Twenty laptop stands ought to be enough for one person. Julianna He tried more than that. She was travelling between China and the United States, working on a small MacBook Air, and discovering an inconvenient truth about the portable office: the computer had learned to travel light, while its furniture was still packing for a fortnight.
The stands she tried were too big or too heavy for the way she worked. A useful object had become another thing to carry. Airports and coffee shops offered plenty of places to open a laptop, but very little room for the equipment that might accompany it. She teamed up with a product expert and began working on an alternative.
That shopping expedition sits at the beginning of MOFT, the accessories company she founded and leads as CEO. It also supplies a useful introduction to her judgment. She had a specific objection to something people were already buying. Instead of accepting the inconvenience as part of the arrangement, she made it the brief.
The stand that had to earn its luggage allowance
Her early working life was already international. On LinkedIn, she describes a decade of global marketing experience in digital accessories. She lists Hunan University of Technology and Business, where she studied from 2006 to 2010. By the time MOFT reached its first crowdfunding audience, she knew the accessories business from the marketing side as well as the customer's side.
That combination matters. A new accessory needs a reason to exist that survives a crowded product page. It also has to survive being dropped into a bag on a rushed morning. Her problem was easy to explain because she had personally spent time and money looking for an answer.
The first stand attached beneath the laptop and folded away when unused. Origami supplied a way to turn a flat surface into a supporting structure, then flatten it again. The appealing part was the absence of a separate packing decision. Once attached, the stand travelled with the machine.
In an early LinkedIn post, He said the team had spent more than two years designing that first product. She also reported passing 10,000 Kickstarter backers within 22 days. Those two intervals belong together: a long stretch spent getting an object ready, followed by a much shorter stretch in which strangers decided whether they wanted it.
Thirty-two thousand people vote with their wallets
The 2019 Kickstarter campaign raised $926,567 from more than 32,000 backers. He discussed the launch with crowdfunding interviewer Salvador Briggman. The sum is striking, but the number of individual decisions is just as revealing. Thousands of people understood the proposition well enough to put money behind an unfamiliar company's folding stand.
A small physical product has a particular advantage in that kind of public test. Its argument can be demonstrated. Open it, place the computer on it, fold it away. The viewer can judge the transformation without learning a new vocabulary. There is something rather civilised about an invention whose sales pitch can be performed with two hands.
By May 2020, Made by Chapter was introducing the stand to the UK as its official distributor. The agency's team had first backed MOFT through crowdfunding, then tried the product themselves. A customer relationship had become a distribution relationship. For He, the object was beginning to travel through other people's working lives.
A fold worth defending
Recognition brought a less charming companion: imitation. In May 2020, a brand protection statement signed by He described MOFT's response to counterfeits. The company introduced package security codes, sought reports from customers, and pursued intellectual property protection. Its Honor the Originality campaign had received reports of 230 links to suspected counterfeiters.
There is a revealing tension here. The product's appeal depended on being immediately understandable. That same clarity made its visible idea accessible to people who wanted to copy it. A fold can look simple precisely because the work of choosing its dimensions and materials has disappeared into the finished object.
He's response included continued invention alongside enforcement. The statement described observing everyday life and studying customer problems before developing products. It presents a practical sort of stubbornness: protect the work already done, then return to the next thing worth making. The customer community had a role in both parts of that effort.
“Not only are we creators, we are also users.”Julianna He · brand protection statement, 2020
The phone becomes a meeting place
The fold soon moved closer to the phone. In 2021, MOFT collaborated with Popl on a version of its circular phone stand and grip with contact-sharing technology. A physical accessory could prop up a device and help its owner exchange details. He described the collaboration in terms of fun and function, treating the social encounter as part of the product's job.
The choice of partner widened the brief. Someone might need to watch, film, hold, or introduce themselves using the same device. MOFT was finding extra work for the small patch of space on its back. An accessory can become surprisingly busy when its owner refuses to carry four separate ones.
By 2023, that conversation had reached fashion. MOFT's collaboration with Tommy Bogo's TOMBOGO appeared in the setting of the label's Spring/Summer 2024 Paris presentation. The runway show took place on June 22, 2023. A company associated with laptop stands was participating in a world where what people carry is also part of how they dress.
That connection makes sense within He's original complaint about luggage. Everyday tools have to live with the rest of a person's belongings. Shape, texture, colour, and the ease of carrying something all influence whether it leaves the house. Utility still has to persuade the hand to pick it up.
A tripod, then a little paper rebellion
The Snap Phone Tripod Stand received an iF Design Award in 2024. Its folding hinge applied the familiar MOFT idea to the business of positioning a phone for filming or a call. He offered a succinct account of the ambition behind it: “I believe that everyone is a creator. All we need is to be set free.”
Then came a pleasing complication. A company making accessories for digital devices introduced a place to write on paper. Launched on Kickstarter in June 2024, Snap Flow combined a notepad, an organiser, a stand, and a folding pen. It attached magnetically to a phone, bringing a small analog workspace along for the ride.
The product divided the process into capturing, organising, and focusing. A thought could be written down, stored, or put in view as a reminder. The phone carried the paper; the paper required no navigation through a screen. Even in an accessories catalogue, a pen can make a quietly persuasive argument for its continued employment.
He described flow as movement from inspiration through creation to action. That gives the little notepad a place in her larger project. Portability includes the transition between activities, and between the tools those activities require. A useful office can contain a screen and a scrap of handwriting without demanding that one replace the other.
- 2019Under the laptop
- 2021Behind the phone
- 2024Beside the idea
- 2025Inside the sleeve
The café gets an origami bar
In October 2024, He brought that working world into a room at The Kinn in Venice, California. MOFT's LA Tech Week event welcomed 300 guests and included a café, an Origami Bar for trying accessories, and conversations with artists and creators. She hosted a session involving Christopher Chan and Tommy Bogo, moderated by Cassell Ferere.
Artist Shantell Martin's collaboration with MOFT also featured at the event. There were films, discussions, and a live art performance. He returned for the closing keynote. The founder who had started with the problem of carrying a stand was now making space for people who might use one, and for the conversations around their work.
The gathering offers a more human picture of her ambition than a catalogue can. A mobile office still needs people. Its owners move through cafés, conferences, and conversations, carrying work between them. Giving those users somewhere to meet was a natural extension of a business concerned with where creation happens.
What fits inside the next fold?
On September 17, 2025, MOFT announced that its Carry Sleeve was available in Apple Stores and on Apple's website. The sleeve combines protection for a MacBook with a folding stand. He called the retail arrival a milestone and pointed to Apple's influence on her company's approach to materials and user experience.
The choice of product gives the occasion a satisfying circularity. The original problem involved bringing a stand along with a computer. Here, the thing that carries the computer becomes the stand. Protection and support share the same piece of luggage. The argument has grown without requiring the bag to follow suit.
By September 2026, He was discussing another set of possibilities in Japan: AirTag cases, mobile batteries, iPad keyboards, and styluses under development. She wanted the proposed electronics to carry MOFT's approach to compactness, design, and texture. She also discussed a newly established Japanese entity and interest in designs drawing on Japanese traditions.
Those plans set up a demanding next chapter. Each additional function has to coexist with the restraint that made the first product useful. A keyboard, a battery, and a stand ask different questions of their maker. He began by rejecting more than 20 answers to one question. Her business now depends on preserving that willingness to be a difficult customer.