Co-Founder & Former President — Curated
Built a marketplace where human expertise is the product. Bet that no algorithm could replace a passionate skier recommending the right boot.
Before Tanner Johnson co-founded Curated, he was guiding people through outdoor education programs at the Boojum Institute and working the slopes at Mammoth Mountain. The through-line: putting the right knowledge in front of people who needed it. He just hadn't built the software yet.
Curated launched in 2017 with a premise that cut against the dominant logic of e-commerce - that automation, search algorithms, and product reviews were sufficient. Johnson and his co-founders believed something simpler: shoppers making expensive, high-stakes purchases (a first pair of ski boots, a custom engagement ring, a surfboard for someone who's never surfed) wanted a person, not a page. A real expert. Someone who had stood in their shoes and could talk them out of the wrong purchase before checkout.
The company built a two-sided marketplace: consumers came in with questions, and Curated matched them to verified product experts who happened to be passionate about skiing, cycling, fishing, or golf. Those experts earned income doing what they'd always done for free - telling friends which gear was worth it and which wasn't.
"Consumers answer a few questions and Curated matches them to a category expert who provides personalized recommendations - and will text or jump on a phone call."- Curated platform description, TechCrunch 2021
Johnson's path to that thesis wasn't through boardrooms. A Princeton psychology and neuroscience graduate, he spent formative career years in experiential education - teaching people outdoors, on ropes courses, in the mountains. That background showed up in how Curated thought about trust. Trust isn't a feature. It's earned through genuine knowledge, demonstrated over a real conversation, not manufactured through a five-star average.
The investors noticed. Forerunner Ventures, the consumer brand firm led by Kirsten Green, led a $22M Series A in October 2019. Greylock, known for backing LinkedIn and Airbnb, came in for the Series B. Then CapitalG - Alphabet's independent growth fund - led the $75M Series C in November 2021 as the company hit 300% year-over-year growth. Total raised: $141.5 million. The return rate on Curated-guided purchases: under 2%.
The origin of Curated tracks a familiar trajectory in Silicon Valley: a co-founder who experienced the problem firsthand. Tanner Johnson's grounding in outdoor sports - through Mammoth Mountain, through the Boojum Institute's wilderness programs - gave him an eye for exactly where consumer shopping broke down in the outdoors vertical. Gear purchases in skiing, fishing, or cycling aren't impulse buys. They're high-consideration, high-cost decisions where wrong choices mean miserable experiences and expensive returns.
The insight was this: the best outdoor gear stores had always worked because of the people behind the counter. A ski shop employee who ski patrolled weekends could size you correctly, ask the right questions, and steer you away from a $600 boot that would destroy your feet on the mountain. Online shopping had deleted that person from the equation entirely. Curated put them back in - at scale, on demand, across dozens of verticals.
The platform's return rate of under 2% wasn't a metric they published as a feature. It was the proof of the thesis - that matching the right human to the right question produces better outcomes than any recommendation engine trained on purchase histories.
As President, Johnson's role was building the supply side of that marketplace: recruiting, training, and retaining the expert community. Not a trivial task. You need people who know their domain cold, can communicate it clearly to a stranger, and want to show up consistently for what amounts to advisory work. The passion economy angle - letting enthusiasts earn real income from what they know and love - was both the recruitment pitch and the retention strategy. It worked.
Princeton neuroscience is a strange credential for a marketplace co-founder - until you consider what building a trust-based platform actually requires. Understanding why people defer to experts. Why perceived authority matters in purchase decisions. Why a recommendation from someone who "gets it" converts when a product page doesn't. The academic training and the outdoor field experience converged into something useful: a founder who understood both the psychology of trust and what genuine expertise felt like from the inside.
In July 2024, Flip - a social commerce platform built around user-generated video reviews, sometimes described as a TikTok-style shopping experience - acquired Curated for $330 million in stock. Eduardo Vivas, Curated's CEO, moved to Flip as COO. The combined entity projected to more than double prior year revenues.
The strategic logic was clear. Flip had built a platform where real people recommended products on video. Curated had built a platform where real people recommended products through one-on-one conversations. Both companies were betting on the same thing: that consumers trust humans over algorithms, particularly for purchases that matter.
For Johnson, who had spent years before the company in outdoor education and mountain sports, the exit validated something he'd known since before he'd written a line of code: the best purchase guidance was always human. The technology didn't replace that. It scaled it.
Consumers answer a few questions. Curated matches them to a verified category specialist - a skier for ski gear, a cyclist for bikes - who engages via text or call to guide the decision.
Experts earn real income from their passion. A fishing guide, ski instructor, or cycling enthusiast can convert their weekend knowledge into professional advisory income.
The outcome that proved the model. When a real expert guides your purchase, you don't return it. Industry e-commerce averages hover around 20-30%. Curated's under 2%.