Unconventional (creativity) has always been her thing: No two days are the same in Xia’s life.
The journey is exciting, non-monotonous, and (mostly) unpredictable. Through richly lived experiences like jumping into the Central Eastern Europe and navigating through the startup landscape in peak-COVID and scaling local women-centric startup communities out of Hyderabad; Airbnb-hopping for 15+ months in search for homes around the world while sketching life’s window views, Xia is well-equipped with resilience to adapt (evolve) in uncertainty, and grit towards pursuing bold ambitions.
As the boots on the ground driving go-to-market strategy for Draper Startup House, which defines a new category of business travel (entrepreneur tourism), Xia was based across 10 cities (Europe, SEA, India) between 2021 and 2024; hyper-scaling the venture from 10 locations to 32 startup houses across six continents.
Being an active advocate for women empowerment through solo travel, and an artist-at-large on a mission to do one creative thing a day, Xia applies her learnings and instinct in the business world. Discomfort zones that challenge her to explore new territories and scale greater heights keep her curious and eager to constantly broaden perspectives and iterate.
Xia went on to simulate a year of retirement, curious to explore what life as a 61-year-old could look like, challenging society’s perception towards ageing. While calibrating life, she explored growth in various forms, like learning how to snorkel off the coast of Cannes, sail in Estonia, roast coffee in Costa Rica, and made (more) art across various mediums, meeting more founders and learning their “why”, and worked only on Sundays. Determined to validate the global claim that Singapore’s passport ranks top in the world, she also went on to explore 39 countries, 56 flights, and many more overland rides. [Read the Retirement Year update]
In 2025, Xia took learnings from the startup ecosystem to the classroom of 100+ international Gen Z founders at TETR College of Business, creatively delivering workshops that inspire students. She led the pioneer cohort of undergraduates through a successful semester on entrepreneurship in SEA, launching 17 innovative Kickstarter projects which raised $80K USD from 1100+ backers in the initial hours of launch, celebrating her students’ wins as they rang their first-ever sales bell 🛎️ (which she vibe-coded for her students).
Through it all, one thing proves true: entrepreneurship is a (more lively) way of (living) life.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0N6emRnTbhzMkPfQXw17kO?si=b8b8d2cbad7e4420
Xia’s Two-Cents | Writings & Panels
About The Xia Operating System