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Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
‘Smoke And Mirrors': How Entrepreneur Daniella Pierson Exaggerated And Self-Promoted Her Way Into Turmoil
D aniella Pierson turned 30 on Monday—a milestone acknowledged by a bevy of successful friends, from Spanx founder Sara Blakely to the singer Jewel to designer Diane Von Furstenberg. It's an especially auspicious birthday for an entrepreneur who spent her 20s building a lifestyle newsletter called The Newsette, which she launched as a student at Boston University in 2015; garnering a feature in USA Today in 2019; debuting on our Forbes '30 Under 30' list in 2020; appearing on the the cover of Entrepreneur magazine in 2021 (with Selena Gomez) for a second company, mental health startup Wondermind; ranking number 16 on Inc5000's list of fastest growing private companies in 2022. And giving talks and speeches throughout, at schools from Stanford to BU and media gatherings from the Forbes Power Women's Summit to Newsweek's Women's Global Impact Forum just this week. Her high profile owes itself to brains and hustle—and, it turns out, a consistent history of large exaggerations and extreme self-promotion, those latter two traits reinforcing the other. Over the course of the last three months, Forbes spoke to more than a dozen people who've worked closely with her and reviewed documents, press releases and videos of all four of her recent business ventures. What emerges is someone who fails to understand the difference between entrepreneurial zeal and extreme hyperbole—and now faces a potential reckoning. For all the celebrity plaudits and press love, Pierson's businesses seem to be unraveling. Business partnerships have collapsed, the staff at her original startup has shrunk to roughly one-quarter its peak size, with revenue tumbling from $40 million in 2021 (if you believe Pierson) to less than $4 million in recent years, according to four former employees. (Pierson declined to comment on any revenue figures after 2021.) Kicked out of a second startup she cofounded, Pierson is now starting her third venture in four years, that one also seemingly riddled with problems. 'I don't know that she actually cares about building a successful business as much as she cares about being able to say she's a badass CEO,' says one former employee who, like others in this article, spoke under condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. 'It's all smoke and mirrors.' The daughter of a Colombian immigrant oral surgeon mother and a car dealership owner father from Niagara Falls, Pierson grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. She speaks often of her early struggles with ADHD, depression and particularly OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). She says she got mediocre grades in school and was called the 'dumb twin' compared to her sister, Alex, who received straight As. (Her sister, who writes under the name Alex Aster, is now a bestselling author of young adult fiction, including the romantic fantasy series Lightlark .) Pierson started Newsette using tactics that would become something of a playbook: scrappy—and disingenuous. In those early days, she sent messages from fake emails to make it seem like the company had more employees than just her. She also posed as an intern, messaging friends of friends to subscribe and telling them if they successfully referred 10 others, they could call themselves 'brand ambassadors' on their resumés. 'I made it look like it was bigger than it was,' she said in a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business last year. 'I literally just faked it 'til I made it.' A notable milestone came when Pierson, then about 24, met Diane von Furstenberg, the legendary fashion designer known for her iconic wrap dress. Married to billionaire Barry Diller, von Furstenberg introduced her to a host of other celebrities, as well as connections at Amazon. Newsette then ran a campaign for Amazon highlighting female founders on the e-commerce giant's homepage on International Women's Day in 2020. Soon after, Pierson started Newland, a creative marketing agency within Newsette, structured to connect influencers with Amazon and other brands. Things looked promising. In 2021, the company generated $34 million in sales, according to a document shared by a spokesperson—$6 million less than what Pierson has frequently said, but still its best year ever. Newsette's spokesperson clarified that the company 'booked' $40 million in sales in 2021, but that Amazon, then its biggest customer, paid the remaining sum in the first quarter of 2022. At this point, Pierson reached out to Forbes to nominate herself for its Richest Self-Made Women list. In looking into her company in 2022, Forbes confirmed that RXBar founder Peter Rahal had come on as an outside investor. Rahal, who sold 50% of his former company for $300 million five years earlier, has since put money into some 100 businesses. That small investment valued Newsette at $200 million. More than the cash, Rahal's bet on Pierson gave her clout. Based on that deal's numbers, Forbes valued Pierson's own 84% stake in the company at just under $170 million. At the time, she also owned more than a third of Wondermind, a mental wellness startup she cofounded with Selena Gomez and Gomez's mom, Mandy Teefey. Wondermind was then worth $100 million after attracting $5 million in a funding round led by tennis star Serena Williams' venture capital firm. Pierson also eagerly showed Forbes millions in other assets, enough for us to declare her in August 2022 'one of the wealthiest women of color in the U.S.,' worth $220 million and, then age 27, 'younger than just about any self-made female entrepreneur with a nine figure fortune.' That Forbes story marked a turning point for Pierson, according to former employees who say she repeatedly used the net worth figure to sell others on her success—even when her businesses turned south. And it turns out the net worth figure she loves to cite was derived from another exaggeration. Yes, Rahal invested at a $200 million valuation, which is traditionally a blue chip way to appraise a private company. But he now tells Forbes that it was just a 1.25% stake and he didn't even look at the financials when he made the investment. In other words, the company touting its $200 million valuation had no real chance of any other serious investor touching it at that price. 