The Makings of a Founder: Reflections with Former CEO and Co-founder of Rotten Tomatoes, Patrick Lee

Awaken* newsletter

June 20, 2024

This edition was a collaboration with The Early Newsletter by Michaela Gordon. You can read her thoughts on our conversation with Patrick here. Thank you Michaela for collaborating and please go check out her article!

The startup ecosystem has gone through a lot of changes over the years. From the dot com era to the modern era of AI, Patrick Lee has seen it all. A stalwart of the startup ecosystem, Patrick has started seven different companies over the last 30 years, including everybody’s favorite movie review website: Rotten Tomatoes. Michaela and I had the chance to sit down with Patrick to talk about Rotten Tomatoes, advice for founders, and Patrick’s reflections on being Asian.

How did Rotten Tomatoes get started?

Rotten Tomatoes had three co-founders. I was the CEO. There’s Senh Duong, who was the creator of Rotten Tomatoes, and he was basically our chief product officer, and Stephen Wang, who was our CTO. I knew them all from my freshman year of college. Senh was down the hall from me in the dorms.

Prior to Rotten Tomatoes, Stephen and I had founded a web design firm. We were doing a lot of work for the entertainment industry, a lot of work for Disney Channel, stuff for Warner Bros., Artisan Entertainment, MTV, VH1, and ABC. We even made the online flash game for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

During that time, Senh was our creative director, and he came up with the idea on the side. He was a huge movie buff. He came up with it and launched it on his own. It was written in static HTML because he wasn’t able to code at the time. And we hosted it for him. After about a year of hosting, we were like, “maybe this should be the business?” So we actually merged our company with his company and became co-founders of both companies and had equity in both. I went out and raised a million in funding, then transitioned our design firm off to another group to take over. We kept an equity stake in that design firm, but then we basically passed our clients to another group to take over. They took over the name and everything so that we could focus on Rotten Tomatoes fully.

What was your experience raising money like?

Rotten Tomatoes was my third company. In my first company, we put in our own savings. For the second company – the design firm – we took loans from our families. $10,000 from my mom and $20,000 from Stephen’s uncle. Once we started getting clients, we paid back the loan with interest.

For Rotten Tomatoes, one of our clients raised some venture money, so they put us in touch with their VC who said they would lead the round. They put in half a million. The rest we actually raised from our old design firm clients. A number of them were tech companies and had successful exits. So they were totally open to investing, and they knew what we could do because they were our clients.

Why did you decide to raise venture capital for Rotten Tomatoes?

This was in late 1999, right before the dot-com crash, so there was a lot of money going around and a lot of investment into the internet. It’s kind of like what Web3 was like a few years ago or what AI is like now. Multiple companies we worked with had raised a lot of money and had successful exits. We were basically building for all these companies and realized that we were on the wrong side of the business. We decided to try to build something that was our own instead of being a services company. That’s why we went and approached the VC that we had contact with. It was a small VC out of Taiwan. I remember we had a couple of different ideas. The first one was Rotten Tomatoes, which already had traction. The other one we thought was interesting was making a portal for Asians and Asian Americans. We were doing the official Jet Li site. We were working with Yolk magazine at the time. I remember having a meeting with Jet Li and he was getting excited about that idea. He was saying he could bring on Jackie Chan. At that time, there were a couple of other Asian magazines that were within our reach. It was a very small community back then. Our thought was, what if we got the different magazines, the different Asian sites, some of the big Asian and Asian American celebrities, and brought them all together? I remember when we pitched these two ideas to our VC, they told us to do Rotten Tomatoes because movies were mainstream. At the time, only 3% of the population in the US was Asian. Even among Asians, there are many different types and they might identify separately as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, etc. The investor felt it would be very difficult to have content that appeals to all of them. They recommended we do Rotten Tomatoes, which, looking back, was definitely the correct decision. The other idea would have probably been about 20 years too early.

