Let's Get Dressed — How ShopMy Became a Billion-Dollar Business with Co-Founder Tiffany Lopinsky

Podcast: Let's Get Dressed
Host: Liv Perez
Guest: Tiffany Lopinsky, Co-Founder & President of ShopMy
Date: December 15, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of Let's Get Dressed dives into the meteoric rise of ShopMy, the affiliate platform disrupting fashion, beauty, and lifestyle marketing. Host Liv Perez sits down with Tiffany Lopinsky, co-founder and president of ShopMy, to discuss how authentic content, thoughtful product development, and a user-centric approach propelled ShopMy to a billion-dollar valuation. The conversation explores the evolution of affiliate links, why “influencer” isn’t the dirty word many think it is, and how ShopMy is democratizing the world of influence for creators at all levels.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The ShopMy Experience: How Affiliate Links Changed the Game

[03:28]

• Tiffany provides a basic walkthrough of ShopMy:
  • Creators use ShopMy to generate commissionable links to 30k+ brands.
  • On the brand side, ShopMy enables brands to find creators who drive real sales—not just those with big follower numbers.
  • Affiliate marketing on ShopMy allows brands to “test” influencer partnerships based on real data, reducing upfront risk (e.g., costly flat-fee campaigns).

“You can look at creators more like a distributed salesforce... If you reach out to an influencer and they're like, it costs $100,000 for three Instagram Stories in a reel... affiliate gives this testing ground for both for creators and for brands to see, ‘Oh, wow, they're already selling organically...’” — Tiffany [05:20]

2. From Creator to Founding ShopMy

[06:49]

• Tiffany’s journey began as a content creator in college, running a Boston food Instagram that reached 150k followers.
• Early days were a “Wild West,” with brands unsure how to value influence, and creators building their careers atop untested ground.

“One of the first deals I did was with OpenTable… They were like, ‘Hey, we’ll pay you $5,000 to talk about restaurants in Boston.’ And I'm like, what is going on? How do they know that I'm worth $5,000?” — Tiffany [07:30]

• She learned early to diversify income and not build an identity solely on one platform.

3. Addressing Pain Points & Building the Platform

[10:50]

• Early affiliate/creator tools were clunky, unaesthetic, and inaccessible.
• ShopMy originated from listening closely to what creators actually wanted: authentic curation (not just “Link in Bio” junk).
• A game-changing product decision: letting creators link anything, even if there’s no affiliate commission attached, promoting authentic recommendation.

“Allowing people to link in their ShopMy storefront, anything that they want, regardless of whether we have commission with the brand, has really contributed to the feeling that it's... authentic.” — Tiffany [15:14]

4. Shifting Perceptions on Affiliate and Influence

[16:43]

• “Affiliate” used to be taboo (“I never use affiliates!”), but industry perceptions are shifting as creators—big and small—demand transparency and authenticity.
• The “storefront” model leverages trust and personal curation.
• Tiffany frames affiliate as analogous to being a personal shopper—authentic people recommending what they truly love.

“I think of it too as like, I don’t know, a personal shopper...It’s just someone you trust telling you about things they like.” — Tiffany [17:22]

5. Competition, Blinders, and Staying User-Centric

[19:52]

• Despite ShopMy’s clear competitors, Tiffany’s approach was “blinders-on,” building the product creators described wanting—not reacting to competitors.
• Constant communication with users and brands fuels iteration.

“We weren’t building in reaction to something, we were just trying to build something that people told us they wanted.” — Tiffany [20:19]

6. The Early Hustle: Convincing Users (and Investors)

[24:34]

• The hardest challenge was overcoming inertia: convincing brands and creators to try something new for two years straight.
• Successful pitching means customizing outreach—a principle Liv echoes for booking podcast guests.

“You have to do discovery at the beginning of a call... What does the person on the other side care about? And then how can I frame the pitch in terms of what they care about?” — Tiffany [26:57]

7. Democratizing Influence—Anyone Can Be an Influencer

[30:04]

• ShopMy now boasts 200,000+ creators and is actively democratizing the “influencer” economy—power isn’t just in follower counts.
• Word of mouth (even from non-famous creators) drives real purchasing decisions.

