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Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Investors Called Her Business A 'Hobby.' She Built It To $100 Million
Olivia Landau started The Clear Cut as a blog to educate her friends and family. 'My mom always told me I would be a terrible entrepreneur," laughs The Clear Cut founder Olivia Landau. In our conversation on The Failure Factor podcast, she explained how she was told she'd be 'an amazing employee' and deterred from following in her parents' footsteps in the diamond industry. Today, with the support of neither of her parents—nor a single investor in Silicon Valley—the fourth-generation diamond expert has built The Clear Cut's revenue to $100 million. However, as is the case with most entrepreneurial triumphs, success didn't come without its share of doubt and struggles. Landau wasn't trying to become an entrepreneur. Her parents, seasoned veterans in the diamond industry, advised her against it entirely. "My parents had always told me to never get into the diamond and jewelry industry because it was dying and antiquated." She recalled during our conversation. Still, Landau was compelled to learn more about the precious stones. She enrolled at the GIA (Gemological Institute of America) to become a certified gemologist until she "figured out what she'd do afterwards.' Then, in 2016, Landau started The Clear Cut—initially an educational blog meant solely to help friends with their engagement ring purchase decisions. "This was just something fun that I did on the side to entertain myself." Something unexpected followed: strangers began contacting her, asking for custom designs. "It turned into this accidental side hustle where I looked up, and—after a year—I'd sold a million dollars of engagement rings through Instagram DMs." That's when Kyle Simon, Landau's then boyfriend, now husband and cofounder, entered the picture: Fresh out of Columbia Business School, he saw her million-dollar Instagram business and convinced her to think bigger. So the pair did what almost anyone with a capital-intensive business idea would do: they attempted to raise outside capital. The diamond company that blew up without venture capital Despite real traction and a clear demand, Landau and Simon were told their startup was not fundable. It was too niche, too personal, and too dependent on Landau herself. 'They said I couldn't be the face of the business,' she explained. 'We had to do more generic content and marketing," she said. Her personal brand wasn't the only element investors and mentors believed she had wrong. They all had the same prescription: personality quizzes, viral gimmicks, tech features. None of them had asked what her customers actually wanted. The most devastating feedback came from a founder Landau idolized. Over coffee, this successful entrepreneur likened The Clear Cut to her sister's travel agency. 'I don't think anyone will invest in this business,' they said. Landau left that meeting feeling crushed. She had actually talked to her customers. She knew they didn't want gimmicks—they wanted guidance. Landau and Simon were trying to make sense of a very real demand: smart, informed, modern couples wanted custom engagement rings without the absurd markup, gatekeeping, or outdated diamond industry antics. It was a real problem they could solve, but no one wanted to fund them. "We met with every single venture capital firm in New York and California. Every single person said that this is not scalable." Landau and Simon gave themselves a deadline to try to raise money, build something, and 'see what happens.' Well, what happened was months of gut-wrenching rejection. 'It was like a full-time job,' Landau recounts. "Most of the time, no one would get back to us." The breaking point came in an Italian town square. While on vacation with Simon's family, Landau finally exploded. "We had a blowout fight right there in public," she tells me. "I was like, when are you gonna realize this is a stupid idea? Let's just move on!" But Simon refused. "Give me a few more months," he pleaded. 'I promise it's gonna work out.' The Clear Cut started as an educational blog about diamonds. Instead of continuing with their strategy to raise capital from VCs, they entered Techstars, a tech accelerator that gave them $120,000. Together with $700,000 from angel investors and customers—many of whom had bought rings from them—they scraped together enough to move forward. 'It wasn't ideal, but I was like, Great, I'll get to own more equity in the business, and I'll have more control. And, I won't have a board of people that don't know what they're talking about telling me what to do. So it worked," she declared, smiling. Despite being underfunded, they were able to maintain the freedom to do things their way. 'We were intentionally doing everything extremely unscalably in the beginning,' she explained. This meant personally handling every customer interaction, manually sourcing each diamond, and managing orders one by one. Why do things the hard way? 'I don't believe in building technology to solve a problem [before fully understanding the problem],' said Landau. 'You have to 'do' the problem to build the proper solution.' By experiencing every pain point firsthand, they knew exactly what technology to build later—unlike competitors who built expensive features customers ultimately never wanted. Their instincts were right. The Clear Cut thrived because of its personalized service; it doubled revenue annually for four straight years, and when COVID-19 hit, traditional jewelry stores shuttered, while Landau's online positioning and high-touch model exploded. 'Now it's really funny, because we're seeing a lot of businesses try to put a face to their brand,' she shared with a grin. Today, The Clear Cut continues to grow profitably, staying true to the educational mission that sparked it all while expanding beyond engagement rings into fine jewelry. Their latest leap is Eunice, a proprietary AI engine launched in May. Unlike the personality quizzes and viral features investors once pushed them to build, Eunice solves real problems they discovered through years of manual work—predicting trends, tracking regional preferences, responding to cultural moments, and bringing pricing transparency to an opaque industry. The result? The Clear Cut achieved its strongest Q1 since 2022, despite industry-wide declines. When I asked if she had any regrets about her unconventional path, Landau didn't hesitate: "I don't think I regret anything." The takeaway? If you're building something that people don't 'get,' it could just mean you're early. Let them call it a hobby and go build it anyway. As Landau said in our interview, "What's the worst that can happen? It doesn't work out, and then you just do something else." Megan Bruneau, M.A. Psych is a therapist, executive coach, and the founder of Off The Field Executive & Personal Coaching. She hosts The Failure Factor podcast featuring conversations with entrepreneurs about the setbacks that led to their success. Listen to her episode with The Clear Cut cofounder Olivia Landau on Apple and Spotify.
