Portrait No. 001
Sophia Zheng
Founder
Open Rewards
Local businesses are the heartbeat of our communities. But over time, I watched many of them struggle while consumer spending shifted elsewhere, often without people even realizing it. The turning point came when I saw cities investing to support their local economies, yet lacking real-time tools to influence behavior or measure impact. I spent a year inside a city hall working alongside their economic development team and experienced this first hand. It felt like an unsolved problem hiding in plain sight. Cities are the original marketplaces, and they should have the tools to drive their local commerce. Now is the time we make this happen.
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
Entrepreneurship has a way of showing you everything you are best at—and everything you are worst at. Building this company has been as much about building myself as it has been about building a product. Despite the challenges that every entrepreneur inevitably faces, what’s been most inspiring is that doing the right thing does compound. Putting communities first, making principled decisions, and staying true to our mission - even when they’re harder in the short term - is something that customers, employees, and partners get behind. That belief has carried us through. We scaled 20X in transaction volume in two years, drove over a million local purchases across 100+ communities.
Chapter II
Your vision.
Empowering cities as a marketplace, the biggest marketplace in our lives.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
If you zoom out, the “why behind the why” isn’t just about local spending—it’s about agency. Thirty years from now, I want to have helped give power to local economies. I want cities and communities to have real, everyday tools to shape their own outcomes - to support the businesses they believe in, keep dollars circulating locally, and build economies that reflect their values. Beyond the platform, the impact I care about is proving that you can build a meaningful, high-growth company by doing the right thing - for your customers, your team, and your mission, even when (and especially when) it’s harder. If we get this right, the legacy isn’t just a company—it’s a shift in who gets to shape the future of local economies, and how.