More and more people have turned Xiaohongshu into an AI incubator.

Author: Zhou Yongliang

An interesting phenomenon is happening.

In this wave of AI, the most active players at the center stage are no longer the experienced “science geniuses,” but rather a large influx of young people with humanities backgrounds. Their ages have also significantly dropped from the previous golden age around 30, with post-2000s and even post-2010s emerging in large numbers.

The deeper reason behind this is that AI is transforming entrepreneurship from a “heavy” mode into a “light” era.

In the past, starting a business required a grand narrative, top-down market insights, and proof that you had enough capability to attract capital and build a team. It was a game with a very high entry barrier.

But now, AI has elevated the “resolution” of the world. A small pain point or a quirky idea from an individual or a group can be a pixel, potentially the beginning of a product. More importantly, an individual or small team with ideas can now deliver a complete, even excellent, product.

Last weekend, at the Xiaohongshu Hackathon Finals, I gained a deeper sense of this.

On the final stage, there was no tense competition feeling; it resembled a lively “product creation camp.” Young faces appeared one after another, shy yet passionate about creation, taking turns to present. Surprisingly, a team of 12- and 13-year-old middle school students even won the “AI Indigenous” special award.

Meanwhile, the granularity of innovation has become extremely fine: one team was still imagining “installing a private server into a satellite,” while the next focused on “AI-generated PPTs being too ugly”; here, a couple was developing brain-controlled wheelchairs for the disabled; over there, a team was trying to solve the eternal problem of communicating with Tony during haircuts using AI…

And the ultimate grand prize went to the DAIZY team for their “Pocket Guitar.” It’s only as big as a smartphone and can be easily pocketed. Through clever design, it hits three major pain points for music lovers: high barriers to traditional guitars, still bulky simplified instruments, and mobile apps that completely lose the tactile feel of string-picking. It allows a complete novice to perform a decent singing and playing session within minutes.

This sends a clear signal: this group of young, diverse “digital natives” is redefining innovation in the AI era with a lighter approach. They are true “AI Natives”: for them, AI is not just a tool to be “learned,” but a native “mother tongue.”

This hackathon is less of a competition and more a concentrated showcase of this generation’s daily creations—a collective “coming of age” for the new AI natives.

1. A New Entrepreneurial Narrative

In the past, the script for technological innovation followed the “Silicon Valley paradigm”: an idea, a business plan, refined repeatedly, then knocking on VC’s door. The starting point of entrepreneurship was secretive.

But at the Xiaohongshu Hackathon in 2026, I saw a completely different approach among this post-2000, even post-2010 generation—let’s call it the “Xiaohongshu paradigm.” Their entrepreneurial starting point is no longer a pitch deck but a “note.” A mode called “Build in Public” is rewriting the old rules.

Post-2000 serial entrepreneur Chen Jinchun labels himself as a “professional prankster.” He has 13k followers on Xiaohongshu, regularly posting various “not-so-serious” AI tools, and openly sharing setbacks and “metaphysical insights” on his entrepreneurial journey.

Since January this year, he has been continuously posting projects under the “Vibe coding” label to help products cold-start. In less than half a year, his product nuwa has gained 100k users.

At this hackathon, his project was “Cyber Talisman,” a headband-shaped self-discipline device with a built-in camera and micro-current device. Users set rules like “no smoking” or “no short videos during work” in the app. When the camera on the headband detects violations, a gentle electric current immediately “physically discourages” the user.

This is worlds apart from the “code is king” geek era of the past. They no longer hide the development process behind the scenes but turn it into a “reality show” that evolves with the community.

23-year-old Lai Xinlu is the founder of the open-source community Share AI Lab. Interestingly, he almost never uses traditional recruitment platforms. His core team members are from all over the world, often recruited simply because they came across a technical discussion post on Xiaohongshu, clicked in the comments, and “precisely matched” to join.

From demand discovery, team building, to product cold start and continuous iteration, Xiaohongshu provides a complete, ultra-low-cost innovation loop for this generation of developers.

In my view, they differ significantly from the previous generation of developers. The older generation—whether webmasters in the PC internet era or app developers in the mobile internet era—were more like “hunters”: seeking opportunities, carefully crafting a product, aiming for a one-hit kill. If they missed, they would look for the next prey.

The new AI generation is more like “farmers”: planting ideas in online communities, watering and iterating daily through “public building,” and watching them sprout, grow, blossom, and bear fruit with users. This process is full of uncertainty but also more vibrant and alive.

2. Reshaping Innovation with Two Major Levers

The new generation of AI Natives entrepreneurs is emerging collectively. But we can’t help but ask: why this generation? Why in a community like Xiaohongshu?

Behind this are two major trends converging, creating unprecedented innovation momentum.

The first lever is the technological democratization brought by AI.

In the past, developing an app required mastering complex programming languages, databases, server operations… the barriers were high.

Today, the explosion of generative AI is unprecedentedly shifting the power from a handful of algorithm scientists and top engineers into the hands of anyone with ideas and creativity. Development ability is no longer a scarce resource; the value of creation is being amplified anew.

The Page One team, awarded the “AI Indigenous” special prize at this hackathon, consists of four middle school students with an average age of only 13.5.

Their project, “Shu Yi NoteRx,” is akin to Xiaohongshu notes—a personalized AI doctor. It uses a self-developed model and a multi-round debate mechanism with five AI agents to provide data-driven note diagnosis and optimization suggestions for creators.

When 13-year-old Yang Xizhe confidently speaks on stage, you don’t see a “child genius,” but a vibrant “AI native.” For him, “coding is like playing games,” and innovation is full of joy. He wanted to make games after playing “Zelda”; AI became his most patient teacher when he faced unsolvable programming problems; he shared a method of memorizing words with AI on Xiaohongshu, which unexpectedly garnered millions of views, with comments from parents and students seeking advice.