Bloomberg
5 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Debswana Halts Some Diamond Output to Save Cash During Downturn
Debswana, the diamond mining joint venture between De Beers and Botswana's government, said it has halted some production at its biggest mine as it looks to save money amid a downturn in demand. Debswana is attempting to cut costs as it adapts to the lower diamond production laid out by De Beers earlier this year, which continues to target a range of 20 million to 23 million carats in 2025.
Bloomberg
7 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
De Beers Draws Interest From Ex-CEOs as Anglo Starts Sale
Anglo American Plc is about to begin a formal sales process for De Beers, after receiving indications of interest from potential buyers that include two former chief executives of the iconic diamond miner. An exit from De Beers represents the final step in a sweeping restructuring plan outlined by Anglo CEO Duncan Wanblad last year as the company fended off a takeover approach from BHP Group. Anglo has already agreed to sell its coal and nickel mines and unbundled its platinum business this week.
Reuters
02-06-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Botswana to slash growth forecast amid prolonged diamond market downturn
GABORONE, June 2 (Reuters) - Botswana will cut its 2025 economic growth forecast to almost zero due to a prolonged downturn in the global diamond industry, a senior financial ministry official said Monday, with the budget deficit also seen widening due to reduced diamond revenue. Botswana is the world's leading producer of diamonds by value and its economy largely depends on diamond exports, which normally contribute around 30% of national revenues and 75% of foreign exchange receipts. In the 2025 Budget, announced in February, finance minister Ndaba Gaolathe had projected 3.3% growth this year based on an expected rebound in the diamond market. For the 2025/26 financial year, running from April to March, he had forecast a budget debit of 7.56% of gross domestic product, lower than the last financial year's estimated deficit of 9% of GDP. But permanent secretary in the ministry of finance Tshokologo Alex Kganetsano told a parliamentary audit meeting on Monday that those estimates were no longer possible to achieve. "In view of what has happened since ... February, we are going to revise this growth forecast downwards," Kganetsano said. "We do have a preliminary figure of close to zero percent, but that figure has to be interrogated internally before we can officially publicise it." The International Monetary Fund expects Botswana's economy to contract by 0.4% this year. Botswana's economy contracted by 3% in 2024 largely due to the diamond market downturn, but the government had expected mineral revenues, including diamonds, to more than double this year which would help it avert another recession. "The trend doesn't seem to show any improvement, instead it is a deterioration," Kganetsano said. "As result of a slowdown in inflows we find ourselves sitting on some unpaid invoices to government suppliers," he added. A significant decline in the country's revenues has resulted in massive liquidity challenges, threatening the financial sustainability of the government's operations, he said.
ABC News
23-05-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Lucapa Diamond Company, owner of NT's Merlin mine, goes into administration
Australia's diamond industry faces an unlikely future as the company behind one of the few remaining projects in the country announces it has gone into voluntary administration. The company that owns the Merlin diamond mine in the Northern Territory on Friday said administrators were now in control of operations. In 2021, the ASX-listed Lucapa Diamond Company took over the Merlin project, 720 kilometres south-east of Darwin, but was yet to resume production. While the Merlin site is famous for producing Australia's largest rough diamond, operators have not produced commercial quantities for more than 20 years. There are no operating commercial diamond mines in Australia, veteran diamond specialist John Chapman says. Rio Tinto's Argyle mine, which produced most of the world's pink diamonds, closed in 2020. While there are several diamond projects in the exploratory stage, Mr Chapman said the Merlin site was the most advanced. "It had been mined at some stage — in fact, it has the honour of producing Australia's largest rough diamond at 104 carats," he said. "It does have the production, but clearly, it's just not economic, probably because of the depth of it. When Perth-based Lucapa bought the Merlin diamond mine for $8.5 million, the company was optimistic about taking over the historic, large-stone producer. "There are some 4 million carats in a resource that we have analysed and believe that we can extract economically for many, many years to come," managing director Stephen Wetherall said in 2021. But since hitting a peak in 2022, the market for the gems has plummeted. Lab-grown diamonds can be produced for a fraction of the asking price of their mined counterparts. And while diamonds have uses beyond jewellery, the post-COVID global economic downturn has hit markets for luxury items. "And that's not good news for any explorers trying to make a commercial venture out of any findings." Richard Tucker from administrators KordaMentha said Lucapa's assets in the Merlin diamond project and a shareholding in an alluvial mine in Angola had "significant upside potential". "Lucapa's management have developed a suitable pathway to development at Merlin … further upside exists through an exciting base metals opportunity on the Merlin tenements," he said in a statement. But with such strong competition from synthetic gem producers, does Australia's diamond industry have a future? "Probably the short answer would be no," said Mr Chapman, who has been in the diamond business for 35 years. "It would be a long shot to say the diamond industry has a future in Australia – but you never know. "Explorers are out there, you never know what they might stumble across, just like they did with Argyle 30 to 40 years ago."
