Former Pinterest designer, Sahil Lavingia, visited Chicago for the first time as the inaugural speaker of the Blackline Headliner series. The 19-year-old is the founder of Gumroad, an online commerce site that allows the sharing and selling of self-made items such as music, drawings, etc. directly to one’s social media followers.
Gumroad’s platform allows the seller to bypass sites like Amazon, which takes a large percentage of the proceed of the sale.
Sahil Lavinia makes an early morning appearance at ABC7.
In his fast, frank, no-holds-barred speaking style, Lavingia spoke about the differences between startup practices in Silicon Valley, Chicago, and other parts of the country. He spoke to an audience at TechNexus, a hub for entrepreneurs located in downtown Chicago. Lavingia took advantage of his short weekend stint with an appearance on the ABC7 morning show, followed by stops at Wrigley Field, and Millennium Park.
Investors flocked to fund Lavingia’s Gumroad to the tune of $8 million, following his stint as the designer of the sharing platform phenomenon, Pinterest. ❒
