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Disrupting the wedding industry, with Zola’s Shan-Lyn Ma | Masters of Scale

Shan-Lyn Ma, co-founder and co-CEO of Zola, joins host Jeff Berman to share how intrapreneurship prepared her to build a business that’s transformed the wedding industry with online tools.

Shan-Lyn MaguestJeff Bermanhost

Oct 24, 202434mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

30 min read · 5,964 words

0:00 – 2:06
The wedding that inspired Zola
1. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Well, two of my very good friends met each other and fell in love at the French Laundry.
2. JBJeff Berman
  The French Laundry is a world-renowned restaurant in California's Napa Valley operated by Chef Thomas Keller, and that's Shan-Lyn Ma, who, as founder of the wedding business Zola, may know more stories about romantic couples than anyone you know.
3. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  So of course, when they... it came time to decide where to have the wedding, they had their wedding at the French Laundry. But it wasn't the most memorable wedding because of that, although of course the food and the destination was incredible. I would say it was because the after party was at a dive bar down the street where the, you know, typically the bride and groom enter in some dramatic, romantic, beautiful way, and they entered the dive bar falling on top of each other, literally.
4. JBJeff Berman
  [laughs]
5. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  But it was just, and that, that kind of combination of going from one extreme to the other that showed, you know, uh, that no matter where you are, there's a lot of love both in this couple, in this wedding, and, you know, everyone around them. And so it was an incredibly fun, special wedding and also, uh, one of those wedding registries that sparked the idea for Zola.
6. JBJeff Berman
  Early in her career, Shan honed her product and e-commerce skills with tech juggernauts like Yahoo and Gilt. Now, as co-CEO and co-founder of the online wedding planner Zola, she's helped over two million couples start their lives together. This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. In this episode, Zola's Shan-Lyn Ma shares lessons about how intrapreneurship prepared her for striking out on her own, finding clarity in a personal crisis, and weathering pandemic-level disruptions to her business. But first, I wanted to talk to Shan about the earliest inspiration of her entrepreneurial story. Shan, welcome to Masters of Scale.
7. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Thank you for having me.
8. JBJeff Berman
  I'm thrilled, I'm thrilled for you to be here. Um,
2:06 – 4:13
What drove Shan-Lyn Ma to entrepreneurship
1. JBJeff Berman
  a lot of the, um, uh, Masters of Scale we have on the show started their entrepreneurial journeys early. Uh, w- how did you get the bug? How did you get started as an entrepreneur?
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Well, I have wanted to be an entrepreneur before I even knew the word existed. Um, so, you know, I was born in Singapore, but grew up in Australia, um, where my family moved when I was four, and I think very early on realized, you know, any money that my parents had, which wasn't a lot, went to school and books and not, not much else. And so anything, anything else that I wanted, I had to earn for myself. And so very early on, kind of learnt or caught the bug, I should say, of creating something out of nothing, selling it to people, and them giving you something in return, and that, you know, is, is truly addictive. And not just the fact that you get to earn something, but the fact that you created something out of nothing. I think, uh, that is still the most fulfilling part of my job.
3. JBJeff Berman
  What, what was... what were some of the first things that you were, you were trying to sell?
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  I mean, I would sell anything [laughs] that moved. Um, you know, whether it was Girl Scout cookies or, uh, I remember when I was 11 years old, um, that I entered a business competition, so super nerdy child. And so we had to come up with an idea that we could then sell as a team. We came up with the idea of stress balls, which is really, you know, beans inside balloons that you could squeeze, and I, I remember I was like, quote unquote, head of sales, and so I just pounded the pavement all day, every day. We-- our team ended up having the highest sales out of any team in, you know, that national competition, and that was really when, you know, something changed in my brain, I think, where I, I realized, you know, if you really wanna do something and you don't give up, you can be the best and, and by the way, um, you know, it, it could be anything. You could be selling anything that you think people might be interested in.
