This Week in Startups - 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

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

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

This week in startups, The Next Unicorns, is brought to you by LinkedIn. You need LinkedIn jobs to find the right people for your business. Post a job today at LinkedIn.com slash unicorn and get $50 off your first job post. Embroker. The Embroker Startup Insurance Program helps startups secure the most important lines of insurance at a lower cost and with less hassle. Get an instant quote and $5,000 of AWS credit at Embroker.com slash twist.

While you're there, get 10% off by using offer code Twist 10. And NetSuite by Oracle, the business management software that handles every aspect of your business in an easy-to-use cloud platform. Get NetSuite's free guide, seven key strategies to grow your profits when you go to netsuite.com slash twist. Hey, everybody, welcome to this week in startups. I'm your host, Jason Calacanis. There are few life events that are more considered than going to college or buying a car. And those life decisions that are more important than where you go to school and what car you buy are what home you buy. And do you have a kid?

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. If everybody's got to make a decision, they have to do a bunch of research. And in Web 1.0, we saw a ton of companies around these specific companies. categories. But my guest today, Shanlin Ma, I did

good? I got it? Good work. Okay, good work. Shandlin Ma is the CEO and co-founder of Zola, Z-O-L-A. Yes. And is it Zola.com? Yes. What does Zola mean? It means love in the Zulu language. Got it. Zola means love. Yes. And Zola is a wedding registry

plus more. Plus much more. Got it. Okay. So tell me why did you build it? When did you build it? And of course, this is part of our next unicorn, our Sunicorn series. So things have been going incredibly well. You raised $100 million. And you've been at this since when?

13. 13. Yeah. So five years to unicorn status. Pretty impressive. Or six years maybe? Six years. Well, not officially a unicorn.

Sorry. Six years to Sunicorn status, right? Correct. Six years to build a pretty epic business. How many people work there? 200. Wow. Based where? Based in New York.

Got it. Yeah. So 200 people, you just raised this $100 million around. So things are going well. Very well. Very well. You got to be making that $25, $50 million a year in revenue if you're going to raise that kind of money. I'm in the ballpark. Higher, but that's all I'm going to say. Okay, great.

See, this is how we do it on the podcast. We get right to the number. It's greater, nine figures or less. So anyway, we'll say $50 to $100 million. Fantastic. Congratulations. What was the original idea here? Because this was a very crowded space. The knot I know was a public company in New York. I covered it when I was a journalist. I thought they had it all wrapped up. But you came in and built a business. So what was the idea of how you would compete in a space that I think a lot of people thought was crowded and maybe hard to grow in? Yeah, and when we first started thinking about Zol even as an idea, which was 2013, that was really out of personal need.

So that was the year or my friends got married at exactly the same time. Maybe you're a few years out from that year. I'm 48, yeah, we all got married. Samantha is right in that year. We're in a different phase right now. We're in the phase where people are dropping my flies. Oh, no. Literally, was at dinner the other night.

And my wife and I seem to be the last couple standing. There's like three couples that are still together, and there's like five that are Splitsky in the last two years. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Right. Woof. Well, the year for me, going back to the year for me, 2013, that was when it was just starting when there was, you know, every weekend, I was going to a different friend's wedding. I was spending a lot of money.

buying wedding presents, buying flights to the wedding. And I was, you know, found myself every time I went to a friend's wedding registry really frustrated by that experience. And I had worked for a long time in e-commerce, building great e-commerce products. What was frustrating about it? Just old technology, web base, not mobile. Exactly. So it was like shopping from a cold transactional checkout cart.

It did not work on a mobile device. And at that time, the wedding registry specifically, was only dominated by the big traditional department stores. And so you couldn't find anything you wanted all in the one registry. And I felt like my friends, who were the couples getting married, deserved a lot better than what they were being offered. And having worked in tech, worked in product, I knew that something better could be built.

And so my co-founder, Nobu and I set out to do that. Got it. And here it is. On the screen, Samantha and David are getting married on November, 23rd. It's like 52 days left. And here we go. An evening in Lisbon, Venice, Touloum. How many places are you going, Sam? My God. Venice, Paris? Wow. So you can also just give a hundy towards dinner. I guess that's like a gift card or just a $100 contribution? Well, it depends how Samantha has set this up. So she, she, you know, as the bride or the couple together,

can decide do we want a gift card or do we want the cash to be contributed to something in particular? And look, I see here in the design, these that are most wanted. Yes. So that's a nice thing. They can just defer the cost of some of these adventures. And oh, I see you can sort it by what's available in the purchase price. So I see we're looking at kitchen in a $150 range or whatever. And these are all very beautiful.

Do you stock everything? or do you work with every other vendor out there? Like, what is the inventory and who does the fulfillment? I'm curious. So one of the things that's different about Zola's registry, which really is not available anywhere else, is that we let couples register for products from today. We have 800 brands, and we work directly with those brands.

So in that sense, we are the retailer. Got it. But we also offer experiences like what you saw, as well as cash funds or honeymoon funds, which is what Samantha has as well. And everyone wants a mix of these things, and they want it in one place, and they want it to be personalized

in the way that you see here, and it's kind of crazy that this didn't exist before. So, Shan, what if, like, Samantha wants, like, a Peloton or something, or ate sleep, and you don't have that, right? Well, the thing that we do have is an add-to-Zola button. So if someone, like Samantha, wants something that is not currently available on the Zola site,

they can use that add to Zola button to pull in any products from any site and add it to their Zola registry. And then Samantha can pick, would I like to get the cash to then go and buy that myself at the time that I feel ready? Or do I want to send my guests to that site to buy it for me? But I think the great thing about that is that it's still all in one place. But then we also have great insight into what do couples want that we don't currently have in our store, that we can then go out to that brand and say, you know, why don't you, we work together to get you on to us. site. How do you make money? You get a commission on all this? Affiliate fees. Do people pay you? So it is, you know, one of the things I'm actually proudest of with Zola is not just the user experience that we've created, but also the business model, which I think is very innovative based on a lot that we learned

about e-commerce and what works well and what doesn't as it relates to e-commerce business models. So what is it? So we have a hybrid of a marketplace business and an e-commerce business. business in the sense that on the Zola site, we have over 80,000 products in the store today, and yet we have virtually no inventory, and we're able to capture wholesale retail margins because we are the retailer. But it is... But they'll drop ship it so you don't have to maintain the inventory. Exactly.

