Welcome to Aria's Browser History!

Sneak peak behind-the-scenes of someone who likes to do too much (and complains/relishes about it)

Author

Aria Ma
June 02, 2025

Hello there! 🐛

Welcome to the first edition of Aria’s Browser History. After hosting a couple of events in May, I received a lot of questions on how people could keep up with my community building initiatives and side quests.

I’ve always struggled to find a space where I could talk about all of my passions because I didn’t see the value in it.

Who’d care about the things I’m doing?

But I realized very quickly after a dozen conversations this past month that there’s a lot of value people can gauge from the holes I’ve climbed out of.

I also want somewhere to archive thoughts, resources, and secret-sauce tips that you’d only really get from experiencing something — rather than Googling it.

So welcome to Aria’s Browser History, our little corner of the internet where I share memes, lessons, and behind-the-scenes from my journey. I’m really glad you’re here. And if your inbox is feeling a little full these days, no worries — you can always unsubscribe below and drop back in whenever it feels right 🐛.

From my browser to yours, Aria

⏰ TL;DR

  • Hosted two community building events:

  • Launched our 3-month Founding Patient Cohort at Jadewell with 6 patients. These patients are paying at a lifetime discount for Chinese Herbal Medicine prescriptions delivered straight to their door. Read more below on how we recruited these patients.

  • Attended Collaborative by Classy where the creator economy was THE talk of the hour.

  • Received an acceptance to a 50-person class at the only Psychedelic Research Summer School at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands for July.

  • Upcoming events I’ll be hosting in Boston.

Upcoming Events I’m Hosting

  • Health-Tech Funding Networking & Fireside Chat: I’m bringing together 1 VC investor, 1 angel investor, and 1 founder who didn’t take either to scale their startup for an intimate fireside chat. The goal is to bring knowledge typically behind locked doors out into the open where attendees feel comfortable asking questions and have more guidance on where to go next in their journey. This will be end of June/early July. I’m finalizing the details now — stay tuned for the lu.ma invite soon!

  • Founders & Explorers Masquerade Networking: I’m making networking not boring and bringing masquerading and gamification into the mix. The event will bring together people from all facets of the start-up ecosystem and meeting each other in… _n__al masks. We’re working backgrounds, exchanging knowledge and value first, not names and accolades. This will be end of July/early August.

  • Solo Founders ____c_i Dinner Night: No, we’re not going to a silly 5-star restaurant to exchange tidbits of info kept close to our chest. This will be unlike ANYTHING you’ve seen before on LinkedIn. If you know someone raising in pre-seed or seed as a solo founder looking for community support, share this newsletter with them! I’ll be sending details out shortly for this end of July shenanigan (and will be writing more about my experience as a 2x solo founder).

🔖 Bookmarks From Mine to Yours

COMMUNITY is the FUTURE

This event challenged my notion that bigger is better. As the first community event I hosted, I felt insecure that it didn’t bring more people in alignment.

Everywhere you turn on LinkedIn, people rock on about their event that brought together 50+, 60+, 100+ people (and having been at many of those events, these numbers are often INCREDIBLYYYYYYYYY inflated lol).

But the night gave me insight about what these conversations can provide. Instead of leaving with one or two connections because you’re overwhelmed in the social context of strangers, we left with six new, deep connections.

Attendees asked panelists questions, panelists asked attendees questions. It wasn’t a seminar, it was an interactive discussion where people felt comfortable expressing their thoughts.

Top three takeaways from the event — 

  1. We need to leave boring networking events in 2024. Event organizers need to figure out a better way to connect individuals at an event more intentionally instead of throwing 30 strangers together to mingle. These smaller groups are a great way to do so.

  2. Burnout is real. You don’t need to be creating everything. You don’t need to be leading everything. Find something that already exists. Support that person or group with your skills. Or just simply show up. I’m going to repeat this again. YOU DO NOT NEED TO CREATE EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO BE INVOLVED IN. Save your energy, strength, and time — and take care of yourself first.

  3. The best way to get started in being part of a community is showing up to events in disciplines you might not even be dipped into. You can learn a lot in cross-functional industries. Don’t just stick in one niche. Once you’re meeting people all over the place, you’ll begin to find your tribe (or an idea of what you’d like to lean into).

Empowering Health-Tech Entrepreneurship Networking & Fireside Chat

My first health-tech event brought 50+ people across Massachusetts (and folx from across the country and world visiting Boston!) together in one room to share a piece of their story in redefining healthcare in the United States.

Some key insights from our fireside chat with visionaries redefining equitable care ⤵️

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How do you cope with the highs and lows of being a founder? Zoe gave us an Oscar-esque speech on how to navigate it.

The people you surround yourself with truly are your rock. The co-founder you choose will dictate how lows the lows can get. And your friends and family will celebrate the highest of highs with you. Be a rock for others, and your community will have your back. But how do you find these people? Go to events! Mingle with people who are not in your industry. You'll find the best of gems in places you're not familiar with.

🚀 How do you find people to support you? Melissa gave incredible advice on those looking to get started.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCELERATORS! They connect you with mentors, cohorts that can provide you feedback, non-dilutive funding to get you started. Put in time for that application, you can copy, paste, and curate for the next application. Look them up on Google, ask ChatGPT — they do not need to be YC or Techstars, we're trying to save the world, not win accolades (those come later).

