Closing The Gap Between Founders And Investors

This post is inspired by my feature in Forbes, where we unpacked my journey from building brands to backing the people behind them.

You can read the full article here:

Forbes: Closing The Gap Between Founders And Investors

When I look back on the past decade, I see a journey that started with a vision and ended with transformation. As the world shifted, so did my own purpose.

Beautycon was never just a business to me, it was a movement. A space for creators, misfits, and Gen Z disruptors to shape the culture around beauty, identity, and power. Letting it go during the pandemic “was one of the most difficult times of my life. It gutted me. I had to let go of a vision I had been building for a long time. It felt impossible to accept. But the world was changing, fast. I had to move on and realize you can’t reach your full potential until you lean into those tough times.”

That moment changed everything. And it made something painfully clear: founders don’t just need capital: they need context, community, and people who’ve lived through the chaos themselves.

What came next wasn’t part of the plan. It was a response to urgency.

When the pandemic hit, the beauty industry flatlined, factories closed, founders froze, and uncertainty took over. I started a weekly Zoom call just to figure out what the hell we were all supposed to do. What began as survival mode became Beauty United, a nonprofit built on collective power and community. We brought together founders, execs, and operators; not just to vent, but to solve. And what I saw over and over was this: founders needed more than advice or capital. They needed someone who had been in the trenches. That’s what made the next chapter obvious.

After Beautycon and Beauty United, I started seeing the entire game differently. I didn’t just want to build companies, I wanted to back the people building them. I wanted to bring operational insight, pattern recognition, and real founder empathy into venture capital.

I joined Intuition Capital, then co-founded Kinship Ventures with Gwyneth Paltrow, a fund backing early-stage companies shaping how we live, work, and care. But I don’t lead like a traditional VC. I lead like someone who’s been in the fire: cap table headaches, team turnover, burn rate panic, reinvention fatigue. I’ve been there. And I’ve stayed.

Being a founder while the culture shifts from traditional capitalism to stakeholder capitalism is a very real kind of pressure. As I told Forbes:

“I’ve had to really focus on rethinking the benchmarks of what’s important to me, to society, and how I can make the most impact for founders who want to change entire industries.”

That’s what I bring into every deal, every room, every founder conversation. I’m here to close the gap, between capital and culture, investors and operators, systems and soul.

Let’s be honest: investors don’t always get founders.

But I do.

And I’m betting everything on the builders who are here to make it mean something.

If that resonates, here’s the full story:

Read the Fobes Article

If you’re a founder navigating the chaos, I’d love to hear how you’re thinking through it. Drop a comment, share this with someone in the trenches, or subscribe to stay in the loop.