Exactly. So if they want to buy this kitchen set, you negotiate with the person selling the kitchen set, and then you drop ship it to them. You get the wholesale to retail lift. So that's what it would have cost. Yes. And that's a big margin. That can be 50%, right?

Well, it depends on the product in the category, but it's the same margin that any retailer or your online in-commerce site would get. I know this is like a stupid question from an investor that you must get all the time. But I'm curious as to the answer. Did Amazon ever fancy it? Because I know they did lists. I would think Amazon would have launched this like six times and shut it down five. Does Amazon have a competing product

And is it any good? So they've had a wedding registry Yeah From way before we launched And it's still there And I think, you know, Every time we launch an update to our product We see some similar updates a year later

Is that disheartening as a founder When they just Are they brutal about it Or are they like incompetent about it? It's got to be scary to go up against Amazon As a commerce person Well, I love it when other sites copy arts because I'm a competitive person so I feel like it's motivation to stay ahead and to keep

iterating and improving. Gotta keep, keep ahead. But I think the thing that is different about weddings and I think why we've grown so quickly is because weddings and registries and what you put together for that single day is something that you really care about. How do I find the site or the registry that reflects who I am as a couple, how can I discover new brands, how can I get something that is emotional and joyful rather than just a cold kind of transaction page? It feels like Walmart or Amazon would be utilitarian to the point of not romantic, not we're starting our lives together. We want to have this beautiful new fairy tale lifestyle of, you know, it's going to be beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. Like Amazon is the opposite of aesthetically pleasing. It's aesthetically

annoying. And I think this is why we have been able to capture a huge chunk of the market. It's because we create a beautiful site that couples can customize, but we also develop, in the case of registry, specific features you cannot find on any other site. Like we only let couples, we let couples control when and where they receive their gifts. So it turns out most couples don't actually want to receive their gifts until after they've come back from the wedding, after they've moved house. And no one else does that. The other thing we do is we have all these other wedding planning products that we've launched after our registry product, like the wedding website, invitations. And these are things that are deeply connected to the registry, connected to each other.

So the registry is kind of the foundation. But then you do invites and the wedding site. Is that all free? Do you use that as like the honey pot, as it were? Yeah. So our wedding planning tools are all free, including the checklist of all the things you need to do for your wedding, oh, yes. Your guest list manager, and your wedding website.

Wow. And so those things. Because people charge for that, right? In the market? Wedding websites. Lots of money, like 500 bucks or something. Oh, I don't know if it's that high, but there's certainly sites that charge for that. I think for us, it is something that we're happy to provide for free.

and we think it makes a lot of sense for Zola to do that because then we then raise awareness of our registry and of other products. Hiring isn't about putting a WANED in a newspaper anymore, posting to some Fugasey job board and waiting to see what knuckleheads apply. No, you need serious talent, right? You're growing your business.

You need to reach the right candidates, the people who are going to fit in with your team and be A players, right? Well, where are you going to find the A players? you know where to find them. It's LinkedIn. Of course, members of LinkedIn are there to make connections. They love to go learn. And they like to grow as professionals and discover new job opportunities. Maybe they're not looking for a job, but they'll opportunistically take a little perusky. Maybe find something interesting and that interesting company might be yours. In fact, a hire is made every eight seconds on LinkedIn. That's it. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Somebody got hired on LinkedIn. That's how LinkedIn gets your job post. They get, write to the people who have the skills hard and soft to solve the problems you need in whatever role you're trying to fill. I know this because we filled a number of important positions here at our company by using LinkedIn. And I'm going to give you 50 bucks to use towards your

first credit in just a moment. Here you see CMO Presh posting for our new client service manager position in our Toronto office. You know, we have this growing podcast and we need someone to maintain the client relationships and help us with growth and marketing and all that good stuff. So we write in the skills we need. We write the description. We add some additional screening questions. These are critical. Great hack.

Screening question. Why do you want the job? What podcast do you listen to? You know, things that people who don't care about the job will skip. And it's all done within a couple of minutes. He sets his daily budgets and he's on his way to finding a qualified candidate. So I want you to go to LinkedIn.com slash unicorn. U-N-I-C-O-N.

You're not as well a unicorn. And I'm going to give you 50 bucks. 5-0-A-50 from me and our friends at LinkedIn for your first job. posting. That's it. Go to LinkedIn.com slash unicorn and get $50.com.com slash unicorn, which is what your company will be when you fill those next two or three positions with that $50 I'm giving you right now. Go to LinkedIn.com slash unicorn and get that 50. All right, let's get back to this amazing episode. There's this kind of thought out there that weddings and getting married is antiquated and that millennials or maybe Gen Z are not going to do it. Is that true or not?

Because the thesis I've heard, and I don't have any statistics to back it up, is millennials are part of this new generation that value experiences. And let's call it a lightweight lifestyle where they don't get married. They don't spend a lot of money on stuff. They don't have, I don't know, homes or cars or leases. To the extent they can not weigh themselves down, which is smart, or burden themselves. And let's face it, marriage, I don't want to say it's a burden, but it is a commitment. it is the serious, it's the most serious commitment, I think, after having kids. Is that true or not?

