YouSaid · the spoken record

Shan-Lyn Ma

lines on the record: 76
first: 2022-04-18
most recent: 2022-04-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Nobu and I were meeting up together on nights or on weekends. We would go for walks. We would brainstorm different ideas of things we could start. Jumping off point was really what are the apps and products that we use ourselves every day that we think we could make a lot better?”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's both quit our jobs and start working on the idea that we will then turn into a business and a startup to do together.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had always when I was at guilt, I was working very closely with Nobu. We were hand in hand partners because we really trusted and loved working with each other. And so we had always talked about one day we should start something together. Actually, it was during the time that I had left and nobody had left guilt to go and work at a different startup. And we met up for lunch, as friends do. And this is what I now think of as my lunch of a lifetime. We were catching up and I was asking Nobu about what he was doing. And he looked at me and he said, you know, it's good. It's fine, but it's not as good as when we were working together. I had this realization and I said to him, you know what? I feel the same way. And we said we've always talked about starting something. Why don't we just do that?”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The day that I had to lay off people from my team, that was one of the darkest days. I could feel a very real shift in the business from the first four years I was there, it was all about growth, expansion, innovation. And it felt like the shift was then starting to move towards profitability, towards protecting and focusing on the core business. I felt like I had done and seen a lot through those four years as kind of the equivalent like 40 years. And so I felt like it was time to move on to kind of take those learnings and try to replicate the growth experience all over again.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and at that time there were also market forces that were the rest of the industry was starting to host their own sales and just sell it themselves. And there was also less excess inventory available to buy. And so it was both from the demand and supply side that it was getting much harder to maintain this model.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes, it was a lot. Because the cost that you have and not just of that particular inventory, which is like a hard cost, is always the soft costs around the photo shoots that you have to do or the cost of the warehouse having to bring in and then ship out all this turnover, this inventory every single day, the cost of a huge merchandising team to source and manage all this product. Just the number of people that required made it very hard for the P&L to ever work out. And it made me very allergic to wanting to work in a business that took inventory in the future.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, amazing products. Be able to offer it at deep discount, have enough depth of that product. So the fact that you have to buy so much inventory and do it every single day for a new sale. Means that it's not just inventory for one season, it's inventory for 24 hours.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that ultimately the business model of flash sales was one that was very hard to turn into a sustainable, profitable business. Every single day, you had to find a large handful of luxury brands that amazing things.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They wouldn't give us an iPad device because as a company they're very secretive. And so again, we went back to Nobu and said, can you please design an iPad app? But by the way, we don't know really anything about this device. And what Nobu did to design this was he watched the Apple. There was one Apple TV commercial where they showed an iPad and he would watch that commercial again and again and freeze frame it to kind of zoom in on what is actually possible on this magical new device. And then he had a cardboard cutout that was the dimension of the iPad that was coming out. And he would put his designs on this cutout and like tap and swipe the cardboard cutout to try to imagine how it would feel. And similar to the iPhone, it ended up being a huge beloved app by all the users.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I first came into contact with Nobu when we were starting to think about building Gilt's first iPhone app. So as part of this project, we realized we didn't have anyone in the company that had experience designing mobile apps on mobile devices before, so we should go and find someone who had that experience. Anyway, we came across no boo and we brought him in to work with us on designing the first ever Guilt iPhone app. He did such an incredible job and that app turned out to be a hit right out of the gate. And it made Apple then come and ask us, could we be one of the first apps to launch on the iPad device when the iPad launched? And at that time, iPads didn't exist yet, but of course they were building it in stealth.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, when I started a guild, it was probably less than 30 people. The business had not been live yet for a full year, so it was still the first year of business, I think, in that first year the business did something like $7 million in revenue. And it was growing very quickly. And so I remember at the weekly all team meeting every single week, the head of finance would get up and say, and yet, and yet again, we've had another record week. So you could tell that this was a rocket ship where the business was growing, the team was growing, and the customers could not get enough.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was really the first time that you could buy designer brands like Valentino or Dolce and Gabbana at 80% off retail for a limited time only through a beautiful website.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yet I was shopping on it every day. I was obsessed with that product spending too much time and money on it. And one day, while I was thinking about all these other jobs in Silicon Valley, I happened upon the jobs page on guilt and just saw right there a listing for my dream job through my resume and through the website. and ended up getting a call for an interview the very next day.