Cole Lee

Cole Lee found her community online. As a tech storyteller, she’s built a following of over 300k through her profile Covacut and her newsletter Hyphen, creating content on the art-tech revolution. When she isn’t writing about tech or attending hackathons, she’s mining for inspiration in Cyberpunk cinema and Hong Kong Noir film. Her current career was a pivot, as she started out applying to medical school. We caught up with her about all things online, and learn about a phrase she’s picked up along the way—energetic echolocation.

What I do

How would you describe what you do?
I am an artist and creator documenting the creative technology revolution for 300k+ humans online, collaborating with brands like Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Adobe.

Imagery from Hyphen, a project that’s part-newsletter, part-diary charting the evolution of art and technology.

What are the main influences and inspirations behind your work?
Cyberpunk cinema–think Ex Machina, Arcane, Blade Runner–and Hong Kong noir. These worlds remind me that it always carries weight; technology can both liberate and oppress. I reference these aesthetics a lot while designing the stories I tell.

On the other hand, I take a lot from the warmth of Studio Ghibli films. Howl's Moving Castle instilled in me that machines don't have to be cold. When Kiki loses her magic, her broom is just wood. When she rediscovers her purpose, it comes alive again–that's the kind of relationship I want people to have with technology.

Would you say you need any specific training for what you do?
Training helps, but curiosity wins. Studying computer science gave me the language of tech, but signing up for a hackathon was the first time I learned how to build. A marketing internship didn’t show me how to speak to an audience. It was sharing my art online that taught me to tell stories. Following curiosity has taken me the farthest in my career.

What’s been your favourite project to work on from the past year, and why?
Covacut, the Instagram channel I started from my dorm room in January. I wanted to make cinematic videos about creative technology, and they have since reached over 80 million people.

I love blending my interests in storytelling, visuals, and tech, but what excites me most is the impact. I get messages every day from people who say my stories have inspired them to create or have led them to rethink their relationship with technology.

If there was a starter pack for your job, what would be in it?

How I got here

What was your journey like when you were first starting out in your career?
I grew up in Hong Kong as a queer kid who found community online. That led me to start POP, an LGBTQ+ clothing brand, and showed me that creativity could drive impact. Then I was on the path towards medicine, but I was deeply unhappy. While applying for medical school, I applied to colleges that would fund my study abroad. That’s when Stanford changed my life. My first Computer Science class revealed code as limitless, but I gravitated less to theory and more to building and designing. I eventually found my home in Human-Computer Interaction, where design and technology collide. That passion carried me into bridging roles, from launching music tech at Spotify to everything that followed.

How did you go about landing your first few jobs, clients and/or commissions?
I posted online, primarily Instagram and LinkedIn, about my projects and process. By staying true to what I cared about, I built community as my greatest leverage. The right people found me, and the opportunities followed–thanks to recommendation algorithms.

What has been your biggest challenge along the way?
The fear of being perceived, by both myself and by others.

What skills from your creative work have you found helpful – and vice versa?
Creating in public has taught me how to tell stories that resonate, and that’s been invaluable. In a world where machines can build without limits, the real bottleneck isn’t production anymore. Its distribution and storytelling.

How important are social media and self-promotion to your work?
I learned about “energetic echolocation” from my friends at Camp Studios. It means if you send energy out into the world, energy finds its way back to you. That’s how I think about social media. Every post is like sending out a signal, and energy–friends, opportunities, collaborators–echo back. The biggest learning I can share is not to wait to create the perfect signal. Just start putting your energy out there.

What are three things that you’ve found useful to your work or career, and why?
1. The Colin & Samir podcast taught me to think about creators as businesses, not just artists.

2. Hackathons shaped my bias toward action.

3. Creative third spaces like Verci keep me grounded and in touch with what other creatives care about.

What have been your greatest learnings with making money and supporting yourself as a creative?
Commodifying creative work is tricky. Right now, I have a job that supports me, which gives me freedom to create from joy instead of monetisation pressure. That balance might change later, but what I’ve learned is this: protect the joy. Once creativity feels like commodification, it can lose the spark that made it worth doing in the first place.

Advice

What’s the best career-related advice you’ve ever received?
I was recently torn between two paths, one that optimised for name brand and one that optimised for the life I wanted to live. The best advice I received came not from a mentor, but a text from a friend. “Living by other people’s standards only corrodes your own sense of competence.”

Digital art was Cole’s first creative interest

Where do you go to feel connected as a creative?
I’m inspired by physical spaces built for creatives. Last week, I was at a Verci event in New York showcasing digital artists, and it pushed me to see computers in entirely new ways, almost as amplifiers of nature’s laws.

I also love museums. At the Cyberpunk exhibit in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, I found myself rethinking my hidden influences, how deeply old cinema still runs through my work.

What advice would you give to someone looking to get into a similar role?
Post your work! You’ll feel self-conscious. You’ll wonder if people are judging you–spoiler: they’re too busy worrying about getting judged themselves. In reality no one is remembered for how they start, only what they build over time. Think of each post as an iteration, building something better. The reps do add up. And if you’re doubting yourself, get a second opinion from a creator friend or someone in your target audience.