And what do you think going forward? Yeah, that is not true based on what we've seen in the numbers of people getting married every year. And actually, if we look back decades and decades, the number of people getting married each year is extremely consistent. It's 2.2 million couples getting married in the U.S. every single year, no matter what the economy is doing or the generation. And so I think the number of couples getting married is the same. What is different is how the millennial couple thinks about their wedding and the age at which they get married. That's the big shift. Okay.

So let's take the last one and then go backwards. What age are they getting married? So the average age today of a couple getting married is between 28 to 30 across the U.S. And it used to be, whatever, 20 years ago? One generation ago, it was like 21. Really? Yeah. That makes sense.

So not Gen Xers, but before Gen Xers, there was probably boomers to Gen Xers. Parents of millennials. Parents of millennials, which would be boomers to Gen Xers, I guess, would be 21. Now 28 to 30. Makes sense. People live longer. Get a little life under your belt, maybe save some money. Is that an economic?

Do you have any insight into why that got pushed back, whatever it is, seven, eight, nine, ten years? Yeah. Well, I think my hypothesis is I think the percentage of women who are working full-time has increased. Education of women has increased. And then I think just the kind of social and religious norms around getting married have changed. There's not that pressure that it, and it really was a stigma for women, I think, right before my generation, that you were the last to get married. Our generation, I was born in 1970. we didn't actually buy into that

that somebody who got married at 30 was like I don't know an old maid they had a term an old maid like oh that was the last person to get married that was some sort of whatever negative for a woman that sounds horrible that was how it was pitched us when we were growing up

that you were the term all made right like you were the last one so you were the remnant inventory as it were oh my goodness that was the perception I'm not saying that's my perception, but that was what people, is that not what your generation thought, that if you were 30 or 35 getting married, something was wrong with you.

Well, I'm not married, and so I clearly don't think that. This is not an indictment. If you've got an issue, you just called me an old mate. I didn't call you an old mate. I was very clear in the language. I am the host of a podcast that's hated by snowflakes. And you're a fan of the podcast, you told me before. That's true.

I am just being candid here. In my generation, that was the perception. is not anymore. Yeah. I think the other perhaps perception that has changed is that couples today, on average, live together before they get married. And I think that that was perhaps not as welcomed a generation ago. No, I have a Korean wife and whose parents live in China and Korea.

They don't watch the pod, but crazy. We live together. But when her parents' kids, came to town. A friend of mine, you've got to edit this, Nick. This is very sensitive. Edit that part out. Let me start over here, edit. Just edit this a little bit, okay?

I'm dead serious right now. A friend of mine who had very traditional in-laws lived with his fiancé. And when their in-laws came in from China, had to move their stuff out of the house and put it in their trunk of their car and move in with their friend for almost two weeks and live on a couch to just in the off chance

that parents came to the house, went to the bathroom, and then checked the closets. See, couples today have it so much easier. A friend of mine went through this. He's not bitter about it, but let me tell you something. This was very anxiety-producing

for this couple. this charade, as it were. And I told them, listen, do what you need to do. Be respectful of the parents and the laws. If they're old school, it's fine. That's changed. Yes. Mostly different now.

And then you said ceremonies were different. Okay, so they're pushing it out a third of their lifespan, whatever, seven, ten years out. That makes total sense. No judgments. I think it's actually smart. Get a little more established in your career. Play the field a little bit.

and then get married when you're maybe, I think, are most people still getting married with the intention of having a family? Or has that been decoupled? Is there any statistics on that? Because that was the explicit reason we were told to get married. Get married. Have kids. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think we see that that is also, that order of operations is slowly changing. I don't think we've seen a huge shift there yet, but I think it's certainly changing. I think a lot of traditions, like, you know, you have to wait for the guy to propose. It has also started. We've seen to slowly change. That's interesting. So they actually have a discussion about it, and there's not like a whole charade where you talk to the sister.

And the sister tells you, when are you going to propose to my sister? You've been dating her for four and a half years. This is my other friend went through that. Not speaking from personal experience or anything. My friend. My friend who's not me. Yeah. So that's changed.

I'm sure that still happens, but I think we, we, it's not so rare to hear about a woman proposing to a man or a woman proposing to a woman or a man, you know, same-sex couples getting married. And, and so I think the, the weight for the guy to get down on one knee before you can even start planning, you know, your life together is, it's not. as common. Let me ask you this. Which would be the most romantic way to propose? In Central Park, on a sunny day, at home, at a romantic restaurant, at a romantic restaurant, or at the top of the Eiffel Tower at sunset exactly. Which would be the most romantic thing you can do? Where are these options coming from. I'm just curious. Which would be the most romantic

in your experience as an expert from zola.com, which does mean love, in your expert opinion, would it be sunset at the top of the Eiffel Tower in a fine restaurant or in Central Park?

Which is the most romantic? Wait, home was one of these options. And home, yeah. Home. Home while Netflixing and chilling. Home? You say home, Netflix and chilling. Yes.

Really? I think so. Wow. Was that not the right answer? Wrong answer. That's the wrong answer. It was Netflix and show moment? Christmas morning.

Okay. Nick did it? Hold on. In bed. In bed? In bed. Netflixing and show. Oh, God.

I didn't realize it was this kind of podcast. Well, we're just, no, no. When we say in bed, we just mean like, cat, not saying, we're just saying you're Netflixing and chilling. Got it. You're just hanging. But you think at home is the most romantic. Yes. not at the top of the Eiffel Tower at Sunset.

That's also pretty good. Sorry, Jade. I screwed it up. Apparently, I dropped the ball. I should have just put in season two of the Sopranos on DVD from when Netflix was on DVD. And I should have proposed to you. How did you propose? I proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower at Sunset.

