Joshua Xu is co-founder and CEO of HeyGen, which makes tools for generating and translating video with AI avatars. His background combines robotics and computer vision with product engineering at Snap.[1][2]
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X Career
Xu studied robotics at Carnegie Mellon, specializing in computer vision, before joining Snap. His work there included advertising recommendations and later computational photography. In CMU’s alumni interview, he dates founding HeyGen with Wayne Liang to December 2020 and distinguishes his technical background from Liang’s experience in design.[2]
Contributions
Xu’s account of HeyGen’s early development describes testing demand before building a large product. The founders manually delivered video orders through Fiverr, then used customer responses to decide which generation features to develop. Requests for a more realistic spokesperson and the ability to animate a photograph informed later product choices. The account explains a product-development process, rather than attributing the company’s models to one person.[3]
Ideas
Xu describes repeated contact with customers as a way to decide where model improvements matter. His CMU interview emphasizes that a usable video system must combine research quality with a product people can understand and operate. A convincing demonstration alone does not reveal which workflow someone will pay to use.[2]
Tools, writing & talks
Writing, research & talks
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HeyGen’s $0 to $1M ARR journeyheygen.comA founder’s account of testing demand with manually delivered videos and building from customer feedback.
Start with the first paid orders and the requests that changed the product. No machine-learning background is required; this is a founder’s retrospective, not an independent audit of the reported business results.
Author[3]