Our city is home to so many incredible businesses and so we asked the founders how they came up with the ideas for their businesses and have shared their responses below.

Stella Guan | Furniture Designer & Founder at Bezier Home

I have been collecting design-forward furniture for a number of years and found myself gravitating towards furniture that are creative in shapes. But the vast majority of the time, these type of furniture doesn’t offer much in terms of function. Many of them are expensive and purely sculptural. In the process of hunting down unique furniture, I’ve spoken to a great number of people who are like-minded – folks who are uninterested in mass-market pieces but go crazy for design-forward furniture. Read more>>

Mudita Vij | Entrepreneur

From childhood, I have been fascinated with the different fabrics, rich, royal colors, intricate designs, textures and patterns of Sarees. I always admired my mother in her gorgeous Sarees and hoped one day I would also get to wear them! When I was 16 years old, my family migrated to Canada from Mumbai, India and then I came to the US for further studies and started working for a Pharma company in South San Francisco. Read more>>

Carrie Blosser & Ashley Killam | Co-Founders, Board of Directors

We met through volunteering with an international music group and noticed the lack of diversity in the music that was being programmed. With our combined music education background, we knew there was a lack of beginner, intermediate, and advanced solos from composers of historically underrepresented backgrounds, so we started Diversify the Stand as a business, raised $13,000, commissioned 12 composers, and printed a book with 12 new works for trumpet and piano. Read more>>