Joshua Xu shares the personal story behind founding HeyGen and the belief that introverts, experts, and camera-shy creators deserve a powerful way to communicate through video without being on camera.
I did not start HeyGen because I love being on camera.
I started HeyGen because I don’t.
I am a classic introvert. Put me in front of a big crowd or a loud mixer, and I immediately feel out of my depth. The people who speak the fastest, laugh the loudest, and take up the most space usually hold the room’s attention.
But here's what I've come to believe: having something to say and feeling comfortable enough to say it in front of people are two totally different things.
I felt that gap for most of my life. I had thoughts I wanted to share, things I wanted to build toward. But I was always more comfortable behind a screen than on a stage. That’s why I found myself drawn to code, to product, to systems. Never to cameras, microphones, or spotlights.
And over time, I realized I wasn't alone. I kept meeting the same kind of people. People who had so much to offer but felt like they were starting at a disadvantage in today’s attention economy, where we’re overwhelmed by content and information. Not because they had nothing to say. But because saying it out loud, on a public stage, felt like climbing a mountain.
The world moved to video
I built my career during what I think of as the mobile camera era. I watched Snapchat blow up. I watched Instagram and YouTube turn ordinary people into influencers overnight. Suddenly, anyone with a camera and confidence could share their thoughts, fuel their creativity, and even change their life. All through the simple power of showing up on video.
However, none of that ever applied to me.
For most extroverts, filming yourself is natural. Energizing, even. For me, and for millions of introverts like me, it's not just uncomfortable. It's painful. And I don't mean 30% harder. I mean 10x harder.
Here's the thing I didn't admit to anyone for a long time: I wanted that superpower too.
I watched people effortlessly express themselves on video, building audiences, sharing ideas, connecting with people at a scale I couldn't touch. And honestly? I felt jealous. They had access to something I didn't. Not because I lacked ideas. Because the medium itself had shut me out.
As video became the most powerful form of communication on the planet, it created a divide. One between people who could confidently show up on camera, and people who couldn't.
Think about who gets left behind
In a video-first world, it's the quiet experts who get left behind. The subject-matter nerds. The operators, creatives, and coaches who are brilliant but either don't have the time, the experience, or the ease to put themselves out there on video. So they face an impossible choice: stay behind the camera, or burn enormous amounts of time, money, and energy just to show up the way others seem to do naturally.
That never sat right with me. Their voices deserve to travel just as far as anyone else's.
That frustration (and opportunity) is what drove me to build HeyGen.
The moment everything clicked
It started with a simple question: what if I could use AI to create videos without ever standing in front of a camera?
The moment that thought landed, it felt like magic. The thing that had held me back my entire life (the anxiety, the awkwardness, the fundamental discomfort of filming myself) could just... go away.
I didn't build HeyGen because I wanted to start a video company. I didn't build it to become a tech entrepreneur. I built it because I wanted to give introverts the same power extroverts have always had.
I wanted people like me, people with ideas and knowledge and stories worth telling, to finally have a way to share them. Not by forcing ourselves to become someone we're not. But by using a tool that actually works with who we are.
Why I obsess over every detail
This is why I care so much about our product at HeyGen and how our avatars move and feel.
I notice every imperfection. When the movement looks off. When a blink feels stiff. When the facial expressions don't quite land. When something just feels artificial. That sensitivity isn't just professional for me. It's personal. I know exactly how an introvert wants to show up: not perfectly polished, not fake, but authentically themselves. Just without the anxiety.
It's why we built HeyGen around you and your Digital Twin. We are laser-focused on building the highest-quality, most realistic avatar.
We're not here to chase the next “tech” fad. We're here to help you turn your learnings, lived experiences, and hard-won expertise into visual content that looks and feels authentic. In any language. At any scale. With as little friction as we can possibly strip away. All without production and a camera.
What we believe
I founded HeyGen on a handful of convictions that guide everything we build.
- Your personality should never limit your ideas. Introverts, non-native speakers, people who don't fit the typical creator mold: they all deserve the same stage as anyone else.
- Knowledge shouldn't stay trapped in text. Documents, slide decks, and PDFs have their place. But video makes ideas feel real. It builds trust. It helps people engage in ways that static formats just can't.
- Technology should serve the people, not the other way around. The tools should bend so you don't have to. If using HeyGen feels like work, we haven't done our job.
- Quality is non-negotiable. AI is not an excuse for "good enough." Our avatars, our voices, our translations have to clear a higher bar than what you could do on your own. Not a lower one.
- And with this kind of power comes real responsibility. When you can replicate someone's face and voice, you're holding something serious. We commit to strong guardrails, consent, privacy, and security. We protect your digital identity.
We chose a different path
There are a lot of AI video products out there trying to do everything for everyone. At HeyGen, we made a different choice. We're building the best AI avatars in the world, so that the people who've always had something to say but never felt comfortable on camera finally have a way to show up. The camera-shy. The under-resourced. The ones who got skipped because video was never designed for them.
And as I said earlier, that means we obsess over how human our avatars feel. The expressions, the movement of facial muscles, the rhythm of breathing during speech, the tilt of the head, the eye contact. We care about presence, not just pixels.
It also means we design for reusability and scale. You should be able to build entire libraries, courses, onboarding paths, and training programs. Not just one-off clips.
And it means we build for easy, seamless workflows. You start from the prompt, scripts, documents, and materials you already have. Not a blank timeline.
Who we build for
Today, millions of people worldwide use HeyGen. Knowledge-based creators scaling their expertise. Educators reaching more learners. Businesses communicating across languages and time zones.
We'll always serve a range of use cases, from courses to social clips. But at its core, HeyGen is still for the person I used to be. Someone with something valuable to share who just needed a different way to share it.
Because your ideas deserve to be heard. Your knowledge deserves to travel. Your voice matters. You just need the right tool.
We're leveling a playing field that's been tilted against people like me for way too long. So if you've ever had something to say but couldn't bring yourself to say it on camera. If you've ever watched others succeed in a world that seemed designed for a different kind of personality. Know that we built HeyGen for you.
That's why I started this company. That's why we're still here. And that's why we keep building.
Meet Joshua Xu, a visionary technologist and the driving force behind HeyGen. As Co-Founder and CEO, Joshua leads the mission to make AI-generated video and visual storytelling accessible to everyone through innovative AI video generators. Before launching HeyGen, equipped with a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, he was a lead engineer at Snapchat, where he introduced significant innovations in ads ranking, machine learning, and computational photography. Joshua combines deep technical expertise in AI and entrepreneurial instincts. His passion for AI video technology and intuitive user experiences continues to define the future of video creation. Dive into Joshua’s insights as he explores the intersection of creativity, AI, and storytelling.
