In 2013, Shan-Lyn Ma was fed up with wedding registries. Most were set up through clunky department store websites offering few options, and all led to terrible gifting experiences. Ma recalls one registry in which every item was made of silver. The only thing she could afford was a single spoon. A former general manager at e-commerce company Gilt Groupe, Ma knew there had to be a better way. The more she researched wedding planning, the more broken processes she found. "The pain point in registries was replicated at every other part of the wedding planning journey," says Ma, 45. "It felt like a huge opportunity." • In May 2013, Ma co-founded the wedding e-commerce startup Zola. A one-stop shop for wedding planning, the New York City-based company has helped more than two million couples plan their nuptials. Today, the platform offers a wedding website builder, a paper invitation shop, and just about anything else engaged couples need.
"In each situation, we looked at how we would monetize it, what the required skills were, and whether our team had a unique right to win the category," Ma says. "You should keep answering those same questions over and over before each new big push."
For Tiffany Kelly, founder and CEO of content-creation platform Curastory, each day of the past three years has felt like a new big push. The NYC-based startup's suite of tools helps content creators monetize videos for TikTok, Instagram, and other social media channels, and users are constantly clamoring for new features. Curastory has targeted college athletes, a burgeoning market since 2021, when the NCAA changed its rules to allow student-athletes to earn money from endorsements. A former data analytics associate at ESPN, Kelly witnessed a similar sea change in sports media in 2017, when the company laid off more than 100 employees, including on-air talent.
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