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Why illumi Exists: Bridging the Gap Between Humans and AI
Lighting Up Collaboration: The Vision Behind illumi
Co-Creation in Action: The Role of LITEON+ in illumi’s Journey
Former CTO with 15 years of experience leading remote teams; scaled teams to over 100 members in enterprises and startups. Andrey combines technical expertise with leadership to deliver value through strategic planning and transformation. Currently building illumi, an AI whiteboard for teams to organize AI conversations, build on prompts, and create workflows - infrastructure for collective AI intelligence where teams get smarter together. After 7+ years in Asia, he's now based in Singapore and enjoys trail running, scuba diving, and motorcycling across the region.
Lingyi Chang (Ling) is a technologist and entrepreneur with 15 years of experience, including 8 years leading AI and machine learning at Microsoft and AWS across Asia-Pacific. She translates technology into business solutions, helping companies solve problems and drive growth. Ling advises consulting firms and financial institutions while speaking at events for Nvidia, INSEAD, and UBS, advocating for collaborative AI approaches. As co-founder and Chief Product Officer of illumi, she identified how siloed AI limits collaboration and developed a visual platform enabling teams to experiment, learn, and build with AI together.
Generative AI has become a powerful tool for individuals, offering new ways to create and solve problems through various platforms. However, a critical question persists: how can AI empower entire teams? While one-on-one interactions with AI chat tools are often effective, they frequently fall short when it comes to supporting group collaboration. This gap is exactly what illumi aims to address.
Unlike many existing solutions, illumi isn’t just another AI chat. According to Andrey, co-founder of illumi, teams require more than stand-alone tools; they need a collaborative environment where members can engage with AI together in real time. illumi offers this distinct solution, not an AI chat, but a collaborative platform that integrates AI to boost team efficiency.
When GPT-3.5 first came out, Andrey sensed a wave that would reshape the software industry. He believed AI would fundamentally transform how teams build, communicate, and solve problems. To turn this vision into reality, however, he knew he couldn’t do it alone. He needed a partner with deep expertise in AI technology and a shared commitment to reimagining collaboration.
During his time at a startup accelerator in Singapore, Andrey met Ling, an experienced technologist who had worked with global enterprises at Microsoft and AWS. When Andrey shared his idea with her, she was intrigued but also skeptical. “How does that work?” she wondered aloud, as Andrey described a system where AI could bridge the gap between business and technical teams.
She believes AI isn’t a magic solution that can solve everything on its own; it needs structure and clear guidance to be truly effective. What resonated with her in Andrey’s vision was the emphasis on fostering teamwork. She noted that engineers often spend only about 25 percent of their time writing code, while the remaining 75 percent goes toward alignment and communication. For Ling, this was a meaningful opportunity to tackle this persistent challenge and create a tool that makes teamwork more accessible and efficient.
For them, the name illumi is simple but meaningful. It reflects their mission to light up the dark and to illuminate collaboration. They aim to create a product that people can immediately understand and use. It should be intuitive, straightforward, and require no complicated onboarding.
From Andrey and Ling’s perspective, illumi, a collaborative whiteboard powered by AI, holds a unique position in the market. It addresses real pain points, such as the inefficiency of scrolling through endless chat threads and the lack of AI tools truly designed for effective teamwork. Despite its clear potential, the value of illumi was initially underestimated.
In the early days, the team faced skepticism from investors, which led to moments of deep self-doubt. At the time, the world was enamored with the simplicity and accessibility of tools like ChatGPT, with many assuming that AI should always be intuitive and effortless to use.
Ling recalls their first pitch with a sense of frustration, noting, “We were focused on concepts like knowledge alignment and team communication. But many investors questioned: 'Why make things so complicated?' ” This reflected the market's limited understanding of these issues at the time.
illumi aimed to address not just surface-level collaboration processes but deeper questions: how knowledge is understood, organized, and transmitted within teams. This seemingly abstract concept is key to enhancing collaboration efficiency.
illumi's design goes beyond applying AI to accelerate content generation; it rethinks how knowledge flows between people and between humans and AI, accelerating understanding and goal alignment. Through visual whiteboard design, team members can intuitively see how data interconnects and understand which information serves as reference sources for AI generation.
illumi is redefining AI collaboration through visualization and transparency. Rather than being just another AI chat tool, illumi serves as a collaboration platform built around visual interaction. Through its visual knowledge base, teams can organize scattered information, prompts, and outputs on a shared whiteboard, making relationships between knowledge clear and preventing information silos. This structured representation enhances understanding and makes AI’s generation process more transparent, allowing teams to trace the origin and logic behind each output.
