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More than two years after quitting all social platforms, Luo Yonghao is back.

On August 26, Luo Yonghao, who had changed his Weibo ID to "Luo Yonghao·Niu Hulu", announced his full return to social media and will operate his social media accounts on nine platforms simultaneously in the future.

This time, Luo Yonghao, who was once known for his "tough life needs no explanation", explained his experiences during this period with a "heavyweight article" in the second season of "True Return".

In the article, Luo Yonghao introduced that he has so far repaid a total of 824 million yuan in debt through various methods such as live streaming, and the remaining debt of more than 500 million yuan will be fully repaid in the next few years.

Luo Yonghao also responded to the long-standing public accusations against him by Zheng Gang, the founding partner of Purple Light Venture Capital, in an article titled "Clarifying the Truth about the Long-term Rumors and Defamation by Zheng Gang, an Investor of Smartisan Technology," and stated that "the company's legal department has completed the collection of relevant evidence and materials, and will later file a formal lawsuit against Zheng Gang for his long-term rumors, defamation and slander."

After summarizing these past phases, Luo Yonghao, who is currently in the process of starting his "last business", summarized his and his team's next move in eight words: "Go all out and stir up trouble."

Photo/Weibo @罗永浩·倪祜鹿

“Paying off the huge debt in silence"

Since Smartisan Technology fell into an operational crisis in the second half of 2018 and tried but failed to save itself by incubating the social software Bullet Messenger, Luo Yonghao, as the founder of this company, has had his life tied to huge debts.

At that time, Luo Yonghao announced in "Confessions of a 'Deadbeat' CEO" that Smartisan Technology owed a total of about 600 million yuan in debt to banks, partners, and suppliers, and promised that he would personally pay off all the debts by means such as "selling skills."

Those who support him praise him as a "real man" in a tragic mood, while more people are watching with a mocking attitude, wanting to see how this first-generation Internet celebrity can practice his idealism.

At that time, Luo Yonghao's "full participation" in Xiaoye e-cigarette was shelved due to policy reasons; his joining the biotechnology company Sharklet Technology as a global partner also soon came to nothing. He was also labeled as the "industry's dark light" because of his various experiences.

But soon, Luo Yonghao, who had already tried to use his face in the endorsement game, ushered in a new outlet - live e-commerce. On March 26, 2020, Luo Yonghao announced that Douyin would become his exclusive live streaming platform for selling goods, and then achieved a transaction volume of 110 million yuan in his first live broadcast on April 1; within a year, this figure reached 3 billion yuan.

Luo Yonghao did weigh the pros and cons of this clumsy "fall" that made Luo's and Hammer's fans sad and his haters happy.

"They always want me to do something impressive, so they think this thing is not that impressive." Luo Yonghao said in the talk show "My Bronze Age", "There are some face issues in the early stage or during the process, more or less, but at that critical juncture, the face issue is the weakest of all the issues, so weak that it can be ignored."

And this incident eventually became the main source of income for Luo Yonghao to pay off his debts.

Amid many doubts about his "debt repayment situation being inflated" and "the cash repayment may be less than 100 million yuan", Luo Yonghao gave a detailed presentation in the second season of "True Repayment Story": of the 824 million yuan in debt he has repaid, 548 million yuan came from his after-tax income from live streaming e-commerce for more than four years, and the rest came from the transfer of Smartisan Technology and the sale of Smartisan Technology's remaining assets.

Luo Yonghao introduced the repayment situation in detail. Picture/Screenshot from Luo Yonghao's Weibo

This figure has far exceeded the previously announced debt of more than 600 million yuan. In Luo Yonghao's latest explanation, this is because of the additional compensation caused by various lawsuits, various fines caused by late payment, and the emergence of new state-owned capital debts, which caused the total debt to climb from the originally announced 600 million yuan to 1.3 billion yuan.

Now, regarding the remaining debt of more than 500 million yuan, Luo Yonghao emphasized that he and his team will use all legal, compliant and business-ethical means to "hype it up" and work at full capacity to increase cash income in various ways, including but not limited to operating accounts on nine social media platforms at the same time, partially resuming the recording of variety shows, and fully resuming commercial advertising and endorsements, so as to pay it off as soon as possible.

