ADPList Founder Felix Lee: AI Proves Design is More Important
ADPList co-founder and CEO Felix Lee stated that while outsiders claimed AI would replace design, it has instead proven that design holds greater value.
Lee, who has no formal design degree, was told by venture capitalists at age 20 that Singaporeans could not build companies and faced numerous job rejections. He transformed Google Sheets during the pandemic into ADPList, the world's largest free mentoring platform, which now has over 1 million users, 40,000 mentors, and spans 140 countries.
The platform has provided hundreds of millions of minutes of free guidance, with mentors from companies like Netflix, Airbnb, and Google. It has received support from Sequoia Capital India (now Peak XV) and Goodwater, and Lee was named in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia.
In an interview, he emphasized that judgment, rather than pixels, is the true moat of design. While originality may be dead, products that look similar can still achieve win-win outcomes. The chaos of super apps versus the Western minimalist approach reflects cultural differences rather than quality gaps.
He also discussed the importance of correctly navigating co-founder relationships, hiring mistakes he wishes to retract, and how his athletic experiences taught him to face failure.
The platform connects global users and mentors for free, with funding from early investments supporting its scale expansion. User growth drives the mentor network and conversation volume, reinforcing the scarcity of design judgment in the AI era. The beneficiaries are global talents and the mentor community seeking opportunities, while the traditional paid coaching model is under pressure.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Felix Lee obtained a diploma in engineering and business from Singapore Polytechnic early in his career and has no traditional design background. He co-founded Packdat (later acquired) and served as the product and design lead at the YC project Gotrade, where he spearheaded democratizing investment products in Southeast Asia. During the pandemic, he started from Google Sheets and transformed his personal rejection experiences into a free mentoring network.
On the capital front, in 2021, he secured $1.3 million in funding from Sequoia Capital India and Goodwater, using the resources for platform matching algorithms, community operations, and global expansion, rather than heavy asset content production. The motivation is to eliminate barriers to opportunity access, rapidly accumulate network effects through a free model, and turn personal failure paths into scalable trust infrastructure.
It is similar to early Meetup or Indie Hackers communities but focuses more on one-on-one professional guidance. It is currently transitioning from a regional spreadsheet tool to a global mentorship infrastructure, having moved beyond early growth into a phase of consolidating network density.
Essentially, it represents a reconstruction of the industry chain. Traditional career development relies on alumni networks and paid channels, while the platform reconstructs access structures with zero barriers to entry. The mechanism is to reduce friction using free services and algorithms, making judgment and real experience tradable scarce resources rather than degrees or pixel outputs.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- The stronger the tool, the more valuable the judgment.
- Paths of rejection often lead to larger networks.
- Free is not a subsidy; it is a leverage of trust.