Of course, as one does. Tom Cruise with Katie Holmes, did it at the restaurant. I did it at the top floor. I don't know what people are thinking. You guys all think in bed we're at home. I don't get it. Charles, is this a generational thing? Where did you do it?

I'm not going to go ahead and put a pin in that one. First one was at the top of the Apple Tower, the second one was at home in bed. Okay, got it. I was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Oh, that's nice and romantic. Wow. Absolutely, very nice.

Didn't work out. All right, well, there you go, folks. Netflix and Chip. All right, listen. you need to have insurance for your startup. I do. And with me today, Matt Miller from Mbroker. He's the CEO and founder. Welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me, Jason. All right. Tell me, what is the Embroker Startup Program? The Mbroker Startup Program is the first fully digital insurance program for startups.

So we can provide startups with all the coverage they need, less than five minutes, save them a bunch of money. Amazing. You just fill out a form? It's like checking out at Amazon? Like checking out in Amazon. Just that easy. Basically that simple. So why did you build the startup program? Why isn't the regular insurance programs that are available? well, good enough. I actually had to buy insurance for my own company, the founder, and it was literally so painful, but I didn't do it.

I actually did not buy the coverage, and I decided we actually had to build something that was better, that was worth the type of overall software we're building. Why are insurance brokers so annoying? I don't think they try to be annoying. They are. They can be. And it's so confusing. It is so confusing.

Why is it so confusing? Why are they so annoying? I think it's confusing because the industry wants to make it confusing. They make more money the more confused you are. If you think you need this guy to help you, you don't ask the right questions. Got it. But it doesn't have to be. It feels like you's car salesman. It can a little bit feel like that, where you're getting sold something.

You don't really know if you need it. Right. And that's what I love about you. You're like the Tesla of insurance because you go to Tesla, you just sign up and you get a Model 3. You don't negotiate the price and you get it instantly. That's exactly what we're trying to build. And yeah, we think it works pretty well. Yeah, I use it and it's amazing. So thank you for building it, Matt.

Thanks, Jason. So get an instant quote and the $5,000 in AWS credits right now by going to a broker.com slash twist. And when you check out, use twist 10 to get 10% off. Thanks for coming in, Matt. Thanks for having me, Jason. You worked at Yahoo as a product manager. Yes. During the 2007 to 2008 post-purchasing Flickr in Delicious era.

Yes. Right after that, in fact. Uh-huh. And then you worked with a GM at, guilt taste, I guess, which was one of the guilt group for my friend Kevin Ryan, the greatest investor in New York City, I guess right up there with Fred Wilson, I guess they would be tied. What was it like to work for Kevin Ryan, the co-founder of DoubleClick and, of course, yeah, now running AlleyCorp's.

Yeah, so I think working for Kevin and learning from him during that first four years of guilt was one of the best things I could have ever done. It was, the amount that I learned during that experience was incredible. And I think it was everything from what does it look like to be and develop product in a fast-growing business. How do you think about scaling the product, the business, and the culture and the team size all simultaneously? Wow. I think the business grew from zero to 600 million in revenue within four years. Incredible.

Incredible. What was taste versus guilt-taste versus just guilt group or guilt? So the background of taste was towards, I think, three years into the life of guilt group, Kevin was talking and thinking and brainstorming about what are the next verticals that make sense for us to launch. Because they started in fashion, homes. Started in women's fashion and then expanded quickly into men's fashion, home, kids. and then you know, we're thinking about new categories. And this was for people who don't know.

After Groupon, there was a website called Vont Preveille, I think, in France. That was flash shells. They would sell a certain amount of stuff every day. It became a phenomenon. Took over France, Paris, whatever. And, of course, Kevin's wife, Pascal is French. And I guess he became aware of it and did something similar in the United States. It was the first person to do it.

But was flash sales was the concept? You buy it today and then it's over. Exactly. The concept is designer fashion brands at up to 80% off for a limited time only. Great idea? Well, I think from a customer perspective, that was the first time we had seen anything like that in the U.S. in a way that was really beautiful to shop and fun and fast to shop. And so that drove huge demand and it drove kind of very fast demand intent. And you had a deadline, you had to buy it. Otherwise, someone else would. Got it. So that's what really drove the...

That was an interesting device. The revenue growth so quickly. I think the challenge that I got to observe from the seat where I was in was, is this a business model that would one day be profitable and sustainable? Because of the amount of both people that required, the amount of inventory you had to buy as the business, the amount of creative production around each flash sale that was just very high. And so ultimately, you know, my take was that seems like a very tough business to ever be profitable in the long run and kind of informed how we thought about the Zola business model and e-commerce businesses. It was tough to be profitable. Yeah.

I'm trying to understand why it would be tough to be profitable. Is it because they had to constantly, was it a business? This is my perception, and it's just a very immature one from the outside, obviously, you would know. But one of my perceptions was it was a business that during the Great Recession was timed perfectly because it was 2008. People were losing jobs. People were scared. The stock market lost half to two-thirds of its value depending on which indices. And people were bargain hunting.

And so it was of the moment, 2008 to 2010, Great Recession after the financial collapse, 2007, 2008. And then when things got better, the people. were providing the clothes were like, this is working against us. We shouldn't put our inventory there. Was it an inventory problem, that of the moment problem? I think that was part of it. I think part of it was during that time frame, the fashion brands had a lot of excess inventory, and this was a way to help move it. And I think the other part of it was that at that point in time, the brands were not as familiar with e-commerce, and so many of them didn't have their own e-commerce sites and many of them didn't have mechanisms to do their own sales online.

