Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sike Li. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Sike, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

The idea for RelaXi emerged at the intersection of personal heartbreak, professional burnout, and a profound spiritual awakening—right as I was entering my thirties.

Throughout my twenties, I led product innovation at consumer tech and media companies, launching AI systems that could predict user behavior at massive scale. I had mastered the mechanics of achievement but remained entirely illiterate in the language of my own emotions.

Then came the turning point: heartbreak, the global pandemic, and the devastating loss of a close friend to depression. I finally hit burnout and was forced to pause. And in the midst of that darkness, I fell in love with someone who deeply challenged the way I saw myself and the world.

She was brilliant and driven, always projecting strength. But I began to see the invisible pressures she carried—the expectation to never let emotions interfere with achievement. Through loving her, I started recognizing this wasn’t just her struggle. My female friends felt the weight of societal expectations, my male friends couldn’t communicate emotions, and honestly, I carried those same pressures too.

I realized this wasn’t about gender—it’s about our generation being trapped in a system that doesn’t support emotional intelligence. Through research, I noticed that most wellness platforms aren’t designed to help you truly feel — they’re designed to help you perform. Whether it’s maintaining habits, hitting the gym, or choosing from a long menu of emotional labels, the experience often feels like another task list rather than a path to clarity. Emotions are treated like checkboxes — something to manage, not something to understand. The result? People feel even more overwhelmed, not more connected. Emotional well-being becomes just another system of self-optimization: one that tracks, but doesn’t transform.

That’s when I realized nothing addressed the fundamental questions: How do I feel, and what can I do about it—so I can show up better for my work, for the people I love?

Recognizing this opportunity, I began documenting emotional patterns and exploring how technology could make healing experiences scalable.

I built a web prototype—an “Emotional OS”—and tested it with users and wellness suppliers.

That blueprint became RelaXi today — a human-centered emotional operating system that uses Reflective AI and multisensory design to guide people back to emotional clarity and self-trust. By embedding emotional context into each interaction, RelaXi connects mood to meaning, offering curated solo or social rituals through our Six Senses Wellness Model — sight, sound, touch, scent, taste, and connection. It helps make emotions more understandable, relatable, and actionable — transforming emotional awareness into real-life clarity and care.

What makes RelaXi uniquely positioned to succeed is that it bridges a critical gap between emotional wellness, sensory design, and scalable AI technology. This isn’t about following a wellness trend — It’s about building emotional infrastructure for the next era of conscious living.

And what excites me most? We’re not just addressing a market need. We’re pioneering a movement where emotional intelligence becomes mainstream, accessible, and genuinely valued—something people actively cultivate, trust, and integrate into their daily lives. That’s how I knew RelaXi was a worthwhile endeavor: it addresses a deep human need in a scalable, innovative, and deeply meaningful way.

Sike, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Sike Li — Founding Chief Product Officer at InnovatorX, a wellness innovation venture based in New York City. Our first consumer product, RelaXi, is a human-centered emotional wellness platform designed as a modern operating system for emotional clarity, self-trust, and conscious living.

My journey into this space is deeply personal. Prior to RelaXi, I spent over a decade in consumer tech and media, leading product innovation and building large-scale personalization systems. Externally, I was thriving and achieving success by traditional standards. Internally, however, I was quietly reaching a breaking point—feeling emotionally disconnected, creatively exhausted, and genuinely depleted.

This experience made me realize something profound: while we live in a time abundant with wellness content and productivity apps, many existing platforms primarily emphasize performance, tasks, or short-term relief. They weren’t designed to deeply engage with the complexity and nuance of our emotional lives. What I truly needed—and what so many people around me were missing—wasn’t just more content, but a meaningful emotional support structure that felt intuitive, genuine, and truly human.

With this insight, I began creating what eventually became RelaXi. Initially, it was a simple prototype: — a personal emotional OS to track moods, routines, and the small moments that brought joy or peace. When I shared it with friends, the response was immediate: they felt more grounded, emotionally clear, and better equipped to engage with life.

