Shan-Lyn Ma
Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Zola. On 3 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestor@shanlynm ↗LinkedIn ↗zola.com ↗
Shan-Lyn Ma is the co-founder and co-CEO of wedding registry and event planning platform Zola. She previously served as Chief Product Officer at Chloe + Isabel and held product leadership roles at Yahoo and Gilt Groupe.
3shows
3appearances
38statements
17resolved
14supported
1contradicted
82%fully supported
Everything Shan-Lyn Ma said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Shan-Lyn Ma: Hallmark Channel rejected Zola ads featuring same-sex couples
“There was one instance where the Hallmark Channel refused to run our ads that showed same-sex couples.”
Shan-Lyn Ma: Expand product lines only once core word-of-mouth is proven
“When you can start to see, both in your product feedback and in your P&L, that, that you have that word of mouth going, that you have that viral network effect, which is inherent in, in weddings, but once you see that, that is the time where you can continue t…”
Shan-Lyn Ma: Post-revenue fundraising shifts from vision to financial returns
“Once you start to drive revenue, have real metrics, of course, you know, the fundraising pictures shift from being all about the dream, and the vision, and the market opportunity, to being about what has the business done, what is it going to do, and how much …”
Ma: Flash sale business models are rarely sustainable or profitable
“I think the, ultimately, the business model of flash sales was one that was very hard to turn into a sustainable, profitable business.”
Ma: Wedding registries had not meaningfully changed since the 1960s
“The problem was that it hadn't changed in decades since the 19 sixties when they were first invented. It was like someone had taken a registry from the 19 sixties and just put it on the internet and hadn't touched it since.”
Ma: Holding warehouse inventory is structurally unprofitable for wedding registries
“And it's even more impractical in a wedding registry setting because By nature of a registry, you want to offer a very broad assortment, so you want as many brands and products as possible, but you need very little inventory depth, and so that kind of model is…”
Ma: Series B is hardest because selling dreams is no longer enough
“You know, at the teenage years where you have enough of a track record where you're making money so you can't just sell the dream of what's going to happen, but you're also not yet at maturity where you can show this is going to, this is already a huge company…”
Zola's team leaked Hallmark's ad ban to NYT without executive permission
“The thing that I am most proud of this entire incident, was that the team didn't ask permission to go and tell the New York Times.”
Ma: VC disconnect from a pain point does not erase the market
“And just because investors didn't feel personally connected to the pain point, did it mean it didn't exist.”
Shan-Lyn Ma: Product launches are either pushed out or demand-pulled
“I think, you know, in product development, there's almost two kinds of product launches. One is where you push a product out, and then you iterate based on feedback, and then the home store example is more of a example where it's pulled out of your hands by th…”
Shan-Lyn Ma: Gilt Groupe grew to $600M revenue in four years
“Where it was, you know, about 30 people at the time, and, you know, four years later, over a thousand people. It was doing close to zero in revenue at the time. Four years later, you know, over six hundred million in revenue”
Shan-Lyn Ma: Kevin Ryan offered to seed Zola on the spot
“His, I still remember his words to this day, which is, I've always wanted to do something in weddings. Love to work with you guys again. Why don't I just give you the funding and we'll do it together?”
Shan-Lyn Ma: Annual marriage rates stayed consistent across decades until COVID
“When we looked at decades and decades of history, we saw The number of people that get married every year is remarkably consistent. Through depressions, through boom times, no matter what the decade, it's a very consistent number every single year. Even as, yo…”
Shan-Lyn Ma: Launching Zola Home helped the company survive 2020
“We very quickly launched Zola Home, which is essentially a kind of home website where you could buy anything you need for your home. It was already using the assortment that we had for our wedding registry, and that really, that was one of the things that help…”
Shan-Lyn Ma: The two years after 2020 were biggest for weddings
“The following two years were the biggest years ever for weddings where a lot of people who, Might have pushed their wedding back or pulled their wedding forward, decided we are going to celebrate being back in person again, again, and we're going to have a rea…”
Apple invited Gilt to build a launch app for the original iPad
“It made Apple then come and ask us, could we be one of the first apps to launch on the iPad device when the iPad launched?”
Nobu Nakaguchi designed Gilt's original iPad app using a cardboard cutout
“What Nobu did to design this was he watched the Apple, there was one Apple TV commercial where they showed an iPad, and he would watch that commercial again and again and freeze frame it to kind of zoom in on what is actually possible on this magical new devic…”
Ma: Gilt needed to sell roughly 80% of inventory for profitability
“I don't remember exactly. I think it was something like 80%.”
Ma: Engaged couples wanted permission to break rigid traditional wedding norms
“What We heard was couples felt like they were almost like on this whitewater raft being shuffled down the same path as everyone else, where you had to register a certain way, you had to have your wedding invitation look a certain way, and what they were lookin…”
Kevin Ryan provided Zola's $250k seed check and joined as co-founder
“Yeah, that first check was 250,000. So he was the first seed investor, but more importantly, he also joined us as a co-founder and chairman of the board, and so brought not just the cash, but also, you know, his experience and advice.”
Ma: Zola raised its Series A one week before product launch
“Yeah, it got us to launch, which was around four to six months, and we actually raised our Series A round the week before we launched.”
Ma was prevented from working for months by severe car crash injuries
“I was very badly injured in, you know, eight broken ribs, fractured spine broken collarbone, injured lung, liver, bad shape, and was really not able to work for quite some time, for quite a few months after that.”
Zola launched a home store after non-wedding consumers shopped during lockdowns
“What was interesting was that certainly in the first four, three to four months, there was less wedding gifts being given. But actually, there was, there still was gifting happening, even though the weddings weren't happening, and what Also helped us during th…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Shan-Lyn's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Zola | 2 | 26 | 86% 6/7 | full record on How I Built This → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Zola | 1 | 12 | 60% 3/5 | full record on Masters of Scale → |
 TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Zola | 0 | 0 | 100% 5/5 | full record on Top Founders → |