brand-discovery
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Material Bank puts the showroom in one box
A designer needs to touch the tile. A manufacturer needs to meet the designer. Material Bank built an overnight delivery business around that small, expensive gap.
Michael Lai
Michael Lai is the CEO and co-founder of Sitejabber, a consumer review platform that has served more than 100 million shoppers and collected over 10 million reviews, and of SmartCustomer, an unbiased brand discovery tool launched in 2025. A Stanford computer scientist and Harvard MBA, he started Sitejabber in 2007 after a co-founder couldn't tell whether an online medical-equipment seller was a scam. His work sits at the intersection of consumer trust, transparency, and the messy fight against fake reviews and AI-generated content.
Faire
Faire is an online wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers with the makers and brands that supply them. It replaces the trade-show-and-cold-email model of buying inventory with a personalized, machine-learning-driven storefront, layering on retailer-friendly financing - net 60 payment terms and free returns on first orders - so that mom-and-pop shops can stock their shelves the way big-box chains do, without the cash-flow risk.