But 10 years later, Amazon starts kicking their butt and they say, we need to know how to sell. If they've got their own website, why wouldn't Barney's take to a flash sale themselves? Because they've got the email list. So I think, yeah, nowadays there's a lot of other places you can go to find a great deal. And customers still want great value, great deals. There's a lot of other places you can find it. It was really instructive for me because I got pitched on fab.com. Remember that?

I do. There was one Kings Lane. Allie Pinkis, friend of mine. There was Fab.com, Jason Goldberg? That's right. Yeah. And then Kevin did on Preve. And Jason came to me.

Guilt. I'm sorry. Came to me with Fab.com. And I logged in and I was like, this is going to be a unicorn. Do you know what Fab.com was before it was a flash shell site? No. It was gay Facebook. Oh, yes.

Facebook from gay men. And I went in there and let me tell you something, Chan. This was a party. I logged into fab.com. I uploaded my Facebook profile. I have never gotten so much attention in my life. I was like, I have, this is dynamic. Everybody's saying hello, there's great conversations.

It was awesome. And I felt this is going to. explode. So I said to him, I'm in for a Hyundai. He said, okay, he comes back to me. He says, J-Cal. I decided, we ran an experiment on Fab.com. We sold some couches, designing couches. They all sold out. We decided gay social network, not as good a business as flash sales. I said, okay. Well, I committed to investing in the Facebook for gay guys. I think you should do both businesses, but there's definitely a need here, right?

He's like, I don't know, it's grind or whatever, you know. I want to do this other thing. And I was like, all right. He's like, listen, no hard feelings. You could be in or you could be out, no problem. And I said, I think I'm out. So I'm out. Fab.com becomes worth a billion dollars.

friend of mine, put $500,000 into that round, this was a $5 million round. He bought like 10%. Becomes worth... Is 10%? Becomes with $100 million. Takes out some... A little bit of loan skis against the secondary set...

A couple of loans against his position. Starts living large. Guy's got a jet suite card or whatever. You know, a little jet card. He's like tooting his own horn. Look at, I made this great investment. Do you know what happened to fab.com? It went close to zero.

Zero. Raised tons of money went to zero. You know what happens if you take loans against your shares of a company that goes to zero? You have to pay it back. You have to pay it back. This is an instructive lesson for everybody out there. This is what could happen to the WeWork, folks. What is your thought building this company having seen guilt, seen fab.com and these other, and One King's Lane, all of them got, really,

dinged pretty hard. And now you're in the commerce business. And we see a little bit of shakiness here. You see, we work in New York. Maybe it's going to go to zero or it could go to whatever, a billion. Or it could be a recap is, I think, probably the most likely thing. What do you think about this moment in time? And as a founder of a company that just raised $100 million,

how do you protect and keep everybody seriously focused on what matters? Yeah. Well, I think having been through that experience of where a company grew from zero to then a billion in valuation to then go down the other side of the hill again, I think was the best possible lesson to then in a fast-growing startup like Zoland to know that we have to earn that every day. And the way you earn it is you work your butt off on behalf of your customers and your partners and nothing is taken for granted. And so for us, we have from day one, I think, being very frugal and capital efficient.

And many times investors will say, well, this is one of the most capital efficient businesses we've ever seen. And we've done it purposely because we want to avoid the situations that we've seen in past companies. But when you take down that $100 million series D, congratulations. Last year, I guess you did that. Yeah, 18 months ago. 18 months ago.

Got to be a little pressure to grow. And how do you balance the $100 million sitting there? This seems like a business that you could. easily get to profitability, right? Because you said you're buying wholesale, you're selling retail prices. It could be profitable, I would assume, but people give you the $100 million to grow. How do you balance the growth expectations of people who can write that $100 million check or 50 or whatever the biggest check is in there? I'm not sure who let it, with the responsibility you need to have to make this business ultimately profitable, which is how you will be judged. Is it profitable

now, or are you in growth phase? We're in growth phase, but I think, with each new product, a new business line that we launch, we assess it like it's, we would assess a new startup idea. So we think, okay, as we launched our invitations and paper business, right, when the idea there was, if you love your wedding website with Zola, why can't you print your save the date or your invitation. Yeah. No, no, thank you card and buy that all from Zola.

And so that is a new business for us. We launched it a year ago. And we invested in that, obviously, to get that up and running, to then get the word out about it and grow that business line on top of our existing business. And that, you know, we, it is an investment, but we looked at it as, you know, is that ROI positive investment? And then what are other things like that in the wedding planning journey that we can do that makes sense for the business? And then that's where we invest the money. So I don't think it's growth at all costs.

And I think to your question of, you know, what's happening? Today, in the news, it's a relief. It's a relief to know that companies that grew in a way that does not seem economically sustainable and now hearing about it. I think that you're right. The market is letting folks know that growth at all costs is not what public market investors want. They want to see a path to profitability and maybe a different growth profile. They're not in the same rush. They don't want you racing to the cliff, Delma and Louise style. They want you racing down the road, sure, but stay on the road.

Yeah. Make good investments. Yeah. In logical places for your particular business. You know, and we're having this big internal debate. There are some companies that, like Airbnb, that I believe the rumor is Airbnb is profitable. Somebody can look it up,

but they seem like that's a hard business to not be profitable. Right. We'll look it up, Nick, about what people think and put it in the chat room. But my belief is that they are very easily profitable. Then you have Uber and Lyft losing 50 cents or so a ride. Pretty easy to cut costs and raise prices and get there, right? You cut 25 cents in costs in the business per ride and you add 50 cents each ride. Now you've got a really profitable business.