*The first Rotten Tomatoes front page, published in 1998.*

Rotten Tomatoes was launched in just two weeks. How did you navigate the tension between creating the perfect product versus getting it out as soon as possible?

Rotten Tomatoes was our creative director Senh Duong’s idea. He was a huge Jackie Chan fan. He wanted to know what everyone was saying about Rush Hour when the movie was coming out, so Senh went to the library and gathered reviews from magazines and newspapers–back then, very little was online. He decided that if he was putting all this work together, he might as well share it with other people. So he went home, built a page for Rush Hour and the other mainstream movies coming out that week, and put all the information up there. Because the scope was limited, he was able to go from idea to launch in about two weeks. He was gathering twenty to fifty reviews per movie for three or four movies. It was a lot of work, but doable by one person.

It turns out that just having the new releases was still very useful because people were most interested in the movies coming out that week. He didn’t need to have tens of thousands of scores for the long tail of movies. He just focused on the head, the tippy top of the head. It was immediately useful, and instantly started getting traffic and attention. Then he just kept it up. He would work on the next week and the next week and the next week. It wasn’t until a year in that we said; “hey, maybe we should turn this into a business.”

My advice for anyone is to launch quickly and test quickly. A lot of people, and I’ve made this mistake multiple times, spend six months to a year or two trying to make this perfect thing. They end up spending a lot of their own money or burning half or more of the funding that they raised trying to build this thing. The issue is you don’t know what perfect is until you actually get it out there.

You’ll see over and over, especially in consumers, folks put something out as a test and then it blows up. Twitter was a weekend project and then they just blew up. Twitch was Justin.tv in the beginning. They just messed around and put something out there. You just have to get the basic thing out there to see if people want it. Sometimes you don’t even have to build anything, you can literally just interview people or just do a mockup, and make a walkthrough of what the product would look like. It could literally be a napkin scribble and you can immediately start getting feedback. That feedback can actually give you a lot more information than putting something “perfect” out there. Go back to almost any consumer site or app and try to look up what version one looks like. Go look at the first versions of Facebook, eBay, Amazon, or whatever. They were ugly. But they solved something. That’s why they kept growing and taking off. I’m always recommending that.

The other thing I say to people a lot of times is to really focus. It’s generally a single thing that people care about. For Rotten Tomatoes, it’s the TomatoMeter. We could get rid of the cast, crew, filmography, photos, movie showtimes, and almost everything else on the site. But really, as long as you have a score, that’s the critical thing that you need.

If you think about fast food chains, every fast food chain specializes in a single type of food. The restaurants that offer multiple types of food are generally all mom-and-pop shops. The really big chains do one type of food. Every single one of them. When you look at social media, every social media platform started off with one unique singular feature. Like TikTok, Snapchat, Clubhouse, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Substack, they all started as one thing. And again, as they got big, they started looking more like each other because they added more features. But they all started out as one thing. You find one thing that people actually care about. And you try to put that one thing out as fast as possible to see if they really care.

How do you know when to give up on an idea?

Testing doesn’t have to be serial. You can actually do some stuff in parallel. As an analogy: if you have a kitchen, you can test a few different types of food concurrently. You could even do a survey before you start cooking to narrow down your options. Then, you can try each of them out and go forward with the best-performing one. It doesn’t have to be: Let’s try chicken, now let’s try hamburgers, now let’s try pizza. You can try all of them at once.

In terms of knowing if an idea will work–you’ll know it when you see it. Rotten Tomatoes got the press instantly. It was getting noticed. USA Today was writing about it and Netscape was highlighting it at Yahoo. The day Pixar released A Bug’s Life, right around the time we released Rotten Tomatoes, we saw spiking traffic coming from Pixar.

When you look at Asian Hustle Network, they just put something out there and it went crazy. Facebook and Twitter had the same thing. Especially with consumer products, when it works, it works. You’ll know when it doesn’t work because it’s crickets. You’ll be trying to tell everyone to go on, you’ll be telling your friends and family, and some of them will go on once and never come back. That’s normal. That’s actually what happens almost every time.

