A photographic archive documenting the early days of startups building (by humans)
About the Project
The Startup Yearbook Project is an archive of beginnings.
Before the press releases, term sheets, and the mythology.
We document the early rooms — borrowed desks (or doors), first prototypes, unpolished logos, faces before certainty.
These photographs capture the last generation of companies built primarily by human instinct. Before autonomous founders, algorithmic management. Before optimization replaced doubt.
This archive is not nostalgia.
It is evidence.
Evidence of: risk without predictive certainty; branding without AGI assistance; decisions made in conversation, not computation; culture shaped by personality, not prompts.
Five years from now, origin stories may look different.
This project preserves the threshold — the moment before the handoff.
This is not resistance to technology. It is recognition of transition.
Every founder photograph is a timestamp. Every early office is a relic. Every imperfect prototype is a signature of human authorship.
The Startup Yearbook Project is a record of the last purely human era of company building.
And the first chapter of what comes next.
About me
Hi, I’m Betty.
Once upon a time, I was a high school yearbook editor. Since then, I’ve spent my career in finance and working in venture alongside startup founders.
The Startup Yearbook Project is a personal passion project — a way to document the early, often unseen moments of company building.
This archive only exists because of thoughtful contributions from founders, builders, and early teams who are willing to share the real moments.
My long-term goal is to develop this collection into an archival photography exhibit, presented at the Museum of Modern Art in the next five years.
Along the way, I plan to compile the submissions into a digital yearbook each year, shared with everyone who has contributed to the archive.
To make the project possible, I ask contributors to grant permission for their submitted photos to be used within the archive, including but not limited to:
the public online archive
the annual digital yearbook
social media posts related to the project
potential future exhibitions
There may also be opportunities to create creative or commercial works from the archive in the future (for example, a photography or coffeetable book).
Thank you for being part of this experiment in documenting a moment in startup history.
Let’s create something meaningful and fun together.
Submit your photos
Ready to be a part of history? Submit your photos and brief company description here
By submitting a photograph, you confirm that you own the image or have permission to share it and grant The Startup Yearbook Project (Betty Ma) a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to display, publish, reproduce, and use the photograph for the archive, digital yearbooks, social media, exhibitions, publications, and related project materials. You retain ownership of your photograph.
