\n<\/p>\n
Emma Grede, a British entrepreneur known for her work developing brands such as Skims, Good American, and Safely, has been catching flak lately. During an appearance on the She\u2019s So Lucky podcast, she was asked why she never invested in Ami Col\u00e9, the makeup brand founded by Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye.<\/p>\n
Her answer, \u201cI don\u2019t invest in first-time founders unless I think there\u2019s something extraordinary about that founder and about that proposition. To me, I didn\u2019t see that and I was like, it\u2019s okay. It was going to come and go.\u201d Yet she later hired N\u2019Diaye-Mbaye, apparently seeing something extraordinary in this one-time founder.<\/p>\n
So what has changed?<\/p>\n
Speaking on her own podcast, Grede reiterated that she didn\u2019t see long-term potential in Ami Col\u00e9, arguing that her later decision to hire N\u2019Diaye-Mbaye at Skims was the better outcome. In her telling, the role offers access to the kind of infrastructure, mentorship, and resources that building a brand independently often can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s this positioning that has drawn the most criticism. Commentary circulating on social media has pointed to a broader pressure placed on Black women founders to be exceptional, with scrutiny that extends beyond their products to their perceived \u201cfit\u201d as business leaders. Grede went further still, suggesting that N\u2019Diaye-Mbaye may have lacked the business acumen to start a company in the first place.<\/p>\n
To be fair to Grede, not every investor is the right fit for every brand, and there is a version of this discussion where her comments are simply an honest account of her own decision-making process. If you think of Shark Tank, sometimes someone walks in with a product and none of the Sharks are feeling it, only for it to be on shelves a year later, hitting the very numbers everyone in that room said were unrealistic.<\/p>\n
Sometimes you don\u2019t invest because you didn\u2019t connect with the brand, didn\u2019t think it would go anywhere, or didn\u2019t find the founder particularly compelling. Now, Grede\u2019s assessment isn\u2019t entirely wrong as Ami Col\u00e9 did indeed close. But the excitement it generated and the space it occupied in beauty at the time, along with what its founder has gone on to achieve, makes the idea that it just came and went feel a little cavalier, even if it’s technically true.<\/p>\n
N\u2019Diaye-Mbaye was clearly extraordinary enough to build a brand that became a cult favorite before she was out of her early 30\u2019s. Grede couldn\u2019t see that at the time which means she wasn\u2019t the right investor, and she isn\u2019t obligated to be the right investor for everyone. But to now imply, with the benefit of hindsight, that there was nothing extraordinary about Ami Col\u00e9, doesn\u2019t seem fair.<\/p>\n
Ami Col\u00e9 was a no-makeup makeup brand built specifically by and for Black and Brown women. To talk through what went wrong, N\u2019Diaye-Mbaye was invited onto Grede\u2019s podcast and spoke with characteristic clarity about what she brought to the brand (which was a lot) and where her blind spots were. N\u2019Diaye-Mbaye has said herself that she made mistakes along the way.<\/p>\n
She was recruited directly by Glossier CEO Emily Weiss in 2018 and made the pivot from social media strategy at L\u2019Or\u00e9al into product development and innovation, working on exactly the kind of minimalist, skin-first aesthetic that Ami Col\u00e9 would go on to center for an audience Glossier was not then speaking to. Meaning, she started her own brand with both product knowledge and marketing instincts. This wasn\u2019t a first-time founder with a dream and a mood board.<\/p>\n
I know people who stockpiled the lip glosses when the closure was announced, it was that beloved. So it\u2019s hard, in that context, to square Grede\u2019s earlier dismissal with what the brand actually became in practice. Ami Col\u00e9 closed but the demand it was serving didn\u2019t disappear with it, nor did the founder\u2019s insight, nor the customers who were buying the products. If anything, the response proved the appetite was real and the execution had landed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
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Emma Grede, a British entrepreneur known for her work developing brands such as Skims, Good American, and Safely, has been catching flak lately. During an appearance on the She\u2019s So Lucky podcast, she was asked why she never invested in Ami Col\u00e9, the makeup brand founded by Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye. Her answer, \u201cI don\u2019t invest in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_daextam_enable_autolinks":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Emma-grede.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}