Take an average YouTube video. You’d have a hard time getting even 100 views on it. Then every once in a while, for whatever reason, someone puts up a video and it gets millions of views and everyone’s sharing it like crazy. You kind of know it when you see it. If you’re begging everyone you can get, you’re trying to market in every way, you’re even buying ads and you’re having trouble getting a hundred views or a thousand views, you’re probably done. If it’s an app or a website, it’s probably not the right one. The way you know if you have product-market fit is if people tell other people about it without being asked to or incentivized to. Think about TV shows like The Queen’s Gambit a couple of years ago or Squid Game. People were sharing it with each other unprompted. They would just tell other people about it and it’s essentially free marketing.

Is it necessary to have startup experience or experience working for another company to execute and test ideas well? Or do you think the best experience to start a company is just to go and start it?

I would say that there is an optimal founder. That founder would be very bootstrappy. They would be able to launch things very quickly, iterate quickly, and without many resources. Also, they would have what I call irrational confidence. They just believe in themselves and what they’re trying to do with this insanely crazy confidence, and often based on nothing.

“When we did Rotten Tomatoes, we didn’t know anything about movies. The Airbnb people weren’t hotel people. The Uber people were not taxi people. Industry disruption often comes from outsiders because disruption requires something out of the box and those people were never in the box to begin with. It’s rare that the disruption happens from within.”

I often speak to students and recent graduates. Some of them will come up and say, “Hey, I was thinking about doing a startup, but I wanted to go work in corporate or management consulting for a couple of years, get experience, and then start it.” There’s a 99% chance you’ll never leave once you’re in and you’re used to a salary, getting raises, promotions, and all that stuff. It’s going to get harder and harder to quit, especially if you get to a point where you’re in your early 30s, married, with kids and a mortgage. The chance of you risking all of that is pretty much zero.

These people, when they come up to me, they’re saying, “Look, I’m too scared. I’m too conservative to actually go out and do it.” The best ones just do it. Yahoo, and Google, they were grad students at Stanford and just left. Zuckerberg was an undergrad at Harvard. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs just left and did it. Most of them don’t even finish school because they’re not scared of leaving early. They have so much belief that they just have to do it. This has happened so many times.

In some ways, dropping out was a good sign. It’s not that they dropped out to bum at home playing video games, they believed in themselves so much they didn’t have that fear of failure. I absolutely think that founding a startup is not for everyone. I don’t recommend it if you’re someone who’s very conservative, and very scared. Go get a normal job, and do the safe thing. But there are people who just have to do it. Even if you have the confidence, you still have to have the ability to iterate, to bootstrap, to do those things properly.

When you see that mix, it almost doesn’t matter what the idea is, assuming that they want to do something big. When you see that mix, that’s the right person. It doesn’t matter what their idea is, they’ll figure out something that’s going to work.

They are sharp and bold – it doesn’t surprise me at all when they make it later on. Look at any of these great athletes or entertainers, and when they were young, they probably had that spark. There is an element of luck, but a lot of it is who they are as a person. The biggest thing when looking at young founders is their irrational confidence. This is true for athletes, entertainers, or anyone who takes that risk. Go back to the beginning and look at them, they have that spark.

You’ve been founding startups for many years now. How have you seen the landscape for Asian American founders change since you started, particularly within tech and venture?

In tech and venture, we generally punch above our weight. At the highest levels, if you look at Nvidia, Yahoo back in the day, YouTube, Twitch, and Zoom, there are Asian founders. If you’re also counting South Asians, look at corporations such as Microsoft and Google, the heads are all Indian.

A lot of Asians tend to lean towards engineering, so we tend to be weaker on the executive side. When people talk about diversity, they often don’t count Asians as diversity for tech and venture.

Similar to college, it’s actually harder for Asians than anyone else. From when I started until now, it’s gotten better, but overall, we could use help on the executive side. In other industries like entertainment, it’s getting better but it’s still not great.

