Amy's time at Stanford University, encompassing both her BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering. This is where she met the two people who would define the next phase of her life: Elena Wagenmans and Cinnamon Sipper.
Getting In
Amy arrived at Stanford in fall 2019, weeks after the worst summer of her life. Both paternal grandparents and her maternal grandmother had all died within weeks of each other in July and August. Her father Jason flew to China, leaving Amy to manage the household alone at seventeen. Her mother Sue had already been dead for three years.
She got a C in anatomy and physiology her senior year. Stanford flagged it as "alarming." Her counselor Mrs. Ashley Seanor at Dunlap High School wrote a letter explaining the circumstances. Amy later thanked Seanor for "being such a great counselor during these past four years."
Stanford accepted her anyway. She arrived carrying four losses and a clarinet.
On December 14, 2018, she had posted on Instagram: "AHH ADMITTED TO THE STANFORD CLASS OF 2023! ❤️🌲" The exclamation is almost unbearably innocent given what the previous months had contained.
Timeline
- Arrived at Stanford approximately 2019 (class of 2019 from high school).
- Freshman fall 2019: Clarinet lessons with Professor Mark Brandenburg at the Brain Music Center. Applied for a scholarship. Overslept and missed a lesson once.
- VP of Stanford Queer and Asian Club from October 2019.
- Intern at Stanford Legal Design Lab from December 2019.
- Babysitting for Professor Carol Vernallis's daughter "Bea."
- Part of "Q&A Core" and "Pathways Project" (paid student positions).
- Undergraduate researcher in the Stanford SHAPE Lab (haptics, shape-changing interfaces).
- Member of Stanford Women in Design, Engineers for a Sustainable World.
- Wrote for The Stanford Daily, spring 2020.
- COVID fall 2020: Emailing PHY41 and ME102 problem sets at 2-3am.
- Played in the Stanford Symphony Orchestra (clarinet).
- Minor in Music.
- Study abroad in Berlin.
- Gap year 2021-22 to work at Apple as a Product Design Engineer.
- Returned for MS in Mechanical Engineering alongside Elena and Cinnamon.
- David Kelley (IDEO founder, creator of "design thinking") was her professor. He gave away his own design books. This connection is part of why Vizcom's design philosophy resonates with her.
What Happened Here
Stanford is where Amy built the foundation that everything else rests on. The Stanford SHAPE Lab gave her hands-on haptics research. The Music minor and Symphony Orchestra kept the clarinet from Peoria alive. The study abroad in Berlin broadened her world. Engineers for a Sustainable World and Stanford Women in Design connected her to communities. The Stanford Daily gave her a writing voice.
And then, during the MS, three mechanical engineering students found each other, started a company (Mobius), and entered the dynamics that would play out over the next several years. Elena was CEO. Amy was COO. Cinnamon was the third founder who would be removed first.
The gap year at Apple (2021-22) is notable: Amy left Stanford, interned at Apple Softgoods (working on the FineWoven iPhone case), received a full-time return offer of approximately $150k total comp, and chose not to take it. She came back for the MS and co-founded Taya instead. See Apple for the full story. Apple was the safety net she walked away from.
Freshman year Amy helped her father Jason Zhou draft his English professional biography. A Stanford freshman editing a neuroscience professor's bio because her English was better. The immigrant family dynamic that quietly underwrites everything.
In Amy's Words
On June 17, 2024, she posted: "Graduated from Stanford today 🎓🌲 Feeling so so grateful for everyone and everything!" This was the MS completion, during the Taya era. She was grateful on Instagram and grinding herself to dust in private.
Amy does not write sentimentally about Stanford in her diaries. It appears as a credential ("Stanford B.S. M.S."), a network (the TomKat grant, the a16z connection), and the origin point of the Elena Wagenmans relationship. The Stanford Daily articles from spring 2020, written during early COVID, show a different Amy: lighter, writing about music and quarantine activities, before the startup era began.