Mady Maio and Lauren Wolfen BUILT CAMBER OUT OF A SIMPLE BUT relatable FRUSTRATION,

there was no easy way to share truly personal recommendations with friends.

After meeting at a fashion tech startup and staying close as they traded travel tips and favorite spots, the pair realized that trusted, taste-driven curation was missing from the app landscape. They built Camber as an app, which then evolved into a thriving recommendations platform, newsletter, and events business that helps people discover the best of Los Angeles.

By bootstrapping much of the business, Maio and Wolfen have been able to grow Camber on their own terms, supporting local businesses along the way. Their larger vision is to make Camber am online to IRL experiences. Read about Mady and Lauren’s journey their C&C 100 interview below.

Describe the moment you realized there was a problem in the app space that wasn’t being solved, and that your idea could be the new solution?

We met while working at a fashion tech start-up where Lauren technically hired Mady for her first job out of college. We loved building something together in a small, high-performing team and often talked about one day creating our own business. Even after we went our separate ways, Lauren to business school and Mady to another start-up, we stayed in touch, trading travel tips, recommendations, and guides.

We realized there was no simple way to share truly personal, curated recommendations with friends. That’s how Camber was born. Originally a mobile app that we created during the pandemic, we ultimately gained traction when we focused on sharing Los Angeles recommendations with a wider community.

Today, Camber is more than just a place to find great spots: it’s a community. Through our weekly newsletter, we share niche, in-the-know recommendations that people actually want to plan their weeks around, and we bring that same energy offline through events ranging from intimate curated dinners to larger walk clubs. Camber has grown into a trusted resource because we always give honest, positive recommendations and lift up small businesses along the way, helping our community discover the best experiences and places to go.

What risk have you taken as a founder that’s changed the trajectory of your business?

We’ve taken a lot of risks together, but the most defining one was deciding to shut down our mobile app after investing so much time and money into it. The traction wasn’t there, and we had to be honest with ourselves about how our audience actually wanted to engage with us.

We started to see that what was really working wasn’t the app, it was our content and the community forming around it. People were turning to us as a trusted resource for recommendations, especially through our newsletter and social channels. So instead of forcing something that wasn’t resonating, we chose to lean into what our audience was already responding to.

Pivoting to camberplaces.com, our web app, allowed us to build a better product around that behavior, somewhere our community could explore our recommendations, search niche spots, and save favorites across Los Angeles. Letting go of something we had poured so much into was uncomfortable, but it completely changed our trajectory and reinforced how important it is to stay close to your audience and continuously build toward what they actually want.

“AI will never replace taste and curation.”

What do you care more about right now: perfecting the product or building the right team? And why?

Right now, it’s about building the right team. We’re lucky to have a phenomenal group in place and have been really intentional about hiring people who are not only talented but genuinely excited to help build Camber. Many of them were part of the community before they joined, which brings a level of alignment you can’t really manufacture.

We’re also very focused on hiring people who are better than us at what they do. Whether that’s event production, editorial, or even creating memes (yes we have a dedicated meme girl), we want people who bring a distinct point of view and expertise we don’t have. That’s been key to elevating everything we do.

Some people we met through past roles, others through unexpected moments like a pop-up bake sale or a cold email with a Camber-branded deck attached. That energy carries through into how we work together. We’re constantly spending time together outside of work too, whether it’s team dinners, ceramics classes, or exploring new spots around LA, and that closeness strengthens both the team and the business.

What’s been harder than you anticipated while building your brand?

One of the hardest parts has been figuring out how to scale a brand that started with a very forward-facing founder. It’s something people don’t talk about enough. Having Mady as the voice of Camber helped us build real trust with our audience early on, but as we’ve grown, we’ve had to be really intentional about how that evolves.

We’re actively navigating how to expand beyond a single voice while still keeping that same level of trust and taste. That’s meant bringing in new voices across content and building a brand that feels bigger than any one person, while still staying true to what made people care in the first place.

On the operational side, being non-technical founders has also been a learning curve. We’ve had to figure out how to work with developers, how to scope and build product thoughtfully, and when to bring in the right support. More recently, we’ve even started exploring vibe coding ourselves as a way to get closer to the product and better understand what we’re building. It’s been a constant evolution of learning, adapting, and stepping into new skill sets as the business grows.

What’s your most common AI prompt?

Our most common prompt is: “What problem are we actually solving here, and what would this look like if it were 10x simpler?”

