Scaling Content Creation for E-Commerce: Liz Giorgi on Building soona and Embracing AI

Every e-commerce brand needs a relentless supply of product photos and videos. Most either pay too much, wait too long, or get content they can't use. Liz Giorgi built Soona to fix all three problems at once - a content creation platform that combines a real studio logistics network with an AI-powered software layer, starting at $13/month and charging only for content you actually like.

In this episode, Liz covers how she bootstrapped Soona through her first year by selling her previous company, raised $56M across four venture rounds, grew to 25,000 brands and 40 million images created, and acquired an AI company to accelerate the product roadmap. But the conversation goes deeper than product metrics - Liz has some of the most thoughtful things to say on this show about what's sacred in creative work, why humans are generative and AI is iterative, and how founder storytelling actually builds a business.

What Soona Solves

Every product sold online needs photo and video content - a lot of it, across a lot of channels. A Shopify listing, an Amazon page, an Instagram Reel, a TikTok Shop post, a paid Meta campaign - each channel has different format requirements, different aesthetic standards, and a different cadence of content refresh. For a brand selling multiple products across multiple platforms, the content need never stops.

Soona provides both the software platform and the physical studio network to get that content produced - fast, affordably, and at scale. Over five years the platform has generated roughly 40 million images and 1 million videos for customers. The sweet spot is brands that have found product-market fit, are past their first few products, and are starting to sell in multiple places - that's when the content need starts to balloon and the old scrappy approach stops working.

The Mocker Acquisition and AI Expansion

Soona acquired an AI company called Mocker to accelerate its AI product roadmap. The attraction was Mocker's approach: rather than generating content from scratch, it integrates with existing product photography to multiply it. Soona already sits in the middle of a high-quality product photo pipeline - Mocker extended that pipeline into limitless downstream possibilities.

In practice: take a clean product-on-white photo captured through Soona's studio network and expand it into any setting - a gray background, a kitchen scene, a seasonal theme, a color variation - in seconds. Combined with Soona's own Bulk Crop feature (content-aware cropping of up to a thousand images at once), the platform now addresses both the production of original content and the scale multiplication of that content across every format and context a brand needs.

The business logic: content doesn't go away. It's part of the daily operations of an e-commerce business, not a one-time project. Soona's goal is to be the layer that makes that ongoing content need affordable, fast, and easy to execute.

Pricing as a Values Statement

Soona's entry price - $13/month - is deliberate, and Liz is explicit about why. The creative services industry has a reputation for being expensive, inscrutable, and ego-driven. Photography studios and agencies can feel exclusionary. Soona's pricing is designed to communicate the opposite: approachable, accessible, no games.

Beyond the subscription, the business model is pay-as-you-go: brands pay only for content they like and choose to download. No traditional photo shoot sunk costs - no studio rental, equipment fees, or full-day crew expenses for content that might not land. The outcome alignment is built into the model.

The results: 25,000 brands on the platform, with 97% reporting a successful first shoot - meaning they liked something and made a purchase on their first session. Higher tiers exist for teams needing multi-seat access and enterprise integrations with e-commerce stores. But the entry point stays low by design.

The Modern Marketer Problem

Liz has a deck she shares with new Soona employees about the state of the modern marketer. The thesis: the marketing role is now possibly the most overwhelming in any organization. The number of tools required, the channel complexity, the trend velocity - all of it is compounding simultaneously.

It's not just creating content anymore. It's managing 20 different sales channels, each with native commerce integrations. It's understanding TikTok Shops and Meta's ad algorithm and Amazon listing optimization and Instagram Reels best practices - all at once. And the trends aren't changing weekly; sometimes they're changing hourly.

Soona is built for that person. Not the scrappy founder posting manually to Instagram, but the marketing director at a $1–2M ARR company who has a team of two and an impossible mandate. The platform gives them a consistent, scalable, affordable content pipeline so they can stop agonizing over production and focus on strategy.

The Founder Path: Bootstrap, Sell, Raise

Liz is a second-time founder, and the financial architecture of getting Soona started reflects hard-won experience. She knew from the beginning that building a software product would require more capital than she had. So in 2018, while beginning to work on Soona, she engaged a broker to package and sell her first company - a bootstrapped business - positioning it for a clean exit.