A lot of your business partners have been Asian. Is this intentional or coincidental?

Part of it is because I went to Berkeley. I wanted to go there because it was 40% Asian. I was born in LA but grew up in Maryland. There were only three Asians in my grade in elementary school, so I felt a little invisible sometimes. I later attended a magnet program for intermediate school and high school, where there were obviously more Asians. When college came around, I wanted to find a place that had more Asians so that I would find more people like me. After we sold Rotten Tomatoes, I went to China and then later on, I went to Hong Kong. What I realized was that when I went to China, they could tell I wasn’t like them just by looking at me. I realized that I’m actually a minority everywhere. The closest thing to people like me are Asian Americans, or even more specifically, Chinese Americans.

My circle tends to be at the intersection of tech and entertainment, and it leans more heavily Asian. The folks I was working with, like Holly, Kun, and Kevin, they’re Asian but they also were all doing companies at the intersection of tech and entertainment. I did Rotten Tomatoes, Holly did Kabam, Kun did Crunchyroll, and Kevin did Twitch. With Kun and Holly, we also had a connection through Berkeley. I was also really into Chinese martial arts when I was at Berkeley. Because of Berkeley and martial arts, I naturally had a pretty Asian group. But for me, I’ve tried really hard to get good diversity across industry, race, and gender.

What have you been working on recently?

When I came back from Asia, I did another startup, a mobile gaming company. We raised a lot of money – five million – but it didn’t work. We made every mistake you could make, including not being focused. I took a break and then ended up doing PKO Investments with Holly, Kun, and Kevin. We made an investment syndicate, investing at the intersection of tech and entertainment. We had about 800 people in our syndicate, half of which invested in at least one company. From 2021 to 2022, we invested in 45 companies and raised $35 million for those companies. Around November 2022, there was a big market crash and a lot of our angels needed to take a break. At that point, no one in our syndicate was looking to invest. We talked about potentially doing a fund or doing something else and eventually, we decided to do another startup.

That’s [Fanverse] what I’m currently working on full-time, and we’re basically doing a membership-driven community. We’re bringing together all the best builders, creators, and talent in the geek fandom space. Geek fandom being things like comic books, video games, anime, sci-fi, and fantasy. Geek fandom is something I’ve loved my whole life. We have founders of companies like Patreon and YouTube. We have gaming people: the CEO of Tetris, an ex-chairman of Midway Games, a board director from Roblox, and a board director from Atari. We have entertainment people, such as Adele Lim (a Malaysian director/writer), Shannon Lee, (Bruce Lee’s daughter who produced the TV series, Warrior), and Karen Gillen (Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy). We have sci-fi authors like Neil Stevenson. This is a super cool group of people. There are about 80 people so far and it’s all community. We’re doing dinners, larger events featuring different speakers, a WhatsApp group, online Zoom stuff, all these things to try and get this community together.

At a very high level, we want to be broad enough that you’re going to meet people outside of your lane that you don’t know, but narrow enough that they are people you should know and could potentially collaborate with in the future, especially since pop culture and geek fandom IPs often span multiple mediums. For example, you have The Last of Us, Halo, and Fallout which are games that became TV shows. You have One Piece, which was a manga that became an animated TV show that has become a live-action TV show. You have the Marvel and DC comics which have become TV shows, movies, and games.

With all this crossover, our idea is to bring in people from each of those different mediums together, let them all meet socially, and then see what happens. We’re already seeing folks working together and investing in each other. Essentially, it’s a networking group of these nerdy folks.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

For anyone who’s reading this, Asian or not, I would say that when you look historically, the biggest companies tend to form every time there’s a new wave of technology. Desktop computing gave us Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard. The internet gave us Google, eBay, Amazon, and others. Mobile and cloud computing brought more. Today, I think AI is bigger than all of those combined times a thousand. It’s crazy what AI can do to change literally everything we know.

