May 2026 Startup Grant Awarded to Lemonade Stand

We’re excited to announce the May $10,000 Startup Grant recipient. Congratulations to Marilyn Yacobovsky, founder of Lemonade Stand.

Recently, WomensNet Advisory Board member Marcia Layton Turner sat down with Marilyn for an exclusive interview. You can listen to their conversation and view the transcript below.

Video Transcript

Marcia: Welcome, everyone, and thank you all for checking in to learn from our May 2026 startup grant winner, Marilyn Yacobovsky of Lemonade Stand.

I’m Marcia Layton Turner. I’m one of several WomensNet advisory board members, and every other month I get the pleasure of chatting with and learning from our amazing winners.

So, Marilyn, could you tell everybody just a little bit about your company, what you sell, where you got the idea, and how things are going?

Marilyn: I am working on a business for kids that can help them do more of what they love to do. I have created this business called Lemonade Stand, which is a kid-first, safe marketplace online where kids can take the things that they’re already making.

We got into this for my daughter, who makes these little Rainbow Loom bracelets. And she has been wanting to sell them, so she tried selling them at recess. She’s in the second grade, so seven years old, very entrepreneurial. But she and I were watching a movie one night (on cable TV in a hotel, which we don’t watch at home), and she started seeing ads, and she was like, “Why do these ads keep interrupting our movie? And what is Shopify anyway?” And I was like, “Oh, well, that’s actually what I do.”

So I have a background in e-commerce. I’ve run a business for BarkBox and then recently a filter company and a D2C subscription company. And so I’m explaining to her, “Well, people sell their things online.” And she’s smart, so she put it together, and she asked, “Oh, can I sell my bracelets online? Can I have a Shopify?” And I said, “Yes, but no, but yes.” And so I started looking into places that she could go online to build a website and sort of give her what she wanted. She’s not looking to build, like, an enterprise Rainbow Loom operation. She wants to sell it to friends and family. And there really wasn’t that place to send her, and so I was thinking about it, and I thought, “I think I can build this. I think I can build this for you.”

And so I used some of the AI tools now that allow somebody who doesn’t have a technical background to build a website, and I started building out this marketplace for her that is really designed to be kid-first in terms of its design and how you use it, but it also teaches them the principles of running a business. So, what does it mean to tell people about your business? How do you know if you’re making money? How much does it cost to buy the Rainbow Loom rubber bands, and then what are you going to sell them for? And so the idea was really to teach kids the thing that we all learned by setting up a lemonade stand in our driveway, but doing it with a native online generation. So that’s the business.

Marcia: Love it! So now let’s talk a little bit about what one or two resources you found especially helpful as you were getting started or even as you started to grow?

You touched on AI, so I’m curious to hear about which one you went with and what other resources you found useful.

Marilyn: So I have played with nearly all of them, but the one that I found to be particularly helpful starting things up was Claude — Claude Code, in particular — because you can just describe in plain language what you need, and it really will just start wiring things up. I think that’s what was so helpful about it this time around. I’ve tried to start businesses in the past, and as a non-technical person, finding partners who can help you and people who will give you their time and expertise when you don’t have much to give back at that point is difficult.

So this time, when I was able to just get over the hump of what would this even look like, and just start chatting with it, and then it just starts wiring it up for you. And there’s a little bit of dopamine: “Oh, there it is, and I did this thing, and now it’s live.”

But what was really amazing was having the background to know enough about what I needed. I know I needed to wire in a database. I know that I needed certain elements within the business to actually make it a business. I could also chat with Claude about when do these things become helpful to wire into the site, and can you help me set up an account with Supabase, that’s the database, or whatever it is that would allow me to then bring it to life. And so that tool absolutely changed the game for me in terms of getting it out of my head and then onto the screen.

Marcia: Amazing. Yeah, I love Claude too.

Marilyn: The other little plug that I would give, because you said outside of AI, I listen to a lot of podcasts. There are great podcasts from Wharton professors. Katy Milkman comes to mind, and Angela Duckworth. And I didn’t actually go to business school. I’ve run businesses without going to business school. I learned by doing. But listening to them and just kind of getting motivated by little lessons and ways to take things out into the real world was, I found, very motivating. So listen to some of their podcasts and play with Claude is what I would say.

Marcia: And who was the first one that you mentioned?

Marilyn: Oh, Katy Milkman. She is a professor of economics at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. And she wrote a book called How to Change that was really incredible, and I find it motivating if you’re trying to develop new habits and move yourself into a new… Really anything. Move yourself into a new career, develop a new habit. So I always find her really inspiring, and she has a podcast called “Choiceology.”

Marcia: Wonderful. So, going from talking about resources, let’s talk about marketing and what you’ve seen so far that has worked. I know you have tons of experience, so I know you can speak to this, but sometimes startups don’t have a lot of historical data to look at. But what marketing strategies, resources, or anything related to marketing have you found work?

Marilyn: I actually learned something new this time around, and there was something that helped tremendously, which was not something that I’d used in my past businesses, exactly to your point.

Starting from scratch, the channel that has helped me the most was WhatsApp, which is, I think, surprising to most people. But I have kids, and so I’m in about six or seven different WhatsApp channels from, like, the PTA or the gymnastics team, or I live in Manhattan, and Battery Park City Moms has their own channel. There are just all these different communities of people that are there to help each other, or just get to know each other, and create community.

And so when I was launching the business, after I finally decided I’ve got to get it out of my head and onto the screen and then tell people about it, I posted first in the PTA group at school, which is not run by the school. It’s just a parents’ organization, and there are about 100 or so people in there. And within an hour and a half, I had 60 kids signed up for my pilot, which was wild. It was like a wildfire. And to the point where I actually had to switch the venue.

So what we’re going to do is have a group of kids in person test it and learn it, so I can also see how they’re responding to it and what things they like and what they don’t like. But it was within an hour and a half I had double the number of kids that I thought I would have. And since then, it just keeps trickling, and people share it around. Yeah, being a part of WhatsApp communities genuinely helped me get from zero to a full pilot and then some.

Marcia: That’s fascinating because I never… WhatsApp would not have been on my list.

Marcia: So, last question. What’s one thing that the WomensNet community can do to show support for your business?

Marilyn: I will make it easy for you. It’s still free, and so is the website right now. I obviously have plans to be able to generate revenue in the future. But right now I just want to learn about what kids like and what works for them and what doesn’t work for them. So if you have a kid, if you know kids, grandkids, especially ones that are, you know, budding entrepreneurs with bracelet businesses or selling bedazzled items or greeting cards, there are actually lots of ideas on the site for ways for kids to start a business. But get them on there and play with it and email me. Let me know what they like, let me know what they don’t like. Feedback at this point is so invaluable. And so yeah, getting on there and playing with the tool and letting me know what resonates with you would be wonderful.

Marcia: Love it. Great idea. Thank you again for sharing your story with us, taking the time to be here today, and congratulations again for being our May startup grant winner.