Where Abyss began
Where it started
I learned to observe emotion before I knew that was what I was doing
Growing up close to people carrying difficult inner experiences made me attentive to small signals: tone, silence, expression, and the distance between what someone said and what they seemed to feel.
I wanted to understand what was happening beneath the surface—and whether there was a way to help.
Motherhood deepened that awareness. It showed me how differently people can perceive, process and communicate the world, and how an inner experience does not become less real simply because it is difficult to express.
My own journey has also involved learning to understand myself: recognising recurring patterns, questioning stories I had accepted, and discovering what can change when a thought is given enough room to be seen clearly.
This was the beginning of Abyss—not yet as a product, but as a question I kept returning to:
Can a digital space help us encounter our own thoughts without performing, suppressing or immediately trying to solve them?
The journey
Different disciplines. The same question
Filmmaking, storytelling and product design may look like separate chapters of my life. To me, they have always been part of the same journey.
Stage 1
Film and storytelling
Filmmaking taught me to express inner experience through image, rhythm and atmosphere.
Stage 2
UX design
Design taught me that the shape of a space and a system can influence how safe, capable and understood we feel.
Stage 3
Abyss
Abyss brings those insights together in a reflective digital space where thoughts can be released, felt and seen differently before they need to be explained.
What guides Abyss
A reflective space, built with care
Abyss brings together reflective design, carefully used technology and clear respect for the person using it.
Space to reflect
Abyss creates space to release a thought, notice what it carries and see it differently. It supports personal reflection while maintaining clear boundaries around professional mental health support.
Your voice stays central
AI helps shape the reflective experience, while each person remains the authority on their own inner world. The user decides which perspectives feel meaningful to them.
Built by real people
Created by Ella Liao, with product design by Maryna Nytchenko and engineering and AI development by Patrick M. Privacy and consent guide how Abyss is being built.
The technology should strengthen your relationship with your own voice — not replace it.
— A note from the founder
Abyss is still being built, but the belief behind it has been forming throughout my life.
I am building it for people whose minds are active, observant and sometimes difficult to quiet—for moments when a thought needs somewhere private to go, so it can become clearer, lighter and easier to face.
My responsibility is to build that space with care: protecting people's privacy, respecting the complexity of each person who enters it, and ensuring the technology never becomes more important than the person using it.
I am not building Abyss to give people all the answers. I am building it because sometimes we need a different kind of space—one quiet enough to help us hear what may already be within us.
Ella Liao
Founder of Abyss
A quieter place for your thoughts is being built
Join the early community and receive three months of full Abyss access when the beta opens.