'It was like Anna Delvey, but on a much smaller scale,' says a former employee of Pierson's. 'Pretty much the second day [I joined], I would make jokes like, 'I'm going to be in the documentary about this company one day.''The Newland business—which had become Newsette's main source of revenue—soon started to falter. Partnerships with Amazon and Mattel, its only significant clients, fell apart. Amazon stopped being a client in late 2022, per former employees. (Amazon declined to comment and Mattel did not reply to a request for comment.) In January 2023, Pierson took to Instagram to drum up business, claiming that demand was high: 'Newsette Media Group keeps the agency under wraps because of our waitlist, but hit us up at and let's see if we can make magic together.' She began laying off staff and shut down the Newland segment entirely at the end of 2023, according to several people who were employed at the company then, though never publicly announced it. One person with knowledge of the situation says Pierson continues to pitch agency capabilities as though Newland is still active, and Pierson has continued, even this year, to include it on her email signature. Things haven't been that much better at the original newsletter business. Former employees say Pierson has described it being in difficult financial straits over the years, claiming at times to have partly funded it out of her own pocket. Two sources say she also wildly exaggerates to clients the value of her company—using the $200 million figure even after revenue nosedived—and the amount that other brands spend on Newsette, claiming that customers like Nike and Ulta Beauty are 'spending tens of millions on us per year.' Four former employees tell Forbes that is not true: no individual brand deal for the newsletter ever hit $1 million, and deals were usually in the tens of thousands or low hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Branded content is Newsette's main source of revenue.) Nike and Ulta did not reply to requests for comment. Another of her embellishments: subscriber numbers. Around the time Rahal came on board in 2022, Pierson cited subscribers in excess of 500,000. But according to two internal documents, subscribers totalled just over 400,000 at that time. 'They got us all on the phone and said, 'Stop talking about the number of subscribers we have,' says a former employee. 'They never said why. But it was because, I think, we didn't actually have that many.' She adds that her team was also asked to start describing the number of subscribers in ranges, rather than specific numbers. The overstating hasn't stopped. Newsette had about 500,000 subscribers last year, per internal documents, but new business pitches claimed to have over 1.3 million subscribers across the company's three newsletter products. It didn't specify that most readers of the newer weekend shopping and wellness bulletins also receive the main Newsette offering, meaning that those 1.3 million were not unique subscribers. Today, Newsette's business is likely worth 'no more than $12.2 million,' according to media valuation expert Kevin Kamen, who reviewed its most recent financial figures and subscribers, provided by Forbes, as well as its social media following. Emphasis on 'no more than.' Wondermind, which Pierson spent most of 2022 running as co-CEO with Gomez' mother Mandy Teefey, is in even worse shape. Pierson was ultimately pushed out in January 2023, after the two women clashed, according to four former staffers. 'She would not characterize it as 'pushed out,'' says a spokesperson for Pierson. 'Leaving Wondermind was a very difficult decision, but she was proud of what they had built in the time there.' Regardless, problems at Wondermind snowballed. Two thirds of its 15 employees were laid off in May. //// When it comes to leadership, Pierson promotes herself as a motivational uplifter of women. 'I have made it my life's mission to ensure that NOBODY gets knocked down by false labels or barriers to success. I'm here for you—with a hand that will always help you back up,' she posted on Instagram on her 30th birthday. But that is not how many former employees describe her. The 11 people who worked with Pierson at Newsette or Wondermind interviewed for this article describe her as prone to fits of anger. They say she berated employees, often claiming their work was 'embarrassing' and that she could do all of their jobs better. 'There was definitely this culture of Danny having two personalities,' says a former employee. 'One was online, and with us she was different.' Ex-staff say she repeatedly interfered with their ability to do their jobs, covertly reading their emails, rescheduling meetings over a dozen times, hiring industry experts and ignoring their suggestions. She'd jeopardize relationships with clients, dominating sales calls with details from her personal story and turning down future campaigns they offered because the money wasn't immediate. 'She denied people on our team their annual bonuses, people that had worked really hard,' says another ex-staffer. 'And then like five minutes later she was on Instagram posting all these stories of her new Chanel roller blades and of the new marble kitchen she's installing in her Soho apartment.' Adds one former employee, 'I have never before in my life worked with someone who knew so little, but thought that she knew everything.' //// Pierson's rise, powered in part by promoting her one-time net worth estimate from Forbes , almost led her into an unexpected deal… Forbes itself. In 2023, Austin Russell—who three years earlier became the world's youngest self-made billionaire at age 25 when Luminar Technologies, the company he founded as a teenager to enable self-driving cars to navigate, went public via a SPAC—assumed the lead role in a high-profile bid to buy Forbes Media. Two previous deals for Forbes had fallen through in the late hours because the controlling bidders were foreign entities. As a major U.S. media outlet, Forbes potentially falls into a category of strategic assets whose sale to non-Americans requires approval by the Treasury Department. Russell, a California-born Stanford dropout, had no such issues. But while Russell was enthusiastic about the purchase, multiple sources close to the deal say, and he would maintain an 82% controlling interest, he also had a full-time job as the CEO of a publicly-traded company and no experience in the media business. So in stepped Pierson, a fellow Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and new acquaintance. 'It all happened so fast,' says someone outside Forbes familiar with the deal. The purchase already had a star-studded lineup supporting it, including the founders of Brex, ScaleAI and Plaid, as well as superstar names like Kevin Hart, Tony Robbins and Jimmy 'Mr. Beast' Donaldson. The idea was that Pierson would invest a relatively token amount, then serve as an active board member. It didn't go so well. In calls with large institutional investors, according to two people, neither affiliated with Forbes, who attended multiple fundraising meetings, Pierson proved polarizing. While some were impressed, 'some people definitely did not like her,' says one. Adds the other: 'People were like 'We can't invest in this'. It was that kind of reaction, they couldn't understand how someone like this could be involved.' Pierson also immediately took charge of the bidders' public relations. In September, the group took the unusual step of issuing a press release announcing that the deal was 'substantially oversubscribed' and naming the board of the new company that would own Forbes —even though the deal hadn't closed yet. Pierson, according to multiple sources involved, engineered the announcement, which described her as 'recognized by Forbes as one of the youngest and wealthiest self-made women of color in the U.S.' Extremely unusual for a press release, a group image of the new principals sat atop the announcements—individual shots stitched together like a business version of The Avengers. The world-famous Mr. Beast and Robbins on one side, the formidable Hart and Russell (and his 82% controlling stake) on the other. At the dead center, standing slightly above the others, her hand on her hip: Daniella Pierson. Two months later, the closing deadline passed and the deal fell through. Pierson has since told people in private that '' Forbes wanted me to be the CEO,'' according to two people with knowledge of her conversations. Despite the deal's collapse, Pierson still describes herself on her speaker's agent web page as a board member of Forbes —which is wholly incorrect. A spokesperson for Pierson says the claim comes from when Pierson was en route to join the board as part of that possible 2023 purchase and that the page is 'out of date.' Yet the page also lists her venture Chasm, which launched less than three months ago. //// No matter the problems behind the scenes, publicly Pierson has never cracked. She continues to present herself as an underdog who's overcome great odds and earned a place in the world of glamorous female business elites. She has a knack for leveraging her ever-expanding network into financial opportunities. For instance, her almost-fellow-board member Kevin Hart introduced Pierson to Kristin Lemkau, CEO of J.P. Morgan Wealth Management. Over lunch in January 2024, Pierson wooed Lemkau with her latest concept: Be a Breadwinner, a company that would empower women to become their own breadwinners by promoting financial planning. 'She's like, 'We have the same idea,'' Pierson recalled in a Forbes interview she did with Lemkau last March, 'And it literally came from that conversation, and I've never seen any company move this quickly. It's truly a partnership.' Pierson told other outlets at the time that Breadwinner would eventually include a newsletter, podcast series, book and a venture capital fund. Lemkau told Forbes that the Chase mobile app's free wealth-planning tool would integrate some of Breadwinner's content. J.P. Morgan sponsored a 'bread carpet' event on March 20, 2024 at its Manhattan headquarters. Pierson declared it the official launch of the company on social media and in the press. Speakers included Diane von Furstenberg and poet Rupi Kaur. Von Furstenberg, who remains a close mentor to Pierson, tells Forbes that she didn't realize the event also served as a company launch. 'I personally only thought it was a conference,' she says. 'I mean, she asked me to speak at J.P. Morgan, so I said yes.' There were similar struggles with the media launch of Breadwinner. Pierson pitched an 'exclusive' to Forbes , which was killed, given her recent ties to a potential Forbes purchase and increasingly desperate, hyperbolic tendencies. Pierson's response defaulted to what an exaggerator might do when cornered: She threatened. 'Since there is absolutely zero conflict of interest, blocking the story seems like a repression of freedom of speech or some sort of discrimination,' she wrote to a Forbes reporter in March of last year, before escalating to the company's chief content officer and CEO: 'I just explained clearly that your 'reason' is actually not valid… As a woman of color who was amplified by your platform, I sincerely thought unethical, discriminatory, or personal feelings were not part of your editorial process…Let me know if you have an answer to this or if I need to loop in my family office team.' Since then, Be a Breadwinner appears to have gone nowhere. Pierson has stopped mentioning it, and the website still says that 'Breadwinner's content is coming soon.' 'We were never in a partnership with her,' says Veronica Navarro, head of communications at J.P. Morgan Wealth Management. 