I first met Shan‐Lyn in 2009, when she was the sole product manager for fast‐growing Gilt Groupe in New York City. But it was easy to see her potential.
Shan‐Lyn originally studied marketing and economics, and after getting her MBA at Stanford, she joined Yahoo for a couple years before she decided to try startup life.
After four years building a product team at Gilt, she was ready to found her own startup, Zola, an online wedding registry and planning company. The business has been growing for seven years now, and provides services that are loved and depended on by engaged couples everywhere.
Moreover, Zola is considered one of New York's most promising growth‐stage companies as well as one of the best tech companies to work for.
Leadership in Action
Here's Shan‐Lyn in her own words:
There's nothing that I enjoy more than building things that the world has never seen before, but once they see them, they're like, “How did we live without it?” Products that bring genuine joy. That is the thing I want to keep doing forever.
When my co‐founder, Nobu Nakaguchi, and I decided to start Zola, we did not just have a vision for helping couples with their weddings, we also had a vision for the kind of company we wanted to work at.
When I was leading product at a prior job, one of the company's leaders gave me the feedback that ...
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