Rotten Tomatoes, for example, rode the wave of the internet. Most of these companies that are still around rode some wave. AI is the biggest wave ever and if you are interested in entrepreneurship and you are reading this article, get on that wave. When there’s such a massive wave, why wouldn’t you get on it? Why would you just go and get a normal job and do something boring and have this wave pass you by? Assuming you’re not too scared and you’re not too conservative, you should get on the wave, do something, and just survive and stick with it for a while. Everyone I know who got into entrepreneurship and stuck with it for ten years ended up doing something pretty interesting.

We at AHN Ventures are of the same mind as Patrick, and encourage our readers to go out there and start building! If you like what you read, you can follow Patrick @rottendoubt on all socials. Thank you for the interview, Patrick!

Stories

Lucy Liu Stars in “Rosemead,” a True Story of Immigrant Mothers Facing Fear and Mental Health Challenges

Lucy Liu is once again bringing us a powerful performance with Rosemead, a film that has been picked up by Vertical for a December theatrical release. The story follows a mother who begins to see troubling changes in her teenage son, opening the door to a deeper look at fear, love, and mental health.

Recently, the film gathered strong early interest after drawing a full audience at a special screening held at the Metreon in San Francisco. Hosted by Dave Lu, the event sparked conversations about topics often avoided in public spaces, especially within immigrant communities.

With its growing list of festival honors, positive reviews, and a narrative inspired by real events, Rosemead is already being recognized as one of Liu’s most powerful and personal performances to date.

Image Source: BBC

A Story Built on Fear and Family Pressure

At the heart of Rosemead is a mother who becomes concerned as her son’s behavior shifts in unsettling ways. What begins as quiet anxiety slowly grows into a frightening urgency as she realizes the situation may be more dangerous than she imagined.

As her fear rises, she faces the painful question of how far a parent can go to protect the child they love. The tension builds with each scene, making her inner struggle feel both real and universal.

The story takes place within a Chinese American household where cultural expectations and unspoken worries create additional layers of pressure. Lucy Liu captures these emotions with precision, while newcomer Lawrence Shou brings a raw, unpredictable intensity that deepens the film’s emotional impact.

Image Source: The Traveler’s Take

Building Momentum Through Festival Wins

Before reaching theaters, Rosemead had already made a strong impression on the festival circuit. Its premiere at Tribeca drew praise for its gripping approach to storytelling and its standout performances.

The film’s momentum continued as it won Best Narrative Feature at the Bentonville Film Festival, adding to its early recognition. It gained even more attention after earning the Prix du Public UBS audience award at the Locarno Film Festival.

During its time at Locarno, Lucy Liu also received a Career Achievement Award that highlighted her long-standing influence in the industry. Vertical’s Peter Jarowey praised her work for its emotional depth, while also recognizing director Eric Lin’s bold and confident vision in his feature debut.

Image Source: Yahoo

A Strong Screening at the San Francisco Metreon

The event at the Metreon brought together creators, film lovers, and local community members for an open discussion about the upcoming release. The gathering served as a space for people to share expectations, explore the film’s themes, and talk about the real-life issues it aims to portray.

The audience noted how the film reflects real family struggles, especially those found in immigrant households. Its grounded approach to fear and uncertainty sparked discussions about mental health and cultural expectations.

After the screening, conversations centered on Liu’s controlled yet deeply affecting performance. Lawrence Shou also drew attention for his breakout role, adding to the anticipation for the film’s one-week run in selected theaters this December.

Experience the film in theaters and see why it’s already drawing strong early interest. Rosemead is set to premiere in select theaters on December 5, 2025 in New York City; December 12, 2025 in Los Angeles, and more cities to follow on January 9, 2026.

Image Source: Nikolas Liepens

Nov 25, 2025
4 min read

Stories

The Story Behind Inspire To Create Media: How Trysen Kaneshige Uses Art to Heal and Connect Community

Born and raised in Kauaʻi, Hawaii, Trysen Kaneshige never imagined that a series of brain injuries would redirect the course of his life. Art, which had once been a hobby, became his lifeline—a way to heal, process, and reconnect with the world around him.

