
Before creator marketing had a playbook, Mae Karwowski built one from relationships, software and a stubborn belief that small voices could add up to real scale. A decade later, the company she started in an apartment sits inside WPP - and she is still asking what the industry has missed.
Mae Karwowski bootstrapped Obviously out of a Lower East Side apartment, turned down a $25 million offer, and sold to the world's biggest ad holding company. The trick was treating influencers like a data problem, not a popularity contest.