Landing

We are closing down Landing this month and announcing the creation of Zeen. This small team of 11 has been chipping away at Landing for a few years now and I'm so proud of my impact at the company in driving the following in the last two years: Building Landing’s first React Native mobile app for both iOS and Android while maintaining and enhancing the web application Supporting our Global Community of 1.2M+ Gen Z users from 190+ Countries Across the World Achieving 900K iOS and Android App Downloads within 1.5 Years 3 Million Collages Created and 11+ Million Assets Uploaded to our System It's been so fun to develop and deliver robust creative tooling, efficiently cached infinite scrolling experiences, and other delightful user experiences built with React Native, node.js, postgresql, typesense, and a variety of AWS resources. The entire team is working hard now to launch Zeen our new creator focused platform next month so watch this space for more info coming soon. As always, my DM's are open if you ever want to chat about consumer tech, scaling startups, and tech in general <3

We formally announced the closure of Landing today on our social media, and welcomed the creation of our new platform, Zeen, coming in early October. It's hard to put into words how much Landing has meant to me these past few years. Similar to many of our creators, Landing was my creative safe space. Our team often joked that I was a super user first, Landing teammate second. I am so grateful for this experience and to be able to build alongside our community, it truly was such a joy running our social channels the past three and a half years, interacting with our amazing creators every day. I am so proud of my team and all that we have done, and my own personal impact on driving the following metrics: • Grew a community of 1.2M+ users from 190+ countries with 100% organic, community-led growth. We had 900k+ iOS and Android app downloads with 3M+ collages created across web + mobile apps • Built our Instagram to a 60k+ audience, with 5 million Reel views, and our TikTok to a 40k+ audience, with over 1 million likes • Helped lead Landing University, an educational program designed to teach Landing creators how to produce viral short form video content, which generated 500+ viral videos and 44M+ total views on TikTok and Instagram Reels. • Secured and launched a series of over 20 organic brand partnerships, including with Girlboss and Bumble. We are now working on bringing Zeen into the world, and I am so excited and grateful to continue to build alongside my all star team. If you are interested in joining Zeen, please sign up for our waitlist https://lnkd.in/eWrZ7Wev 💟

It was an everyday doomscroll on insta, when i stumbled upon a reel showing off a new internet baby! Not giving much thought to it, i started doing a little research and i instantly fell in love with the idea and the space here at Landing . Ever since that day I couldn't help myself but to try to bring out the best in this safe space, with all these people here, who weren't just creative but the kindest humans too. Landing was my therapy, somewhere i found myself at the end of every stressful day. Being an LA was just a cherry on top. I am so grateful to have my LA besties with me- from random rants to work talks. Also a huge thank you to Liz Friedland for helping me out from day 1 with everything. Will surely miss Team Landing 💚 but also, Cheers to new beginnings 🥂

After a few months deep in build mode, I’m excited to share some big news from team Landing - we’re launching a new platform Zeen in early October! Nearly exactly a year ago, we launched Landing’s mobile app. Since then, Landing has become a global community of over 1.2M Gen Z creators from 190 countries around the world, all through 100% organic community-led growth. Landing has empowered an amazing amount of creativity - 11M image uploads and 3M collages to be exact. More than anything, it has been an absolute joy to experience the positivity and growth of Landing right alongside our creators, ambassadors, and team. As a team and company, we have always been led by our users, and the last year was no different. We have lived deep in the weeds of our creators’ experience, and built a unique vantage point to spot the changing winds of 2024 and beyond. We have seen an undeniable need from Gen Z creators for a content format with more lasting power than ephemeral video, a way to directly connect with their communities outside of the unpredictable algorithms of social platforms, and a reliable channel to earn from their product recommendations that doesn’t feel salesy. At a certain point, the signal became too strong to ignore. It is from this core set of needs that Zeen is coming to life. September is a season of change as we say goodbye to Landing and introduce Zeen. As founders, it comes with so much gratitude for the lessons of Landing and excitement for what’s ahead. We will be sharing more over the coming weeks ahead of Zeen’s launch as we onboard our initial creators - stay tuned! Zeen waitlist 🖤 http://bit.ly/ZeenWaitlist

After a few months deep in build mode, I’m excited to share some big news from team Landing - we’re launching a new platform, Zeen, in early October! Nearly exactly a year ago, we launched Landing’s mobile app. Since then, Landing has become a global community of over 1.2M Gen Z creators from 190 countries around the world, all through 100% organic community-led growth. Landing has empowered an amazing amount of creativity - 11M image uploads and 3M collages to be exact. More than anything, it has been an absolute joy to experience the positivity and growth of Landing right alongside our creators, ambassadors, and team. As a team and company, we have always been led by our users, and the last year was no different. We have lived deep in the weeds of our creators’ experience, and built a unique vantage point to spot the changing winds of 2024 and beyond. We have seen an undeniable need from Gen Z creators for a content format with more lasting power than ephemeral video, a way to directly connect with their communities outside of the unpredictable algorithms of social platforms, and a reliable channel to earn from their product recommendations that doesn’t feel salesy. At a certain point, the signal became too strong to ignore. It is from this core set of needs that Zeen is coming to life. September is a season of change as we say goodbye to Landing and introduce Zeen. As founders, it comes with so much gratitude for the lessons of Landing and excitement for what’s ahead. We will be sharing more over the coming weeks ahead of Zeen’s launch as we onboard our initial creators - stay tuned and sign up for the waitlist here: http://bit.ly/ZeenWaitlist! ✨

