07/23/2026
In 1999, I co-founded the original Artsy with Jasmine Trabelsi. In 2008, two men took the idea, dropped the "women" part, and raised $139M for the platform.
Jasmine and I co-founded Artsy through a $5k grant as Seniors at UMass Amherst. We were the first platform + marketplace to showcase and sell art by women artists. Our CTO, Kellan Elliott-McCrea, went on to help build Flickr, Etsy, Dropbox, and Adobe's Frame.io.
With no advertising and before social media existed, we grew to 60,000 monthly visitors. We interviewed Yoko Ono, De La Soul, Judy Chicago, and Nancy Spero. We ran a print magazine. We built a global community around promoting women artists. Grassroots, through the site, newsletters, art exhibits, and fan mail.
The name was deliberate. Female artists were never called Masters. They were "artsy." We took the word back.
Artsy shut down in 2001 when the art world went quiet and budgets dried up. In 2008, two male founders launched Artsy.net. Same idea, minus the women, and raised around $139M. We still hold the rights to the original name.
This is the Matilda Effect. the pattern of women's breakthroughs (in art, in science) getting erased or reassigned to men.
I rarely shared this story. Now that I’m building RAISE Community Goraiseco I’ve decided to talk about it.
Jasmine and I recorded a podcast about it a while back. Listen in the link in comments. 🎨
