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Yiying Lu
Artrepreneur - Bilingual TEDx Speaker - Artist of Twitter Whale 🐳 & 🥟🧋🥡🥠🥢🦚 Emojis - San Francisco Arts Commissioner - Fast Company Most Creative Person in Business
Professional Background
Yiying Lu is a celebrated artist, entrepreneur, educator, and bilingual speaker whose remarkable career has consistently bridged the gap between art and technology. Initially rising to fame through her innovative designs, including the beloved Dumpling and Boba Tea emojis and her work with iconic brands like Disney Shanghai, Twitter, and Microsoft, Yiying has created a unique niche where creativity meets cross-cultural communication. Founded upon her experiences across the globe, Yiying's work reflects her commitment to unifying people and transcending linguistic barriers through design that resonates on an emotional level.
After relocating to Silicon Valley in 2015 from Sydney, Australia, Yiying took on the role of Creative Director at 500 Global, where she had the opportunity to collaborate with numerous startups in developing creative branding strategies. This invaluable experience has shaped her current endeavors, where she uses her expertise to lead her creative studio. Here, she focuses on branding, Web3 innovation, and cross-cultural design, working with a diverse clientele that includes technology giants such as Apple, Google, Adobe, and Airbnb. Her unique insight into both Eastern and Western cultures empowers her creative approach, making her a sought-after consultant in the realm of design and branding.
Yiying's influence extends into her role as a public speaker. Drawing on her rich background and experiences, she has shared her insights at major global conferences and universities, including TEDx, Talks at Google, SXSW, and Adobe MAX. Her talks frequently explore themes of creativity, innovation, and cross-cultural design, showcasing her prowess in merging cultural perspectives within the design industry.
Education and Achievements
Yiying's educational background is a testament to her commitment to excellence and innovation in design. She studied at the prestigious Shanghai Shixi High School before pursuing her Bachelor of Design in Visual Communication at the University of Technology Sydney, where she graduated with first-class honors. In addition to her degree, she enriched her studies with an exchange program at the renowned Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, focusing on Advertising.
Further specializing her knowledge, Yiying also undertook study in the International Design & Media Foundation Stream at UNSW, where she was recognized for her outstanding performance in design. This robust educational foundation has propelled her career, leading to numerous accolades including recognition as one of Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business and a Top 10 Leader in Innovation by Microsoft.
Her achievements in the design field have not gone unnoticed, as Yiying has received multiple awards such as the Shorty Awards for Design and the Australia China Alumni Award for Arts & Creative Industries. Her work has been featured extensively in prestigious publications, including The New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, Fast Company, and many others, highlighting her influence and reach within both the arts and technology sectors.
Community and Professional Contributions
Yiying Lu is deeply engaged in her community and the broader professional landscape. She was appointed as a Commissioner of the San Francisco Arts Commission in 2021 by Mayor London Breed, where she focuses on promoting art and enhancing cultural engagement in the city. Prior to this role, she served on the Board of GlobalSF and contributed as a business mentor for startups, providing guidance and support to emerging entrepreneurs.
Her dedication to fostering innovation and creativity is further demonstrated through her mentorship initiatives, where she has advised aspiring designers and entrepreneurs at organizations like Orbit Startups and Galvanize Inc. Yiying is also a valued member of various advisory boards, such as the China Australia Millennial Project, and has worked closely with educational institutions as a guest lecturer at notable universities including Peking University and Tsinghua University.
In the realm of design, Yiying has not only consulted for firms like Adobe but has also played a role as a creative ambassador, striving to inspire and engage future talent in the design field. Her commitment to education and mentorship is evidenced by her involvement in programs that cultivate creativity and innovation in students and professionals alike.
Notable Projects
Among her most recognized projects, Yiying Lu designed the Twitter Whale emoji that became synonymous with system outages, showcasing her ability to infuse fun and relatability into serious subjects. Additionally, her work on the Dumpling and Boba Tea emojis resonates with a wide audience, celebrating cultural elements that evoke a sense of community and joy.
Her creative prowess has led her to be recognized internationally, as she was the first artist invited by IDEO to participate in their creative programs in China, reinforcing her innovative approach to design thinking. Through these games and projects, Yiying merges fun, functionality, and a deep understanding of cultural nuances, creating designs that connect people across the globe.
Conclusion
With a unique cross-cultural perspective and a fierce dedication to creativity and innovation, Yiying Lu has established herself as a leader in the design industry. Her multidisciplinary approach has not only garnered her accolades and recognition but has also enabled her to effectively serve as a bridge between diverse cultures through art and design. Future endeavors will surely see Yiying continue to make a significant impact, championing the crucial dialogues between art, technology, and cross-cultural understanding. With her extensive background, passion for creativity, and commitment to uniting people through design, Yiying Lu remains a powerful force in her field.
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Clay is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
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- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.