“If a friend says to me, ‘Oh my God, I use this product and it’s so good and it helped my under eye bags,’ that is what is going to make me buy something.” — Tiffany [31:08]

• Micro-influencers and niche tastemakers (even a stylish mom with a small following) are earning real incomes due to true engagement—not fame.

8. Notable Use Cases & Authenticity Wins

[35:28]

• Tiffany notes ShopMy’s top earners aren’t celebs—one is “an accountant in Texas who just talks about things that she likes,” never accepts sponsored deals, and has maximal trust with her audience.

“If you look at our top 100 earners on the platform, they're not household names. They're people who... just talk about things that they like.” — Tiffany [35:52]

• Authenticity and evolving with audience interests are key to long-term success—those who “find a way to really like and get energy from what they’re doing” last.

9. Changing Marketing—and the Industry

[39:18]

• ShopMy is positioning itself as core infrastructure for the new marketing world, directing more marketing dollars into performance-based influencer budgets.
• The platform is quietly shifting how brands spend, leveraging data and transparency over gut-feel and glamour.

10. New Feature — Circles & The Shopper App

[41:44]

• Recent launch of the Shopper app and "Circles" feature:
  • Users can curate personalized “circles” of creators to follow, aggregating their recommendations in a feed.
  • Provides creators new surfaces and data to engage and monetize, and gives shoppers a highly personalized experience.

“You can follow your 20 favorite people and that's your own customized personal shopping experience of everyone you love and everything they're finding on the Internet.” — Tiffany [42:21]

11. ShopMy Becomes a Unicorn: What’s Next?

[45:15]

• ShopMy’s billion-dollar valuation is exciting, but Tiffany says the real reward is “building it... and making things better for people.”
• Looking ahead: continuing to expand the shopper experience, new verticals (especially travel), and ongoing product iteration.

“It is exciting and... what energizes me and fulfills me is building it.” — Tiffany [45:24]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On perception shifts:
  “Affiliate marketing has never been sexy. It’s just not. For me, I think the strongest thing of ShopMy has been the fact that... it feels like my own store.” — Liv Perez [15:00]

• On authenticity:
  “Everything else on the market at the time... it was just this walled garden... more than a thousand brands, like, that's just not gonna cut it.” — Tiffany [15:14]

• On pitching:
  “You can’t just dump things into ChatGPT and get a response and think it’s gonna be perfect. It matters to put in the effort of someone who you think is gonna be a perfect fit for your product, brand, platform, whatever you’re doing.” — Tiffany [29:24]

• On the future of influence:
  “ShopMy has the power to democratize influence because you’ve got people who just organically love sharing things, who don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers, but deserve to have that back and forth.” — Liv Perez [32:13]

• On long-term vision:
  “We felt like we had this incredible dataset to... allow [consumers] to almost make their own personal store.” — Tiffany [42:01]

• On reflecting as a unicorn:
  “It’s... a testament to creators and just how people shop. The concepts of it are not rocket science. It’s just giving people the infrastructure to do like what they've been doing in a better way.” — Tiffany [45:24]

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:28] – ShopMy explained: experience for creators and brands
• [06:49] – Tiffany’s journey from creator to co-founder
• [14:30] – Building ShopMy: from “Shop My Shelf” to a multi-industry platform
• [19:52] – Addressing competition & staying user-focused
• [24:34] – The grind of startup beginnings: convincing early adopters
• [30:04] – Democratizing influence and the importance of micro-influencers
• [35:28] – Notable consumer behaviors and authentic success stories
• [41:44] – Launching the Shopper app and Circles
• [45:15] – Reaching Unicorn status; what's ahead

Episode Summary

This rich, insightful conversation offers a rare look under the hood of one of digital fashion’s most influential platforms. Instead of simply disrupting the affiliate marketing space, ShopMy’s approach is data-driven, authenticity-first, and creator-empowering—making influence accessible and profitable for everyone. Tiffany Lopinsky’s candid accounts of early stumbles, user-centric innovation, and future ambitions paint a picture of a company poised to keep changing how we shop, share, and shape what’s next in fashion, beauty, and beyond.