👂 How do you stay true to yourself with so much noise? Eric gave us this mic drop.

Listen closely, but don't listen to everything. You're gathering information. Every conversation you have. Either with an experienced investor, 10x founder, or someone exploring entrepreneurship. Connection curates conversation. Feedback provides options. But that does not mean you need to accept every conversation and option as truth. Don't worry about offending someone. Worry about who might be affected if you don't get your solution launched.

Launched 6-person Founding Patient Cohort at jadewell

One of my side quests is building a Chinese Herbal Medicine telemedicine platform for chronic condition patients. Think Curology, hims/hers, and Curex — but for Traditional Chinese Medicine herbs.

Our Founding Patient Cohort is a small group of real people (like you) who are getting early access to our platform and helping us make it better. Think of it as being part of the backstage crew for something that actually matters: a smarter, more transparent way to experience Chinese Herbal Medicine.

So what is this exactly?

If you're in the Founding Cohort, here's what you're getting:

  • Early access to our digital Chinese Herbal Medicine platform

  • Personalized herbal prescriptions, real support, no fluff

  • Occasional surveys to tell us what’s working (and what’s not)

  • A say in how we make this telemedicine care delivery easier, clearer, and better for everyone

They are getting all the same care we’ll offer in the full version — just with a few more check-ins along the way. We’ll ask about symptoms, how they're feeling, how the herbs are working, and what could be improved.

No one wants to take something if they don’t know what it is, how it works, or whether it’s doing anything. Our Founding Patient Cohort is helping us build something better —where herbal prescriptions are personalized, results are tracked, and patients are treated like humans.

The first month of the cohort just ended, and all 6 patients are choosing to continue to the second month. That means 0% churn for our first paying patients.

If you know anyone who may be interested in joining the next cohort to treat their chronic condition symptoms with Chinese Herbal Medicine for a lifetime discount rate, they can fill out this form.

Funded by Tufts Derby Entrepreneurship Center to Attend Collaborative by Classy

My first time in Chicago brought into view just how important the creator economy will be as consumers continue to be fatigued by ads asking them to buy! buy! buy!

My top three insights from the two-day conference —

1️⃣ The creator economy is booming, and we need to start investing in these communities to drive crowdfunding and P2P fundraising. Gretchen Littlefield, CEO at Moore, put this aptly: respect these creators. They're not here to do you a favor. How can you build this relationship past the first initial event or sponsored livestream? Showing up, investing in their community, and nurturing this relationship for years to come. And yes, pay them! How would I get started if I wanted to tap into to creator economy? Find creators with great engagement between 10K - 35K followers and start conversations with them.

2️⃣ Trovon C. Williams, MBA from NAACP gave us this mic drop: Do what you got to do, in order to do what you WANT to do. A truly amazing storyteller, he spoke about how NAACP has had to evolve marketing and mobilizing efforts due to our decreasing attention spans and increasing social media noise. What can you do except fail, fail, fail again? The algorithms give us this one bonus: they reward good content, and ignore bad content. Don't be afraid to just put content out there, and see what works. And don't forget, content that gets shared, wins the algorithm game.

3️⃣ Community is the name of the game in 2025 (and beyond as AI continues to take over). We are reverting back to prioritizing human connection - true human connection - not just over screens but deep conversations and investment into each other as people. Floyd Jones from BackBlack highlighted the four C's in Community Building: Catalyst, Communicate, Convert, Catapult. Use your community as a catalyst for intention and excitement. Communicate to them about the needs and how they can get involved. Convert their interests into tangible things to accomplish - do they want to donate or volunteer? Catapult this one person into a testimonial and repeat the cycle within the community. This is the E=mc^2 of community building.

I’m going to the Netherlands in July to study Psychedelic Therapy Research

I'm elated to have been accepted to the Summer School on Psychedelic Research this summer!

With 0 years of experience in psychedelic therapy research (but 4+ in biomedical research), I was accepted into the 50-seat class where we’ll be exploring psychedelic research applications and and best-in-the-industry ethical practices from University of Groningen.

It’s a shame how behind the US is in researching the amazing potential psychedelic substances have shown to be successful against treatment-resistant conditions.

I’m looking forward to bringing back these intensive lessons and prepare my PhD application for Clinical Psychology (and take some cool pictures of Groningen for y’all)!

📰 Random Recommendations

  • You absolutely need to go watch SINNERS this weekend if you haven’t seen it. Don’t read the Google description, don’t read the trailer. Pretend it’s 1921 and just go watch it. I’ve had 2 people take this suggestion already and they did NOT regret it.

  • Just finished a book club on The Power Code: More Joy. Less Ego. Maximum Impact for Women (and Everyone) by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay. Lessons about what power looks like by womxn (vs. men), how differently it’s desired, what it means to harness it. Super valuable insights no matter what you identify as.

  • If you’re looking to try a no-code platform out, I’m doing bolt.new’s month-long hackathon to keep me accountable in just building something new.

Powering down, Aria ✌️