What began as a personal form of therapy soon turned into a mission: to use creativity not only for his own recovery but to uplift his community and share stories that mattered.

As he experimented with murals, branding, and design, Trysen discovered that each project could bridge culture, healing, and connection in ways he had never anticipated. Through perseverance and collaboration, he began working with brands like Volcom, Olukai, and Soulection Radio, while also leading projects for schools, nonprofits, and community organizations across Hawaii.

From these experiences, Trysen founded Inspire To Create Media, a healing-centered creative agency that blends streetwear aesthetics, cultural storytelling, and design to create work that resonates far beyond the islands.

Finding Inspiration in Adversity

Trysen’s path to entrepreneurship was shaped by necessity and resilience. “I wasn’t able to work a regular job since I would have a lot of migraines or dealt with depression etc. It’s been challenging but I’ve learned to be resilient and not give up. What also inspired me was to create something for my community and for the next generation that is after me,” he recalls. The setbacks could have ended his creative ambitions, but Trysen chose to focus on what he could control: his art and his recovery.

Instead of succumbing to frustration, he saw opportunity in every challenge. He began creating small pieces, testing ideas, and using art as a method to regain focus, confidence, and purpose. These early efforts helped him realize that healing and creativity could coexist and even amplify one another.

What started as a personal journey of recovery soon became a mission to uplift others. Trysen wanted to leave something meaningful for his community and for the next generation, showing that creativity could transform not only individual lives but also the cultural landscape of Kauaʻi.

Overcoming Challenges Without a Safety Net

The road to building a creative business was far from smooth. Trysen faced difficult challenges that he considered walking away from everything, grappling with both the physical and emotional toll of head injuries. Each day was a battle between self-doubt, pain, and the desire to keep moving forward.

Beyond personal health struggles, he had no investors, no team, and no corporate backing. Every decision, every financial risk, and every project came solely from his determination and willingness to learn through trial and error. “If I had someone that saw what I was creating in the beginning, it would’ve been easier,” he admits.

Gratitude and persistence became his anchors. By embracing the lessons from failures and small victories alike, Trysen built a foundation that was resilient, flexible, and authentic. This mindset allowed him to continue pursuing his vision even when support was scarce and the path ahead was uncertain.

Turning Achievements Into Community Impact

Despite obstacles, Trysen’s journey is marked by achievements that combine personal growth with community recognition. He takes pride in consistently showing up, even on days when recovery felt impossible, and in taking creative risks that shaped the identity of his agency.

Inspire To Create Media has earned acknowledgment on multiple levels—from Proclamations by Mayor Derek Kawakami highlighting community murals and workshops to features in local newspapers chronicling his evolving projects. These recognitions validate his belief that creativity paired with purpose resonates far beyond personal satisfaction.

For Trysen, the real measure of success is impact. Each mural, logo, or art initiative tells a story and strengthens the connection between people and place, leaving a lasting mark on Kauaʻi’s cultural and creative landscape.

Building a Healing-Centered Creative Vision

At the heart of Inspire To Create Media is a philosophy that creativity can heal, connect, and inspire simultaneously. From large-scale murals to branding and apparel, every project is designed with intention, reflecting local culture while appealing to a global audience.

Trysen explains, “Art became my way to rebuild, reconnect, and serve. What began as personal recovery grew into a mission: to use art as a tool for transformation for myself, for my community, and for the next generation of island creatives.”

Today, Inspire To Create Media continues to expand its reach, bridging art, healing, and business. Trysen’s story proves that even the toughest setbacks can spark the most powerful creativity—turning personal recovery into a force that inspires communities, cultivates connection, and demonstrates that a small island studio can have a big global impact.

Follow Trysen’s journey:

📍 @trys.creates | @inspiretocreate.media

Nov 14, 2025
4 min read

Stories

Building Meraki: How Vivian Kwan Turned Passion into Purpose

The first time Vivian Kwan realized she could build something on her own terms was during her college years in the U.S. — a time that completely shifted her perspective on what a career could be.

