Ms. McKellar is the Brooklyn-based founder of Loosecubes, a marketplace for renting extra workspace that received $1.3 million in seed funding from Accel Partners, Battery Ventures and some undisclosed angel investors. “As of today, we have 1,242 spaces being shared in 275 cities in 35 countries,” she said. “We're a completely free platform right now, but I can tell you that as far as I can tell from media mentions, etc., we have twice the number of listings that AirBnB had at this same time in its development. That makes me feel good.”

In the past, Ms. McKellar co-founded party photography service Tiger Photo and the business development non-profit New Sector Alliance; headed up finance and operations at real estate development firm Tribeca Associates; and worked as a real estate investment banker at Goldman Sachs, where she was “responsible for originating and packaging complicated securities (and tanking the global economy). Sorry guys,” according to her LinkedIn profile.

Her dream is to run Loosecubes “from an island somewhere... or maybe in Paris, for the rest of my life.” Eventually she’d love to be an angel investor and advisor to start-ups.

But if Loosecubes fails, she says, the first thing she is going to do is write a novel. “It's been a hilarious, wild ride. It would probably make for a great romantic comedy, with Prince Charming being a Groupon-esque success.”