Yeah, they've been Airbnb profitable. before the two straight years, they say. And then you have something like we work, and you're like, wait a second. It's not profitable. And they took on all this risk, and their defensibility is a desk. Your defensibility is everybody who's a guest,

you know, had a Zola wedding, puts their email address in and gets a reminder, hey, are you married or not? Would you like to put your registry up there? Yes, that is one. But also it's all the products that we're building in the wedding ecosystem. So all the things that we do to help couples plan their weddings are all focused on how do we be that one-stop shop where no one else is today.

It's pretty smart. What happened to the knot? That was like the big 800-pound grill. That was like your Amazon. Did they just drop the ball on all this? So they have a different business model. Their business is media, content. Right.

They have local listings. They charge a wedding vendors, right? Yeah. So they have an ad-based model where they charge ad fees to both their advertisers and vendors. And I think that is a fundamentally different business model. I think it's hard to do it. Yeah, completely different. So now that the world has gotten this cold water thrown on it, you've always been, I think, a little bit logical about growth.

What is the outlook for the company over the next couple of years? And I guess Goldman did your last round, and that's a bank that takes people public. Are you thinking, hey, what's the path to going public with this? Or do I just need to get a profitability as a CEO of a company that's in this Sooner Corn phase? What do you think about what to focus on? Because you do have the reality of the market and then the reality of what your investors want. They want an exit eventually. You have to deal with this reality of, you know, choppy waters.

How do you think about it? So just to add color to the last round was led, co-led by NBC and Comcast Ventures. Oh, wow. And then Goldman Sachs, the investment group was also participating in that. in some of our other existing investors. So when you get Comcast in NBC, do they put you on TV as part of that? Well, they give you some ads?

They help us understand what's the best way to be spending marketing dollars on NBC as well as other properties. They give a little discount or some little remnant going on there? They certainly benefit to companies in their portfolio. Got it. I got it. Okay. And then are you up to that?

Are you doing television advertising yet? We do. We do. Yeah, so we, you know, what's interesting, we found as we've been experimenting with TV ads over the last year, that it actually has been very high performing for us from an ROI perspective, which was surprising. But I think it makes sense. I think that some of the products out there today, you're able to target more accurately. And so it, how do they do that with the targeting? Is it they target the streaming audience?

That's one way or the other way. I think we just have a clear sense of what the demographic is per show. Got it. And so. Which performs better for you? Television. Or social or search. And how do you think about it as the CEO when the marketing people come to you?

Well, I can tell you what they tell me, which is it, it's a portfolio approach. And so it sounds like nobody wants to take responsibility for their vertical. No, it, and it changes from. from quarter to quarter, depending on what season we're in. It changes from what products we're promoting. So our registry product might be a bit different to our invitations and paper products. So I think the goal is how do we make sure when someone is just engaged a few days ago, that we are there somewhere wherever they are,

whether it's on the social channels or TV or search. So search has got to be super competitive. Wedding invitations, my God, or wedding registry. What does that cost per click? $20? $30 because you have PTSD from this. Well, I could tell you, I'd have to kill you. She just rolled her eyes and was like shaking your head like, oh, my God.

Search ads. Wedding registry, that's got to be a $20 click. The team would kill me if I would disclose any of our secrets. Yeah, no, you don't have to do that, but it's got to be brutal. You know it's got to be totally brutal. What do you think of this? Like if I type Zola, you have the first ad Zola,

and then you have your listing, you're organic. And it's like a little tiny ad. Here it is. Look at the little tiny ad. Isn't this like just so lame that Google does this to you guys? Look. This is wedding registry. Oh yeah.

Do Zola. Just do Zola. This is infuriating to me. Now they didn't put your competitor ahead of you, but they put your ad ahead of you. So don't click that. It's going to cost them like $20. Isn't this infuriating that they make you buy your ad slot above your organic result?

And they have your type, it's crazy, right? At least they didn't put competitors up there. Did you see that that they're putting, you have to buy your, you have to buy it because they put their competitors in it. I mean, I have seen some people in the, in the tech community be up in arms about this. Type in a sauna. This is like infuriating for Asana. So like Asana has to deal with Monday. And then if you type in Monday,

I would actually do a base camp. I think this base camp was the guy who was complaining about this because Basecamp didn't want to pay. Oh, look, they took it off. Yeah, because he was complaining so much. Scroll down. Type in Basecamp project management. Let's see if for that,

because Basecamp is kind of a generic term. But, yeah, let's see if that, if they changed that one. Yeah, look, so Monday has the ad for Bay above base camp because it has the word project management in it. But this is a really controversial issue. I think that this is what's going to get Google into antitrust trouble is this overreaching thing where you type in one person and they put the competitor up there. Like if you type, just do Netflix. And let's see if Disney Plus comes up. That would be nasty.

No ads. Okay. Anyway. What do you think of that thing? the brand search thing? I mean, do I love it? Would I prefer not to pay for it? Yes.

Do I think it's part of the cost of doing business today, unfortunately? You got to do it. Yeah. This is for Google. I think tech companies need to behave just a little bit better. Just like 5% better would go a long way. Like this feels too sharp elbowed Google. I'm just looking at Google, Sundar.

Like, you don't, this is probably winds up being 2% of their revenue, or maybe like under 1% doing this like little trick of like making you buy your name. It just feels lame. Like, don't do these things on the margin. You know what it's like?

It's like the DoorDash tipping thing. You know about that? Yes. We do you think of that one. I think a tip should go to the person who did the delivery. I mean, what are you thinking, DoorDash? I know the team over there. Like, this is the stupidest option.

you could ever do. This is where tech needs to just on the edges just if your mom or dad found out you were doing it what would they say over dinner? If somebody went to your mom and dad were like, you give the tip to

everybody, like to the CEO of DoorDash, like your mom got the tip, right? The mom says, yeah, the driver got the tip, right? I just order from DoorDash. And you're like, maybe. And your mom's like, what? But I use your service. I gave a $4 tip. Like, well, if you give five, we give it to them.