Anytime we get stuck on something, whether it’s product, content, or strategy, we’ll use AI in this way to help us zoom out and refocus. We’re big believers that 10x is easier than 2x, and this lens keeps us from overcomplicating things or incrementally improving something that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

What does your current tech stack look like—and how has it changed your daily output?

Our tech stack is pretty lean, but it’s built to keep us fast and organized. We rely heavily on Notion to run almost everything internally, from our content calendar to newsletter planning to event production and overall operations. It’s really the backbone of how we stay aligned as a team.

On the content side, we use CapCut for editing social videos and Descript for podcast production, which has made it much easier to produce high-quality content quickly without needing a huge team.

Our newsletter lives on Substack, which has also become a core community touchpoint for us, not just a distribution channel. For analytics, we use Looker Studio to track performance on camberplaces.com and better understand how people are engaging with our recommendations. Having this stack in place has completely changed our daily output. It allows us to move quickly, stay collaborative, and make more informed decisions while keeping everything centralized and easy to manage.

What do you want to build beyond just the brand itself?

It’s all about the community and fostering genuine human connections. We love helping people discover a matcha spot, a local mahjong night, or meet like-minded newcomers at a Camber event. Many people attend our events solo, and it’s amazing to see connections form naturally.

At the same time, we’re really focused on delivering the best possible recommendation, every time. Whether that’s through our newsletter, social content, or camberplaces.com, we want to make it incredibly easy for someone to find exactly what they’re looking for in a way that feels curated and trustworthy.

A big part of what we’re building is bridging the gap between online and real life. You might discover something through Camber digitally, but the end goal is always an IRL experience, trying a new restaurant, going to an event, meeting new people. We think about how technology can support that journey without replacing it.

Ultimately, we want Camber to be more than just recommendations. It’s a way for people to feel connected to their city and to each other.

"Did you raise capital for your business—and if so, what surprised you most about the process?"

We’ve primarily bootstrapped the business, which is something we’re really proud of. Early on, we took on a small amount of SAFE investment from friends & family for specific needs like technical development, but overall we’ve been intentional about growing at a pace that feels sustainable and aligned with our vision.

Bootstrapping has given us the ability to stay in control and build Camber exactly how we want to. We think a lot of companies take on outside capital before the business is truly ready, and then feel pressure to grow at a rate that isn’t natural or aligned with what they’re building. We’ve been really mindful of that.

What surprised us most is how much clarity comes from not having that external pressure. It’s forced us to stay close to our community, be thoughtful about revenue, and make decisions that are actually right for the long term. We’re really grateful to be building Camber on our own terms.

AI is undeniably the biggest thing in tech right now, and it’s changing everything around us. How should women entrepreneurs be leveraging it to level the playing field? How are you using it in your business?

Maintaining authenticity and a human, friendly connection is at the heart of Camber, so we focus on using new tools in ways that enhance that, not replace it.

Internally, we’re thinking a lot about how it can streamline operations. Things like invoice management for brand partners, event production timelines and budgets, and even helping us organize our thinking around bigger strategic questions. It’s become a really helpful tool for clarity and efficiency behind the scenes.

On the product side, we’re excited about how AI can better leverage our database of recommendations to deliver the best possible recs for our community. The goal is for someone to be able to go to camberplaces.com and ask something in natural language like “I’m looking for a casual date night in Silver Lake with natural wine,” and actually get a thoughtful, curated answer.

That said, AI will never replace taste and curation. The reason people come to Camber is because they trust our point of view. AI can help us deliver that more efficiently and at scale, but the trust and the taste behind it will always be human.

Rapid fire POP QUIZ:

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is:

Mady: Journal and meditate, no phone. That time feels really sacred to me.

Lauren: make my bed. It’s a small accomplishment that signals the day has officially started.

If I had one more hour in the day, I would:

Mady: Read a romance novel, take a singing lesson, or drive to Malibu for sunset.

Lauren: go to a ballet class or practice my Spanish.

A song that describes the era I’m in right now is:

Mady: Bejeweled by Taylor Swift

Lauren: Lovely Day by Bill Withers

My current obsession is:

Mady: Fragrance. I’ve always loved a good candle, but lately I can’t get enough of perfume. I get tester kits from Dedcool, Liis, D.S. & Durga, etc and just rotate. There's something about scent that makes me feel instantly put together.

Lauren: Alvin Ailey’s dance choreography for Revelations