All field notes
Browse all of Elian Yong’s essays on AI, product design, solo business, and life, available in Chinese and English.
- Can Postpartum Depression Be Prevented? Understanding a 500-Person Study
A trial of 500 pregnant participants offers evidence on preventing depression relapse. What the results mean, who they apply to, and why added support does not replace medication.
- The Three Skills Becoming More Valuable in the AI Era
AI makes building easier. Judgment, reliable delivery, and earning trust become more important. Three connected skills for turning ideas into a business.
- A Solo Business Reporting $300K in MRR: Why Pay for Your Future Self?
A first subscription begins with hope. Renewal needs lasting value. Stella’s personalized audio stories raise useful questions about what people pay for—and why they stay.
- 1.2 Million Business Ideas: As AI Generates Startup Concepts at Scale, What Does a Solo Company Really Need?
When ideas become abundant, the scarce resources are understanding a specific problem, reaching real customers, and patiently testing one small judgment.
- How Did Cal AI Get Noticed? It Got More Right Than AI
AI was the foundation. Distribution came from a clearer path: an understandable use, creator-fit content, relevant audiences, and a product experience that held attention.
- Is Tesla Preparing to Race on Mars? Cybertruck Explores, Roadster Takes Off
Propulsion, fan downforce, and an upside-down demonstration bring racing-game imagination into reality. A reveal sparks curiosity; engineering still has to deliver.
- Why Are Some People Always First to Buy a RMB 15,999 Phone?
Some buy features, some buy a head start, and others buy pleasure, familiarity, or a picture of the future. The honest measure is the life the purchase enters.
- This AI SaaS Makes $69K a Month: How Fastlane Turns a Website into a Marketing Workflow
The revenue is founder-reported and Fastlane is a team venture. The useful lesson is how it connects a URL, creative production, publishing, and feedback.
- AI Saves Me Time. Why Am I Busier Than Ever?
Efficiency improved, but the finish line kept moving. Some of the time AI saves should return to life.
- After Zheng Qinwen’s Victory: Everyone Loves a Winner, but Few Stay Through the Low Points
Applause arrives after the result. What sustains a person is the willingness to keep going seriously when nobody is cheering.
- If Nobody Reads Anymore, Why Are Bookstores Still Here? How Does Sisyphe Make Money?
Coffee, cultural products, and events turn a book purchase into a stay. Books and space preserve unhurried time in a fast world.
- I Couldn't Find the Right App, So I Used AI to Tailor My Life
Starting with my own needs, I am making tools that fit daily life more closely—and relearning how to understand the people around me.
- A Friend Told Me to Make More Visually Polished Videos. But First, I Want to...
Being good at something—and knowing it has value—does not mean it deserves most of your energy right now. Begin with what you still want to use and improve tomorrow.
- I Built a Few Products with AI—and Slowly Pieced Together the Life I Want
From 81 everyday-life comics to a daily rhythm of seeing the world, reading a chapter, and resting at noon: the products I made are becoming a way of living.
- You Love It. Will Anyone Pay for It? The Hardest Step in Building a Product
Your own need can start a product. Reaching a market takes a concrete problem, clear value, a small real transaction, and a business you can keep running.
- People Are Paying for My App. Not Much Money, but I’m Happy.
Two transactions and CNY 11.41 in estimated revenue. A small beginning worth celebrating—and a reason to keep improving something I use myself.
- OpenAI Dots Is Here: As AI Gets More Capable, Can I Worry Less?
What creates relief is not simply AI doing more, but an agent that can carry work forward, respect boundaries, and truly take one recurring responsibility off your mind.
- When an Agent Has a Phone Number and a Wallet, It Is No Longer Just a Chat Box: Manus Cue Enters the Physical World
For AI to enter the physical world, it needs more than a smarter model: a phone, email, wallet, computer, and clear boundaries for permission and responsibility.
- When AI Can Code, Design, and Run Operations, What Is Left for Ordinary Internet Professionals?
AI is narrowing the gap in execution while widening the gap in judgment. Value now lies in finding problems, making choices, understanding people, and owning outcomes.
- AI Employees Have Started Work: A One-Person Company Can Finally Have a Digital Team
A one-person company expands through the range of work one person can direct. AI executes; the creator keeps direction, taste, empathy, and responsibility.
- The Best Ad May No Longer Be an Image, but a Salesperson You Can Talk To
When an ad can understand space, budget, preferences, and doubts, the opportunity is to turn product knowledge into an honest conversation.
- The New Siri Is Here: AI Will Not Kill Apps, but It Will Eliminate One Kind of App
People may stop opening your app while continuing to use its value. Siri is turning apps from destinations into capabilities AI can understand and call.
- In Midlife, I No Longer Rush to Prove Myself: A Designer Built Seven Products with AI—and Learned How to Live Again
From big-tech design, serial entrepreneurship, and a long personal low to returning to design, AI, and independent creation.
- 100 Issues, 1,800 Posters: Looking at the World Every Day, What Is Quietly Changing Our Future?
Daily curiosity becomes a body of work through choosing stories, writing in two languages, and making fresh visual judgments.
- After More Than $4 Million in Annual Profit, He Says: I Do Not Want a Bigger One-Person Business
Justin Welsh’s choices raise a different question: if an opportunity succeeds, will it give me the life I want?
- Apple Now Lets Multiple Apps Share One Subscription. Is This a New Opportunity for One-Person Companies?
One subscription, a family of products, and a long-term relationship: the real change may be how small developers build a body of work.
- The Big Opportunity for Internet Professionals Building One-Person Companies in the AI Era
Connect product, design, development, and operations: begin with a real need of your own, then use apps, the web, and AI to bring a small product to a wider world.
- AI Made Your Homepage Beautiful. Why Do People Still Not Understand It?
A homepage can have character and still be clear: what is here, why it matters to the reader, and what happens after they click.
- After AI Builds Your First Version, Why Does Every Change Leave You Less Sure?
Your first version is here. How do you choose what to fix next? Make it work, make it clear, then refine it.
- After a Serious Mistake, Can You Begin Again? Some Take Ten Years to Return Home; Others a Lifetime to Return to Themselves | The Odyssey
Mistakes carry a price, and choices have consequences. What truly answers the past is the person you choose to become from this day forward.
- Wendao 1.0 Is on the App Store: Reading the Tao Te Ching More Slowly—and More Closely
An unhurried reading experience that brings source text, textual notes, translation, interpretation, and daily practice together.