I am a designer and creative technologist - turned entrepreneur, with diverse founding experience across tech-enabled fashion, AI-driven consumer beauty, and e-commerce platform growth - all with a focus on transforming leading edge technologies into a fun, intuitive, and accessible format.

In 2017, I co-founded HelloAva with one goal: to democratize skincare by educating and empowering consumers to build their ideal, personalized skincare regimen. An idea from a Stanford classroom quickly turned into a tech-enabled skincare discovery platform, and in just 2 years, our team matured to support a network of 80+ retail beauty brands, a 3-year contract with Unilever, and B2B revenue generation. HelloAva is backed by leading consumer tech VCs including DHVC, GingerBread Capital, Long Venture, and Sogal Ventures.

My road to creative entrepreneurship began early in 2011, when I left my home in Guangzhou, China with the vision to pioneer a new category of immersive, augmented-reality fashion line in New York. My collection “Itchyitchy” debuted at New York Fashion Week in 2017, and since then, I’ve led my team to multi-industry recognition across international stages for fashion and technology, including SXSW, TechCrunch Disrupt, Le Revelateur D’innovation in Paris, New York Textile Month, NYC Media Lab, and the MIT Media Lab.

Since 2021, I’ve also worked to bring my creative vision to reach a broader audience of fellow makers - by leading Growth at Popshop Live. Following the company’s $20mm Series A by Benchmark, my team unlocked the potential of livestream shopping for millions of creators and small business owners for the first time, introducing a new platform category and community within which to diversify their audience, reach, and revenue.

My work has been featured in WSJ, Forbes, Yahoo!, TechCrunch, Cosmopolitan, Cheddar, Vogue Italia, Dezeen and more. I am a speaker at 50+ events on entrepreneurship, start-up, AR/VR, beauty, innovation, diversity and inclusion, sharing stories of my career path and learnings from my experience as an entrepreneur.

Contact me: kailuguan@gmail.com