4:13 – 7:13
The entrepreneur who motivated Shan
1. JBJeff Berman
  I grew up, um, mostly with posters of athletes-
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  [laughs]
3. JBJeff Berman
  ... on my wall, including, uh, a famous poster of a basketball player named Darryl Griffith, whose nickname was Dr. Duncan Stein. I still remember that poster on my wall. You grew up with a very different kind of hero on, on, on a poster on your wall. Who, who, who was on your wall?
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Well, uh, you know, there, there's two, um, very different people on my wall. So one was Kylie Minogue-
5. JBJeff Berman
  Uh-huh. Okay.
6. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  [laughs] who I wanted to be like. The other person was Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo, who I also wanted to be like.
7. JBJeff Berman
  So how does Jerry Yang end up on your wall as a young woman with the entrepreneurial bug in Au- in Australia?
8. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  You know, Australia is a very remote country in that it's literally on the other side of the world from the US and surrounded by water. So my, my window was really magazines with-- which ended up being business magazines, which was what the library had at the time. And so I would read about all the exciting things that were happening in the world, and Ya- this story of Yahoo was one that really caught my imagination. Here was this young person right out of school who was finding a way to democratize information and make it accessible to everyone. And, uh, by the way, he did it in a very fun, you know, down-to-earth way, and he also looks like me, and I-- it made me feel like that was something that I would like to do one day.
9. JBJeff Berman
  Shan was laser-focused on getting to Silicon Valley, so when she had the opportunity, she enrolled in the MBA program at Stanford. Soon after, she got an internship at Yahoo and then a full-time job. The man on the poster in her childhood bedroom was now signing her checks.
10. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  There were so many things I learned at Yahoo, but the number one memory, the Most exciting moment for me was when I walked past Jerry Yang in the hall [laughs]
11. JBJeff Berman
  Did, did, did you get to say, did you get to tell him about him being the inspiration?
12. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  No, obviously I was too stunned-
13. JBJeff Berman
  [laughs]
14. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  ... and shocked and starstruck, and so he was very busy, clearly, very stressed, a lot of things going on at that time in Yahoo. But I walk- walked past him, and then I think I just stopped in my tracks and h- maybe had a small panic attack. [laughs]
15. JBJeff Berman
  Oh. Have you had a chance to talk to him since?
16. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  I have, I have, I have.
17. JBJeff Berman
  And what was that like?
18. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  It was incredible. I think he was everything that I, you know, I imagined he would be in terms of kind, humble, um, uh, ex- obviously extremely smart. And so I'm lucky to have had the opportunity to meet him and, um, you know, now I, I, I'm very, you know, part of what gets me up every day is the motivation to be able to show Jerry that I can one day write to him again and say, "Look at the things I've done, I hope." [laughs]
7:13 – 8:49
Lessons from Gilt
1. JBJeff Berman
  About a decade into her career, Shan landed what became a transformational role at the website Gilt.
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  For those people who might not be familiar, um, Gilt was one of the earliest, I would say, Web point-to startups based in New York. It was at the forefront of kind of, um, a new wave of e-commerce and shopping experiences, both on the web and on mobile. And so I w- you know, I came across Gilt at first as a early customer.
3. JBJeff Berman
  Mm-hmm.
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  I was looking and I thought, "Wow, I can't stop coming to this site. There's something special happening." I s- saw the team page. I thought, "These are people I would love to work with and learn from." Was lucky enough to get the job as the first product manager there, and, and I feel like that was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
5. JBJeff Berman
  Why is that?
6. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  So it, it gave me the opportunity to have a, a seat on the rocket ship, which I think is, you know, a phrase that Sheryl Sandberg coined, where it was, you know, about 30 people at the time and, you know, four years later, over 1,000 people. It was doing close to zero in revenue at the time. Four years later, you know, over 600 million in revenue. And so I got to have a front seat on developing all the new products that would drive that expansion. Because when you're in a, such a fast-growing company, there's a lot of opportunities to do things you would never be able to do otherwise.
7. JBJeff Berman
  Yep.
8. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Um, including kind of coming up with ideas and having the chance to do them if, if they're good ideas.
8:49 – 11:11
The moment of frustration that led to Zola
1. JBJeff Berman
  And so w- w- having taken those lessons from Yahoo through Gilt, w- where did the idea for Zola come from?
