seya*
the clothing brand I co-founded at 17
How it
worked
the short version ↓I co-founded SEYA in June 2025, the summer after high school. We sold clothes online, direct to customers. The waffle-knit sets in these photos were ours.
Most of our growth came from college students posting about us. I built a campus creator program that grew to 10+ schools in the US and Canada, and in our first year that content reached about 6.1 million people.
I owned pricing, negotiating with vendors, and planning each product drop. Keeping track of all those creators in spreadsheets got messy fast, so I built our own software for messages, organization, and launches. It saved us 20 to 25 hours a week.
We did six figures in sales in our first year. I was co-founder from June 2025 to July 2026.
what it
taught me
People buy what their friends wear
Posts from real students did more for us than ads. If someone you trust is wearing it, you want it too.
Watch the cash
A small brand can have good sales and still get squeezed by inventory and reorder timing. The math matters as much as the clothes.
It made me better at diligence
When I look at a company's numbers now, I have a good sense of which lines a founder watches closely and which ones they'd rather not explain. I've been that founder.