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- She Launched During a Recession with Zero Tech Experience — and Still Hit 7 Figures
She Launched During a Recession with Zero Tech Experience — and Still Hit 7 Figures
No VC. No Deck. Just Curtains.
Jenny Jing Zhu didn’t go to Y Combinator.
She didn’t raise $2 million. She didn’t even code.
She sold curtains.
Beautiful ones. Affordable ones. Ones people actually wanted — even while the economy was tanking.
Her business, Lush Decor, crossed 7 figures without any of the stuff startup Twitter says you need:
No co-founder
No pitch deck
No VC
No hype
What she did have?
A real product
A sharp read on customer taste
And a willingness to sell it before someone else did
“The economy didn’t matter. People still needed curtains.”
She didn’t start a “movement.” She shipped something useful.
🧰 The Real Playbook:
Validate with money, not opinions. She didn’t ask people if they liked her idea. She asked them to buy.
Start with profit — not a pitch. Instead of “raising to survive,” she built something that made cash on Day 1.
Sell something obvious, not genius. Curtains aren’t disruptive. But they’re in every home. That’s the edge.
Bottom Line
Still waiting for the market to bounce back?
Jenny didn’t. She launched while everyone else was “workshopping their positioning.”
You don’t need a big idea.
You just need a real one.
Build something useful. Price it like you mean it. And ship while everyone else is still tweeting.
Best,
Peter Delle