Today, RelaXi has evolved into a thoughtfully designed emotional wellness app that combines artificial intelligence, emotional intelligence, and multisensory experiences. Our platform guides users through personalized emotional journeys, drawing from our proprietary Six Senses Wellness Model: sight, sound, touch, scent, taste, and connection. Rather than pushing for more productivity or goals to hit, RelaXi provides gentle, meaningful guidance and innovative experiences — helping users reflect, recalibrate, and reconnect with themselves. It invites them to understand their emotions, value emotional awareness, and recognize each feeling as a signal of inner power.

What truly sets RelaXi apart is our foundational belief: emotions aren’t problems to solve—they are signals to understand. By integrating thoughtful design, emotional storytelling, and personalized AI guidance, we help people build a deeper awareness and healthier relationship with their emotional world.

What makes me most proud is seeing how RelaXi is positively shifting the way people approach emotional wellness—not as something negative or insignificant, but as essential infrastructure and a portal toward a balanced, authentic life rooted in self-trust. We’re cultivating a new emotional vocabulary, empowering people to live from self-trust rather than fear, and redefining vulnerability as strength instead of weakness.

For anyone just discovering RelaXi, I want you to know this isn’t simply another wellness app. It’s an invitation to slow down, reconnect, and reclaim emotional clarity on your own terms. Ultimately, our mission is simple yet powerful: to democratize emotional health, making emotional intelligence accessible, meaningful, and truly transformative for everyone.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

My entrepreneurial thinking is shaped by a blend of Eastern philosophy and Western behavioral strategy. I’ve always believed that to design emotionally intelligent systems, you need to understand both the inner and outer architecture of human behavior.

From the East, texts like The Heart Sutra and Tao Te Ching taught me that clarity and leadership come from presence, not pressure. These principles have shaped how I approach team dynamics, product design, and long-term vision — not as a race, but as a rhythm. I build for flow, not force.

From the West, books like Feeling Good by David Burns and The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris offered practical insight into how thought patterns and emotional narratives shape human behavior. And The Finders by Dr. Jeffrey Martin opened up a different paradigm — one where emotional stillness isn’t achieved through effort, but arises through awareness. That shift helped me think differently about how we design for reflection, not just reaction.

These works didn’t just influence how I think — they gave me a multidimensional framework to build from. RelaXi was born at the intersection of emotional depth, human systems, and strategic clarity. It’s more than a wellness product — it’s an emotional operating system designed for a generation ready to move beyond burnout and reconnect with emotional intelligence, agency, and self-trust.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Resilience, for me, isn’t just personal — it’s systemic. As a founder, I’ve learned that emotional resilience is the foundation of visionary leadership.

For years, I was moving fast — chasing growth, milestones, expectations. But beneath the momentum was fear: fear of being unseen, of falling behind, of not being “enough.” That fear wasn’t unique to me — it’s the silent engine behind how many modern people operate. High-functioning on the outside, emotionally disconnected underneath.

Through a long-distance relationship, I met someone who changed how I saw the world — and myself. She’s brilliant, grounded, and full of quiet strength. But I also saw how she, like many, was navigating the weight of cultural expectations: to succeed, to soften, to balance ambition with likeability. Our conversations cracked something open in me. We unpacked emotional labor, identity, pressure, and modern loneliness — and I began to see how much of what we call “choice” “timing” is actually inherited code. Systems that reward performance but penalize emotional truth.

At the same time, I watched people around me burn out, numb out, or quietly give up on themselves — not because they weren’t capable, but because they didn’t feel emotionally safe. I grew up in a culture where emotions were often unspoken, and vulnerability was seen as a flaw. But in those moments, I realized: vulnerability isn’t weakness — it’s the beginning of clarity, connection, and power.

That realization became the foundation of my work. I didn’t want to build just another wellness app. I wanted to create emotional infrastructure — a system that helps people pause, reflect, and reconnect with who they really are.

That’s how RelaXi was born: a human-centered emotional operating system for modern life. We innovated a system that combines AI and sensory design to guide people toward emotional clarity and self-trust.

To me, resilience means questioning the systems we’ve inherited — and having the courage to build the ones we actually need. RelaXi isn’t just a product. It’s my answer to the emotional gaps our culture never learned to name— a modern emotional nest for today’s way of living and loving.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.innovatorx.io/relaxi-app
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/innovatorx.io/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisike/