While working her way through grad school, Opaper founder Joan McIntosh ran an online bakery. “I would wake up at 3AM, 4AM, go to a commercial kitchen and go door to door, delivering food or putting it in grocery stores.” After graduating, McIntosh’s professional life became decidedly more high tech—she was senior product manager for data and machine learning platforms at Streetlight Data and then Lacuna Technologies. On a return trip to Southeast Asia (McIntosh was born and raised in Indonesia), she observed the rise of social commerce, or people selling through social media like Instagram and WhatsApp, and was surprised to see it was similar to all the …
