Mariam Naficy

Founder & Executive Chairman Minted

Last Reviewed: September 26, 2026

Executive Summary

Mariam Naficy is the founder and Executive Chairman of Minted, the San Francisco online marketplace for independent art, design and custom goods. She ran Minted as chief executive from its founding in 2007 until 2021, shared the role as Co-CEO into 2022, and then moved to the chairman’s seat as she started Arcade.ai, an AI product creation platform where she is founder and chief executive. A consumer internet founder since the first dot-com wave, she co-founded the online cosmetics retailer Eve.com in 1998 and has served on the boards of Yelp and Victoria’s Secret & Co.

Career Highlights

• Founded Minted in June 2007; Chief Executive Officer 2007–2021, Co-CEO 2021–2022, Executive Chairman since 2022.
• Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Arcade.ai since 2022, and Managing Partner of the incubator Heretic Ventures since 2021.
• Co-founder and CEO of Eve.com, an early online cosmetics retailer, from June 1998 until its acquisition by Idealab in October 2000.
• Ran the e-commerce division of The Body Shop International from 2003 to 2007.
• Independent director of Yelp, Inc. from 2014 to 2020, and of Victoria’s Secret & Co. from 2022 until the June 2026 annual meeting, when she did not stand for re-election.

Professional Journey

Naficy earned a B.A. in Political Economy at Williams College and an M.B.A. at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In June 1998 she co-founded Eve.com, an online cosmetics retailer that her later board biographies describe as a first-of-its-kind site for the category, and served as its chief executive until October 2000, when it was acquired by Idealab.

After Eve.com she worked in media and retail. She was interim Vice President of Marketing for Columbia Tristar International Television in early 2002, then Vice President of Marketing and Product Development at Movielink, a web-based video-on-demand service, from April 2002 to May 2003. From November 2003 to June 2007 she led the e-commerce division of The Body Shop International.

She founded Minted in June 2007. Her Yelp board biography described it as an online marketplace for independent design and art; by 2026 Victoria’s Secret was describing it as an online marketplace for creative and custom goods and “one of the most successful community-based e-commerce companies in the world”. She led it as chief executive for fourteen years, and in 2014 joined the board of Yelp, where she served until 2020.

In 2021 she became managing partner of Heretic Ventures, an incubator that launches and funds online consumer businesses built on new technology, and moved to a Co-CEO arrangement at Minted. In 2022 she became Minted’s Executive Chairman and started Arcade.ai, an artificial intelligence product creation platform, where she is chief executive. The same year she joined the board of Victoria’s Secret & Co., sitting on its nominating and governance committee.

In May 2026, shortly after an investor, BBRC International, launched a proxy contest at Victoria’s Secret, she told the board she would not stand for re-election, citing her near-term professional commitments and the time the contest would demand; the company stated there was no disagreement. Her board term ended at the 11 June 2026 annual meeting. She has also served on the boards of Medium and the maternal health non-profit Every Mother Counts.

Education

Williams College

B.A., Political Economy

Stanford University Graduate School of Business

M.B.A.