The year was 2005. The bathroom in the tiny condo I shared with my fiancé was a mess. Too many bottles of half used product… and more were coming because Shoppers Drug Mart was having a sale. Hello, my name is Ali and I’m a beauty product junkie.

When we came up with the idea for ChickAdvisor there was no place to review products online. YouTube was a year old; Facebook hadn’t launched yet and Amazon was primarily an online bookstore. The idea for a site to review products came from using TripAdvisor to plan our honeymoon. If people could review hotels, why couldn’t they review products?

There was just one small problem: we were broke. I had just gone back to school for a 4-year degree and while my fiancé was doing contract work, it was not enough to finance a startup. Luckily, we were young enough and dumb enough not to know what we were getting ourselves into.

We threw ourselves into fundraising for our idea, meeting with Toronto’s top VCs and angel investors. We were laughed out of many meetings. Most of the would-be investors were men who couldn’t wrap their heads around why anyone would bother to take the time to review a mascara or a moisturizer. In one meeting there was finally a woman. She laughed the hardest and walked out.

Then came the angels and meetings in mansions and coffee shops around the city. Ultimately, two were interested in investing in the business, but not with a woman at the helm – a story for another day. So, with a female CEO, we got no money. No money, big problem.

Undaunted and resourceful, via the power of the Internet, we found a motley crew of individuals willing to contribute their time to build the site in exchange for shares in the business. Most of them were hackers, which was fantastic. Who better to build a secure site than people who loved breaking into sites? Staff benefits back then included a power outlet and a lot of frozen lasagna.

On September 2, 2006 after another all-nighter, ChickAdvisor.com went live. We got traction right away, which was amazing considering our marketing budget was zero dollars. It turns out people DID want to take the time to review a mascara and share their thoughts with a broader community. Others wanted to read those reviews and tell their friends. Brands, like our first client, Maybelline New York, reached out to us after finding the reviews on Google.

15 years, thousands of products, and hundreds of thousands of reviews later and ChickAdvisor has added FamilyRated, XYStuff and Butterly lines of business to connect and build communities around brands for every possible consumer or brand. And while I can’t imagine ever having that payback moment like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman with all the people who laughed at us, I still can’t quite face frozen lasagna.