Founder Life Q&A with Xiaoyin Qu
Can you please introduce yourself with recent updates as if you were catching up with an old friend?
I am Xiaoyin Qu and I am a serial entrepreneur. Right now working on a new AI product after exiting my previous company Run The World. Before that I was a Stanford MBA drop out. I started my career as a PM at Facebook and Instagram in 2015.
How did you get into entrepreneurship? What’s your origin story?
I co-founded my first company when I was 20. It was a college counseling company that helped top Chinese high schoolers apply for top U.S colleges. My co-founder quit college to work on this full time and it has become one of the leading college counseling companies now. I finished school instead and worked at Facebook post-college. I always enjoyed building and creating things, from companies to writing articles, and eventually published a bestselling product book.
At what point, did you decide to pursue your first start-up full-time and quit Stanford? What made you so sure about that decision?
Stanford MBA was very cool. I got to meet lots of people and get creative again. I came up with the idea of Run The World while I was a first-year MBA student so I just went and built it, raised some money, and quit MBA. I wasn’t so sure about that decision at the time. I just really loved the idea and I was lucky enough to have a strong team and great VC backing. I just figured I should go all in and try my best.
How do you keep up-to-date with the tech industry? There’s always something new popping up daily, especially in Gen AI field
I follow lots of good people on Twitter, and read The Information and TechCrunch. Sometimes I attend events in Gen AI and mostly leverage my existing friends who are smart to tell me what they are up to and what they find interesting.
What do you think are the biggest differences between Product Management leaders v.s. Founders?
PM leaders are responsible for the products but as founders, you might need to do lots of selling or promoting. How to get the products out to people’s hands is equally important. I had to do tons of sales calls, trying to close deals and getting people to use it more. Lots of founders who were PMs that I know, initially tried to solve all problems by changing products. However, that might not be the case. For certain industries or customers, a B+ product is good enough but they want A+ services and customer success. As a founder, you need to know how important a product is for your business and don’t over-index on building products when the elephant in the room is bad onboarding and customer services.
What are some skills you have to learn v.s. Unlearn when transitioning from PM to a Founder?
I think the most important thing is to be open to do all kinds of jobs. Especially when you are trying to find product market fit, things might not work 99% of the time so you have to quickly adapt and do every function as needed. As a PM at Big Tech, there is a clear job description, but now you have to do lots of work initially: build websites yourself, design logos yourself, call customers yourself etc. As your company expands, the type of work you do as a founder becomes very different: it’s more about building teams, hiring and firing people, and setting up culture.
What advice do you have for aspiring founders?
Being resilient and keeping your energy up high might be the hardest thing to do in the entrepreneur journey. You will face lots of adversities and challenges and might not know which direction to go as the founder. Being able to re-motivate yourself when facing challenges and bounce back is the key to be a successful founder. You need to be the last one standing. Be brave and keep going!