If it's under five, it pays for their fee. It's just so lame. Well, yeah, and just... Do you think about this stuff? To go off that... Well, absolutely. And I think the thing that has been disheartening to watch over more recent years

as the tech bubble has expanded is just some bad behaviors that I think are frustrating that companies can even be let you know, it's like investors or the board or the companies or the leaders are letting this happen. And I think it's, you know, people like some of the things you talk about on your podcast or in the news where it's only by calling people out saying, this doesn't feel okay that things start to change. But I wish that there was some internal being held to your own high standard.

You have an internal compass that you were. to think, you know, just because I could let people place ads on Facebook by nationality. Like, oh, that's a clever idea. But wait, people could use that for nefarious purposes. Maybe we shouldn't let them target African Americans in swing states. Yeah. And then take roubles for those ads. Like, I mean, come on.

And it's so dark. Yeah. And I don't want to act like, you know, we are perfect and I am perfect. And definitely not the case. But I think, you know, one of the things. things that I, one of the books I read recently super pumped was. Yeah, I haven't read it. So.

I'm not in it. I looked at the index because I'm an Uber investor. And the second, I don't know, my guys, like, thinks I, I mean, I had no role in the success of Uber, obviously. I'm being dead serious. Like, I just put a check in. But there were some things on there that were bad behavior. Well, I think that one of the highlights of that book to me was a letter that was

covered in that book that Katrina Lake wrote. to benchmark that's Bill Gurley specifically that was like look I'm reading a lot about this behavior this is not what I expect I just want you to know and that letter that she wrote

I thought was a great example of just leadership great leadership Hey everybody I'm here with my friend Jason Maynard who works at NetSuite tell everybody what do you do Jason? You know I do many things here at NetSuite but I run the field operations for the business unit I know you had my friend Jamie Siminoff

and from Ring used NetSuite. He really scaled that company quickly. What are some success stories in terms of people scaling quickly and how you help them at NetSuite? So the thing about Jamie, and I admire most about him, is he even taught me three things, mission, strategy, and execution. So Ring was a mission-driven company, right? Make community safe.

Make community safe. Everyone in the company lined up behind that. Then he had a clear strategy in terms of how they were going to go to market, acquire customers, the product strategy was completely aligned. And they were really good at execution. I mean, they really went after kind of an Omni-Channel-type model. They were online.

They were selling through stores. They were on QVC. You know, they did all of that. Any way to get people to support the mission. But they were all lined up. That organization was completely lined up. And one of the things Jamie does, and I'm sure he probably talked about this at times, he still would onboard all the employees to make sure that they heard the mission.

So for a founder like that, he wasn't in the depth of the accounting department, counting the beans, he was making sure that everybody they hired was on the same page. And I think that is what you have to do to lead. All right. Right now, NetSuite is offering you valuable insights with a free guide, the seven key strategies to grow your profits. So go to netsuite dot com slash twist, net suite.com slash twist and get that free guide. Seven key strategies to grow your profits. We appreciate the work you're doing in the startup community. It's great stuff. Thanks, pal. Thanks. All right. We'll be back one more. You deal with that harassment. Have you ever had to deal with that in your career? I'm curious. You've been doing this in

tech since 2007, I think? How much harassment have you had to do with? As a woman, and as an Asian woman, I'm married to an Asian woman. The amount of harassment I see her get, specifically as an Asian woman, like people, I think, maybe discount that. But it really is like you get treated a certain way. Yeah, I think the thing that... And maybe a white woman wouldn't.

Well, it's hard to say, I don't... I have not experienced being a white woman. Neither of I. But I think the... certainly being underestimated has happened as a founder. And while frustrating, I think we're starting to see some positive shifts in the industry. How did that manifest itself, the underestimating you specifically? Well, you know, sometimes people, investors would say, you know, I want to ask my wife about whether this is a good idea or, you know, we didn't, you know, we seem to.

have a fine experience with our wedding registry 20 years ago, so I'm not sure this needs changing. So I think those are just things that you wouldn't say to anyone coming up with a cool new product in something that you were excited about personally. Yeah. I think it's so clueless when male investors don't take the time to understand something that maybe has a female buyer. It's like, it's a crazy blind spot. I was in a meeting once, and this one investor shows up like 20 minutes late to every board meeting. And he's like, yeah, you know, I talked to my wife about the website.

And he literally goes into this whole thing about his wife's a website. And I just thought to myself, you're worth $50 million. You have four homes. And your life is not the prototypical. life here. Yes. Yes. Like, so the level of cluelessness, number one, it's so insulting to the founder to be like,

let me tell you what, one person who is worth $50 million with four homes thinks about your website, which their assistant might use or their house manager might use, but they would never actually go to. It's like a level of cluelessness. Get educated. And I think that's why it's, it's why I, it's why I, you know, what we're doing in the wedding space is particularly gratifying now to be able to show an example of something that people didn't expect could be a big category. But the reality is the weddings market in the U.S.

alone is a $100 billion market, right, which is bigger than many of the other categories that investors invest in every day. Which, by the way, 2 million weddings, 50,000 a wedding. That's how you get there, right? It's pretty simple math. It's mind-boggling how this is one of the few categories left that is fueled by millennial spending today that has not yet seen a multi-billion dollar disruptor emerge. Yet every other category that you look at of this size has seen that disruptor come through and take the entire market. And so I think being that mis-underestimated or people ignoring this category is very motivating and frustrating and exciting all at the same time. Let me ask this. You've been at it for 10 years. No, six.

Six for this, Zola. Yes. But you had the four years before. Yes. Do you feel it changed in tech over the past decade and how? As a woman in tech in that year, you're in the captain seat. Yeah. You know, the captain of your ship.