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  It was, it was really born out of personal need. At 2013, which was the year we started Zola, that was the year all my friends were getting married at the same time, and I think many people have that year where every weekend you're going to a different wedding, you are spending a lot of money, [laughs] doing a lot of travel, buying a lot of gifts. I was buying a lot of gifts for my friends from their wedding registries, and I re- I distinctly remember there was one friend where the only thing I could afford on her registry was one silver spoon.
3. JBJeff Berman
  Hmm.
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  And I called her up and I said, "What is going on [laughs] with your registry?" And she said, "Oh man, I don't even know. It was so frustrating to put together. I just let my mother deal with it. I don't even know what's on there. The whole thing is just so painful and horrible." And that kind of set a, a light bulb because here I had been working in creating simple, fast, fun e-commerce shopping experiences, and suddenly I was faced with one that was the worst shopping experience I'd ever seen online. And so I started talking to Nobu, who is m- my co-founder here at Zola, and we had been working together for a long time. And I was saying, "This is kind of crazy. It's, it's like stuck in the 1900s, and, you know, our friends deserve better." And Nobu's married, and he said, "Oh, it's just, just as bad not just for guests, but also for couples. Everything that you have to do to get to set up a registry is, is one of the worst parts of getting married." And what we heard again and again was that people wanted fundamentally different things than what they were getting from department store registries, which dominated the market at the time. They wanted products as well as experiences and cash. They wanted to fully personalize their registry and their entire wedding, and they just wanted the convenience of managing things where and when they wanted them, and no one else was doing that. And we thought, we've been, we have been doing that, just at a different company, and we can bring very kind of unique insights to this problem. And we kind of looked at each other and we said, "We should do something about that." And that was the beginning of Zola.
5. JBJeff Berman
  So
11:11 – 12:30
What Zola got right — and wrong — early on
1. JBJeff Berman
  a- almost every company when they start out, they get some things really right, they get some things really wrong. What did you get right and what did you get wrong at the beginning?
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  So my co-founder Nobu and I are very much product people. We are focused on the, the customer, the couple, and we believe the best product always wins. And so I think what we got right was laser focusing on how can we design and build the best possible product for our couples. And we also didn't want to distract ourselves with doing a lot of different products or features until we felt like we had really nailed the first one-
3. JBJeff Berman
  Mm-hmm
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  ... which was the wedding registry.
5. JBJeff Berman
  Yep.
6. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Now, I think what we got wrong was that maybe we waited a, a little too long to respond to couples' requests to expand beyond wedding registry. Um, the-- We, we spent the first four years on that one product, but we heard from day one of launch, "Oh, could you please help me with this? And you, you know, my wedding planning, could you also help me with my wedding website because my registry already has all my information. If I could just add a few more things, it could all be in one place." And- You know, I would say if we, I could do it all over again, I would react faster to those, those couple requests
7. JBJeff Berman
  But there's
12:30 – 13:25
When to expand to other product lines
1. JBJeff Berman
  a tension, right? Because you, you wanna nail the one thing.
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Yes.
3. JBJeff Berman
  You wanna get it really right-
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Yes
5. JBJeff Berman
  ... before you start expanding, and yet if you're not serving your customers' broader needs, you risk losing them to competitors.
6. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Exactly.
7. JBJeff Berman
  So when, when, when other entrepreneurs are coming to you and they're asking you about this, how, how do you advise them about when to branch out into those next product lines?
8. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  When you can start to see, both in your product feedback and in your P&L, that, that you have that, um, 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 to invest in that core product, but, but also consider, oh, are there other things that we can then add on that are accelerated by that word-of-mouth?
9. JBJeff Berman
  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, w- uh,
13:25 – 17:18
Inside Shan-Lyn Ma’s fundraising journey
1. JBJeff Berman
  talk about your fundraising journey, if you would. How did investors... When did you decide to go talk to investors, and how did they respond when you, when you brought Zola to them?
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  So I always tell any founder or entre- aspiring entrepreneur that every fundraising journey is completely different to anyone else's, and ours, you know, it, it fits that exactly. Um, so Nobu and I, once we had quit our jobs and started working on Zola, um, we started talking to Kevin Ryan, who is, we knew very well from Gilt. He is, you know, well-known founder, investor, entrepreneur.
