I’ve been side gigging since second grade.
My first foray into product development occurred when I was 8 years old. I was “hired” to make a custom font. I needed to understand the user problem and create a solution.
1992: Custom Font
At the height of Contempo Casuals, every teenage girl was wearing tees with “devil,” “sexy” and other similar phrases. They didn’t appeal to me so I created my own line called Mon Etoile with the tag line “Smart Fashion for women.”
This was pre-Etsy, pre-Amazon (it only sold books back then), and pre-print on demand, so I bulk ordered a box of shirts and made a store on ebay.
1998: Mon Etoile
In 2010, I worked as a Product Manager Intern for a small wedding start up and learned all about the wedding industry. I wanted to do something on my own, so I created a prom fashion site to help teens plan for and purchase items for high school prom.
At its height, PromMafia.com had over 70k monthly visitors and multiple advertising deals.
2010: Prom Mafia
I wanted to move on from blogging and create real software. With my cousin, we co-founded Zanifesto to allow anyone to create high quality visuals for marketing. We made Canva before we had ever heard of Canva.