Lensabl Founder and CEO Andy Bilinsky: The Backstory

Introduction

Most founders chase the big market. Andy Bilinsky went after the one nobody wanted. While direct-to-consumer eyewear brands piled into the frames business chasing the next Warby Parker, Bilinsky built Lensabl around the part everyone ignored: the lenses. The result was the first online lens-replacement service, a category he more or less created by spotting a complaint that his own previous company kept hearing plus nobody was solving.

Here is the backstory: who Bilinsky is, where the Lensabl idea came from, the model that made an overlooked category work, the numbers behind the growth plus the lessons he shares with other founders. Figures come from his interviews plus investor coverage, so treat the dated ones as snapshots rather than current totals.

Who is Andy Bilinsky

Andrew Bilinsky, known as Andy, is the co-founder plus CEO of Lensabl, a Los Angeles-based direct-to-consumer optical company he built with co-founder Mike Rahimzadeh. He studied at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, then spent years in business development roles at companies including Live Nation, HauteLook, BeachMint plus PlayHaven before co-founding the mobile advertising platform ChirpAds. That mix of e-commerce plus ad-tech experience shaped how he later approached Lensabl: a DTC operator who understood both the supply side plus the growth side of an online business. In interviews he has described the startup grind plainly, the round-the-clock pace where the work never really stops, early mornings answering emails before a day of calls plus strategy. That is the unglamorous reality behind most early-stage DTC companies, his included.

The idea: a complaint nobody was solving

The Lensabl idea did not arrive as a flash of inspiration. It arrived as a customer complaint, repeated. At ivory + mason, customers kept asking whether they could get proper prescription lenses fitted into frames they already owned plus loved, rather than buying yet another complete pair. They were tired of long waits at optometrists plus the multi-hundred-dollar price tags at traditional eyewear retailers. The frames-first model could not answer that, because it was built to sell whole glasses.

Bilinsky plus his co-founder saw the bigger signal underneath the request. The lens market was strikingly large compared with the frames-only market, yet nobody had brought lens replacement online. So rather than keep fighting for share in the saturated frames category, they decided to build the first online lens-replacement service: a customer mails in frames they already own, a lab the company operates fits new lenses, plus the glasses come back updated at a fraction of traditional cost. The complaint that the old business could not solve became the foundation of the new one.

The model that made it work

The core insight was decoupling. Per Bilinsky's interviews, frames plus lenses have completely separate supply chains, different materials, different sources plus different functionality requirements depending on the prescription, yet most eyewear companies bundle them into a single product. By separating the two plus owning the lens side, Lensabl could serve customers who had a whole collection of frames they loved from different brands plus simply wanted updated lenses for them.

Getting the lens side right mattered enormously, since different prescriptions need different lens functionality, plus the company built its lab operation around exactly that. Once the lens-replacement product worked, Lensabl added frames as a second product, an idea that came from customers: not everyone had a spare pair to wear while their main glasses were sent in for re-lensing. Offering affordable frames solved that gap plus improved conversion on the lens-replacement service at the same time. The company has since grown into a one-stop online optical shop covering lens replacement, frames, contacts, vision plans plus an online vision test.

The growth plus the numbers

The model attracted capital plus customers. Per CoEfficient Labs reporting around 2020, Lensabl had raised more than $7 million from investors, which Bilinsky directed toward growing the company's most successful existing channels rather than spreading thin. He has framed that as a deliberate choice: pour capital into what is already proving itself rather than chase every new idea at once, a discipline that kept a young company focused on the products customers were buying. Per Investor Connect coverage around 2021, the company had helped more than 100,000 customers streamline their vision care plus saved them over $5 million collectively. Treat both as dated snapshots that have very likely moved since.

The lessons he shares with founders

Across his interviews, two themes recur. The first is a caution about co-founding with close friends. Many people want to start a company with friends because they already know plus enjoy each other though a startup will occupy years of your life plus disagreements are inevitable. A long-standing friendship can make those disagreements harder to handle than a purely professional relationship would, so the personal stakes are worth weighing before you sign on together.

The second is the one his whole career demonstrates: pick the right opportunity over the obvious one. The obvious move after ivory + mason would have been another frames brand. Instead Bilinsky found the underserved adjacent category, lens replacement, plus built the first-mover position there. For direct-to-consumer founders, the lesson lands clearly: the gap a competitor leaves open is often a stronger bet than the market everyone is already crowding into. Lensabl exists because someone listened to a complaint that a saturated market was ignoring.

Where Flinque fits for brands like Lensabl

Lensabl is the kind of direct-to-consumer brand that grows on creator marketing. DTC companies in eyewear, beauty, apparel plus adjacent categories lean heavily on influencers to demonstrate a product, build trust plus drive trackable sales, since a creator showing real glasses on a real face does more than a banner ad ever could. Finding plus vetting the right creators is the first step in any of those campaigns.

When the task is finding creators, Flinque is one tool for it. Its index carries beyond 10 million verified profiles in more than 25 countries, covering Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X. You filter by niche, who follows them, follower count, engagement rate and where they post from. Each result clears a fake-follower scan first. Entry is free; the paid plan is $49 monthly.

To be clear about scope: this is not a claim that Lensabl uses Flinque, just an illustration of where a tool like this fits for a brand of that profile. Flinque finds plus vets creators, it does not run campaigns, ship product or negotiate deals. For a DTC eyewear or optical brand, the relevant search would filter creators by niche, audience demographics, engagement plus location across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube plus X, with a fake-follower check on each, so the brand can shortlist creators whose audiences really fit before spending on a partnership. The strategy plus the creative stay with the brand. The discovery is the part a tool shortens.