3. JBJeff Berman
  Kevin Ryan is indeed the founder of Gilt, among many other New York-based startups. He's often called the godfather of New York City tech.
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Because we'd worked with him for so long, we were just used to kind of sharing ideas, getting feedback on those ideas, hearing his thoughts, and we were talking about Zola. Um, you know, 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?" And that sounds like a dream, right? [laughs]
5. JBJeff Berman
  Sounds great. Problem solved.
6. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  So every single founder I talk to says, "Wow, that was the easiest fundraise I've ever heard." In many ways, it was the quickest fundraising story, but I consider it more as one of the longest-running fundraising stories in that Nobu and I worked with and for Kevin at Gilt for four years. You know, we worked our butts off 24/7 to really show that we were people worth investing in again.
7. JBJeff Berman
  Mm-hmm.
8. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  And it was only because of that history, of the track record of performance, that Kevin had the confidence to say, "Let me, uh, do your seed round." Once, the week before we were about to launch, I remember we started to get outreach from investors who were interested in meeting us to hear what we were working on.
9. JBJeff Berman
  Right.
10. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  The products that we were about to launch. They sent us a term sheet, like, the same day. And so again, it was [laughs] a matter of, wow, that seems really easy. But in fact, it was, it was all the work that we had put into developing the product that we were about to launch that made them want to invest. Now, I wish every round was as easy as that. It... And it certainly has not been as easy as that.
11. JBJeff Berman
  What's gotten harder?
12. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Well, I would say once you, um, start to drive revenue, have real metrics, of course, you know, the fundraising's, uh, pitches shift from being s- 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 money is this gonna earn me? And so, you know, de- depending on the year, there are some years where it's, it's very easy to tell that story, and then there are other years where you see the revenue is coming, but it's just not immediately apparent on the books, and those, those are, are tougher fundraisers, and we've certainly had those. Um, and so, you know, what I will tell anyone who is kind of e- experiencing a tougher fundraise is that you, you just keep going until you, you can't anymore.
13. JBJeff Berman
  Yeah, I mean, this is one of the paradoxes, right? It's like if you're, you know, pre-product, it's all on the promise of the product. If you're pre-revenue, it's all on the promise of the revenue. If you're revenue, it's on the revenue, but, like, if you're in growth mode, they're less focused on the bottom line. Once you're getting close to profitability, now they're focused on... right?
14. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Yes.
15. JBJeff Berman
  It's, the, the goalposts move as you move down the fundraising field-
16. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Yes
17. JBJeff Berman
  ... and it, it can get, it can get harder.
17:18 – 21:19
Inclusivity around same sex marriages
1. JBJeff Berman
  Um, y- you all made a decision early on to be inclusive of, um, same-sex couples. Um, was that... W- what was that decision like for you all? Was that, was that something that required a lot of discussion? Was that an obvious thing? Was that something investors were worried about or in favor of?
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  You know, it wasn't even a, a decision or a discussion. It was something so obvious that it was offensive to us-
3. JBJeff Berman
  Hmm
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  ... that no other wedding company was being inclusive of... The default was always what's the n- the bride's name? What's the groom's name? The default was, oh, it must be a bride and a groom. It was, quite frankly, offensive that th- that was even still in existence.
5. JBJeff Berman
  Sure.
6. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  So, you know, we thought, well, [laughs] why don't we, we ask? We say, "Who is getting married here?" And then we change the experience that we're showing to someone to reflect what people have told us.
7. JBJeff Berman
  Mm-hmm.
8. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  And, you know, I cannot even describe the outpouring of love and messages that we received when couples said, "You know, it made me cry when you showed me a groom and a groom's picture," um, because No one else has. And that, that was, you know, almost like week one, and it kind of helped us know we were on the right track and we need to do it everywhere we possibly can, show that we are for all couples, um, not just in the product, but in our marketing, in, in customer support, every single place that we can.
9. JBJeff Berman
  Has there been negative feedback for that?
10. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  There was one instance where the Hallmark Channel, um, refused to run our ads that showed same-sex couples.
11. JBJeff Berman
  Wow. What... Do you remember what year this was?
12. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  I think it was around 2019.
13. JBJeff Berman
  Oh, wow.
14. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Not the 1800s.
15. JBJeff Berman
  Right. And so, so you all came up with a, with a TV creative, with a, with a 30-second ad for TV and, and you have a media buyer who goes out to, you know, make sure it's running in the right places. Hallmark Channel's an obvious place to be advertising for Zola. It features a same-sex couple, and they reject it.
16. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Exactly. And this, you know, at this point, we have been running ads with same-sex couples on different platforms for years-
17. JBJeff Berman
  Yeah
18. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  ... and, you know, thought nothing of it. And, you know, it's just, it's just the way that, that we operate. But this was the first time that someone said, "No, we're, we're gonna run these three ads, but we're not gonna run these three ads." And fir- at first, we didn't understand why, and then we looked at the ads, and the only thing that was different was w- the, the ads that were rejected featured same-sex couples. So we asked, you know, "Is that the reason?" And the answer was yes. And the thing, one of the things I'm most proud of in Zola's history is that the marketing team knew that was not okay. They knew that it was unacceptable and that, you know, Zola as a company would reject that answer. And so they, they told people, they told the press, and it kind of blew up in a way that it, it ga- that we... There was a lot of coverage around the fact that Hallmark refused to, um, play what Kara Swisher called very cheesy ads.
19. JBJeff Berman
  [laughs]
20. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  But, you know, I th- I thought they were pretty good.
21. JBJeff Berman
  By the way, by the way, by Kara's standards, that's like a compliment.
22. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Yeah.
23. JBJeff Berman
  So, yeah.
24. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  But the, you know, the, the thing was, it was, um, it was an important moment for us because by standing up for, you know, what, what is very core to the company, we, we showed our couples and prospective couples, everyone, you know, who we are. And, and it ended up, um, attracting, uh, you know, a love, not just from couples, but also from our team-
25. JBJeff Berman
  Yeah
26. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  ... who said, "Thank you for doing that."
21:19 – 23:32
How a near-death experience fueled Shan
1. JBJeff Berman
  I wanna just take a half step back, um, because, uh, a few years into the Zola journey, you, I believe, were in an accident. Can you tell us about what happened?
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Yeah. So I, I was coming back from California, where I ha- was speaking at a conference, and I was, you know, in a ride-sharing service on the way home when all of a sudden, you know, the driver ran a red light and was... a car slammed into me. And the, in that millisecond of extreme pain, I r- remember the exact thoughts that went through my mind, which were, one, "This is it. I'm dying. It's all over," and two, "I'm not done yet. I cannot die today. This is... It's, it's, it's, um... I'm not ready." And specifically, the two things that I thought, "I need to get these done first," one was, um, "I need to, [laughs] I would like to have a child."
3. JBJeff Berman
  Mm-hmm.
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  And then the second is, "I need to get Zola to where I know it can be to, to fulfill this potential of this company." And while, you know, what happened after that was, you know, s- something that I would not wish on anyone when it comes to kind of the, the n- amount of broken bones and pain and recovery and trauma, that was, um, the, the, the way that I was able to get through that was to think about, "Well, I know now, it's very clear to me the things that I really do wanna do." And, you know, sometimes as a founder, when you've been working on a business for, for a while, you start to think, "Would I like to do something else?" And that moment was very clarifying for me because the answer came back very clearly, "No, this is what I need and want to do every single day." And, and so, you know, ever since then, I feel like, um, my, my personal mission is very clear and, you know, every day I need to continue to push Zola to where I know it
23:32 – 28:37
How Zola survived the pandemic
1. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  can get.
2. JBJeff Berman
  Between that accident and today, um, we had a little pandemic.
3. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  [laughs]
4. JBJeff Berman
  [laughs] We had a little once in a century event, um, which, uh, for some businesses, Peloton, it pulled their business forward incredibly, but you're running a business that supports people gathering in person. So I, I wanna go back to March of 2020. What was it like being at Zola then, and how did you manage through especially those first few months of the pandemic?
5. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  One of the reasons that we were so excited to do something in the weddings space in the first place was because 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, you know, the culture changes, people still wanna get married. Except for when there's a pandemic.
6. JBJeff Berman
  [laughs]
7. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  And you're not allowed to leave your house. And that was probably the darkest year for the weddings industry overall.
8. JBJeff Berman
  Yeah.
9. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Um, certainly for us, we could see very quickly as couples were moving the wedding dates on, you know, their, their wedding websites with Zola. You know, our... We had kind of three things that we knew we had to do, and we thought, "Okay, this is clearly going to be a make or break year or month for us. What are the things we need to figure out?" The first was, how can we support our couples who are clearly going to, to be in a lot of pain because they don't know what's going on, they don't know what to do. They, you know, in some cases have put down large deposits. Um, and so we started building products and features that would support couples during that time specifically.
10. JBJeff Berman
  C- can you say more about that? I mean, so I've, I've got a, a venue booked, I've got a honeymoon planned, I've got guests coming in, all of it, and all of a sudden the world is shut down. So w- what even, what are the tools you're giving people to manage that?
11. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  So we started talking about you might, you might wanna change your date. You might wanna change that booking, and what are the ways we can support you to do that? Well, you know, here's exactly how you do it via your wedding website and other Zola products. Um, here's how you message that to your guests in a way that, you know, hopefully people can really hear. And then for those that have bought save the dates or wedding invitations with us, let us help you send out free change the date cards. And so th- that was the kind of one, one example. The other example was, okay, maybe you, you just really wanna get married on that same day. So, um, here's a virtual weddings feature that we put up very quickly. And, and then here's, you know, s- some other vendor recommendations of things that, that might be more supportive of the type of wedding that you might wanna have now or later on, um, you know, potentially with less people.
12. JBJeff Berman
  And in the meantime, y- y- your own team is... I mean, you're not gathering in the office at that point. So you're, you're figuring this out for your customers at the same time you're figuring out how to lead a team that is all of a sudden working from home. How'd you do it?
13. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  So I would say the, the... We made the decision to focus on, on two things that I think helped limit the distraction and the what we call doom spiraling that, the, that one could have gone into mentally. And, you know, I think the first was, let's start to build out scenarios of what could happen.
14. JBJeff Berman
  Mm-hmm.
15. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  So we had a, um, what happens if the pandemic lasts three months? What happens if the pandemic lasts six months? And, you know, let's not even imagine what happens if the pandemic la- lasts nine months. And that then helped us create, um, some very quick decisions around things we needed to stop and start doing. Up until that point, we had also heard feedback from couples and started to see in our data a lot of people are buying from their home because, you know, home, the home category at that point was booming. And so we very quickly launched Zola Home.
16. JBJeff Berman
  Mm.
17. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Which is essentially a kind of home, um, w- 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 helped us get through that year. And, and then of course, the following two years were the biggest years ever f- for weddings, where a lot of people who might have pushed their wedding back or pulled their wedding forward decided we are gonna celebrate being back in person again, again, and we're gonna have a really big wedding.
18. JBJeff Berman
  So, uh, as we sit here in 2024, um, you added Zola Home in the pandemic. Um, uh, you had this experience at Gilt of beginning to expand into new business lines and what have
28:37 – 29:54
Zola’s growth strategy
1. JBJeff Berman
  you. As you look at growth ahead for Zola, what's next?
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Well, there's still, first of all, a lot to do in weddings. So we will continue to grow and build upon the weddings product portfolio that we have. But we're excited about being a life stage company.
3. JBJeff Berman
  Mm.
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  And thinking about, you know, couples, once they get married, they still actually do come back to Zola. They still kind of ask us to help them with more things that they think we're well-suited to do. And so our recent launch of Zola Baby-
5. JBJeff Berman
  Mm-hmm
6. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  ... is a, a good example of that, where actually from probably the first day we launched Zola, we also heard requests for, "Oh, can I use this for my baby registry?" And it took us 10 years, but we, we finally decided it was time to do that. And so that, um, now I think kind of s- puts us into the, we serve you from engagement through this entire life stage of really kind of growing up, you know, creating a family. And I think w- we are looking at what are other parts of this life stage. Um, it's, it's everything to do with a couple and their relationship together, and how can we best support that.
