Tingyu Su on why AI startups should treat the founding designer as a strategic hire from the start of company building
July 10, 2026 – 3:34 pm
Image by: Tingyu Su
Artificial intelligence has dramatically accelerated software development, making it easier than ever to transform ideas into working products. According to Stanford’s recent report, AI performance on a key coding benchmark jumped from 60% to nearly 100% in a single year, while organizational AI adoption reached 88%. As AI capabilities continue to expand, Tingyu Su, a startup Founding Designer with experience spanning creative technology, product innovation, and multidisciplinary design, believes the challenge is no longer simply building software. It is creating products that people immediately understand, trust, and choose to adopt.
The Evolving Role of the Founding Designer
According to Su, startups often prioritize engineering talent, but they also need someone who can connect product development, branding, and customer experience into a cohesive whole from the very beginning.
"The speed of AI development has changed what companies compete on," Su says. "Building an early product is becoming more accessible. Creating a brand and experience that people immediately understand, trust, and remember is where lasting differentiation begins."
The Importance of Every Touchpoint
Su notes that customers often form opinions about a company well before they ever use its technology.
"A website, conference booth, presentation deck, or marketing material may become the first interaction someone has with an organization," she says. She recalls a recent industry conference where a prospective customer stopped by the company’s booth and remarked that the materials felt clean and immediately understandable, and looked noticeably more refined than those of the surrounding exhibitors.
For Su, moments like that confirm why every touchpoint should reinforce the same identity customers eventually experience inside the product itself. A startup’s product will change many times, she says, but a thoughtfully built brand is the one thing that shouldn’t. For AI startups, that consistency is what earns customers’ trust before the technology proves itself.
Su’s Background and Approach
Su’s multidisciplinary career has influenced how she approaches design. Her experience spans art institutions, creative agencies, consumer brands, and technology companies, backed by formal training in communication design and product innovation. Her work has also been recognized with an iF Design Award, and she contributed published research presented at the CHI 2025. Today, she applies that broad perspective as the founding designer at Youlify, a Silicon Valley healthcare AI startup developing revenue cycle management technology for healthcare organizations and providers.
Su also believes expectations for early-stage products have evolved alongside AI. While the minimum viable product remains a valuable way to validate ideas, she says functional software alone is rarely enough to earn customer confidence. Instead, she encourages founders to think about creating a Minimum Lovable Product, an example of which could be a beautifully designed and intuitive user interface that delivers core functionality but also subtly hints at the AI capabilities to come.