'We promoted the event, and that was the end of the collaboration with her,' adding that Breadwinner content did appear in the Chase app for an unspecified amount of time. Pierson recently transitioned the Be a Breadwinner Instagram page (which has 13 followers) to link to Chasm, a new venture she launched in May to address gender disparities in venture capital funding. A spokesperson for Pierson says the idea for Breadwinner has now turned into Chasm: 'She's always been passionate about supporting female entrepreneurs.' Pitched as an invite-only club of 'the most successful men and women in the world' who contribute $25,000 annually, Chasm promises to award monthly grants and offer resources to female founders. It claims in marketing materials to have already partnered with 50 high-profile investors and entrepreneurs, including Spanx founder and billionaire Sara Blakely, Drybar founder Ali Webb, Tony Robbins and Instacart CEO Fidji Simo. Yet none of these advertised 'members' attended the kick-off on May 20—an expensive affair at luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet's swank AP House in Manhattan where espresso martinis featured the name 'Chasm' inscribed in foam. Nor do those 'members' appear to have shared anything about the company on social media or spoken about it publicly. Forbes reached out to every known name: Webb confirmed her participation, a Simo spokesperson denied that she is a member and others did not reply to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Pierson insists Simo is a member and 'close friend' and says Pierson is paying her membership fee to ensure involvement. As Forbes was finishing this article, Pierson took to Instagram to post a preemptive response. 'In the last 24 hours, people who represent everything that my gender equality initiatives have fought to change, have launched a smear campaign against me and my companies. The result has been an eagerness to spread false statements and fabricated information intended to discredit me and eliminate my ability to continue to put millions of my own dollars into helping women.' 'I will not allow anyone to get away with defiling the character of me and my companies with uninformed speculation and outright lies.' One person in a position of informed speculation doesn't seem impressed. Peter Rahal still owns the 1.25% of Newsette that he vastly overpaid for, the investment that provided Pierson her inflated net worth figure, but the state of their relationship is murky. When Forbes asked him for comment, he replied, 'Danielle is a great entrepreneur'—misspelling her name. And when Pierson was making announcements about Chasm on LinkedIn this May, he publicly responded with a comment. It was a clown emoji. Additional reporting by Zoya Hasan More from Forbes Forbes Meet The Other Billionaire Behind Skydance's Paramount Deal By John Hyatt Forbes How Small Business Can Survive Google's AI Overview By Brandon Kochkodin Forbes How Scrubbing Your Social Media Could Backfire–And Even Hurt Your Job Prospects By Maria Gracia Santillana Linares Forbes How AI And Mini-Organs Could Replace Testing Drugs On Animals By Alex Knapp
Business Insider
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
A founder said her $200 million newsletter empire had over a million subscribers. Her own records tell a different story.
Daniella Pierson is a proponent of faking it till you make it. The 30-year-old founder of The Newsette Media Group, known for its daily newsletter about style and pop culture, says it's been key to her trajectory: a $9 million SoHo apartment, a net worth reported to be $220 million, and mentors like Serena Williams and Diane von Furstenberg. "I faked it till I made it," she told a Stanford Business School audience in 2024, recalling that she pretended to be an intern when her company was a one-woman affair to drum up interest and used made-up names when communicating with partners. A Business Insider investigation into Pierson's enterprise reveals that pretending to be her own intern may not have been her only distortion of reality. A review of internal documents and dashboards, recordings of meetings, and interviews with more than 10 company insiders uncovered questions about what Pierson has told the public and advertisers about her business when compared with what her own records show — including how many subscribers her newsletter has. A spokesperson for Pierson confirmed to Business Insider that The Newsette's daily newsletter goes out to about 500,000 subscribers each day. That's less than half the 1.3 million subscribers claimed in a 2025 pitch deck to advertisers and the million-plus referenced by Pierson in multiple public appearances. The spokesperson said that the larger figure reflects the company's overall email list, which includes what they described as "disengaged subscribers" who have been "funneled out" of the daily newsletter by a quality control mechanism. In a statement sent to Business Insider and posted on Instagram, Pierson called criticism of her business a "smear campaign," and said claims involve "false statements and fabricated information" meant to hamper her ability to continue supporting women through her companies. "They messed with the wrong person," she wrote. Pierson has touted The Newsette Media Group's 2021 revenue — $40 million, according to both Pierson and former employees — in public appearances as recently as last year. She's never publicly revealed revenue figures for subsequent years. Company documents seen by Business Insider paint a less rosy picture for last year: The company's 2024 revenue goal was $5 million. The Pierson spokesperson said this number was not accurate but declined to provide further information. They added that the company is currently profitable. Part of the revenue decline can be attributed to the 2023 shuttering of Newland, the creative agency that Pierson launched in late 2020 as part of The Newsette Media Group. She said Newland drove more revenue than the newsletter business itself in 2021. The Newsette Media Group now employs eight people, down from 40 at its peak, the Pierson spokesperson said. Pierson's business, by multiple measures, has fallen from its heights. It's a problem she's familiar with. In a 2024 TEDx Talk, Pierson spoke about "all of the billionaire guys" who had raised capital and whose companies were now "worth zero." "People don't realize, you have $1 billion on paper, that paper can burn real fast," she said. Over the past decade, Pierson has perfected her founder narrative. An identical twin, Pierson struggled in school and was labeled, in her own telling, "the dumb