29:54 – 30:56
The wedding gift that every couple wants
1. JBJeff Berman
  What is a, a non-obvious, unusual wedding gift that you, that you saw or that you've given or that you've re- Like, what's one thing that, that people should think about giving as a wedding gift that they might not otherwise think about?
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Yeah. Every registry at the e, you know, towards the end, there's a lot of, there's a bunch of things that people aren't as excited by. And one of those things is a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
3. JBJeff Berman
  [laughs]
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  And, you know, as a guest, I understand. I don't really want to gift a vacuum cleaner either. It's not one thing that you wanna walk into someone's house and say, "Oh, I feel so great because I gave you that vacuum cleaner."
5. JBJeff Berman
  Right.
6. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  But you know, every couple always says, "I really hope someone gets me that vacuum cleaner because I've always wanted a Dyson, but I've never wanted to bu- you know, spend that for myself, but I would, I would love to get it." And so that-
7. JBJeff Berman
  Well, James Dyson was a guest recently.
8. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Oh.
9. JBJeff Berman
  And not a sponsor of the show this week.
10. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  [laughs]
11. JBJeff Berman
  But we're, well, he'll be very happy to know that the Dyson vacuum cleaner should be the number one item that people buy or contribute to buying for, for, for their friends who are getting married. I love that.
30:56 – 32:34
How Zola is leveraging AI
1. JBJeff Berman
  And we've entered this world of AI, and you all launched a Split the Decisions tool. Can you tell us about that?
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  What we heard consistently from couples, mostly heard from brides, is that there's one person that does all the work-
3. JBJeff Berman
  Mm-hmm
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  ... in putting together a wedding, and they really wish it was more fairly distributed.
5. JBJeff Berman
  Mm-hmm.
6. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Um, and so we put together this, this tool that really helps couples, you know, it asks you a few questions such as what are you each strong at, what are you interested in, and then kind of s- divides up what are the responsibilities that you can both take on in planning this wedding together, because you're getting married together. Um, so that's, that, it, it, it was something that was like started as a fun idea, but we've really been surprised at, at how many people have embraced, um, tried it out, and continue to see a lot of positive feedback on that. And then the other thing, um, that, that also we launched was a thank you note generator.
7. JBJeff Berman
  Hmm.
8. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Because one of the most painful things about after you get married is that you have to send a lot of thank yous to people who came to the wedding, gave you a gift, and we thought, "Well, this is something that is very easy to, to generate if you know who gave you which gift, and you know their contact information," and if, you know, you can as a couple put in, like, what kind of tone you might want that thank you note in, and, you know, now we can just help you generate that, and then you can imagine over time just click a button, send the note, and you're done.
32:34 – 34:08
Shan-Lyn Ma’s favorite part of her job
1. JBJeff Berman
  Yeah. What's your favorite thing about what you do?
2. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  I- it's still the thing that I started doing when I was very young, which is working with a group of smart, fun people to think about new ideas that will make other people happy, working on getting that idea out into the world, and then seeing if people actually want to use it and love it. And there is nothing as satisfying as when someone who uses Zola comes up to me and shakes me by the shoulders and says, "You don't understand how much I love Zola. I love Zola." And they-- I say, "Well, thank you. I really appreciate it." And they say, "No, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. I love it." And that passion is what I'm always looking for for anything that we do, because it means that, you know, we have done something truly different. Um, and so still the moments I live for.
3. JBJeff Berman
  Well, that's a wonderful place to bring the conversation to a close. Thank you for being with us.
4. SMShan-Lyn Ma
  Of course.
5. JBJeff Berman
  Zola has built a better experience for millions of people around a key milestone in their lives, and Shan's commitment and clarity in the face of crisis continue to fuel Zola's growth. And if that isn't something worth raising a glass to, I don't know what is. I'm Jeff Berman. Thanks for listening. [outro music]