Zhonghao Max Yu
I’m Max Yu, a student founder building at the intersection of finance, technology, media, and design.
Currently building SuMarket and studying finance at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.
Bloomington, Indiana · Originally from San Diego
Welcome to my office.
Everything I build lives in one room — with the Pacific out the window. Scroll to look around: the shelf, the desk, the closet, the rig, the car.
Discipline came first.
Ten years of competitive swimming — All-American, CIF State finalist, a school record in the 200 Medley Relay. The shelf came home before any of the rest existed.
I started swimming at eight, in San Diego. By the end I had ten years of 5 AM practices, an All-American honor, a CIF State final — 5th in the 200 Medley Relay — and a school record that still stands.
The medals matter less than the operating system it installed: show up before anyone is watching, trust volume over talent, and treat feedback as a gift even when it stings.
Every venture since — the apparel brand, the photography work, SuMarket — runs on habits that were built lap by lap in that pool.
SuMarket is built right here.
A financial-market intelligence platform — daily briefings across 10+ sectors, three reading depths, web + iOS. Founded, designed, and shipped from this desk.
The product
Daily briefings across 10+ sectors — tech, healthcare, energy, real estate, crypto, international — each readable at three depths: Snapshot (the gist in plain English), Analyst Brief (fundamentals and macro context), or Deep Dive (Bloomberg density). AI analysis tools are built into the reading flow. Web + iOS, with free, Pro, and student tiers.
The founder story
I designed, coded, and shipped SuMarket myself — brand, product, and platform — then grew it into a company: an internship program, partnerships, and a small team I'm learning to lead. The question driving it now: how personalized should financial information become, and how do you earn trust while doing it?
Pick your depth: Snapshot, Brief, or Deep Dive.
Every briefing reads three ways — the gist in plain English, the analyst view, or Bloomberg density. Free and student tiers.
Lens & Pistons hangs here.
The automotive apparel brand that taught me e-commerce, brand, and operations — $1K+ monthly revenue and a 10× demand spike survived. Three collab tees hang here — click one to meet the collaborator.
The brand
Lens & Pistons joined the two halves of car culture — the lens and the machines. I ran it end-to-end from home: product and pricing, the Shopify storefront, the photography, the marketing. At its stronger points it did $1,000+ a month, and when demand spiked 10× overnight (3 to 30 orders a day), limited drops and outsourced production cut unit costs 70% and fulfillment time by five days.
The collaborators
Five creator collaborations shipped, negotiated as revenue-share partnerships — including Katya BRZ, Nikolai Aksenov, and PearlWhte WRX, whose tees hang in this closet. Creators are partners, not ad slots; structure matters more than reach.
What it taught me
Revenue is a lagging indicator of a hundred small operational decisions. Brand is what makes two identical shirts worth different amounts. And fulfillment is invisible until it's the only thing a customer remembers. Almost everything in SuMarket traces back here.
Golden hour goes through this.
The kit, laid out mid-session: the A7R IV, the 20-70mm G Master, the 60-600 telephoto, the shotgun mic, batteries, and the bag. Brand photography for Rent Exotics; a 200+ image library that lifted booking conversion 20%.
The work
Brand photography for Rent Exotics — a 200+ image working library that lifted booking conversion 20% and drives about ten on-the-spot vehicle upgrades a month. Drop photography for Lens & Pistons. Event coverage for AKPsi and Acacia. All shot on the A7R IV, usually at golden hour.
The eye
Photography taught me that people decide how much to trust something from a hundred small signals — framing, light, what you choose to leave out. That instinct now shapes everything I build: product screens, brand, decks, this room.
Beyond the build, my involvements.
Two brotherhoods anchor my life on campus — one professional, one social — plus the house council that programs the floor I live on. Together they keep the work grounded in people.
Alpha Kappa Psi · Historian
The nation's oldest professional business fraternity, where the professional side gets sharpened — an eight-week pledge ship built around interviewing, community service, and networking. As Historian and Pledge Class Historian I'm the chapter's memory: 35+ photos at every pledge event, every professional and social night documented for the chapter's social media, and 20 hours cut into a rush video that carried recruitment and branding for the season.
Acacia · PR Team
The social and service side of campus — brotherhood, philanthropy, and a circle of friends well outside the business-school bubble. On the PR team I work with the president on the chapter's social plan, holding a steady two to three posts a month, and shoot every event. The rush graphic I built with the rush chairs lifted engagement 20% across platforms during rush season.
JLLC Ducatus · House Council Leader
Ducatus is my house inside the Jellison Living Learning Center, Kelley's selective first-year residential community. Leading its house council means running the programming: a monthly calendar timed against midterms and recruiting cycles that pulls 20–30 people an event, a standard run-of-show for objectives and budget that cut setup by ten minutes a night, and QR pulse surveys after each one — feeding the top feedback into the next agenda raised retention 15%.
And the favorite, parked inside.
A Guards Red Porsche 911 Carrera 4S — the car that started the whole obsession. Car culture is the thread: the photography, the brand, the ops work at Rent Exotics.
Why cars
Car culture was my first obsession — the design, the engineering, the way a machine can carry an identity. The favorite has always been the 911 Carrera 4S, and in Guards Red it refuses to be ignored: a shape that has barely changed in sixty years, a color that never asks twice, absurd capability underneath. That's the brief for everything I make.
Where it shows up
Cars turned into a camera, the camera into a brand, the brand into operations work at Rent Exotics — where the loyalty program and long-term rental options I helped implement lifted repeat rentals 30%+. Obsessions compound if you let them.
Let's start a conversation.
Building something interesting, working in finance, or have thoughts on SuMarket? I'd be glad to connect.