twin." When she got to Boston University, she said inmultiple podcast interviews, she floundered in school, uninspired by learning about the Earth's crust and how to properly measure the area of a triangle. She decided to focus on what she did like — magazines — and founded The Newsette as a newsletter during her sophomore year at the age of 19. Every morning, she'd wake up at 5 a.m. and spend five hours drafting a newsletter for her subscribers. During class, she DM-ed people on Facebook, telling them that if they brought on new subscribers, they could add "Newsette ambassador" to their résumés. "When I started in 2015, there weren't any newsletters out there," she'd later tell the audience at Stanford. (Prominent launches of newsletters with a similar flair included The Skimm in 2012 and Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop in 2008.) Once she graduated and had hammered out the product details, she couldn't find investors. Instead, she took a $15,000 loan from her parents. She's said she has since repaid the loan and has posted on Instagram that she "made her mom a millionaire" by giving her a stake in Newsette Media Group. Without venture backing, she had to be profitable right away, she said, so she began selling ads, making $25,000 in her first month of accepting advertisers in 2017. Pierson was successful in attracting press attention, at first from small college-targeted outlets and her hometown station, later from outlets including Elle, WWD, and Business Insider. The interviews were peppered with her catch-phrases: The Newsette was a "gift in your inbox," she often said, and at the beginning, she had three employees, "me, myself, and I." In 2019, a meeting with von Furstenberg, whom Pierson calls her fairy godmother, resulted in a partnership with the fashion designer: a publication called the Weekly Wrap, which Pierson said on the "Money Rehab" podcast was one of her big breaks. In early December 2019, she appeared on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list, saying The Newsette had grown to 500,000 subscribers. Revenue, Pierson said in a number of interviews, shot from $1 million in 2019 to $7 million in 2020 to $40 million — $10 million of it profit — in 2021. She said that revenue and the company's 500,000-plus subscribers allowed her to sell a 1.25% stake in the company at a $200 million valuation. The Pierson spokesperson declined to say who the investor was. Based on The Newsette Media Group's valuation and her stake in Wondermind, a mental-health startup she had cofounded with Selena Gomez and Gomez's mom, Forbes reported she was worth $220 million in August 2022. That made her the youngest, wealthiest self-made BIPOC woman in America, according to the magazine, a title she repeats with gusto. An examination of company documents shows a growing gap between the subscriber numbers Pierson gave publicly and what was on the books. On August 10, 2022, the day the Forbes story came out touting more than half a million subscribers, The Newsette had 411,000, according to documentation reviewed by Business Insider. In a 2023 interview with Forbes, she said it was on track to reach 1 million subscribers by the end of the year. According to company documentation, The Newsette had no more than 570,000 subscribers that year. At the 2024 Stanford talk, she said she had hit the 1 million mark; the records say The Newsette had fallen below 500,000. She repeated those numbers to advertisers. A pitch deck used earlier this year claims that The Newsette has "1.3 million+ subscribers" who receive its weekday, Saturday, and Sunday editions. A spokesperson for Pierson told Business Insider that there are 1.2 million emails in the company's total contact list — including people who no longer receive the newsletter regularly — and said the daily edition currently goes out to about 500,000 active subscribers. Jacob Donnelly, the founder of A Media Operator, a newsletter-based publication for people building digital media companies, said that standard industry practice is that the number of subscriptions refers to the number of people who receive the newsletter. "If I were to go out and say I have 1.3 million subscribers, what I'm saying to the advertiser is when I hit send, it's going out to 1.3 million people," he said, speaking generally and not about The Newsette specifically. "If someone is not subscribed to a product, I don't see how they could be classified as a subscriber." In a meeting with a potential advertiser earlier this year, a recording of which Business Insider reviewed, Pierson mentioned a subscriber count of "a million" and boasted that "every single day, our sponsors get at least 250,000 unique views." In the more than two years of newsletter data that Business Insider reviewed, The Newsette's newsletter only hit that many unique opens one time. More than half of the days, it had fewer than 200,000. At the end of 2020, von Furstenberg personally pitched Pierson to Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Pierson previously told Business Insider. The tech giant soon became one of the first clients of Newland, a creative agency that became, for a short time, The Newsette Media Group's cash cow. In 2021 and into 2022, Newland completed a number of projects for Amazon; Pierson told the Stanford audience that the company "was responsible for tens of millions of dollars in revenue." The agency took a 360-degree approach to social media marketing, coming up with the brief, hiring the talent, and handling the paid media. Campaigns included a viral Prime Day TikTok push featuring Snoop Dogg and a number of creators, and content for Women's History Month with Keke Palmer, Mindy Kaling, and von Furstenberg. According to two former employees familiar with the financials, the $40 million revenue figure Pierson touted represented gross revenue, or all of the money that flowed through the company, inclusive of cash reserved for talent and paid media. Most publicly owned ad agencies report net revenue — the money left over once a campaign is finished — and not gross revenue, which includes money the agency gets to pay for things like celebrity endorsements. When Amazon underwent a reorganization