Shan-Lyn Ma: Zola Co-Founder and Co-CEO

Second Life

Shan-Lyn Ma, co-founder and co-CEO of wedding registry site Zola, was destined to be an entrepreneur. In fact, her childhood bedroom décor featured a poster of her idol, Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo. After graduating with her MBA from Stanford, Ma pursued her lifelong dream and took a role at Yahoo, first as an intern and later in product marketing. Two years later, she moved over to e-commerce company Gilt Groupe as its first Product Lead. It was during her time there that she founded and ran her own business unit, Gilt Taste, where she worked closely with future Zola Co-Founder Nobu Nakaguchi. Though Ma moved on to a role as Chief Product Officer at jewelry company Chloe + Isabel, she and Nobu were percolating on an idea for a business. During that time, Ma was also spending nearly every weekend at friends’ weddings and was repeatedly met with clunky registry sites. She and Nobu realized this area of wedding planning needed disrupting and they set out to do just that. Zola has now helped over 2 million couples plan their weddings and just recently expanded to include a baby registry service.

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