She found herself surrounded by students who were running side hustles, freelancing, and starting companies before graduation. It was a stark contrast to her upbringing in Hong Kong.

“Back home in Hong Kong, the path was pretty clear: study hard, land a stable job, and climb the corporate ladder,” she recalls. “But in the U.S., I met people who were building something entirely their own. That inspired me to think differently.”

Curious and driven, Vivian began experimenting — running a small photography business and creating content for fun. That experiment grew into Meraki Group, a boutique talent management agency representing a diverse roster of lifestyle creators — and now a 7-figure business built entirely from the ground up.

Redefining Success as a First-Generation Founder

When Vivian launched Meraki Group in 2021, she had no network, no outside funding, and no PR machine behind her, just the belief that creators deserved better representation.

As a first-generation Asian immigrant, Vivian was raised to stay quiet and keep her head down. “But entrepreneurship requires something different,” she says. “I had to learn to advocate for myself and my talents loudly and unapologetically.”

Without big teams or resources, she leaned into what she could control: being hands-on, transparent, and relationship-driven. That boutique approach became Meraki’s unique selling point: brands and creators know they can reach Vivian directly, and that trust has allowed Meraki to thrive against the odds. Today, Meraki has closed 300+ brand campaigns with brand partners like HOKA, REI, Shark, Columbia Sportswear, Libman, Google, and UGG.

The Challenge of Balance

Motherhood has always run parallel to Vivian’s entrepreneurial journey — two worlds that demand her heart in equal measure. In the early years of Meraki, she often found herself caught between deadlines and bedtime stories, client calls and school drop-offs. The guilt was relentless: every hour spent growing the business felt like time borrowed from her children.

But over time, her perspective shifted. She began to see that showing her kids what fulfillment looked like was one of the greatest gifts she could give them. Building Meraki wasn’t just about proving something to the industry — it was about showing her children what resilience, purpose, and self-belief looked like in real life.

“My kids deserve a mother who’s confident and happy,” she says simply. “That thought keeps me grounded when things get hard.”

A Year of Growth and Gratitude

In October, the Meraki community came to life in a way that no Zoom call ever could. Vivian and her team hosted their annual NYC dinner — an intimate gathering of creators, brand partners, and friends who had helped shape the agency’s journey. The room buzzed with laughter, warm reunions, and stories that stretched back to Meraki’s earliest days.

For Vivian, it was a full-circle moment. Many of the guests were creators she had signed during the uncertainty of the pandemic — people she had championed from afar before ever shaking their hands in person. Watching them share a table, swapping stories and ideas, felt like witnessing the agency’s spirit materialise in real life.

It wasn’t a night of flashy sponsors or curated photo ops, but of genuine connection — the kind that has quietly fueled Meraki’s success from day one. “What I’m most proud of isn’t the growth,” Vivian reflects. “It’s loyalty. Many of my creators have been with me for three or four years. In an industry where talent often comes and goes, that kind of long-term commitment means everything.”

What Comes Next

As Meraki continues to grow, Vivian is laying the groundwork for a new chapter — one that strengthens the agency’s foundation while amplifying its impact. She’s focused on expanding her team and refining systems to preserve Meraki’s signature boutique quality, even as it scales.

“I’m being intentional with this next chapter,” she says. “Before stepping deeper into consulting and mentorship, I want to make sure the agency continues to run with the same care and creative integrity it was built on.”

With that foundation in place, Vivian plans to open limited consulting slots and launch educational programs for creators and emerging talent managers. Her goal is to nurture the next generation of creative leaders — empowering them to build with heart, purpose, and the courage to redefine what success can look like.

Follow Vivian’s journey:
📍 LinkedIn | Instagram

Nov 7, 2025
4 min read

Stories

The Founders Behind Anise Health: How Two Women Are Reimagining Mental Health for the Asian Community

When Nisha Desai and Alice Zhang met at Harvard Business School, neither of them expected that a casual conversation about their frustrations with therapy would spark the idea for something much bigger.