toward the end of 2022 and into 2023, the company largely paused its new work with Newland, according to four former employees. Amazon declined to comment to Business Insider about its business with Newland. After Amazon's departure, Pierson struggled to bring new clients to the agency, said four former employees. Newland, Pierson said, grew to eventually employ the majority of Newsette Media Group's employees. In December 2022, Newsette conducted one of several rounds of layoffs. Former employees said the layoffs were due to a cash crunch. By the end of 2023, Newland had completely folded. The Pierson spokesperson said the job cuts were not due to a "financial crunch," but were made for the sake of "efficiencies." For 2024, the company's revenue goal was a modest $5 million, according to internal documents. The Pierson spokesperson said those numbers were not accurate, but declined to provide additional numbers or documentation. In addition to Newsette Media Group, Pierson has been involved in other ventures. In 2021, she was announced as the co-CEO of Wondermind, a mental health website that she cofounded with Selena Gomez and the singer's mother, Mandy Teefey. In 2023, she quietly left the company; the circumstances of her departure have not been disclosed. After a press release about Pierson's investment in a group attempting to purchase Forbes went out, she posted on X that she was "on the board" of the magazine. The deal ended up falling through, and she was never on any board. Her most recent venture launched in May. Chasm is a $25,000-a-year membership club that aims to "close the gender gap through entrepreneurship." The club says its members include singer Lionel Richie and Spanx's Sara Blakely, neither of whom responded to Business Insider's request for comment. Membership fees will fund a website and award monthly five-figure grants to entrepreneurs, the first of which was announced on August 6. After being contacted for comment, Pierson sent a statement and posted it to Instagram, saying there was a coordinated attempt by people "who represent everything that my gender equality initiatives have fought to change" had launched a "smear campaign" against her and her companies, resulting in "false statements and fabricated information" aimed at eliminating her ability to "continue to put millions of my own dollars into helping women." "These false statements don't just affect me," she wrote. "They affect the thousands of women who we fund, spotlight, or promote via my companies." She said The Newsette Media Group "absolutely did" make $40 million in 2021, and defended Chasm, saying it was "on track to give away free resources and grants for female entrepreneurs worth millions this year alone." In a 2021 podcast interview, Pierson offered a vision of what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur. "If you can sell yourself," she said, "you can basically do anything."
Newsweek
15-07-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
Could Female Entrepreneurship Close the Gender Gap? Daniella Pierson Thinks So
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. In Daniella Pierson's hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, dads were the breadwinners. They were the ones who went to work, who had financial freedom and who wielded power because of it. While other little girls were playing mommy to their baby dolls, Pierson "wanted to be the dad." "I wanted to make my own decisions," she told Newsweek. By the time she turned 25, Pierson had made over $10 million. By 26, her media company was bringing in more than $40 million in revenue. By 27, she was worth $220 million. "A huge reason why I became successful was because I thought like a man," she said. "It's not advice I'd want to give a woman today." When she founded The Newsette as a sophomore at Boston University, Pierson knew nothing about running a media company. At 19, she was struggling in school and convinced no one would hire her after graduation. Instead of waiting to confront that fate, she decided to hire herself. With no venture capital funding, she began writing a women-focused daily newsletter, where she served as editor-in-chief, publisher, reporter and everything in-between. Women's Global Impact: Daniella Pierson Women's Global Impact: Daniella Pierson Newsweek Illustration/Canva In its first year, The Newsette reached 14,000 subscribers. Her business was growing, but Pierson was still figuring out what a successful entrepreneur looked like. She started studying the strategies and behaviors of the wealthiest self-made Americans but found herself emulating the careers of men. Women were rarities on those lists. "If 50 of [the 100 most powerful, self-made people in America] were women, I bet you no one would be telling us what to do with our bodies. I bet you we would probably not make less than men," she said. "It all starts at the top." Now, at 29, Pierson is focused on closing that gender gap. Last month, she launched CHASM, an invite-only club that seeks to fund female entrepreneurs through a membership-based model. The platform is built up of high-profile members—like singer Lionel Richie, Spanx founder Sara Blakely, OpenAI's incoming CEO of Applications Fidji Sumo, Drybar co-founder Alli Webb and motivational speaker Tony Robbins—who each pay $25,000 annually. Twenty percent of the membership fee goes directly to CHASM grants, which are distributed monthly, while the majority of the membership fees, 80 percent, goes to CHASM resources. Those resources include lists of what the top VC firms are looking for and which investors to go after, crash courses on building a pitch deck and writing a job description, a glossary for funding terms and legal workshops that break down what entrepreneurs need to know about starting an Limited Liability Company (LLC)—things that can be a little "unsexy." Female entrepreneurs can apply for these funds and access all online resources for free. "As an entrepreneur, I want to know the unsexy things," Pierson said. "I want to know what manufacturing plan the brands I love use, I want to know how to contact them. I want to know what a prototype is." "It took me so long just to even find those