Header image source: LiberLive.
In the latest season of the reality dating show Love Actually, Chinese celebrity Eliza Liang appeared as a guest. In the first episode, she pulled out an atypical guitar to lighten the mood and performed a duet of Fish Leong’s Belong with a male contestant.
But Liang wasn’t actually playing a traditional guitar. What she held was a stringless instrument made by LiberLive.
Though it resembles a guitar in appearance, the LiberLive has no strings. Instead, it features nine silicone pads on its fretboard that light up in sync with a song’s chord progression. Users simply tap the pads as they light up to simulate the strumming of chords.
Its novel design and simplicity quickly propelled the product into viral status.
On Douyin, videos of people playing and singing with the stringless guitar regularly garner hundreds of thousands of likes. Thanks to organic buzz and word-of-mouth marketing, LiberLive’s sales have soared.
Launched in April 2023, the LiberLive C1 became a hit in Tmall’s musical instruments category. Within a year, it was generating over RMB 1 billion (USD 140 million) in annual sales, popular across platforms like Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin.
According to data from Frost & Sullivan, from June 2023 to June 2024, LiberLive sold more units globally than any other brand in the stringless guitar market.
“LiberLive is one of the most successful smart hardware products in recent years,” said Li Chen (pseudonym), an investor from a financial advisory firm focused on smart devices, in an interview with 36Kr. The brand’s parent company, Unknown Planet, surpassed RMB 1 billion in revenue in 2024, a milestone many heavily funded ventures still struggle to reach.
Yet despite eventually claiming the global top spot, LiberLive faced widespread investor rejection during its early funding attempts.
36Kr learned that the company sought institutional investment at two key moments: in 2019, when development on the stringless guitar had just begun, and again in 2023, right before mass production. Both times, no institutional investors came on board.
According to the company’s cap table, Unknown Planet has only completed two funding rounds to date, backed not by venture capitalists, but by ecosystem stakeholders. Investors include XbotPark Fund, founded in part by academic and entrepreneur Li Zexiang, as well as Will Semiconductor and Z-Pilot. Sources said a major VC did buy out some secondary shares in 2024, but no notable institutions joined earlier.
Multiple investors told 36Kr that those who evaluated LiberLive early on were mostly baffled by it. Rumors suggest that founder Tang Wenxuan, frustrated by repeated rejections, became disillusioned with VCs and has since refused to take investor meetings. He has also never spoken to the media.
Betting on an unconventional vision
LiberLive doesn’t fit the mold of what investors usually look for.
Founder Tang was neither an exec from big tech nor a veteran of the music industry. He studied automation at Hunan University before earning a graduate degree in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He later worked as an algorithm engineer in DJI’s navigation division.
In 2016, Tang left DJI to launch Unknown Planet. His early products included a smart art education robot and a motion-sensing car called Planet Racer. Despite leaning heavily on artificial intelligence, neither product took off.
By 2019, Tang had begun developing the stringless guitar that would become LiberLive and was actively seeking funding for it. But no investor was willing to bet on the idea. What followed was four years of heads-down development, largely self-funded due to tight finances. When the C1 finally launched in April 2023, it became an overnight sensation.
Asked where the inspiration came from, the LiberLive team told 36Kr that Tang has long loved music and took up guitar during college, but found the instrument too hard to learn and too intimidating for beginners. He wanted to give more people access to the joy and sense of ritual that comes from playing music.
To be fair, smart guitars already existed before LiberLive. In 2016, PopuMusic launched the Poputar, which retained the strings and body of a traditional guitar, but added guiding lights to help users find the right notes.
LiberLive, however, took a far more radical approach. It eliminated strings altogether and reimagined the way a guitar could be played. In fact, it’s more accurate to call it a new instrument disguised as a guitar.
Even the LiberLive team was unsure how the market would respond.
“We did conduct some small-scale user testing before launch, which gave us some confidence,” a marketing team member said. “But when the user base grew, we really weren’t 100% certain how it would go.”
What happened next exceeded all expectations. Just weeks after release, the C1 was completely sold out. “It wasn’t a scarcity tactic,” the marketing rep said. “We just didn’t expect demand to spike that quickly.” Even the company’s employees were drafted to help on assembly lines to meet demand.
LiberLive’s moat
LiberLive’s minimalist design played a central role in its appeal. “Plenty of brands have dabbled in smart instruments. Some tried to disassemble them, others focused on flash or celebrity tie-ins, or added tons of chords,” one industry insider said. “LiberLive’s interpretation was the simplest and most beginner-friendly.”
“There were lots of copycats and imitators,” the person added, “but LiberLive still sold the best.”
More importantly, it tapped into what investor Li Chen called “the emotional value of young people.” Instead of targeting the niche market of seasoned guitarists, LiberLive embraced casual music fans who may want to play in front of friends, on social media, at gatherings. It gave them a sense of achievement and emotional payoff.
A Frost & Sullivan report noted that younger consumers were more receptive to stringless guitars. While most buyers of smart guitars were aged 30–45, nearly half of LiberLive’s buyers were between 18–30.
Lessons from an outlier
LiberLive is a rare business story that runs counter to industry norms.
When looking for a product direction, Tang initially tried flashy AI concepts, but ended up committing to the less trendy category of musical instruments. While most smart hardware startups chase rapid iteration and constant upgrades, he spent four years refining a single product.
That contrarian approach likely explains why so many investors missed the opportunity. “Maybe what LiberLive wanted to do was too ahead of its time,” the marketing rep said. “Since no one had done it before, investors were hesitant.”
One hardware investor compared it to Pop Mart, a collectibles brand also overlooked by most institutions early on. “Consumer trends can’t always be predicted through research or logic,” he said. “They move with the times.”
Li Chen agreed that investor caution in 2019 was understandable. At the time, Tang had two failed products and an unproven concept. But in 2023, when the C1 was fully developed, investor reluctance was harder to explain. “It’s worth reflecting on,” he said.
He believes many hardware investors have become overly focused on abstract metrics like team pedigree, market buzz, and conceptual hype, neglecting what actually matters.
The same mistake, he said, is being repeated by today’s AI hardware founders. Many treat AI as the core and scramble to find hardware that fits the tech, instead of identifying unmet consumer needs. The result: products that fail to find product-market fit, or get rushed to launch in half-baked form.
He pointed to a Shenzhen company that released a smart glasses prototype within months, only to receive widespread backlash. “It couldn’t even handle basic Bluetooth calls,” he said.
“LiberLive didn’t have flash or buzzwords,” Li Chen said. “But it succeeded because it understood what real users actually want.”
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Wang Fangyu for 36Kr.