Raymond's User Manual

Couple Cofounders: Raymond and Yuzu

6 min read

Raymond Hou’s business is not run by him alone; it is a two-person partnership built through long-term collaboration with his wife, Song Zhiyou (Yuzu). They married in July 2019 and formally founded two brand lines, “Raymond Thirty” and 「柚智夫妻」, together in July 2020, putting their marriage and work on the same track. In Raymond’s self-positioning, this is the identity of “couple cofounders,” not simply “one creator plus an assistant.”

Origin: from the Beijing plan to returning to Taiwan during the pandemic

Their collaboration existed before the brands. When Yuzu worked in content operations at a media agency in Taipei, she included Raymond among the speakers on a “speaker development list”; her first impression of him was not especially positive. One turning point in moving the relationship forward was Raymond’s invitation: “I’m preparing to go to Beijing. Would you come with me?” For Yuzu, this took their relationship from “Should we be together?” directly to “Should we work hard toward the same goal?”1 They therefore went to Beijing together. Yuzu worked as a community manager at a local coworking space, deliberately developing her ability to cultivate the “soul of a space.” The original plan was to stay three to five years, but the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020 brought them back to Taiwan after six months. After returning, they did not let the interrupted plan stall; instead, they redirected their energy to the Raymond Thirty podcast. Raymond also began working as a digital-transformation consultant for a Taiwanese brand group.

A two-brand structure: two tracks, one community

The couple deliberately divided their work into two brands. “Raymond Thirty” carries workplace perspectives, digital work methods, and courses; it is the outward-facing methodology and product line. 「柚智夫妻」 carries their life together, an entrepreneurship diary, and travel records. Yuzu writes “Yuzu Says” and the couple’s entrepreneurship diary, adding the emotional and everyday dimension that Raymond discusses less publicly. The two tracks share the same audience, whom they call “allies” and “islanders,” leading to the later subscription community (the Lifehacker journey / Lifehacker Islands). In a public revenue retrospective in 2024, Raymond explicitly described the business as belonging to “Yuzu and me, the two of us,” rather than as an individual achievement, showing that this identity is shared at the business level too. The retrospective reported total company revenue of about NT$9.6 million in 2023, all from content production and membership operations. At the time, the brand had fewer than 4,000 Instagram followers and about 6,500 newsletter subscribers. Raymond used this to support the idea that a company of one can operate through niche trust rather than high traffic; after operating costs, taxes, and outsourced work were deducted, less than half was actually retained.2

Complementary division of labor

Their collaboration rests on complementary personalities and abilities. Raymond is more rational, efficiency-oriented, and focused on doing everything as well as possible; his first response is often self-reflection and review. Yuzu shifts between “being emotional with people and rational about work”; with a theater background, she is accustomed to recording life through video and writing. In their actual division of labor, Raymond leads the content and methodology, while Yuzu takes on visual documentation, community, and relationship-building. Friends once called Yuzu an “underground agent” because she was good at identifying and helping promising people around her. This later extended into her role as Raymond’s agent and the brand’s outward-facing connector. Both see themselves as “operators”—they find fulfillment in connecting people and matching resources to the right person. This shared professional tendency is the underlying force that allows them to run community and content at the same time.

Conflict as a collaboration mechanism

Combining marriage and work comes at the cost of frequent friction. In the early stage starting in 2020, they put nearly every day off into podcasting: livestreams on Friday, editing on Saturday, and scriptwriting on Sunday. This was also the period when they “argued the most.” Raymond’s high standards for detail (music coming in half a second late, a partnership email not being clear enough) would turn directly into nitpicking and put pressure on Yuzu. They did not treat conflict as a problem that had to be eliminated, but developed relationship rules: after an argument, do not give each other the silent treatment for more than ten minutes; when angry, “hold hands first, look into each other’s eyes, and speak slowly”; when one person becomes emotional, the other first stays quiet. Yuzu’s core judgment about the relationship is not “finding the right person,” but “finding someone willing to change together”; she describes them as “slowly becoming the right person for each other.”3 This ability to turn conflict into adjustment is considered key to being both partners and business collaborators.

Shared goals and meaning

Supporting this identity is a shared wish that came before business: the two had always wanted to “open a shared space,” a “utopia” where people they liked could gather to cook, exchange ideas, and try different possibilities. Their coworking-space work in Beijing, podcast, and group in Taiwan after returning were all understood as accumulating “allies, people, projects, and stories” toward this goal. In this framework, business is not opposed to life; the two are integrated. Raymond and Yuzu treat building a business around something they love as part of their shared way of life.

Further reading

Sources cited

Footnotes

  1. Hou Zhixun, “【Yuzu Says】What Is the Couple’s Shared Goal? The First Public Story of How Yuzu and Raymond Met,” podcast, 2020-05-13. View original ↩

  2. Hou Zhixun, “Independent Creator, Fewer Than 10,000 Followers: How to Reach NT$9.6 Million in Annual Revenue?” WordPress, 2024-03-11. View original ↩

  3. Hou Zhixun, “【Yuzu Says】When Did I Feel Raymond Was ‘the Right Person’? A Model of Friend Groups,” podcast, 2020-05-30. View original ↩

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