Shan-Lyn Ma, co-founder and CEO of Zola, reflects on a formative lesson about public speaking and executive presentations learned during her summer internship at Yahoo.
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“So to this day, whenever I get nervous about something, what I do is I imagine the faces of the people that I'm representing on my team, and I It makes me feel so much better. Like I have a gang on my side.”
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Insight
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Ma: Holding warehouse inventory is structurally unprofitable for wedding registries
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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…”
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 MaMar 11, 2021▶ 6:17How I Built Resilience: Shan-Lyn Ma of Zola
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