Most designers spend their careers shipping other people's products. Xinran Ma decided to build one of his own. He trained as an architect at Columbia, moved into product design, and spent four years in a stable remote role at Redfin before walking away to run Design with AI full time. The newsletter now reaches more than 40,000 designers, alongside a Maven course and three books.
This conversation is about the thinking behind that move. Xinran talks about the exact night he resigned, the moment his wife showed him a finance app where his side income had passed his salary, and why he refuses to turn any of it into a "quit your job" sermon. The throughline: build a safety net for your own growth while you still have the job, follow your curiosity rather than the trend, and keep the feedback loop short enough to stay motivated.
Chapters
00:00 From architecture to product design
16:40 Leaving a stable job
24:52 Books, then newsletter, then course
31:26 Input and output
33:24 The newsletter takes off
35:46 Growing intentionally and sustainably
38:16 AI, design, and what lasts
46:15 What sustainability really means
49:27 Start small, start early, start hungry
56:48 Finding clarity and your North Star
Resources
Design with AI newsletter: https://designwithai.substack.com/
Maven course (AI for Product Designers): https://maven.com/xinran
Xinran on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmaxinran/
Xinran's website: https://www.xinranma.com/
Hosted by Bear Liu. More at https://bearliu.com
