40-year-old sold her company for $22 million—2 years later she bought it back and is launching a 'Coachella for career women'

CNBC

17-07-2025

This weekend, some 2,000 people will gather in downtown Los Angeles for Create & Cultivate's festival for women in business. They'll be treated to a performance from Grammy-winning artist Doechii and hear from keynote speakers including Ciara, Ayesha Curry and Brittany Snow.
The sold-out event, which organizers are calling a "Coachella for career women," marks the return of Create & Cultivate's founder, Jaclyn Johnson, to the company after she sold her majority stake to a private equity firm for $22 million in 2021, according to Forbes; she, alongside the company's new CEO Marina Middleton, bought back majority ownership by the end of 2023.
"It wasn't expected," Johnson, 40, tells CNBC Make It of buying back her company. She and Middleton had already spent a year launching a new business that focused on curating 30- to 50-person events when the opportunity arose to take back ownership of Create & Cultivate.
The platform she founded in 2015, meanwhile, was facing challenges adapting its events to the pandemic era, first to online offerings and then back to in-person gatherings. The company's revenue dropped from $14 million in 2019 to $4.7 million in 2022 and $5 million in 2023, Johnson told Forbes in 2024.
But taking back the reins, Johnson had a vision: A new approach that would combine her knack for large-scale events and Middleton's expertise in bespoke moments where attendees can get more tailored business advice.
Johnson may be returning to her roots, but she's doing things differently this time.
Her goal is "to be able to take a 10-year-old brand and completely reinvent it in a way that keeps the legacy and keeps the value ... giving women the tools, tips and tricks they need to succeed — but give it a new breath of fresh air."
The change isn't without risks, but Johnson says that within the first six months of launching the festival idea, brands and talent showed interest. "Tickets were selling, and so we knew we had caught on to something special, and so we just went with that momentum," she says.
It all goes back to the career advice Johnson lives by: "For us, we always go with our gut," she says.
As a founder, investor, mentor and mentee, Johnson says she's learned to trust her own experience and expertise. "I've done this for a long time now. And so we have this unique perspective that is really hard to find," she says. "We know this audience, we know what they want, and let's lean in and go all in on that."
Johnson says the new festival is different from past Create & Cultivate events in two ways.
First is offering curated programming across four stages: a main stage that will cover entrepreneurship, business and finance topics; a "Creator Compound" to focus on all things content creation and online marketing; a "Center Court" stage for women in sports; and a test kitchen for women in food and beverage.
"We're creating specificity in the content, and you get to choose your own adventure, like where you want to spend your time at the conference, and who do you want to learn from," Johnson says.
The second special feature of the festival is intentional networking. Attendees have access to Connect, an AI-powered platform where they can note the type of person they want to meet (a venture capitalist or a lawyer, for example) and the system will pair them for a 15-minute intro session.
"You're able to make these real connections, so you feel like there's real ROI that you're walking away with," Johnson says, adding that the platform already has 10,000 meetings scheduled for the weekend.
With programming like Doechii's performance and activations ranging from brow touchups to flash tattoos, Johnson adds that it's important to incorporate fun into the business conference.
"We like to say you can come here and learn to do your taxes and get your nails done," Johnson says. "We're beyond hustle culture. We've gotten to a place where people want to enjoy what they're building."
"Building a business is not easy," she adds, "and it's not for the faint of heart. You need your village around you. So being able to do that in an environment that feels fun and beautiful and reflects what you want your life to look like, I think, is really special."
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