As Pao School celebrates the 2024 graduating class, a look back at its former graduates offers a glimpse into their diverse journeys. Three alumni from the class of 2018 have a fascinating story to tell.
After graduation, Pao School friends Kevin, Steve, and Victor went on to launch a successful start-up business. Their company, Gerzz Interactive, is a software development company for the mobile internet. The company achieved huge success with their first product ‘HALO: Murder Mystery’ and has seen continuous growth with their new product ‘Dubbing AI’. The company’s rapid growth is underscored by Kevin Lin, one of the Gerzz founders, being named a Forbes Asia 30 under 30 winner in Enterprise Technology.
From left to right:
Kevin Ling, Victor Chen and Steve Zhou
The three alumni first crossed paths at Pao School in 2014. They scattered after graduation, pursuing higher education in various cities across the United States. Three years ago, they each returned to China, looking for entrepreneurial opportunities. They had not lost touch with each other as they were bound closely together by shared interests, common values, and aspirations. Despite the physical distance, they maintained regular communication online cherishing the trust and understanding cultivated since their school years as their most treasured asset.
Sports at Pao School formed their initial connection. The trio fondly recall bonding over basketball, football, water polo classes, and playing games in their free time, considering these among their most cherished moments.
During the inception of their company, they integrated the core values of Pao School into their own corporate culture. They believe in the integrity of sharing perspectives with users and fellow employees, and in communication with each other and with users. While the early days of the start-up consisted of endless work, the team found that this was not sustainable. As Gerzz has grown, all founders and employees have been able to follow more balanced work-life schedules.
Beginning of a Life-Long Friendship
Kevin, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a major in Computer Science, completed his bachelor's degree within three and a half years. He recalls his time on the Pao School basketball team with great fondness. The experience of representing the school, battling alongside his teammates, and leading the team to victory at a home game during the championships are among his most precious memories.
Victor graduated from College of the Holy Cross with a major in History. He found the transition to university seamless due to the solid preparation he received at Pao School. He shared a discussion he had with his mother about the most significant benefit he gained from his time at Pao School. To Victor's mother, his attendance at the school facilitated his smooth transition through the challenging phase of preadolescence. From Victor's perspective, being exposed to teachers and peers from a wide range of cultural backgrounds had smoothed his passage into the wider world. Boarding school life had equipped him with interpersonal skills of value not only to his early lessons, but also to his higher education studies, and ultimately to his entrepreneurial ventures.
Steve graduated from Tufts University with a major in Psychology. Though he only attended Pao School until Year 9, he agrees with his friends about its benefits. Like Victor, he sees Pao School as having prepared him for later educational and business life. In his case, this proceeded through boarding school in the USA to university life, and then the world of business.
Nurturing Entrepreneurship
Through Your Passions
Our collaboration is built on a strong foundation of mutual trust. Understanding each other deeply, when faced with challenges, our first instinct is not to question or avoid responsibility, but to come together to find solutions. Furthermore, the harmonious blend of our personalities and technical expertise has been key to our success.
—— Victor Chen
Gerzz was founded in 2021, at the time, the three Pao alumni were still pursuing their undergraduate degrees but found themselves back in Shanghai due to COVID-19. The pandemic with its online courses provided the friends with more time to pursue their interests and to hang out with each other. Among their shared interests was a game– called ‘Murder Mystery’ which they decided to move online, launching Gerzz to do so. "We think Murder Mystery represents a unique form of social interaction,” Kevin said. “Its high-quality scripts serve as an engaging medium for young people to connect with Chinese culture."
Starting a business right after graduation was no easy feat for any of the three. Kevin turned down work opportunities in the US, while Victor and Steve opted out of pursuing graduate school, obtaining a PhD, or working in corporate. For Victor, launching a project in college and seeing it through to founding a company was a remarkable journey in itself. In comparison to other paths, entrepreneurship has brought them more opportunities and responsibilities. "You must be accountable for every decision you make, and throughout the process, you may feel inundated by challenges from all directions. However, simultaneously, you will also develop unforeseen skills, which are integral to personal growth."
Similarly, Steve believes that entrepreneurship should stem from one's own passions, serving as the primary source of motivation to persevere and achieve breakthroughs. He emphasizes that "while young, one can afford to experiment and learn through trial and error." Throughout his entrepreneurial journey, he discovered that compared working in corporate, entrepreneurship exposes individuals to a broader spectrum of experiences. Working within a corporate structure often entails adherence to various processes and KPIs, whereas entrepreneurship involves working for oneself. "You'll generate more ideas, possess greater drive to accomplish tasks, and won't view it as working overtime but rather as pursuing a fulfilling career."
Subsequently, the team observed that in murder mystery games, when players' voices matched the scenes and characters, the user experience improved as a result. Therefore, the team decided to develop a feature that could generate virtual voices for users based on the scene and character, essentially creating virtual voice masks.
However, bringing such a creative concept to life presents its own unique array of challenges. Initially, the team used traditional voice-changing solutions but found the effects uncontrollable in complex scenarios. They then tried a method similar to iFlytek's text-to-speech, but the text-based modality caused the generated voices to lose the original speaker's emotions. Eventually, the company decided to build its own algorithm team to develop a proprietary AI voice-changing algorithm model.
Meanwhile, the team realized that although HALO demonstrated the capacity to generate substantial revenues, amounting to over RMB 10 million in 2022, but converting this revenue into profit proved challenging. HALO operated essentially as a scripted role-playing platform, difficult to scale and heavily dependent on operational management, resulting in narrow profit margins. Consequently, shifting the company's business focus to identify high product-market fit growth points became imperative.
In response, the company decided to iterate on the voice modulation feature and developed a new product offering AI-driven real-time voice-changing feature—Dubbing AI. In 2023, the company's revenue doubled and marked its first international income.
In addition, the team is also working on launching a second AI voice product later this year: Utell. This real-time accent conversion application aims to enable everyone to overcome issues related to accent, allowing users to achieve "voice freedom" and speak as native.
