Lina Trivedi facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Lina Trivedi
Born	(1973-06-11) June 11, 1973 (age 52) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Education	DePaul University
Occupation	Entrepreneur publisher author
Known for	Beanie Babies web site, Beanie Babies poems
Notable work	WordBotic

Lina Trivedi (born June 11, 1973) is an American entrepreneur, author, and public servant. She is famous for writing the first 136 poems for Beanie Babies. She also created the very first website for a business to sell directly to customers. This website was for Ty Inc., the company that made Beanie Babies. Many people say she helped invent E-commerce and made Beanie Babies the world's first Internet sensation.

Early Life and Computer Skills

Lina Trivedi is an Indian American who was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her family spoke Gujarati. She grew up in Addison, Illinois. She went to DePaul University to study Sociology. During this time, she started working at Ty, Inc..

Lina's parents were entrepreneurs, meaning they ran their own businesses. They taught her computer programming from a very young age. In the early 1980s, when Lina was only 7 years old, her family bought an IBM Personal Computer 5150. Her mother made her read the DOS 1.0 manual three times! By second grade, Lina was already writing simple computer programs using BASIC.

Creating the Beanie Babies Craze

Joining Ty Inc.

In 1992, Lina Trivedi became the 12th employee at Ty, Inc.. By 1995, Beanie Babies were becoming very popular around the world. Lina thought the tags on the toys were a bit boring. She suggested adding unique birthdays and fun poems inside the heart-shaped tags. She even wrote an example poem for Stripes the Tiger, which included her own birthday. Ty Warner, the president of Ty, Inc., liked her idea. He asked her to write all the poems and design the inside of over 100 product tags.

The First Business Website

Later in 1995, Lina told Ty Warner about something new called the internet. At that time, the internet was mostly used for research by colleges. But Lina saw a chance for businesses to connect with customers. She brought her 14.4k modem from DePaul University to show Warner how the internet worked. He was very interested and gave her permission to create a website for Beanie Babies. When the first Ty website launched in late 1995, only about 1.4% of Americans were using the internet.

The Beanie Babies website Lina created was the first of its kind. It was designed to connect a business directly with its customers. The website had cool features. People could vote for a Beanie Baby that wrote a daily blog. There was also a trading post, fan mail, and a list of 101 things to do with a Beanie Baby. The website received over 1 billion visits each year! Lina is known for using the internet to make Beanie Babies incredibly popular.

Growing the Phenomenon

The Beanie Babies craze grew super fast because of the internet. Lina managed all the announcements on the official Beanie Babies website. People started buying and trading these toys online, sometimes for hundreds of dollars. Some collections were even worth over $100,000! At the peak of their popularity, 10% of all sales on eBay were related to Beanie Babies. Lina also helped design new Beanie Babies and decide which ones would be retired. In 1996, she even let fans help create the 100th Beanie Baby character through the internet.

Media and Creative Works

Lina Trivedi has appeared in several media projects about the Beanie Babies phenomenon:

In 2023, Lina Trivedi's story was also part of a movie called The Beanie Bubble. In the film, a character named "Maya Kumar," played by Geraldine Viswanathan, is based on Lina. Maya gets a job at Ty, Inc. and helps turn the Beanie Babies craze into a huge success by creating an online market for collectors. The movie shows Maya as the first person to build a commercial website and write the poems for the Beanie Babies tags.

Books by Lina Trivedi

Lina Trivedi has written several books:

Technology Innovations

After her time with Beanie Babies, Lina Trivedi started her own web design company in 1997. Her company created the first websites for many famous places and groups. These included the Sears Tower, the Spice Girls, and Mötley Crüe. One cool thing she did was broadcast live pictures of the Chicago skyline from the top of the Sears Tower on its website.

Her design firm was recognized as one of the best in Chicago in 1998. Lina herself was named one of the top local talents in 1999 and one of the top entrepreneurs under 30 in 2000 by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Lina also worked on a team that created the world's first system for processing credit card applications in real-time. This technology was first used for Citigroup credit cards.

In 2013, Lina started developing software to help people write and publish books and websites. She even invented an artificial intelligence (AI) that can write. This AI helps writers focus on their ideas by handling the technical parts of publishing. Her invention has been called a step before ChatGPT. As of July 2025, Lina is developing new artificial intelligence with her company called Joii.ai.

Personal Life

Lina Trivedi lives in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. She is a single mother to a child with special needs. Her daughter was born with a very rare condition called Goltz syndrome. Because of this, her daughter was born without a leg, had missing fingers, and lacked muscles on one side of her face. By age 5, her daughter had already had over 25 surgeries. She was also the youngest child in the United States to get a prosthetic leg at just 7 months old.

Lina has used her business skills to help her daughter, Nikhita, learn about business. Before starting 3rd grade, Nikhita became the president of a company in Wyoming. This company designs and sells bows, inspired by the business run by Minnie Mouse in the TV show Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.