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’s So Lucky podcast, she was asked why she never invested in Ami Colé, the makeup brand founded by Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye.
Her answer, “I don’t invest in first-time founders unless I think there’s something extraordinary about that founder and about that proposition. To me, I didn’t see that and I was like, it’s okay. It was going to come and go.” Yet she later hired N’Diaye-Mbaye, apparently seeing something extraordinary in this one-time founder.
So what has changed?
Speaking on her own podcast, Grede reiterated that she didn’t see long-term potential in Ami Colé, arguing that her later decision to hire N’Diaye-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’t.
But it’s 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 “fit” as business leaders. Grede went further still, suggesting that N’Diaye-Mbaye may have lacked the business acumen to start a company in the first place.
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.
Sometimes you don’t invest because you didn’t connect with the brand, didn’t think it would go anywhere, or didn’t find the founder particularly compelling. Now, Grede’s assessment isn’t entirely wrong as Ami Colé 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.
N’Diaye-Mbaye was clearly extraordinary enough to build a brand that became a cult favorite before she was out of her early 30’s. Grede couldn’t see that at the time which means she wasn’t the right investor, and she isn’t obligated to be the right investor for everyone. But to now imply, with the benefit of hindsight, that there was nothing extraordinary about Ami Colé, doesn’t seem fair.
Ami Colé was a no-makeup makeup brand built specifically by and for Black and Brown women. To talk through what went wrong, N’Diaye-Mbaye was invited onto Grede’s podcast and spoke with characteristic clarity about what she brought to the brand (which was a lot) and where her blind spots were. N’Diaye-Mbaye has said herself that she made mistakes along the way.
She was recruited directly by Glossier CEO Emily Weiss in 2018 and made the pivot from social media strategy at L’Oréal into product development and innovation, working on exactly the kind of minimalist, skin-first aesthetic that Ami Colé 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’t a first-time founder with a dream and a mood board.
I know people who stockpiled the lip glosses when the closure was announced, it was that beloved. So it’s hard, in that context, to square Grede’s earlier dismissal with what the brand actually became in practice. Ami Colé closed but the demand it was serving didn’t disappear with it, nor did the founder’s insight, nor the customers who were buying the products. If anything, the response proved the appetite was real and the execution had landed.
