Andy Liu of Lullaby: Her Boyfriend's Bedtime Story Beat Calm, Headspace & Melatonin
with Andy Liu — Founder, Lullaby
Listen on Spotify
About This Episode
Most apps fight to keep you scrolling. Andy built Lullaby to do the opposite — get you off your phone and fall asleep. It started at 2 AM, after a consulting deadline, when her boyfriend made up a bedtime story and it worked better than any meditation app she'd tried.
On this episode of 18VC, we sit down with Andy, founder of Lullaby — an AI sleep companion that talks you toward sleep and then gets out of the way — on why she's not building a generic AI companion, how “sleep intelligence” is her moat against ChatGPT, and why she'd rather you delete her app.
Highlights
- The 2 AM origin story: a boyfriend's bedtime story out-performed Calm, Headspace, melatonin, and magnesium
- Why her North Star is the opposite of every companion app — take you “from scrolling your phone to turning off your phone”
- The Reddit post that validated the idea, and the top comment that said it all: “Protect that man at all cost”
- Why she started the company on gut, not market research — and why speed of iteration is the real moat
- The ICP she's chasing: “overstimulated achievers” who can sleep but can't turn their brain off
- Her answer to the killer investor question — if ChatGPT and Claude Voice sound human, what's left? “Sleep intelligence.”
- The privacy design: short-term memory feeds a classifier, so the app never stores every sentence you say
- The surprising interview finding — the content that helps you sleep is usually rooted in childhood familiarity
About Andy Liu
Andy Liu
Founder, Lullaby
Andy Liu is the founder of Lullaby, an AI sleep companion that talks users toward sleep and then gets out of the way. A former consultant who studied at NYU, she started the company after a 2 AM bedtime story from her boyfriend out-performed every meditation app she'd tried — and built Lullaby to get people off their phones instead of hooked on them.
LinkedInHosts
Timestamps
00:00 — Intro
02:15 — Cold open
02:37 — From Chongqing to NYU to consulting
04:22 — The pressure — and the sleep spiral
07:39 — 2 AM: the bedtime story that worked
14:45 — Why Lullaby isn't an AI companion
18:53 — “Protect that man” — validating on Reddit
20:23 — Starting on gut, not market research
23:11 — The ICP: overstimulated achievers
24:52 — What Lullaby actually is today
28:00 — What “trust” in an AI really means
33:52 — The problem they actually solve
37:12 — What the user interviews revealed
42:20 — “Is it real, or AI?” — the voice
44:02 — The moat: sleep intelligence
47:54 — Privacy & the memory design
52:21 — The future: a sleep layer for Whoop & Oura
55:29 — Perfectionism, killed
57:04 — Advice for young founders
More Episodes
Barry Li: He Ran a $1K/Week “Dark Market” at 15 — Now He Teaches Kids to Out-Build AI
with Barry Li
Barry Li — founder of OMNIAPATH and Wov3 — on running a $1K/week dorm “dark market” at 15, killing a profitable business the day he saw ChatGPT, and how to survive the AI era.
Founders, Foreign Markets, and Going Global from Korea with The Ventures' Ethan Cho
with Ethan Cho
Ethan Cho of TheVentures on building an AI-native fund, why “good companies” beat “good stocks,” and the brutal signals he uses to tell real founders from tourists.
With Model OS Founder Fernando Jia: The Doom of the “Rent Model” Era
with Fernando Jia
Fernando shared with us his journey building the survival layer for AI Applications.
Never Miss an Episode
Subscribe to the 18VC Podcast and get informed when new episodes are released.