Mariam Naficy is the founder and CEO of Minted, an online design marketplace that produces stationery, paper goods, home decor products, and really, anything to support an intentional lifestyle.
And it's all based on crowdsourced designs from a talented community of independent artists from over 100 countries. Mariam is no stranger to an eclectic community. She is the daughter of Iranian and Chinese immigrants and lived all over the world growing up. She points to these diverse experiences, and the experience of often being an outsider, as the foundation for her ability to approach entrepreneurial problems from a new perspective.
In 1998, she founded Eve.com, an e-commerce cosmetics company which she then sold for $110 million just two years later. She followed it up with Minted, which she originally intended to run as a lifestyle business she could operate while raising her young kids. But, after a bumpy start, and almost shutting down the company, Mariam realized the unique value of the community of artists she had built. She has now gone on to raise nearly $300 million in venture capital, valuing the company at well over $700 million.