As they juggled graduate school and their own mental health, they often felt therapy wasn’t built for people like them – they spent more time explaining their background to their therapists than actually healing.

They realized it wasn’t just them – there’s a gap in mental healthcare that left many in the Asian and multicultural community feeling unseen and misunderstood.

That shared realization became the seed for Anise Health: a platform built to make therapy culturally attuned, accessible, and truly effective for the AAPI community.

A Problem They Both Knew Too Well

Before their paths crossed, both founders had already seen the same issue from different directions.

Nisha, who grew up in Florida in a family of healthcare entrepreneurs, had always been drawn to questions of access and equity in care. After studying finance and marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and earning her MBA from Harvard, she worked in healthcare investing and later in digital product management at Humana. It was there, while helping build a mental health app, that she started hearing a troubling pattern from thousands of users – the same barriers she had personally faced.

Nisha recalls that people weren’t saying therapy didn’t work. They were saying it didn’t fit, that they didn’t feel understood.

Alice, meanwhile, came to the same conclusion through her own deeply personal experiences. Born in China, raised across Japan and Canada, and now based in New York, she calls herself a “third culture kid.” Her multicultural background gave her adaptability, but also a sense of never fully belonging anywhere.

That feeling resurfaced when she sought therapy during business school. Despite being fluent in English, she found herself translating her own emotions for her therapist – explaining why criticism from parents felt like love, or why pursuing excellence felt non-negotiable.

Alice remembers feeling exhausted after each session, explaining her background again and again, and leaving each time feeling unseen.

Alice Zhang (left) and Nisha Desai (right)

Building a Culturally Grounded Model of Care

After that pivotal conversation at Harvard, the two women began mapping out what culturally attuned mental health care could look like. They spoke to clinicians, patients, payors and community leaders, testing how cultural nuance could be integrated into evidence-based therapy and coaching.

They envisioned a new kind of care model: one that didn’t require clients to educate their therapists or set aside their cultural identity at the door. Instead, therapy would start from a place of understanding.

“Alice and I really built Anise to be what we believe our community has needed during our upbringing. What we kind of wished for ourselves through our own personal journeys with therapy.”

But building what didn’t yet exist came with challenges. They had to prove — to investors, clinicians, and even the broader healthcare system — that cultural context wasn’t just a “nice to have,” but essential to effective care. Many mental health professionals hadn’t been trained to deliver culturally adaptive therapy, so Anise Health had to design that framework from the ground up: provider training programs, accurate diagnostic tools, tailored care plans, curated resources and a scalable model for personalized, culturally attuned care.

Their persistence paid off. What started as late-night brainstorming sessions between classes evolved into a fully fledged mental health platform that blends clinical rigor with cultural empathy.

Growing the Movement

Since its founding, Anise Health has facilitated over 10,000 paid appointments and built a network of 60+ licensed providers across multiple states. The company is now expanding through insurance partnerships that make culturally attuned care more affordable and accessible.

Behind the scenes, Nisha leads operations and product design, while Alice drives partnerships and provider training.

Their complementary strengths, coupled with a shared sense of purpose, have helped Anise Health raise $6.4 million in funding and gain recognition as one of the top 10 most innovative Asian Pacific-led companies to watch by NYSE, Y Combinator, and Gold House.

Redefining the Future of Mental Health for Asian Communities

For both founders, Anise Health’s success goes beyond numbers. It’s about shifting how mental health is understood and delivered, starting with a community that has long been underserved and stigmatized.

“Our goal isn’t just to make care available,” Nisha says. “It’s to make it effective, culturally relevant, and sustainable within the healthcare system.”

By creating a new gold standard of culturally attuned care, Nisha and Alice aren’t just helping Asian Americans access therapy that finally feels like it speaks their language – they’re reimagining what inclusive mental health care can look like for everyone.

Learn more about Anise Health at anisehealth.co

Nov 4, 2025
5 min read