Ep. 18: Entrepreneur Karol Guan discusses creativity at art school and in her beauty AI startup - a podcast by Richard Yan

(Episode in Mandarin)

Karol Guan is an entrepreneur. This interview was recorded in Nov 2020. At the time she was co-founder of HelloAva.co, a startup that recommends skin care products based on a combination of AI and doctors. Karol studied Fashion/Apparel design at Parsons School of Design in New York City.

We discussed how the 2020 Covid both helped her startup grow and presented challenges to the way she worked, how she felt about being a woman in the male-dominated startup space, how her training as an artist and creator at Parsons prepared her for entrepreneurship, how she felt about sexual harassment in the venture space and beyond, the career paths of her friends that have returned to China, and more!

0:00 Intro

02:34 HelloAva is the StitchFix for cosmetics

11:41 Rewards and challenges for being a startup founder

16:01 Dealing with messy logistics at her startup during Covid

25:52 Women in startups 36:53 Sexual harassment in venture

45:54 Finding one's calling in life

1:09:45 Reflecting on career paths of friends returning to China

1:14:56 Being Cantonese

1:22:05 Karol asks Richard about his takeaways from hosting Chinatown 2.0

Further episodes of Chinatown 2.0

Further podcasts by Richard Yan

Website of Richard Yan