Deferred Interest Vol. 33
You may or may not have seen me on Amazon's CEO Club
On today’s episode of things I never thought I’d say
I saw my face on TV last week. And no, it was not in the background of an NYC blizzard news segment. I was on Amazon Prime’s CEO Club!!
CEO Club follows “Seven ambitious and extraordinary women open[ing] their lives and businesses to reveal what it really takes to build empires, balance family, and navigate friendship at the highest level-where each and every move is personal, powerful, and under the spotlight.”
Full disclosure, I am not one of those seven women. But my amazing partner, Hannah Bronfman is—and I could not prouder!
If you’re new here, Hannah and I have been building an early-stage investment platform focused on the future of consumer health and wellness for the past 2.5 years. We’ve been side by side through it all. So yes, you’ll spot me in a few scenes.
The show is genuinely powerful. Seeing a diverse group of women entrepreneurs brought to 200 million Amazon Prime subscribers matters. Representation at that scale isn’t small.
That said, I have thoughts. Many thoughts.
This will likely span more than one newsletter because watching those moments back stirred up more internally than I expected.
Most of the show was filmed in Q4 2024, which somehow feels like lightyears ago. Our business has evolved. I’ve evolved.
Watching this earlier version of myself putting all of my energy into finding and securing investors, all during one of the most challenging years for VC funding in the past decade was traumatic humbling. And it’s also made me want to talk about the ugly parts of entrepreneurship. The pieces that don’t always make for good TV, but are very real.
This was why I loved HB’s role in CEO Club. Her story showed candid, realistic glimpses of the sacrifice and struggled that pairs with starting a business.
Building a business is not for the faint of heart. And sometimes, media glamorizes the grind without showing the cost. When you’ve lived it—financially, emotionally, spiritually—it can consumer your entire life if you let it.
Which brings me to one of my least favorite, yet most common, rejection modalities.
Ghosting happens in business, too
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received, which frankly transcends business is this: the second best answer to “yes” is a quick “no.”
A clear “no” gives the other party the gift of time. It allows them to stop chasing a dead end and redirect their energy toward finding where the “yes” might be. In fundraising, this is everything.
When you’re raising capital, you’ll hear “no” more times than you can count. Eventually you build a callus. You expect it.
But, just like dating, the worst rejections are the ones where someone leads you on. You start envisioning this beautiful capitalist future together…and then…silence.
In Episode 2 we pitched to someone who verbally committed on camera to invest with us. He later ghosted. He never invested. Nearly impossible to reach since.
When large sums of money are involved, human behavior gets funny. Any founder who has raised capital can confirm this.
And when you’re building alongside someone with a strong public presence, you attract an even wider range of characters.
Some people take meetings and make promises because they want proximity. Some are embarrassed to admit they don’t actually have the capital. Others aren’t interested, but delay the “no” because they think they’re sparing your feelings (they’re not).
We have our own hypotheses about what happened in Episode 2, but ultimately the “why” matters less than the lesson.
you need thick skin
one rule I now live by: it’s not official until the documents are signed
We have more ghosting stories than I care to admit. If you’d like me to share how we’ve learned to navigate them, leave me a comment below.
Now, on a much more beautiful note
Last week I attended The Black Beauty Club’s Founders & Friends event, and it was everything.
The theme of the afternoon was “Black Beauty After the Hype: Building Brands That Survive 2026.”
This was my first TBBC event, and I’ll tell you the programming and guest list were exceptional. The guest of honor was Lisa Price, founder of Carol’s Daughter.
L'Oréal acquired Carol’s Daughter in 2014. More excitingly Price bought her brand BACK from L'Oréal last year.
Given her track record, who better than to speak on how Black beauty brands can thrive in today’s anti-DEI environment.
I had the chance to ask Lisa about the buyback and what that process looked like, to the extent she could share. I also referenced the broader pattern of women reacquiring their businesses, a topic I unpacked in Deferred Interest Vol. 15.
Lisa made an important distinction. What people are calling a “trend” is really just women, and Black women, participating in normal business cycles. Historically, we simply haven’t had the economic power to do so.
She’s right.
Private equity has operated this way forever. Take Walgreen’s, for example. Walgreen Co. went private under Sycamore Partners last year after being part of public company Walgreens Boots Alliance. Prior to that Walgreens (the U.S. retail operations) was a standalone company, with subsidiary brands like Duane Reade, which it acquired in 2010. Being reacquired and reshuffled is just cyclical behavior.
The afternoon ended on an even higher note. I met Ron Robinson, the Black chemist behind Rhode and BeautyStat!! If you care about product formulation, he’s a legend.
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More reflections on growing a business coming soon. Trust me, there’s a lot to unpack.
That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading.
X
Jamie