E983: The Next Unicorns: Zola CEO & Co-founder Shan-Lyn Ma shares insights on growing her all-in-one wedding platform in a $100bn market, adapting to changes in wedding demographics, balancing growth and profitability while keeping her team focused, raising moral standards in tech – E5 of 10-ep mini

This Week in Startups

Jason Calacanis

Technology

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2019

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

0:51 Jason intros Shan-Lyn Ma
3:17 Starting Zola and competing in a crowded space
5:14 Jason and Shan go through LAUNCH President Sam's Wedding Registry live on air
6:30 How Zola's registry and business model work
9:10 How does Zola look at Amazon's wedding lists
14:29 What has changed in wedding demographics, and how does Zola keep up?
21:26 Jason and Shan share thoughts on romantic proposal locations
25:37 How working for Kevin Ryan at Gilt impacted Shan
33:27 Shan's insights on keeping employees focused, balancing growth and profitability
39:28 What do the next few years look like for Zola?
42:20 Wedding SEO competition
46:33 Raising moral standards in tech
50:19 Shan's thoughts on being underestimated as a female founder
54:01 How the NYC tech scene has changed over the past 10 years

Transcript

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0:00.0	This Week in Start-Up's The Next Unicorns is brought to you by
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0:50.0	Hey everybody, welcome to this week in startups. I'm your host
0:53.3	Jason Callicanis. There are few life events that are more considered than going
0:58.0	to college or buying a car and those life decisions that are more important than where you go to school and what car
1:05.8	you buy are what home you buy.
1:08.9	And do you have a kid?
1:11.2	And do you get married? These are the considered purchases in your life and as such they are one of the great places to build a startup.
1:21.0	If everybody's got to make a decision, they had to do a bunch of research, and in
1:24.3	Web1.0 we saw a ton of companies around these specific categories. But my guest today, Shanlin Ma, I did good. I got it. Good work.
1:38.0	Okay, good work. Shanlin Ma is the CEO and co-founder of Z-O-L-A.
1:43.2	And is it Zola.com?
	...

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