the end." A touring musician, not a TikToker Reay is open about the tension between his origin story and his ambition. "I don't want to be a TikTok celebrity," he says. "I'm a musician. I want to tour." The platform gave him an audience, but it also boxed him in. He remembers friends who wrote incredible songs during lockdown, while he chose to build a fan base. Now, he says, some of those friends have had to stop writing and make TikTok videos instead. China, he says, gave him permission to be both an online creator and a live performer. Universal Music, his label, didn't push him to chase trends. "They never said, 'Do this, do that,'" he says. "They supported what I wanted to sing, and then they made it the best version they could." Before Reay, a string of international artists had already found warm receptions and career-shifting opportunities in China. Kazakhstani singer Dimash Kudaibergen, Malaysian star Shila Amzah, US country artist Mickey Guyton, British vocalist Jessie J, and French singer-songwriter Joyce Jonathan all won large Chinese audiences through high-profile television appearances and live performances, each using the platform to open a new chapter in their careers. He's already planning a return. He wants to bring a tour. He wants to buy the traditional instruments he saw on set and take them home to England. "I'm going to learn how to play them," he says, "and maybe put them into my music." The advice he'd give other Western artists looking East is to stay loyal to yourself. "Be yourself," he says. "It's very easy to want to change yourself to fit into a market, but at the end of the day, if you stay true to yourself, you'll be happy." "In the UK, I felt like I needed to do other things to make other people happy," he says. "If I hadn't stopped doing that, I wouldn't be sitting here. I wouldn't have done the show. My whole journey would be different," he says. 。云启资本投资人陈昱直言：“有了 Idea 只是开始，更关键的是写出第一行代码、跑通第一个 Demo。” 天际资本创始合伙人张倩进一步指出，当前 AI 创业门槛显著提升，核心就在于技术应用能力。“如今做 AI 创业，创始团队必须掌握‘用 AI 开发可用产品’的核心能力。
B | 这里的‘会用 AI’，绝非简单了解技术概念，而是能将技术转化为可落地的实际产品 —— 这是入门必备条件，也直接拉高了行业准入标准。” 另一个是用户敏感度，即能感知真实用户需求，哪怕是最细微的变化。这对于年轻创业者而言，是挑战也是机遇。挑战在于，相比于更有经验的创业者，年轻创业者可能缺少一些行业经验，“他们需要更加贴近客户”。不过在用户敏感度上，年轻创业者也更有机会，有投资人认为，他们更加有“品味”，能够做出更懂年轻用户的产品。
C | 这确实是这届年轻创业者的机会，我们看到许多如今市面上优秀的AI原生的应用，都来自00后的创始人，例如AI原生的会议产品Cluley，还有AI招聘产品Mercor。 第三个指标是开放心态，AI是全球性浪潮。
D | 甚至许多AI创业者从创业起步第一天起，就是瞄准出海做产品，一位投资人解释，这个趋势的原因是，国内的C端用户付费意愿和付费能力较弱，国内的企业用户，对于AI产品普遍要求私有化部署，和上一个Saas时代一样，很难有爆发式增长。
E | 云启资本投资人陈昱表示，他最欣赏的创业者特质是聪明、诚实、有野心。 一位深耕硅谷的投资人表示，很多AI出海的创业者需要足够了解，例如英语够好，了解国外人的生活习惯等。
F | 第四是速度，张倩说，一个无法快速迭代、展示成果的团队，很可能会错失最佳的发展时机，无法满足市场快速变化的需求。
G | AI2.0时期的技术商业千变万化，只要有一波浪潮没有跟上，可能后面就被淘汰。很多创业公司都是以月甚至是周为单位迭代产品。
H | 也有很多创业公司，他们的产品可能已经迭代了多次，甚至不是最初的样子。 还有一位投资人曾经告诉，他认为AI2.0时代的创业者，要有一种“邪教”般的思维，这个意思是，一个强大的“粉丝”生态，强大的用户粘性，除了做产品，创始人需要懂得如何经营用户社区和生态，很多AI产品，在冷启动之后，因为没有持续根据用户需求迭代产品，最后导致了用户流失。“AI起来之后，很多人都失业了，留下的是有审美能力的人。”这位投资人说。
I | 另一个更重要的是，是否在持续生长的用户生态上，快速形成数据飞轮，沉淀数据，构筑自己的护城河。 云启资本合伙人陈昱表示，对于一家好的AI原生公司，他会看三个维度，第一是技术的原生性，即是否基于AI的最新能力，而不是简单把AI当成插件；产品打磨力，即能不能把复杂的技术转化成用户自然体验；团队适应力，在高速迭代中能否保持韧性和调整节奏。 目前，《最有潜力的 30 岁以下 AI 领军者・TOP20》榜单报名已正式截止，最终 20 位领军者名单将在后续揭晓，敬请期待！ 我们不仅发布榜单，更解读趋势背后的趋势与逻辑，快来2025F&M创新节现场链接核心人脉与稀缺资源，与顶尖创新者同行！ 早鸟票限量发售中，立即锁定席位~ 文章标题：一线资本拆解30岁以下AI领军者通关密码 文章链接：https://www.huxiu.com/article/4794796.html 阅读原文：一线资本拆解30岁以下AI领军者通关密码_网。 Current article:http://w8e.chengjuecannaobianmouqueduoyu.shop/rsf08l/20260826/4140.html Published on:05:19:37 |