What Luo Yonghao and his team are going to do next. Photo/Screenshot from Luo Yonghao's Weibo

As for the fact that Zheng Gang, the Smartisan investor and founding partner of Zihui Ventures, had previously publicly accused him of not paying back the 15 million yuan he owed, Luo Yonghao admitted it. But he also said: "If I personally pay this money back to his company on behalf of Smartisan, it must be the last, last, and last payment before the finale of the true story."

“The last entrepreneurial venture

In the view of many interviewees, the second season of "True Return" brought considerable benefits to Luo Yonghao.

On the one hand, of course, it is traffic; on the other hand, it is personal reputation.

"Not hiding from debts and having the ability to pay them back not only satisfies fans, but also makes the capital market feel that the 'story' is good. Especially in the current investment market environment, the sense of story and trust brought by such high-profile publicity has a very good effect." Internet industry analyst Zhang Shule also told China Newsweek.

Of course, more importantly, this will pave the way for its subsequent business actions.

In Zhang Shule's view, Luo Yonghao's high-profile announcement of the new development of "True Return" is just like the previous launch of "True Return" to attract attention for his entry into the live streaming e-commerce field, which is marketing for subsequent commercial actions.

"Luo Yonghao has established an image of being responsible and accountable in front of the public. Such an image based on sincere repayment and active response to problems will be beneficial to his future launch of new products and other business activities." Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, said that his behavior "does not rule out the possibility of warming up for Thin Red Line Technology products."

The Thin Red Line Technology mentioned by Jiang Han is the latest venture of Luo Yonghao, which he said was "the last thing I will do in my life, and I can do it for 10 to 20 years."

In April this year, Luo Yonghao revealed in a live broadcast of the fourth anniversary of Making Friends: "We will also have a product coming out in September this year, and we have prepared two budgets of $199 and $299." According to him, this is "a technological product." In this regard, industry insiders speculated that it may be an AR device from Fine Red Line Technology.

As early as 2022, Luo Yonghao publicly expressed his optimism about the product form of AR glasses, saying, "The evolution of human tools has its own internal logic. According to the logic of the history of tool evolution, wearable devices will definitely beat portable devices when the same functions are met." He also announced in the "Make Friends" live broadcast room that his new startup company is named "Thin Red Line" (translated as "Thin Red Line").

In order to concentrate on his business, in June of that year, Luo Yonghao, who once called himself a "traffic master", even posted on Weibo that he would quit Weibo and all social media platforms.

However, AR glasses are different from live streaming, and may be another hardware track that Luo Yonghao and his team will have to spend a lot of money and time on. Luo Yonghao also admitted: "Due to the maturity of the entire industry chain, it will take about 5 years for AR glasses to be commercialized."

Jiang Han explained that the technical threshold of AR glasses is relatively high, requiring a large amount of research and development funds and time; furthermore, the popularity of AR glasses is still limited by consumer acceptance, and it will still take time for consumers to understand and accept them.

What's more, in this immature and limited market, the competitors surrounding Xihongxian Technology include giants such as Google, Apple, Meta, and Samsung, as well as "senior" brands with sufficient funds such as Thunderbird Innovation, XREAL, and Rokid.

However, even though the prospects are still unclear and the failure and pain of Smartisan Technology are still fresh in people's minds, it still did not stop Luo Yonghao from continuing to toss, nor did it stop investors from accompanying him. At the end of 2022, Xihongxian Technology received an angel round of financing of approximately US$50 million led by Meituan Longzhu, followed by BlueRun Ventures, Lenovo Capital, Matrix Partners, DJI Innovations, etc., with a post-investment valuation of approximately US$190 million.

But what can this money produce? Will Xihongxian Technology repeat the mistakes of Hammer? Everyone is waiting for Luo Yonghao's answer.

"After all, technology products cannot be packaged and sold simply by telling 'crosstalk,'" Zhang Shule said.

Author: Shi Hanxu

Editor: Yu Yuan