15. Mariam Naficy, Minted
As a child, Mariam Naficy lived in five different countries in the Middle East and Africa, where she was fascinated by the art she saw. As an adult, she wanted to expose the world to those artists. After co-founding the first online cosmetics retailer, Eve.com, which sold for $100 million in 2000, in 2007 Naficy combined the principles of crowdsourcing and analytics to launch Minted, an e-commerce site that crowdsources the best work from independent artists worldwide.
Artists submit work to Minted’s monthly design challenge; users vote on them; and the winning designs are sold as art, home décor and stationery. Minted now has independent artists and designers in all 50 states and over 100 countries, and recently received over $208 million in venture capital funding.
