She left Buffalo for college and stayed away for over a decade. Now she's leading UX at a startup breaking $100 million in revenue.
Laura Fariole collected a lot of pelts since she left Buffalo for college.
Time in Boston, San Francisco, and New York City. Working at agencies and writing ad copy for major brands. A first-40 employee at DraftKings, where she pivoted into user-experience and design. Eight years at Facebook/Meta, launching Meta's Business Suite and Facebook Pages.
But, like many others, family brought her back to Buffalo. The seed, Laura says, was planted much earlier, in the audience at one of the early 43North Finals, when she happened to be home on a trip from Boston.
"I remember being like, oh, all this is happening here," she said. "There's growth happening. Tech innovations are happening here."
Fariole and her husband, Anthony, moved to Brooklyn in 2021 with their 15-month-old. That brief period is fraught with recollections: daycare colds, no community support, a lack of suitable places to be outdoor with kids.
“We were like, ‘Why are we doing this?” Fariole said. “Let's go get a backyard. Let's go where we can just walk around our neighborhood and it's like not a big deal. Where it's green and there are plants growing and we can see people. Brooklyn is lovely, but also, it’s not.”
When Laura and her husband finally made the move, she continued to work remotely for Meta and then pivoted into UX consulting. To get out of the home office a bit, she rented a desk on the 43North floor inside Seneca One.
The connections made there landed her on a panel at a 43North speaker series event dedicated to UX. In the audience was her now boss.
This week, Laura started as Azuna's VP of User Experience. Azuna is quickly becoming a Buffalo startup darling. The plant-based odor eliminator startup is on pace to break $100 million in revenue this year, and has grown to more 60 full-time employees.
Laura traded in mega-metros for the charm of Buffalo, and a remote Big Tech gig and consulting for an in-house leadership position at a scaling startup. For a Buffalo ecosystem that's spent over a decade trying to engineer exactly these kinds of serendipitous collisions, it doesn't get much better.
And to Laura, it's a uniquely Buffalo story. Right down to the converted spouse.
Laura’s husband, Anthony, works in IT for Reddit. The New Hampshire native is now a major Bills fan and loves Buffalo. The two and their kids landed in Snyder, close to family, good schools, and the expressway for a quick commute downtown.
They’ve been surprised by Buffalo’s eclectic and high-quality restaurant scene. And having a window into the local startup community, she can see a thesis for why businesses start, scale and stay here.
"Everyone knows everyone in Buffalo, and everyone will help anyone," she said. "You can have an idea here and make it happen. Everyone's rooting for you."