Complementing this, visual context control gives teams greater command over the environment in which AI generates content. By dynamically adjusting background data, priorities, and reference sources on the whiteboard, teams can ensure AI responses align with current objectives and context. This visual control transforms AI from a black box into a collaborative, adjustable partner, helping teams maintain consistency and accuracy in complex projects.
In essence, illumi's value isn't about "using AI" but giving AI a clear role and position within a team's knowledge structure. However, with "AI literacy" not yet widespread and the industry insufficiently appreciative of these issues, finding investors and early users who shared their vision proved challenging.
Nevertheless, the team maintained their vision, diligently demonstrating the platform's capabilities and communicating its unique advantages. Over time, their perseverance began to yield results. In recent years, concepts like "Prompt Engineering" and "AI Literacy" have become more widely understood, and the market has evolved. Competitors have emerged exploring similar ideas about human-AI collaboration and AI-driven teams. This trend has validated Andrey and Ling's vision, demonstrating that their ideas are increasingly relevant to the development of AI services. illumi was no longer an isolated concept; it had become part of a growing conversation about the future of teamwork in an AI-driven world.
Every startup has a turning point. For illumi, that moment came with meeting LITEON+. At the time, illumi was still in its early stages with only a product prototype, lacking user feedback and practical validation. They had a vision, but needed proof that it could work.
Ling remembers the early challenges when they first engaged with LITEON+. Fixing bugs and building even the simplest features quickly became the top focus. The workload was much larger than they had expected.
What the team found invaluable was that during this intensive period, LITEON+ became a reliable ally, willing to invest time and resources while demonstrating understanding and trust in the illumi team. Ling recalls receiving constructive feedback that helped them refine and optimize key product features. After three to four months of intense iteration, the team successfully delivered a usable and stable version. Through continuous refinement, that early prototype gradually transformed into what we now know as illumi.
For illumi, LITEON+'s involvement went beyond being an early product user helping validate technical feasibility; they became partners in refining the product. Andrey highlights how seamless the collaboration felt. The LITEON+ team was well-organized, supportive, and approachable, creating a sense of reliability and ease throughout the process. LITEON+’s structured approach made every interaction productive and kept the project on track.
Beyond product development, LITEON+ provided illumi with access to ecosystem resources such as exposure opportunities and relevant introductions. These efforts helped illumi connect with potential users and gain visibility during a critical phase of their growth. This experience became key to illumi's early development. It helped illumi turn vision into progress, shape a product ready for real users, and gain visibility.
Reflecting on illumi’s path, it becomes clear that innovation is not about waiting for ideal timing. Despite early doubts, the team advanced steadily, driven by a clear vision and strong belief in their mission.
Generative AI has become a powerful tool for individuals, offering new ways to create and solve problems through various platforms. However, a critical question persists: how can AI empower entire teams? While one-on-one interactions with AI chat tools are often effective, they frequently fall short when it comes to supporting group collaboration. This gap is exactly what illumi aims to address.
Unlike many existing solutions, illumi isn’t just another AI chat. According to Andrey, co-founder of illumi, teams require more than stand-alone tools; they need a collaborative environment where members can engage with AI together in real time. illumi offers this distinct solution, not an AI chat, but a collaborative platform that integrates AI to boost team efficiency.
When GPT-3.5 first came out, Andrey sensed a wave that would reshape the software industry. He believed AI would fundamentally transform how teams build, communicate, and solve problems. To turn this vision into reality, however, he knew he couldn’t do it alone. He needed a partner with deep expertise in AI technology and a shared commitment to reimagining collaboration.
During his time at a startup accelerator in Singapore, Andrey met Ling, an experienced technologist who had worked with global enterprises at Microsoft and AWS. When Andrey shared his idea with her, she was intrigued but also skeptical. “How does that work?” she wondered aloud, as Andrey described a system where AI could bridge the gap between business and technical teams.
She believes AI isn’t a magic solution that can solve everything on its own; it needs structure and clear guidance to be truly effective. What resonated with her in Andrey’s vision was the emphasis on fostering teamwork. She noted that engineers often spend only about 25 percent of their time writing code, while the remaining 75 percent goes toward alignment and communication. For Ling, this was a meaningful opportunity to tackle this persistent challenge and create a tool that makes teamwork more accessible and efficient.