Well, I think the, you know, certainly the New York tech scene has changed tremendously, even over the last six years. How? So when I first, I moved actually from the Bay Area to New York to take the job. Sunnyvale to New York. Take the job as the first product. Yahoo was in Sunnyvale, right, at that era? It was, but I lived in San Francisco. And you commuted down there?

Yes. Oh, my Lord, how brutal. It was brutal. But down to great experience. Amazing Sunnyvale. Lots of great restaurant choices down there. Oh, it's so brutal. It was for the people, not the location.

David Philo showing up in his like Honda Accord, eating in the cafeteria? The fun story behind Yahoo is that, I had a poster of Jerry Yang on my bedroom wall from when I was, from when Yahoo first started, because I loved the company so much and I admired Jerry Yang so much. So you were an entrepreneur nerd kid. Yes, yes. True nerd. True nerd. You didn't have Nirvana. No Bieber. Jerry Yang. Correct.

David Philo. I like it. And so that was the reason I wanted to come to Silicon Valley, work at Yahoo. I even one day got to pass Jerry in the corridor. It's very exciting. Did he give you a high five or say hi? No, I was too intimidated at that point. But one of the best moments in recent history was I got to meet Jerry Yang again in person having actual conversation. And he now is an investor in Zola.

Wow. I mean, he's Taiwanese, I think, right? Yeah, by heritage. Yeah, by heritage. And he's a hero in Taiwan. I mean, Yahoo in Taiwan was the number one search engine for a long time. because Jerry Yang was just so worshiped there or whatever. He's a really great founder.

Now he's an investor. That's fantastic. Well, that's a full circle for you. Yes, exactly. Well, listen, continue success. Thanks for sharing this great success. If you're getting married, you know what to do. Go to zola.com.

By the way, do you take a Vig on, if I buy Sam like dinner when she's in Paris, and she gets a gift card, take a Vig on that? Well, so that I think is through the hundred, honeymoon fund or cash fund, we make no money. That's, yeah. So, because I remember I got pitched by Honey Fund or something like that. That's like just Kickstarter for weddings. That's not you guys.

So the way... They charge. Yes, I believe they make money through charging an additional amount. We do not. We get charged a credit card processing fee when you use a credit card, and we break even on that, and so we make no cash on the cash fund. That's smart. Yes. Thank you.

That's super smart. You give up, it's like a really smart move. because you're giving that for free, it makes it super easy then to add your other items. You're like, you know what? I could just give people my Venmo and get it direct. Young people are pretty savvy about moving money around. So if you were to charge 10%, they would tell you, you know, don't use it. Now you've got the money flowing through.

Well, yeah. I mean, I think it comes back to what is the right thing to do for the user. What is the thing that we can build that is going to have everyone want to actually create a registry or their invitations or They're waiting on Zola and we make the right decision. All right. Listen, continued success. If you haven't used Zola and you're getting married, what are you waiting for? Get there, Zola.com.

And you're hiring. Yes. What's the hardest position in New York? Still developers? It's kind of hard in New York developers or it's gotten better? Oh, it's gotten much better. Yeah. But always everyone, every team within our company is hiring engineers, product designers, product managers.

What's the culture? Hard work or balance and lifestyle? What's the culture, would you say on that spectrum? Hard work get a big reward or culture of balance. Where do you put it? I seem like a hard worker to me. Yeah, I would say we want people who work hard and are entrepreneurial, but at the same time we don't want people to kill themselves

because we want them to be able to work with us for a long time. Got it. So you believe in putting in a solid 50 hours a week, but not an insane 80? Focus 40 I think it's whatever gets the plan done It's a big discussion here in Silicon Valley I think part of this like entitlement

As part of what got us here It used to be in the tech industry You were expected to like The idea that you had balance And a startup was like well If you want balance Go to the big company like If you're at a startup

We're here to like hustle We win because we work whatever 20% harder And then they became this thing Like startups were going to have balance And everybody would be namaste and putting in 40 hours a week. That doesn't seem to me like a recipe for winning. I don't know.

Maybe I'm old school. I think I am old school. I know I'm old school. I mean, I, so I think the reality is if you can work productively up to a certain point, that is the point at which you should. What do you put in, honestly, 60 hours a week? What would you say your average, like, hours into your SAC, 60? I would say each day, I'm in the office up until maybe 60.

seven. So you put in 10 hours? Go home and then a few hours. So you're putting in 10, 12 hours a day, five, six days a week. You're doing a solid 60, 70 as a CEO. That's what it takes. That's what it takes as a CEO. I don't expect my entire team to be doing that every day, every week. That's absolutely not. But you put in the 6070. Yeah. Let me some message to millennials. She doesn't expect you to. But let me tell you something. I would never go to work and come in after. my boss arrived and I would never leave before my boss left the office. To me, did you grow up that way? Like, don't leave till the boss leaves? I don't think that was ever explicitly said, but I probably did not do that. To me, like, yeah, put in the time, people, I think it's an Olympic sport startups. I think this is an Olympic sport to get, to be an Olympian, which, you know, you are, you want to go for the gold. You've got to get up early. You may be a little tired at the end of the day. Well, that's what I tell everyone who says, you know, how do I know if I should be a founder

and start a company? And I say, well, are you willing to devote at least the next seven to 10 years of your life at a minimum 24-7, nothing else but this? Because if you are, yeah, you should be a founder. But if not, maybe not. Yeah, maybe not. Yeah. If you want to be in the captain's seat, like, it's a lot of responsibility. It's a lot of work. All right, listen, continued success. We'll see you as Zia stock ticker symbol of Zola. Yes. There we go. Good luck.

All right. Thank you. I'll see you all next time.