She sold that company in 2020. The cash proceeds funded Soona's first prototype. The prototype got her to an MVP. The MVP opened the door to venture capital. Four rounds and $56M later, the company is post-Series B - and Liz is clear-eyed about the venture path: it's hard to get off once you're on it.

She has no strong ideological preference for bootstrapping vs. venture capital. Each serves different goals at different stages. What she's certain about is that starting with a clean funding plan - knowing what you're building, what it costs, and how you'll finance each phase - is essential before the first line of code.

What's Sacred and Why It Matters

The sharpest insight of this episode isn't about product or pricing - it's about how Liz thinks about AI in relation to creative work. Her framework: humans are generative intelligence. AI is iterative intelligence. It iterates on what you give it. It improves on existing inputs. But the original generation - the ideas that come from nowhere, from experience, from walking without headphones - that's irreducibly human.

Liz writes a Monday Memo to her team every week. She posts on LinkedIn. She's writing a book. None of that uses AI writing tools, not because she's anti-technology, but because the writing isn't really about the output - it's about the process. The weekly writing session is how she learns about herself, her business, and the market. Outsourcing the generation would outsource the learning.

Her advice: before automating anything with AI, ask yourself what's sacred. What do you do that's actually generative, not iterative? Protect that time first. Then use AI to free up more of it.

She invokes Steve Jobs's daily walks - without music, without podcasts - as the model. Allowing your own thoughts to surface. That uninterrupted generative space was possibly his greatest competitive advantage.

Founder Storytelling as Business Strategy

Liz's approach to LinkedIn and public communication is intentional and strategic. She shares the wins, but also the hard moments. The framework she uses is the hero's journey: a story without conflict doesn't invite people to root for you. When you only share good news, you push people away instead of pulling them in.

The goal of founder-led storytelling isn't personal branding as an end in itself. It's building a community of people who are emotionally invested in the company's story - and who therefore recommend it, advocate for it, and root for it when things get hard. People buy from and refer companies they're rooting for. That's the business case for vulnerability.

Tools & Resources

• Soona - AI-powered content creation platform for e-commerce brands; studio network + software; $13/month + pay-as-you-go; 25,000+ brands (soona.co)
• Mocker - AI company acquired by Soona; enables expanding existing product photos into new backgrounds, scenes, and variations using generative AI
• Soona Bulk Crop - Soona's AI feature for content-aware cropping of up to 1,000 images at once; Liz's personal favorite AI tool they've built
• GPT Workspace - Google Suite integration bringing ChatGPT directly into Gmail and Docs; Liz's daily AI workflow tool for in-context writing assistance without switching browser tabs
• TikTok Shop - Referenced as a major new channel complexity for modern marketers; native commerce integration that adds significant operational burden

Key Frameworks from This Episode

Generative vs. Iterative Intelligence

Humans are generative intelligence - we produce original ideas from experience, reflection, and intuition. AI is iterative intelligence - it improves and expands on what we provide. The best AI workflows preserve the human generative step and use AI to accelerate the iterative downstream work. Confusing the two risks outsourcing the very process through which founders learn.

What's Sacred at Work

Before automating with AI, identify the work that is intrinsically valuable to you - not for its output, but for what the process teaches you. For Liz, it's writing. That time is where she learns about herself, her business, and the market. AI should free up more of your sacred time, not encroach on it.

Incentive-Aligned Pricing

Soona charges only for content brands like and choose to use. The traditional photo shoot model front-loads all cost with no output guarantee. Soona's pay-per-asset model means the company's revenue depends directly on customers getting value. When your pricing structure is outcome-linked, trust follows naturally.

Bootstrap to Exit to Build

Liz's funding path: bootstrap Company 1 → sell it → use proceeds to prototype Company 2 → raise venture capital on the back of an MVP. This sequence gave her the financial credibility and product proof to access capital markets at favorable terms rather than pitching on an idea alone.

Hero's Journey Storytelling

Founder-led content that only shares wins pushes people away. The hero's journey requires conflict and strife - those are the moments that invite audiences to root for the protagonist. Sharing the hard parts of building Soona doesn't undermine Liz's credibility; it's precisely what makes people emotionally invested in her company's success.

The Content Flywheel for E-Commerce

Content isn't a campaign - it's infrastructure. An e-commerce brand selling multiple products across multiple channels needs a continuous supply of visual assets in multiple formats. The brands that treat content as an ongoing operational input (rather than a one-time production project) build a sustainable advantage; those that treat it as a project keep starting over.

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