For them, the name illumi is simple but meaningful. It reflects their mission to light up the dark and to illuminate collaboration. They aim to create a product that people can immediately understand and use. It should be intuitive, straightforward, and require no complicated onboarding.
From Andrey and Ling’s perspective, illumi, a collaborative whiteboard powered by AI, holds a unique position in the market. It addresses real pain points, such as the inefficiency of scrolling through endless chat threads and the lack of AI tools truly designed for effective teamwork. Despite its clear potential, the value of illumi was initially underestimated.
In the early days, the team faced skepticism from investors, which led to moments of deep self-doubt. At the time, the world was enamored with the simplicity and accessibility of tools like ChatGPT, with many assuming that AI should always be intuitive and effortless to use.
Ling recalls their first pitch with a sense of frustration, noting, “We were focused on concepts like knowledge alignment and team communication. But many investors questioned: 'Why make things so complicated?' ” This reflected the market's limited understanding of these issues at the time.
illumi aimed to address not just surface-level collaboration processes but deeper questions: how knowledge is understood, organized, and transmitted within teams. This seemingly abstract concept is key to enhancing collaboration efficiency.
illumi's design goes beyond applying AI to accelerate content generation; it rethinks how knowledge flows between people and between humans and AI, accelerating understanding and goal alignment. Through visual whiteboard design, team members can intuitively see how data interconnects and understand which information serves as reference sources for AI generation.
illumi is redefining AI collaboration through visualization and transparency. Rather than being just another AI chat tool, illumi serves as a collaboration platform built around visual interaction. Through its visual knowledge base, teams can organize scattered information, prompts, and outputs on a shared whiteboard, making relationships between knowledge clear and preventing information silos. This structured representation enhances understanding and makes AI’s generation process more transparent, allowing teams to trace the origin and logic behind each output.
Complementing this, visual context control gives teams greater command over the environment in which AI generates content. By dynamically adjusting background data, priorities, and reference sources on the whiteboard, teams can ensure AI responses align with current objectives and context. This visual control transforms AI from a black box into a collaborative, adjustable partner, helping teams maintain consistency and accuracy in complex projects.
In essence, illumi's value isn't about "using AI" but giving AI a clear role and position within a team's knowledge structure. However, with "AI literacy" not yet widespread and the industry insufficiently appreciative of these issues, finding investors and early users who shared their vision proved challenging.
Nevertheless, the team maintained their vision, diligently demonstrating the platform's capabilities and communicating its unique advantages. Over time, their perseverance began to yield results. In recent years, concepts like "Prompt Engineering" and "AI Literacy" have become more widely understood, and the market has evolved. Competitors have emerged exploring similar ideas about human-AI collaboration and AI-driven teams. This trend has validated Andrey and Ling's vision, demonstrating that their ideas are increasingly relevant to the development of AI services. illumi was no longer an isolated concept; it had become part of a growing conversation about the future of teamwork in an AI-driven world.
Every startup has a turning point. For illumi, that moment came with meeting LITEON+. At the time, illumi was still in its early stages with only a product prototype, lacking user feedback and practical validation. They had a vision, but needed proof that it could work.
Ling remembers the early challenges when they first engaged with LITEON+. Fixing bugs and building even the simplest features quickly became the top focus. The workload was much larger than they had expected.
What the team found invaluable was that during this intensive period, LITEON+ became a reliable ally, willing to invest time and resources while demonstrating understanding and trust in the illumi team. Ling recalls receiving constructive feedback that helped them refine and optimize key product features. After three to four months of intense iteration, the team successfully delivered a usable and stable version. Through continuous refinement, that early prototype gradually transformed into what we now know as illumi.
For illumi, LITEON+'s involvement went beyond being an early product user helping validate technical feasibility; they became partners in refining the product. Andrey highlights how seamless the collaboration felt. The LITEON+ team was well-organized, supportive, and approachable, creating a sense of reliability and ease throughout the process. LITEON+’s structured approach made every interaction productive and kept the project on track.
Beyond product development, LITEON+ provided illumi with access to ecosystem resources such as exposure opportunities and relevant introductions. These efforts helped illumi connect with potential users and gain visibility during a critical phase of their growth. This experience became key to illumi's early development. It helped illumi turn vision into progress, shape a product ready for real users, and gain visibility.
Reflecting on illumi’s path, it becomes clear that innovation is not about waiting for ideal timing. Despite early doubts, the team advanced steadily, driven by a clear vision and strong belief in their mission.
