I started university in 2005 and finished my master’s degree in 2012. In 2007, the first iPhone arrived, marking the “iPhone Moment” of the mobile internet. I lived through that entire era, yet unlike peers such as Guo Yu, Sofish, 61, Kevin Zhou, or Tualatrix, I didn’t reach financial freedom or build a company with its own assets. Now that the AI era has arrived, I refuse to be a bystander again.
Output-Based vs. Time-Based Valuation
The individuals mentioned above share a common trait: their wealth is valued by their output, not their time. They either played pivotal roles in building massive products—like Guo Yu at Douyin or Sofish at Ele.me—or they founded companies to ship their own creations, like 61’s Midi Technology (creators of MD Clock and OffScreen). Even as independent developers, Kevin and Tualatrix have built lasting reputations and assets.
In the mobile era, code and products served as massive levers. You could write it once and sell it infinitely with zero marginal cost. However, the act of creation itself still lacked extreme leverage; it was manual, artisanal work. In the AI era, this has fundamentally changed. The capacity to create has been amplified 10,000x.
If one’s wealth continues to be priced by time spent rather than output produced—by participating in or leading product creation—the gap between the two will become unfathomable. This is the root of my anxiety when I see projects like OpenClaw on Twitter: builders with their own products can command AI agents via Telegram even while traveling, while those of us selling our time use these powerful tools for trivial personal tasks or tests that generate no lasting wealth.
On the Field vs. On the Sidelines
At the dawn of the mobile era, I tried building a few things. But after graduation, I took a “safe” job and drifted away from the market. I stopped shipping.
Real insight belongs only to those “on the field”—those creating real products for real users. Observing, theorizing, and analyzing from the sidelines produces not just shallow understanding, but often fundamentally flawed perceptions.
In the AI era, the transition is mandatory: I must shift to an output-based mindset, using the constant delivery of products to the market as my primary vehicle for learning and building wealth.