Emma Grede explains why she didn’t invest in Ami Colé but went on to hire its founder for SKIMS
Emma Grede dropped the book “Start With Yourself” on Tuesday, April 14, and has launched a viral book tour.
After the beloved beauty brand Ami Colé shuttered its operations in July 2025, months later, founder Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye was hired by Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS as EVP of beauty and fragrance, drawing backlash at the time, particularly from those who are not fans of the Kardashian family’s orbit. Now, that same move is proving even more confounding after SKIMS founding partner Emma Grede revealed she didn’t find Ami Colé “extraordinary” enough to invest in, but later hired N’Diaye-Mbaye anyway.
On a recent episode of the “She’s So Lucky” podcast, while promoting her book “Start With Yourself,” the 43-year-old businesswoman and entrepreneur shared why she didn’t invest in Ami Colé and how her relationship with N’Diaye-Mbaye has evolved over the years.
Grede, who is also the CEO and co-founder of Khloé Kardashian’s Good American, said she doesn’t invest in first-time founders unless she finds something “extraordinary” about the founder or the concept.
“To me, I didn’t see that. I was like, ‘It’s okay.’ But I was like, ‘It’s gonna come and go.’ That’s how I felt,” she revealed.
The topic arose toward the end of the discussion as Grede, with host Les Alfred, recalled that N’Diaye-Mbaye’s appointment at SKIMS in November 2025 initially drew intense backlash. While Grede said she personally saw mostly positive coverage, she was aware of the reaction on some level, but as a founding partner, she still saw it as a strong opportunity for N’Diaye-Mbaye.
Her relationship with the beauty founder didn’t end after she chose to pass on investing; in fact, it only deepened. According to Grede, she kept in touch with N’Diaye-Mbaye, with the founder often reaching out for advice as she made certain moves along the way. So when her company was headed toward the end after just four years, she was able to return Grede’s usual ask of “need anything?” with “Yes, a job!” something Grede was more than happy to oblige.
The relationship, for Grede, is an example of how some of the most crucial connections can come from unlikely places and how investing in the right ones can be critical to a person’s success. There’s a long-held belief in business that you should treat everyone, from the doorman to the receptionist to the CEO, with the same regard because you never know where someone could end up. Grede said she’s seen that dynamic come full circle on this tour, as she’s been interviewed by multiple former employees she’s grateful she nurtured good relationships with.
“Your relationships are long, and your careers are long, so you really need to nurture and put a lot into people,” she said.
Part of why the reaction to this admission has become so large is that, while Ami Colé’s rise and fall were disappointing and N’Diaye-Mbaye’s next chapter is hard for the anti-Kardashian crowd to maybe accept, it all falls into a much larger conversation about what it actually takes for Black-owned brands to survive.
When Ami Colé launched in 2021 as a clean beauty brand, it came a year after the national reckoning on racism and lack of opportunity for Black Americans, when more people were invested in supporting Black-owned brands than ever before. Its products, including popular lipsticks, glosses, foundation sticks, and more, paired with its bright orange packaging, showed immediate promise. So when it closed in less than four years, that loss hit hard, especially because by the time the closure was announced, it was far from the first. Black-owned brands—many of them newer, due to systemic barriers only exacerbated by the Trump Administration’s anti-DEI rhetoric—had already begun to decline in rapid succession.
What makes hearing Grede’s position land wrong for some is knowing how crucial early investment is for businesses to survive and how few opportunities Black brands are typically presented with. Much of the capital available to emerging businesses is controlled by people who are not Black, which makes representation in those decision-making roles feel especially significant. So learning that Grede, a Black woman in that position, passed on Black company can be exhausting to say the least.
Still, as Grede said while chatting with Alfred, N’Diaye-Mbaye is “very talented,” and she spoke highly of her. Hiring her appears to be a way she chose to invest in the founder.
Since Grede dropped “Start With Yourself” and as been on this tour, many of her soundbites, from being a “three-hour mom” to suggesting working from home could be damaging to women’s careers, have hit the discourse like a land mine, and she made it clear during a packed stop at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C. on Thursday evening, which theGrio attended, that she welcomes it.
Her message, both in the book and beyond it, is less about convincing people to agree with her specifically and more about getting clear on who you are and what you want, then basing your choices and routines around that while ignoring the rest. Understanding what you don’t want, or even to some extent whom you don’t want to fully model yourself after, can matter just as much as knowing who you are.