The second lever is the community power of “public building” on social media.

This generation of “AI natives” is also “social media natives.” Sharing isn’t a learned strategy but an innate instinct. They habitually record life, express opinions, and naturally transfer this instinct into creation and entrepreneurship.

Post-2000 developer Sun Donglai’s “Dreamoo” social app was almost entirely “grown” on Xiaohongshu.

It started with a research post, where his team wanted to verify whether “visualizing dreams with AI and socializing” was feasible. Unexpectedly, this post, with no paid promotion, received tens of thousands of views and thousands of interactions. The comment section became a natural demand insight pool—some recorded 800 words of dreams daily, others couldn’t find suitable tools and even serialized their dreams on novel websites.

These lively feedbacks confirmed to Sun Donglai that he had touched a real, overlooked need. So, from product naming, feature adjustments, to UI design, he co-created with users through notes. Within the first month of launch, Dreamoo gained 3,000 seed users solely through Xiaohongshu’s organic traffic and word of mouth.

When “AI technology democratization” and “community public building” combine, a new innovation landscape emerges: AI lowers the barrier to “making,” while communities solve the problems of “being needed” and “being discovered.”

More importantly, the innovators become more diverse than ever—middle school students, liberal arts students, designers, disabled individuals… regardless of background, as long as you have a good idea and keen human insight, you can create truly valuable products.

These community-rooted innovations no longer obsess over grand narratives or revolutionary upheavals but are deeply rooted in specific, tangible pain points, itch points, and pleasure points. They are diverse, long-tail, and niche, forming a vibrant tech ecosystem.

3. The Evolution of a “Grass-Planting Community”: From “Buy Buy Buy” to “Create Create Create”

All these phenomena are not accidental.

From last year’s Xiaohongshu independent developer contest to this year’s hackathon, I can clearly feel a powerful innovation momentum gathering and evolving. It is transforming from a lifestyle community into an innovation infrastructure for the AI era, even resembling an “App Store for AI.”

Xiaohongshu’s origin was to help people solve “what to buy.” Through countless genuine shares from ordinary users, it built a strong “trust” network. This trust naturally extended from consumption decisions to travel, food, fitness, learning, and other aspects of life, making Xiaohongshu a decision-making portal for “how to live.”

Now, a deeper creative force is emerging here. As tens of millions of developers start to treat Xiaohongshu as their core innovation platform, the community’s value dimension is expanding again. It is answering a more profound question: “What to create?” and “How to create?”

First, for creators in the AI era, technology itself is becoming homogenized and commoditized. The cost to invoke a large model API is decreasing, while deep understanding of users and keen insights into niche scenarios are becoming the most scarce and valuable resources.

With 350 million monthly active users, Xiaohongshu generates vast amounts of complaints, help requests, and shares daily, forming a lively, diverse demand scenario database. Developers no longer need to guess what users want; they only need to “lurk” in relevant notes and comment sections to hear the most authentic voices. Their initial ideas and concept sketches can start doing real “echo location,” validating needs and even pre-testing products, while building their brand and accumulating potential users from “day one” of creation.

Second, traditional software development—finding people, funding, traffic—is arduous. Xiaohongshu offers a complete zero-to-one loop: from discovering real needs, to finding like-minded partners through sharing, to launching the first note for product cold start, and even attracting investors through community influence. The entire innovation chain can be openly and affordably completed within this community.

Finally, the “co-creation” culture of the community. On Xiaohongshu, “Build in Public” is not just a solo act by developers but a duet with users. Users are no longer passive consumers but active co-creators, promoters, and supporters. They provide suggestions, create content, and spread products spontaneously.

The core logic of Xiaohongshu is “people” and “trust.” When this long-accumulated community trust meets the innovation needs of the AI era, it sparks incredible energy. It provides fertile ground for small but beautiful innovations rooted in real life to take root, grow, and thrive.

This is an ongoing “symbiotic” story: it once coexisted with new consumption and lifestyle content, and now it chooses to coexist with the new generation of AI builders. It is this resonance with cutting-edge creators that allows the community to find new narratives in the AI era and build a moat that can withstand cycles.

Looking back ten years, the wave of mobile internet gave rise to a generation of entrepreneurial heroes. They seized the dividend of smartphone proliferation, connecting online and offline, changing people’s clothing, food, housing, and transportation. That was an era of channels and platforms; the core of innovation was capturing major user needs, occupying entry points through scenarios, then competing in execution to build a winner-takes-all platform.

Today, AI has brought a new wave. This generation of post-2000s, even post-2005s entrepreneurs, faces opportunities and challenges vastly different from the previous. The story of capturing hundreds of millions of users through massive demand no longer exists. Instead, the explosive productivity brought by AI means that a single or a few super-individuals empowered by AI can now create excellent products without needing millions of dollars in initial funding.

Thus, the world’s “resolution” has increased: creating better services for fewer users can also achieve higher LTV. Their weapons for innovation are now more about precise demand capture, extreme insights into niche scenarios, and even the ultimate expression of their aesthetic sensibilities—further amplified by the community cohesion brought by “public building.”

As the logic and environment of entrepreneurship change, and individual creation becomes mainstream, platforms like Xiaohongshu—gathering countless vibrant individuals and genuine needs—become the best soil for this transformation. It is evolving from a decision-making platform into an innovation infrastructure for the AI era. Here, tiny innovations and inspirations from individuals can flow, collide, and validate with maximum efficiency.

This is both a huge opportunity for Xiaohongshu as a community and a mission it must undertake. I look forward to more creative spaces like hackathons. Because this not only concerns a platform’s ability to stay current but, to some extent, determines what meaningful value Xiaohongshu can bring to the world.