How I Built Resilience: Shan-Lyn Ma of Zola

How I Built This · 11 Mar 2021 · 27m

What this episode covers

Shan-Lyn Ma, co-founder and CEO of Zola, explains how the company pivoted from a wedding planning platform to an e-commerce marketplace for home goods during the pandemic. She details the initial struggle to raise capital from skeptical investors who doubted the wedding industry's scalability and how prior experience at Gilt helped secure early funding. Ma discusses the rapid development of virtual wedding streaming capabilities and the Zola Home store, which emerged from user demand rather than initial strategic planning.

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