Welcome, Hongyuan
Welcome, Hongyuan — ex-founding product designer at Sequoia Capital U.S. — joins The Creator as Venture Partner, exploring the intersection of design and venture as both a designer and an investor.
Heyu’s words
I’ve known Hongyuan for over a decade. We first met online and later in person at Samovar Tea House, starting a warm—though slightly awkward—conversation about design and business value. At the time, I had just landed in the U.S., volunteering at San Francisco Design Week, drifting from economist to design-curious, thanks to my experience at IDEO.
Back then, Chinese designers in tech ventures were rare. Hongyuan was one of the few.
I remember feeling nervous yet excited, asking her endless questions about the whys and hows. She had just finished a coaching session and greeted me with a quiet warmth—thoughtful, a bit distant, unmistakably intentional. Over the years, we stayed in touch, sharing inspiration and struggle as we navigated different roles—she in design at Sequoia, I in business at Airbnb.
After I launched The Creator, our conversations deepened. We kept returning to old questions—about design, intention, and what makes things meaningful.
Over matcha, I shared a thought: “Maybe this isn’t just about design—it’s about anthropology. The systems and contexts that shape human cognition and behavior.”
This is the coffee shop where good conversations happened!
She nodded with her signature poker face and said in classic Silicon Valley fashion, “I think so. Then how can I be helpful?”
I laughed and said I’d think about it.
A week later, during another chat, she asked, “How’s the thinking going?”
I replied: “Would you be interested in joining The Creator? Maybe we explore it firsthand—together.”
She didn’t say much. Just sat there in her cool, artsy outfit. But as I got up to catch my Lyft, she said:“Yeah… I think you just sold me.”
The rest? That’s The Creator’s next chapter.
Hongyuan’s words
About My story
Hi, this is Hongyuan. I was born in a small town in northern China. My education didn’t follow the usual path either. Before I started elementary school, I was already reading at an adult level. But growing up in a small town with limited public school resources, I spent most of my time at the local library. That’s where I learned about the world—moving from one word to the next, from one book to another. Dictionaries and books became my first window into understanding how things worked.
In college, I studied journalism, as I was drawn to the idea that a journalist could shoulder social responsibility. However, during my time as a reporter, I quickly encountered the limitations of journalism’s tangible impact. This realization inspired me to come to the U.S. to study new media. I met a group of HCI students in my first semester, and something clicked. For the first time, I saw design not as decoration, but as a way to change how people interact with the world. That eventually led me into the field of design.
After graduation, I moved to Silicon Valley and worked as a designer at several tech companies, from startups (e.g., Intercom, Medium) to large firms (e.g., Facebook). Later, I joined Sequoia Capital as the first full-time product designer, where I collaborated with many early-stage startups and led the design of internal tools at Sequoia.
Recently, I’ve started exploring the frontier of new ventures in a more flexible format—as both a designer and an investor.
About Why The Creator?
My favorite anthropologist, Benedict Anderson, wrote a memoir titled A Life Beyond Boundaries. In it, he reflects on fieldwork and says:
“…One has to be endlessly curious about everything, sharpen one’s eyes and ears, and take notes about anything. This is the great blessing of this kind of work. The experience of strangeness makes all your senses much more sensitive than normal, and your attachment to comparison grows deeper. This is why fieldwork is also so useful when you return home. You will have developed habits of observation and comparison that encourage or force you to start noticing that your own culture is just as strange—provided you look carefully, ceaselessly compare, and keep your anthropological distance.”
That spirit—of staying curious about everything, observing carefully, and comparing constantly—is how I move through the world. Before I came to the U.S., I never imagined myself working in tech. I thought I’d stay in academia for the rest of my life. Everything I knew about Silicon Valley came from books and TV. So when I arrived, I was an outsider—and in many ways, I still am. I’ve always looked at technology through a humanistic lens. I can’t help but wonder, can’t help but compare. Maybe it’s that outsider perspective that feeds my curiosity across fields: how different industries work, how companies are run, and how talent flows.
So when Heyu shared the concept of The Creator—as a practice at the intersection of anthropology, design, and investing—it felt like something I’d been unknowingly waiting for. We both care about people. We both love design. And we’re deeply curious about investing, with a shared vision through complementary approaches.
About Good Design
Good design gives people a new way of seeing the world.
The Teshima Art Museum, designed by artist Rei Naito and architect Ryue Nishizawa, is a true harmony between human presence and nature. The design is so seamless that it feels as though it simply belongs there. It gave me the space and time to sit in complete stillness and watch a single drop of water emerge, quiver, crawl, rush, run—until it became a stream.
Photo Credit: Teshima Art Museum
My design work always begins with understanding—understanding how things work, what people need, and why things break. I spend time with users, digging into the “why” before translating insights into solutions. I care deeply about clarity and intuition—not just making things “look good,” but making them feel inevitable. At Sequoia, I led the redesign of our talent products by first developing an in-depth understanding of the signals from our talent partners. I also work closely with PMs, engineers, and data scientists, of course—but just as often, I partner with early-stage founders, helping them shape their early prototypes and define their brand with intention.
I’ve always been drawn to early signals: the design decisions that reveal a founder’s sharpness, the standards that reflect their taste. That’s what I carry with me into venture—using design as a lens to read a team’s judgment, ambition, and long-term potential.
About Good Time Spent with The Creator
Over the years, I’ve changed jobs and spoken with over 100 early-stage teams. Each chat represents a possibility—a kind of future that might be. Maybe it’s just who I am: I have a deep desire to gather information and understand how the world works. Over time, I’ve developed my own sense of judgment. Many of the teams I spoke with went on to raise, grow, or get acquired. I’ve always loved these conversations. And when I look at that long list, two things stand out:
They understood the importance of design. They had taste—in product, in brand, and in experience.
They cared about people. They knew how to spot talent, how to empower it, and how to build teams with high talent density.
What I’m looking for in The Creator is to stay close to that early moment of potential, and to be in a place that values design, values people, and treats both with care. As a design advisor, I hope to act as a strategic partner to early-stage startups—exploring potential directions for both product and design. That includes defining the story we want to tell, the feeling we want to give users, and even how to design the organization and culture itself.
I work closely with founders to search for product–market fit while maintaining both speed and quality. I’ve done this across different stages—from building growth products at Intercom to talent and investor tools at Sequoia. Now, I’m excited to do it with even more conviction—earlier, and across ventures I care deeply about.
About Current Top of Mind
Gifted education.
As a child, I didn’t receive the kind of education that fit how I learned or thought. That experience stayed with me. Now, I’m exploring this space to better understand it, both out of personal reflection and a desire to contribute. On a larger scale, I’m curious whether there’s something meaningful I could build here, a product, a set of ideas, or a way of approaching gifted education that could make a difference.
FDA processes for drug development and approval.
I’m helping an early-stage startup build in the healthcare space. It has led me to learn more about how the U.S. pharmaceutical industry operates, especially how drugs are researched, regulated and brought to market. It’s a complex system with a big impact on people’s lives, and I’m finding it super fascinating.