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is that the centralized team? There was just a lot of questions around how do we work together to fight this common enemy. And in a small company, you don't have to deal with that. And so I think just the innovator's dilemma problem was really brought to life, even though so many smart people there were really trying to make it work. And the lesson that I took from that was that actually it's never obvious what's going to happen in a business. Even a big company, it's really incumbent upon the people to act as one team and feel like they're working in a small startup because that's who they're competing with. And that's the only way that you're going to win.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I don't think it was a general feeling because I think the leaders of the company at that time were still people that everyone admired because they were so talented and brilliant leaders. I think the challenge that was frustrating to most people was How do we decide who is responsible for a given decision? Because it has an impact on so many businesses. So for example, We were talking about hey, there should be an app for Yahoo Finance. But who's responsible for that and who makes the decision? Is it the Yahoo Finance team? Is it the mobile team?”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that was the most exciting day during the time that I worked at Yahoo, which was the day that I was in the head office and I walked past Jerry Yang in the corridor. So we didn't quite meet, but we were in the same hallway. And I remember I was so starstruck when he walked past that I literally stopped in my tracks and I had to take a moment to catch my breath.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I do is I imagine the faces of the people that I'm representing On my team, and it makes me feel so much better, like, like I have a gang on my side”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think I was as nervous during the interview, but I was certainly very nervous when I was in meetings with all these very senior people who I thought knew so much more than I did. And I remember very distinctly I was presenting something I was working on to a group of executives and it did not go well because I was stuttering. I was getting questions that I couldn't answer very well. And I remember the head of the group at that time. He said to me, he pulled me aside after the meeting and he said, you are representing us all. you need to essentially get it together next time we're in this same situation and that was the best thing that anyone had ever said to me up until that point because it made me realize it was not about me and how nervous I was it was about me representing an entire team of people and I could not let them down so to this day whenever I get nervous about something”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think I said that I had a picture of Jerry Yang on my bedroom wall, but I definitely did emphasize how much I love the company. And the interviewers at the time, the comment to me was, oh, you can tell that you really want to work here, which is an understatement to say the least. I think I said, yes, even before the offer was out of the person's mouth.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had always had it in my mind. I think it was because my mother would say to me growing up, one day you'll go to the US and you'll get your MBA and it'll all be great. And I have no idea how she got that in her head because we had never known anyone who had worked in the US. We had never known anyone who had gotten an MBA. But somehow she had that as a dream for me.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take these stress bowls. I would go out in my neighborhood, knock door to door, and sell them every night after I came home from school. I wouldn't go home until I had sold out for the day. And at the end of that competition, we ended up being the company with the most sales in the state. And I was so proud of what I had contributed to that team. And from then on, I was hooked.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They were, I would say, some variation of the stereotype of the Asian tiger parents. But more than that, I think I remember that my dad wanted me to read great books. And by great books, he meant Homer's the Iliad. And so it was kind of disturbing to him that all I wanted to do was read business books. That was what led me to, you know, I remember a real turning point for me when I was 11. I entered my very first business plan competition where students from different schools would all form teams. You would come up with an idea for a business. And for us, we came up with the idea of selling stress balls where we would put balloons and fill them with rice. So I would”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A hustler, he wanted, he was very ambitious in business. And that was very inspiring and romantic to me. And so that is why I wanted to be like Alex Peking. Jerry Yang, I was and still am a huge fan of because he was the founder of Yahoo, which going back into internet history was really the first company that made the world wide web accessible to anyone in the world. And on top of that, I spent a lot of time growing up in Australia as many first generation immigrant kids do, wishing that I was like everyone else. Yeah. That's all I wanted to be. I just wanted to be white and have lunch that was like everyone else. And Jerry Yang kind of looked like me. And so here was someone out of college who was starting this company that was impacting practically every single person in the world.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, Michael J. Fox, let's just start with him. He was in this TV show, you might remember, called Family Tide. Family ties, of course. And his character. And they show Alex Fikin was. Yeah.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, then Nobu, who has a very innocent mind, wanted to call the company wish and blow in reference to a wedding cake. Could be taken in all kinds of ways. And so...”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Turns out in the Zulu language Zola is the word that roughly translates to love. And let me tell you, I'm so glad we picked that name because the runner-up names were terrible.”
2022-04-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Zola: Shan-Lyn Ma · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT