brands supported
overseas
Founder portfolio2026
Xiaoyue Sun
Building ventures through customer insight, experimentation, and better market decisions.
Co-founder of hiLumio and founder of PLUSONE, exploring how customer insight can shape better products, creator decisions, and growth models.
Suzhou / Shanghai, China
CurrentlyBuilding hiLumio IntelligenceTesting PLUSONE through consumer feedback and product iteration
Operating snapshot
cumulative
hiLumio revenue
creator profiles
manually reviewed
target consumers
interviewed for PLUSONE
8 cross-border campaigns delivered · 3 PLUSONE tasting sessions completed
Operating business
hiLumio
Cross-border creator marketing for Chinese brands going global.
hiLumio works with Chinese consumer technology and outdoor brands entering European and North American markets through creator selection, localisation, outreach, and campaign delivery.
Visit hiLumio ↗TYPICAL CATEGORIES
AI recording devices
Consumer electronics
Projection
Outdoor climbing
Outdoor communication devices
CAMPAIGN MIX / MARKETS
5 consumer / AI hardware · 3 outdoor
UK · Europe · North America
AI / HARDWAREAI Hardwareassets/hilumio-ai-hardware.jpg
FIELD / CREATOROutdoor & Climbingassets/hilumio-outdoor.jpg
RIDE / CONNECTOutdoor Communicationassets/hilumio-communication-tech.jpg
BRIEF / MATCH / DELIVERCampaign Workflow
Brief→Match→Localise→Deliver
Representative campaign categories. Client identities omitted.
The operational bottleneck
30,000+ profiles later,
the bottleneck became clear.
Existing platforms helped us find creators. The harder problem was deciding which creators genuinely fit a specific campaign.
CURRENT WORKFLOW
Client Brief→Creator Database / Platform→Manual Screening→Shortlist
Across 8 campaigns, more than 30,000 creator profiles were manually reviewed to deliver around 20 creators per campaign.
From service to product
hiLumio
Intelligence
Early-stage internal prototype
From creator search to creator decision intelligence.
hiLumio Intelligence is being developed to help marketers interpret campaign intent, identify relevant creator traits, and make more accurate creator-selection decisions.
Campaign Decoder
Turn campaign briefs into creator-selection criteria.
Reference Search
Analyse a creator, screenshot, or reference style and preserve the traits that matter.
Decision Engine
Compare creators and explain who fits the campaign best — and why.
View Prototype ↗
Internal prototype · human review remains part of the decision process
Better creator decisions,
not just better creator search.
Independent venture · Founded Feb 2026
PLUSONE
Early validation
An alcohol-free beverage venture for young adults’ social occasions.
Xiaoyue founded PLUSONE after asking whether young adults could have a distinctive social drinking experience without relying on alcohol.
Her family’s experience in the Chinese spirits industry provided product and channel exposure, but PLUSONE explores a different consumer need.
STARTING QUESTION
Can an alcohol-free drink still feel distinctive, social, and satisfying?
The initial idea focused on offering young adults more choices for social occasions while responding to growing interest in health and vitality.
EARLY VALIDATIONCurrent position: Iteration
Question→Formulation→Interviews→Tasting→Iteration→Commercial Test
Initial Product Exploration
3 initial beverage formulations
Consumer Discovery
30 target-consumer interviews
Tasting & Feedback
3 small-scale tasting sessions
Flavour · packaging · pricing · drinking experience
Product Iteration
2 formulation-refinement rounds completed
Priorities: stronger carbonation · more pronounced mouthfeel
Commercial Validation
Willingness to pay · repeat purchase · production cost · pricing · margin · small pilot launch
WHAT CHANGED
INITIAL ASSUMPTION
WHAT CONSUMERS TOLD US
WHAT CHANGED
An alcohol-free drink could offer a lighter alternative for young adults’ social occasions.
They wanted stronger stimulation and a more distinctive sensory experience.
Stronger carbonation and mouthfeel became priorities for the next product-development stage.
Alcohol-free should not mean experience-free.
WHAT I LEARNED
- Personal values can guide what I explore.
- Consumers must shape what the product becomes.
- Early testing is more useful than advancing on founder enthusiasm alone.
WHAT COMES NEXT
Product
Refine carbonation and mouthfeel
Consumer
Identify the strongest early customer segment
Commercial
Test willingness to pay, unit economics, and margins
Market
Run a small pilot before expanding distribution
Two ventures,
one recurring question.
How do we turn repeated manual judgement into a better product?
How do we turn founder assumptions into a product consumers actually want?
BOTH VENTURES ARE TEACHING ME THE SAME DISCIPLINE
Understand the problem.
Test the assumption.
Use evidence to decide what deserves more time and capital.
JOURNEY
Built through doing.
Built early digital-growth and customer-acquisition experience.
Worked across a technology-product launch cycle at Nuromova.
Co-founded hiLumio and built cross-border creator campaigns for Chinese brands entering Europe and North America.
Began translating manual creator-selection judgement into hiLumio Intelligence.
Founded PLUSONE and began testing an alcohol-free beverage concept through interviews, tastings, and formulation iteration.
HOW I BUILD
How I build
- 01
Start with a real problem.
- 02
Make assumptions explicit.
- 03
Test before scaling.
- 04
Change direction when evidence says so.
SELECTED EXPERIENCE
A compact record.
Zhipu Xinsi
Digital Growth & Customer Acquisition
Nuromova
Product Launch & Go-to-Market
hiLumio
Co-founder
PLUSONE
Founder
EDUCATION
Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
BSc Marketing
2023–2027Peking University
Summer School — Macroeconomics
2024