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Comment by squigs25 | Hacker News Reader

This is a really impressive story. I wish we got more background about the 2010 era, before she hired engineers in San Francisco? Was this site completely freelancer developed initially? How many users did she get before shipping out to cali?

BTW, this site is really taking off with young, social-media crazed teenagers, so keep an eye on it! Already at 8MM users, it's similar to pinterest with a business model that really makes sense.

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Yes, completely freelancer developed. I closed the agency and moved to SF from LA when we got to 30k monthly uniques.

Overall, the two years prior to the inflection point and the first users were pretty inefficient. The vision was actually always the same (a universal social platform for all of shopping), but the execution changed dramatically. We literally just kept launching features around this concept, but they were pretty unfocused, until the minimalist redesign.

On the other hand, this 2 year period allowed me to make lots of product design mistakes and learn from them and to develop a personal philosophy and approach to product design.

Very cool site, seems to be very well implemented. I can see it becoming a much more "useful" Pinterest, at least to me. I love cruising around for cool stuff to buy, and it seems to make good suggestions of related items based on other users' likes (which I'm guessing is weighted by your friends list).

According to Wikipedia they passed 10 million users in August 2013, 90% of which are American women.

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