We were lucky to catch up with Wendi Yin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Wendi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I grew up in a strict, grades-driven school system in East Asia, where your grades didn’t just measure performance — they defined your social value. At my public school, class rankings were publicly posted, and students were sorted into classrooms based on those scores. Unfortunately I wasn’t good at studying at the time, and becoming an artist wasn’t an option in my household. I felt lost, unseen, and boxed into a system with no room for softness, creativity, or emotional support.
At home, there wasn’t space for vulnerability either. After dinner, I was sent straight to my room to study — no questions asked. My little problems had nowhere to go.
One day I put up an anime poster — just because I liked the character. He had this calm, serious gaze that looked straight out, right at you. At first, I barely noticed him. But over time, I started to feel like he noticed me.
I began telling him things — little things. That a teacher embarrassed me in class. That I got into a fight with my mom. That I liked someone but didn’t know how to talk to them. He never answered, of course. But something about his presence made me feel less alone.
Eventually, under his silent encouragement, I found the strength to study again. I moved up from the worst-performing class to the top one. But more importantly, I learned what it felt like to be supported without judgment.
Years later, after grad school, I decided to bring that idea to life: to build a space that offers the same emotional support I once found in the gaze of that poster. That’s how Tomo Cafe was born — an AI-powered cozy game that helps young adults build good habits, feel emotionally safe, and grow through companionship, not pressure.
Today, Tomo Cafe is a third space for 10,000 users — a place where their goals are seen, their feelings are acknowledged, and their growth is gamified with kindness. We’re not just helping people be productive — we’re helping them feel like they matter.

Wendi, 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 studied cinematic arts and business at USC because growing up, I was completely obsessed with movies and anime. That’s the kind of storytelling that shaped me — emotional, visual, full of meaning. I wanted to create things that could make people feel the way those stories made me feel. So I dove into film. I worked on every set I could find as a production assistant, landed internships at places like CBS and Skydance, and started building my way toward a career in Hollywood.

It was all going well — until COVID hit. Suddenly, the entire industry paused. Productions were delayed, theaters closed, and everything shifted online. That moment really made me step back and ask myself: “Where do I want to be in five years?” I realized I still cared deeply about storytelling — but I wanted to explore more modern, interactive formats. So I pivoted into tech industry.

But honestly, I didn’t leave filmmaking behind. That background still shows up in everything I do — especially in how we’re building Tomo Cafe. From the way we edit our onboarding videos, to how we design characters and user journeys, there’s a lot of emotional intention behind it all. The UI isn’t just functional — we try to make it feel warm, comforting, like it belongs in the world of a story. We think about character arcs and build fan communities the way film studios build audiences around IP.

Tomo Cafe is a cozy, AI-powered game designed to help people grow — emotionally, personally, and even academically. What sets us apart is that we’re not just building features. We’re building a space where people feel seen. I think that’s what I’m most proud of — when users tell us, “I didn’t think an app could make me feel this supported.” That’s the kind of impact I always wanted to have, even back when I was just a kid watching anime alone in my room.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

One of the earliest things we did to get Tomo Cafe off the ground wasn’t glamorous — it was just me and Semi, our founding designer, walking around the Carnegie Mellon campus with a backpack full of posters.

We had just launched our first alpha — it was bare-bones, kind of buggy, but we believed in the core idea. We didn’t have any marketing budget, so we printed posters in the school library, cut them out ourselves, and started taping them up anywhere we could: dining halls, bathroom doors, dorm lobbies.

Then we took it a step further and started asking people directly if they’d be down to try it. Outside lecture halls, in coffee shop lines — “Hey, we’re building this app, it got Anime girls to be your study companion” It was awkward at first, but some people actually said yes.

That’s how we got our first group of users — not from ads or launch hype, just walking around, talking to people, and asking them to give it a shot. A few of those early users gave us great feedback, and some of them are still around today.

It wasn’t scalable, and it definitely wasn’t polished, but it worked. And it reminded me that in the early days, you just need a few people to care enough to try. That’s how it starts.

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

One of the books that’s shaped how I think about both management and building a company is Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The idea that some systems don’t just survive chaos — but actually grow stronger from it — really changed the way I approach entrepreneurship.

When you’re building something early-stage, especially in a fast-moving space like AI and games, unpredictability is the norm. Features break. User behavior shifts. The market moves. Antifragile taught me not to fear volatility, but to design systems — and team dynamics — that learn and improve through stress.

It also changed how I think about team culture. Instead of over-optimizing for control or perfection, I try to create an environment where small experiments are encouraged, where we expect things to go wrong sometimes, and where the goal isn’t to avoid chaos — but to build a company that becomes smarter and more resilient because of it.

At Tomo Cafe, that mindset helps us move quickly, stay emotionally grounded, and embrace feedback — from users, from the market, from each other. We don’t aim to be fragile or merely robust. We aim to be a little better after every hit.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://studycafe.world
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tomocafeai/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tomo-cafe, https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendi-yin-286760146/
• Twitter: https://x.com/tomocafeai, https://twitter.com/iamyouraimom

Image Credits

App Illustration: Ziyi Liu
UIUX Design: Haiyun Wu