At the recent Shenzhen SEO Conference, a talk by Ning Gao, co-founder of Linkoud — “Becoming AI-Native: The New Paradigm” — drew wide attention. The talk vividly described how companies (especially independent sites and going-global teams) can use the brand-new AI-Native paradigm to achieve Lean, Focused, and Compassionate growth in the age of artificial intelligence.

Linkoud co-founder, former investor at Hillhouse Capital

This article offers an objective interpretation of Ning Gao’s talk, distilling its core ideas to give independent site sellers and founders locked in fierce competition a new framework for growth.

1. The New Standard of the AI-Native Era: Small Teams, High Efficiency, High Valuations

Opening the talk, Ning Gao used a “Lean AI Native Companies Leaderboard” to reveal the new standard for AI-era startups. These companies display characteristics sharply different from traditional tech companies:

• Extreme efficiency: they maintain very small teams (usually under 50 people) while exceeding $5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). He mentioned that Telegram Messenger supports $1 billion in annual revenue with a team of fewer than 30 people — unimaginable in the past.
• Striking per-person value: these AI-native companies’ per-employee revenue and valuation far exceed traditional models. On average, a team of just 20 people achieves what traditional companies need 100+ people to accomplish.
• A new growth paradigm: Gao noted these companies broadly follow a new pattern — raising seed funding at the right moment, prioritizing “hiring” AI as core labor, and staying intensely focused on revenue and profitability.

This series of observations raises a remarkably forward-looking question: will we see a billion-dollar company run by a single person in the future? This isn’t just speculation about the future — it’s a re-examination of every company’s core competitiveness today.

2. The Core of Lean Growth: Focus and Product-Channel Fit

Faced with AI’s opportunities, how can small teams break through? Gao emphasized in his talk that the answer lies in focus and finding the perfect Product-Channel Fit (PCF).

This idea is rooted in the insight of growth theory heavyweight Brian Balfour:

“Product is built for the channel, not the other way around.”

This means that at the product design stage, a company must think deeply about what its core growth channel is — and actively shape the product’s form, features, and even business model to “fit” that channel’s rules.

The talk further noted that successful growth often follows “The Law of Distribution Power” — the vast majority of growth comes from maximizing a single channel. So instead of spreading effort thin, focus all resources on dominating one core channel.

Gao used examples to show how specific channels can crack the growth code. For instance, AI writing tool Jenni.ai partnered with a large number of content creators on YouTube to make tutorial videos, letting potential users experience the product’s “Aha” moment in the shortest possible time — achieving explosive viral growth.

3. The Growth Weapon of the AI Era: Programmatic SEO

Among the many channels, the talk gave special, detailed attention to a strategy hailed as a “growth weapon” — Programmatic SEO (pSEO).

At its core, pSEO is using programs, structured data, and pre-built templates to automatically generate thousands of highly optimized landing pages at scale.

The power of this strategy is that it covers massive long-tail search demand at extremely low marginal cost, building a solid organic traffic moat. The talk cited multiple examples of companies that took this strategy to the extreme:

• Zapier: generates a page for every integration combination of “App A + App B,” capturing countless precise “how to connect XX and XX” searches.
• Wise: creates pages for every currency conversion pairing globally, becoming the unavoidable choice when users search “convert currency A to currency B.”
• Nomad List: generates detailed data pages for thousands of cities worldwide, precisely serving digital nomads’ city information searches.

Gao specifically warned that pSEO isn’t risk-free. Success depends on the data itself being genuinely valuable to users and pages delivering excellent user experience — otherwise, mass-produced low-quality pages will invite search engine penalties instead. One important practical lesson: start building SEO at least 6 months in advance, laying a solid foundation for post-launch growth.

4. Back to Basics: Compassion and First Principles

Technology and growth strategy are ultimately “tactics”; the talk’s most central philosophy returns to the “way” level — user-centeredness.

Gao repeatedly stressed that technology itself isn’t the goal — what truly matters is what users can achieve through your product. This demands founders return to first-principles thinking: what is the user’s fundamental need?

• Case: the power of templates. The talk noted that users often don’t want a complex tool — they want “something that actually works.” So directly offering “templates” becomes an extremely effective solution: it skips the learning curve and goes straight to the user’s goal.
• Case: Artisan’s controversy and essence. Although AI sales agent Artisan’s marketing approach sparked controversy, its fundamental goal is to use AI to free sales development representatives (SDRs) from tedious, repetitive work and ultimately help users get high-quality sales leads.

This leads to the talk’s most humanistic point:

“Use AI-empowered execution to deliver human-caring outcomes.”

This means successful companies don’t just find product-market fit (PMF) and match the right growth channel (PCF) — they must also carry compassion, genuinely caring about users’ ultimate success.

5. AI-Native Strategies for Global Teams

This lean, focused, AI-first model is especially well-suited for teams preparing to go global. The talk summarized core strategies for such teams:

1. Prioritize hiring AI labor: treat AI as a core team member, not an auxiliary tool.
2. Reach the world with your business: use digital and AI capabilities to break geographic boundaries.
3. Focus on serving a specific user segment: going global doesn’t mean serving everyone. Finding the right PMF often means finding the most precise customer segment and delivering exceptional service to them.

Summary

Ning Gao’s talk paints a clear blueprint for AI-era startups:

Future success will belong to companies that can build small, elite teams, prioritize AI as core labor, focus on finding and dominating the most efficient growth channel (especially SEO), and always return to first principles of user needs with compassion.

This isn’t just a methodology — it’s a new business philosophy. It signals that an era of “big growth” built on intelligence, strategy, and compassion — rather than sheer capital and headcount — has already arrived.