things, let alone get them for free," she said. "We want to provide the things that people don't find sexy and tell a woman with no business experience, 'We hear you and you're not an imposter. You just have never done this before. So, let's give you as much knowledge, content, resources, community as possible.'" Pierson launched CHASM earlier this year in an effort to close the gender gap for female entrepreneurs. Pierson launched CHASM earlier this year in an effort to close the gender gap for female entrepreneurs. CHASM This year, The Newsette will celebrate its 10-year anniversary. Looking at Pierson, it's surprising to realize that she's already spent an entire decade spearheading three major business ventures (She also co-founded mental fitness startup Wondermind alongside actress Selena Gomez and Gomez's mom, Mandy Teefey.) Pierson is petite and chatty, both of which are accentuated by the ginormous, beige couch she perched on and the acoustics of her lofty SoHo apartment. Much like the two mini poodles, Leo and Truffle, who run circles around her feet, Pierson gives off a cheerful energy. With the sleeves of her houndstooth blazer rolled up and her green-trimmed glasses sitting atop of her head, she feels like someone who is truly excited to see what the day will bring—an enthusiasm you wouldn't expect from someone who has spent the last 10 years waking up before the sun to run their media company alone. But that's what The Newsette gave to Pierson. Her first year at BU had been hard. She remembered feeling incredibly depressed, hating school and struggling to make friends. "I was like a chameleon in the worst way," Pierson said. "I was kind of whoever people wanted me to be. That was my personality." She never anticipated that The Newsette would grow into what it is today because her self-esteem led her to believe that she was incapable of creating something as big as it became. But in finding her newsletter and "wearing every single hat" at the company, something changed. "Instead of hoping the day wouldn't come, I was jumping out of bed at 5 a.m.," Pierson said. "I felt more control of my future than I'd ever felt in my entire life." Reflecting on the last decade, Pierson offered some advice for anyone who might be where she was 10 years ago. "Hype yourself up," she said. "You have to have so much belief in yourself that no matter who is telling you you're crazy, it almost adds fuel to your fire." Pierson will join Newsweek at this year's inaugural Women's Global Impact forum. The August 5 event, hosted at Newsweek's headquarters in New York City, will bring together some of the world's top female executives and connect them with rising stars across industries and job functions. For more information on the event and entry guidelines, please visit the Women's Global Impact homepage.
Elle
03-06-2025
- Business
- Elle
Daniella Pierson's Mission to Champion Female Entrepreneurs
The Newsette founder Daniella Pierson has a new venture to add to her portfolio: Chasm. According to TechCrunch, all-women teams currently receive just 1.8 percent of VC funding. This initiative aims to close that gender gap in entrepreneurship, supported by an impressive roster of members, including musician Lionel Richie and Sneex inventor Sara Blakely. Essentially, investors like Richie and Blakely will pay $25,000 a year to be a member of Chasm. With the funds Pierson receives from her high-status friends, she will then disperse monthly grants to young, female entrepreneurs, giving them tools and resources for their businesses to thrive. 'Chasm is going to make a massive dent in the gender gap by focusing on one solution that has a domino effect: creating more successful female entrepreneurs,' Pierson says in a press release. 'If you think about who has the most wealth and power in the world, they have two things in common: They are men and they are entrepreneurs. We're creating an ecosystem rooted in community, insight, and real resources.' As a 29-year-old BIPOC entrepreneur, Pierson says she takes the issue personally. She started The Newsette while still in college and grew it into a powerhouse email juggernaut before leveraging her rapidly expanding network to launch Chasm. Chasm will offer only one grant per month; those interested can apply for these funds by filling out a form online. The site also offers resources for young entrepreneurs, welcoming every woman to join the community. These could be as simple as a membership to Instacart+, the first partner of the new company, which allows less time to be spent at the grocery store for working women. It even has a newsletter, much like Newsette. With her impressive list of backers, Pierson emphasizes, in an email interview, that members are value-driven, hence them giving the $25,000 as a direct grant rather than as an investment. 'They get to see what they're fueling every single day, whether that's through our grant winners, or real stories of impact,' she says. 'Many of these people are dear friends who believe fully in the mission.' The organization is also not a nonprofit. 'The only way to create sustainable, systemic change is by introducing a business model that can fund itself,' Pierson adds. 'If I raise $10 million in donations, I can make $10 million of impact. But, if I use my media background and network to build Chasm into a $500 million company, then we inspire other member-to-many models. That's when billions start flowing toward real, scalable solutions. If I can prove that this model drives both value and change? That's a tide that lifts every boat.' Pierson is also a co-founder of the 'mental fitness ecosystem' Wondermind with Selena Gomez, a website offering resources to those in need. The singer and actress made headlines weeks ago as the startup laid off the majority of its already small staff amid financial troubles. Pierson left the company in 2023, and Chasm continues Pierson's mission-led work. Others involved in Chasm include Instacart CEO and chair Fidji Simo, entrepreneurs Tony and Sage Robbins, and Drybar co-founder Alli Webb.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
China Insight: Will China's Cultural Tourism Boom Power Fashion's Next Growth Engine?