It’s been a really special gift to build Landing with and for some of the most incredible humans. Landing has been a huge part of my life over the past few years - both professionally and personally. I’ve never felt more like myself on the internet than I have on Landing, and I know the same is true for so many others around the world. To have built an online space that empowers people - and specifically young people - to explore, grow, and fully express their most real selves through creativity is a pretty wild feat. Above all, the relationships that have been formed through Landing will always be the thing that makes me most proud of the magic that we created there. The past few months have been a very bittersweet period. While we say goodbye to Landing, I’m so excited to bring Zeen into the world. I can’t wait to create some more magic with this team ✨ Updates to come soooon!

There are truly not enough words to describe what Landing has meant to me and to hundreds of thousands of others over the past five years. In building, we were gifted with countless "lessons in Landing and in life" - a refrain our team came back to time and time again. At each step in the journey, Landing brought us gifts of knowledge and wisdom - about how to build beautiful products, thriving and inclusive communities, once-in-a-lifetime teams, and most importantly, about ourselves as humans. Our creators have always called Landing their "safe space," and it was indeed this for me as well, over a period of critical years during which the world changed forever. I have never felt more fully myself, accepted exactly as I am, as I have within our team and community. In this way, Landing has helped to set us free. It's hard to imagine a world without Landing, and yet even in this last chapter, we receive one last lesson about change - that the hard thing and the right thing are often the same, that we can feel both immense grief and profound optimism in the same moment, and that we must often close doors if we are brave enough to create space for the best yet to come. Building this community and platform has been the privilege of a lifetime. I am forever grateful to Ellie Buckingham and Miri Buckland for believing in me, to our team for proving that small groups of talented and dedicated humans can truly accomplish incredible things [Alex W. Crandall Greta Bergin Ashley Preston Caroline O'Donnell Ellen Cooper Chris Houdlette Danny Carubia Katherine Crutchfield and to all others who were with us along the way], and to every single person in our community for the forever support and for filling my heart with more love, joy, and laughter than I could have ever dreamed possible. With endless love and potential, forever and always 💚✨

Over the last month, we’ve shared the news with our community that we will close Landing web and mobile apps on September 18th, 2024. In early October, our 11-person founding team will launch a new platform called ZEEN, leveraging all we have learned over the past 5 years building Landing. This is not a decision we take lightly. It has been informed by 6+ months of intense product testing, user research, deep observation of the ways in which the world has changed over the past 5 years for creators and consumers, and doing everything in our power to give Landing the best shot at success. It’s been a period of many emotions. Our team shares the profound sadness and grief of our community to lose Landing as it exists today. At the same time, we feel immense excitement, hope, optimism, and gratitude to have the opportunity to build towards a vision for the future that we believe has huge potential. A vision informed by our collective experience building world-class products and communities. For now - our team’s top priority is to support our creators in any way we can over the next week to ensure you are able to save your Landing content. See the FAQ page linked in our bio for more information and clear instructions for what you need to do, and by when. We will start sharing more about Zeen - and would love to invite you to continue with us on our journey as we build. You can sign up for the waitlist linked in our bio. All creators on the waitlist will be invited to join Zeen to claim usernames and get early access ahead of its public launch in early October. More than anything - thank you. Landing has never been just about our platform, but about the incredible people in our community. You are what has made Landing such a bright spot in all of our lives, and for that, we are forever grateful. With love and endless potential - Team Landing 💚✨

What happens when you merge (commerce, DTC, platform, Gen AI) + (founders, funders, and operators) = The Room Podcast As a newbie in all of these industries, I had the pleasure of volunteering for Madison McIlwain's summit. I was able to meet Madison when I was a part of GenZScouts. These experiences I have outside of work build up my case studies (lol shoutout to Landing for being one of mine) & become a stronger community builder. It was awesome meeting Katie Kirsch, Breana Teubner, Sarah Davidson, Miri Buckland, Shriya Nevatia, and others in IRL. There was one thing that nobody mentioned though. Omnichannel was mentioned, but no mention of the hot 🔥 trend of retail media networks. I am not joking when I talk about the buzz🗣. Every big 🏢 company is becoming one and with Genuin, any company can. We are building the world's 1st community media network. If anyone is interested in learning more, DM me or check out our Linkedin. #commerce #dtc #cpg #mediabrand #platform