Good morning, Broadsheet readers! CDC Director Mandy K. Cohen is trying to get Americans vaccinated again, Huda Beauty CEO Huda Kattan says she’s willing to lose her business over support for Palestinians, and Sophia Amoruso builds her VC firm Trust Fund. Have a good Monday!
– Trust fund. Sophia Amoruso, the founder of Nasty Gal who coined the term “girlboss,” is now almost a year into her latest endeavor: a venture capital firm with the tongue-in-cheek name, Trust Fund.
Amoruso announced the launch of the firm in January 2023 with plans to raise $5 million. (Unlike most funds, Trust Fund was incorporated under Rule 506(b) of the Securities Act, which allows Amoruso to raise in public and from a wider group of investors.) She decided to launch a fund after spending “way too much of [her] own money” as an angel investor.
While Amoruso popularized the term “girlboss” with her memoir and a Netflix show of the same name, the phrase took on a life of its own. It became less inspirational and more of a put-down. “I’m exhausted by the girlboss narrative,” Amoruso says.
So, this time, she’s avoiding gender-specific terms and restrictions. Trust Fund is not exclusively investing in female-founded companies; Amoruso wants to invest in all opportunities available to her. Or as she puts it: “I’m happy to ride on a man’s coattails.” “I’m not going to double down on my disadvantage,” she adds.
Nasty Gal founder and ‘Girlboss’ author Sophia Amoruso is now running a VC firm called Trust Fund. Stefanie Keenan—Getty Images for goop Amoruso had a nontraditional path into the tech industry, starting Nasty Gal as an eBay store for secondhand clothing; she bootstrapped the company to $28 million in annual revenue by the early 2010s. But fast growth led to a fast fall, and the brand filed for bankruptcy and sold to retailer Boohoo for $20 million in 2017.
Now, she says that her understanding of the challenges of entrepreneurship—in the days before Shopify—will set her apart as an investor. Amoruso is especially interested in B2B products and services for entrepreneurs, which she views as consumer products. “They’re products that the average person who’s starting a business can understand and use that demystify business ownership for everybody, including the person I was when I was a community college dropout at 22,” she says.
Trust Fund has made nine investments so far. They include a social commerce platform, a gig economy marketplace for the dental industry, a creative operations tool for creators and marketers, and Gift Shop, a site where small businesses like restaurants can sell their merch.
She has other potential investments on her wish list, including an idea for an “Etsy for services” that would allow non-professionals to monetize their hobbies—to make and sell a one-off floral arrangement without launching a full-blown business.
As Amoruso moves more behind the scenes as an investor rather than a founder, she’s not abandoning the marketing savvy that helped launch Nasty Gal into the zeitgeist. “I don’t like operating companies,” she admits. “[Now] it’s my job to invest in companies that drive revenue instead of drive revenue for myself.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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Check out the Fortune Cyber 60 |
These startups are helping fight cybercrime Fortune teamed up with Lightspeed Venture Partners to highlight 60 venture-backed startups that offer enterprise-grade cybersecurity solutions. See the full list here |
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- Calling the shots. CDC Director Mandy K. Cohen is on a nationwide media tour trying to convince Americans to get vaccinated for the flu, COVID, and RSV this winter. Just six months into her tenure, Dr. Cohen’s main priority is improving Americans' confidence in the agency amid COVID fatigue. New York Times
- Business on the line. Huda Kattan, the Iraqi-American CEO of beauty brand Huda Beauty, says she’s willing to risk her billion-dollar business over her public support for Palestinians. The comments came in a video posted to the CEO's TikTok, in which she also claimed she’d received death threats and customer boycotts for her views. Newsweek
- Realty house of horrors. Up-and-coming realty firm eXp is facing a second lawsuit filed by women who say two former high-earning agents drugged and sexual assaulted them. The five women blame the brokerage's "work hard, play hard" culture and claim executives failed to take action against the agents after the women made their claims. Attorneys for the two agents deny the allegations, and a spokesperson for the firm's CEO, named as a defendant in one of the suits, said the claims were handled swiftly and that the agents were independent contractors, not employees. New York Times
- Top-down DEI. Aviva CEO Amanda Blanc told a British Parliamentary committee last week that she personally signs off on all white male candidates for senior roles at her insurance giant to “make sure that the process followed for that recruitment has been diverse.” Fortune
- Ad police. Nandini Jammi's nonprofit removes conspiracy theorists from social media and notifies advertisers when their ads appear adjacent to extremist content. After X owner Elon Musk recently reinstated conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the platform, the activist is petitioning to remove Jones again. Washington Post
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: The Vistria Group appointed Kate LeFurgy as head of communications and marketing.
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Lyft President Kristin Sverchek on 2024: 'I'm excited to just move—I have a bias towards action' Business Insider
Is Poor Things the best we can do for female sexuality onscreen? Vulture
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"When you put a control freak in a situation where she’s not in control, of course that’s quite uncomfortable."
—Victoria Beckham on participating in the Netflix documentary Beckham
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