In the post-pandemic economy, consumer desire is no longer driven solely by products but also by experiences that spark cultural resonance and emotional connection. As China navigates economic headwinds, a key question emerges: can the integration of culture and tourism serve as a catalyst to boost consumption and ignite new engines of growth, particularly in the fashion and lifestyle sectors? More from WWD Why Saudi Arabia and Qatar Are Primed for New Design Events as Contract Business Drives Demand Daniella Pierson Launches Chasm to Close the Gender Gap Through Entrepreneurship Not a Lot of Love for 520: Brands Rethink Local Campaigns Amid China Uncertainty The month of May — bookended by the May Day Golden Week and the Dragon Boat Festival — has become a vital barometer for evaluating China's cultural tourism momentum. The surge in domestic travel and experiential consumption during these holidays is not only reinvigorating local economies but also reshaping the urban fashion landscape in unexpected ways. According to official data, 314 million domestic trips were made during the May Day holiday alone — a 6.4 percent increase year-over-year — generating 180.27 billion yuan (about $24.97 billion) in tourism-related spending, up 8 percent from the previous year. While per capita spending has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, the rebound in demand signals a clear shift: consumers are prioritizing culturally immersive, emotionally resonant experiences that often intersect with fashion and lifestyle consumption. Cultural Immersion Meets Fashion Aspirations Trends such as 'reverse tourism' — in which travelers explore lesser-known towns and county-level cities — are gaining popularity. At the same time, attractions centered on the renewal of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) have emerged as major draws. National trend culture is sweeping the country, with searches for ICH-themed tourism surging and ticket reservations for heritage-focused sites up 132 percent year-over-year. Immersive, hands-on experiences have become particularly attractive to younger audiences. Data from Ctrip shows that workshops like ceramic art classes in Jingdezhen and traditional kesi (silk tapestry) weaving in Suzhou now attract thousands of daily participants. The blending of cultural performance and tourism has turned cities like Henan's Luoyang, Anhui's Anqing and Xinjiang's Kashgar into popular destinations offering deeper, story-rich experiences. Events such as the Puppet Carnival in Fujian's Zhangzhou and hand-painted lantern exhibitions in Sichuan's Zigong Lantern Museum further demonstrate how traditional crafts are being revitalized through design-forward, tourist-friendly formats. In this shift, cultural tourism is not just a leisure activity — it's becoming a new platform for fashion expression and consumption. Macao's Cultural Reawakening and the Rise of Experiential IP The evolution is not limited to mainland China. In Macao, the May 7 relaunch of 'The House of Dancing Water' — a 2-billion Hong Kong-dollar reinvention of the acclaimed show that had been on hiatus for five years — marks a milestone in cultural tourism's commercial potential. Attended by high-ranking officials and industry leaders, the premiere underscored Macao SAR's strategic pivot toward 'tourism+' as a model for economic diversification. Lawrence Ho, chairman and chief executive officer of Melco International Development, described the show as a symbol of Macao's aspiration to fuse entertainment, culture and tourism into a global narrative. The production, co-created with Italy's Peparini Studios, integrates technological innovation, multicultural storytelling, and a performance ensemble representing over 30 countries — including retired Olympic athletes — into an immersive, fashion-adjacent spectacle. The show's impact goes beyond the stage. With advance ticket sales exceeding MOP 180 million (about $115.4 million) and City of Dreams hotel occupancy soaring to 92 percent, 'The House of Dancing Water' is expected to draw over 500,000 attendees annually and significantly boost local employment. Moreover, the performance has established a new commercial ecosystem. Custom-designed costumes (24 sets in total), re-orchestrated symphonic scores and newly introduced characters such as 'the Sailor' are driving secondary consumption through merchandise and IP-based fashion collaborations — demonstrating the economic value of experiential culture. Policy Momentum and Urban Collaboration Backed by favorable national policies — ranging from tax incentives to funding subsidies and streamlined project approvals — cities across China are actively investing in the convergence of cultural, tourism and fashion economies. Shanghai is leading this charge. The city's 2025 'First in Shanghai' campaign, 55 Shopping Festival, and Shanghai Summer international consumption season are all examples of how municipalities are integrating retail activations with cultural programming. The 55 Shopping Festival alone featured 13 high-impact IP events over May and June, including innovative retailtainment experiences and premium business district promotions. In Beijing, the Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism partnered with the Singapore Tourism Board and Pop Mart to launch the 'Beijing×Singapore Pop Toy Show Dual City Plan.' Running from May 31 to June 20, the collaboration will explore the fusion of pop culture, fashion toys, and urban tourism through landmark activations in both cities — highlighting how trendy IPs can fuel cross-border cultural consumption. From Soft Power to Hard Value In today's globalized economy, cultural exchange is more than a diplomatic nicety — it is a strategic growth engine. The true revitalization of a city is not defined by skyscrapers or mega-malls, but by its ability to inspire, engage, and convert cultural energy into commercial and social value. As cities continue to experiment with immersive formats and fashion-forward cultural tourism, the potential to unlock new consumption models is clear. The chemical reaction between culture, tourism, and fashion is still evolving — but its impact on sustainable growth could be profound. Editor's Note: China Insight is a monthly column from WWD's sister publication WWD China analyzing key trends in that important market. 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