Portrait No. 001
Julia Xu
Co-Founder & CEO
Wayo
Raised — $3M
I started Wayo to solve a problem I’ve lived on both sides of: how painfully hard it is to make a real product idea come to life. After working at Alibaba US, I saw how global manufacturing was still trapped in emails, spreadsheets, and language barriers - completely disconnected from the modern creator economy. Before that, I’d built and scaled my own e-commerce brand, often staying up until 3 a.m. negotiating with factories in China just to get samples right. It made me realize that creativity shouldn’t be limited by supply-chain complexity. Wayo is my answer: an AI-powered operating system that turns ideas into physical products, end-to-end, through a vetted network of hundreds of factories. The mission is deeply personal - bridging East and West, technology and craftsmanship - to make global manufacturing seamless, affordable, and open to anyone.
In her words
“Born in the U.S. and raised in China, I grew up between worlds. After working at Alibaba as Chief of Staff, I built Wayo to make global manufacturing and custom product sourcing more accessible to everyone, so great ideas do not depend on insider networks or factory connections to become real.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
Building Wayo has been the hardest and most fulfilling climb of my life. I started with no team, no capital, and no playbook for reinventing how the world makes physical things. As a female founder and first-generation immigrant, I often walked into rooms where investors assumed manufacturing wasn’t “venture-scale” or that I didn’t “look” like a supply-chain founder. But grit and proof speak louder than bias. We built traction founder-led, with $2M+ in annualized revenue, 70% month-over-month growth, and a $3M pre-seed round led by Neo - all before a formal launch. I spent a year alone in Shenzhen, visiting over 100 factories and living in rural industrial areas to learn the supply chain from the ground up. What started as me figuring it out alone turned into recruiting an entire team from factory floors and building Wayo’s global network brick by brick. The climb has taught me that resilience is an operating system of its own: when the world says no, you just keep building until it can’t ignore you.
Chapter II
Your vision.
I’m obsessed with one question: Why is making physical things still so hard in a digital world? My vision for Wayo is a world where creating custom products is as easy as generating digital content - where a designer, brand, or startup founder can turn imagination into production in days, not months. By automating sourcing, design, and manufacturing through AI, we’re not just fixing inefficiency - we’re rewriting access. Wayo will unlock a new creative economy built on physical expression, empowering millions of people to build products, not just ideas. We are changing how the world makes things.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
Thirty years from now, I want to have redefined what it means to create - to make manufacturing as accessible and creative as software. I hope Wayo inspires a generation of women builders and global founders to see factories not as barriers, but as canvases for innovation. My legacy will be proving that technology can bridge worlds - East and West, digital and physical - and that a young woman who once walked factory floors alone in Shenzhen could help millions bring their ideas to life.