{"id":137300,"date":"2025-05-28T00:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T00:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/137300\/"},"modified":"2025-05-28T00:49:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T00:49:13","slug":"this-29-year-old-entrepreneur-wants-to-help-other-uninvestable-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/137300\/","title":{"rendered":"This 29-Year-Old Entrepreneur Wants to Help Other ‘Uninvestable’ Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before building her multimillion-dollar business<\/a>, Daniella Pierson said she was “the poster child” for “do not invest in.”<\/p>\n

Now, she aims to help other “uninvestable” women secure financing for their ideas with her new organization, CHASM, where she wants to help close the gender gap in VC funding.<\/p>\n

“I had zero investment, not because I didn’t want it. I wanted it very badly,” Pierson told Business Insider. “I went to dozens of VCs, and I was rejected, rejected, rejected, laughed out of every room.”<\/p>\n

One “household name” told Pierson she spoke too much and too quickly, and didn’t know what she was talking about: “I cried the whole Uber home.”<\/p>\n

Despite the setbacks, Pierson made a name for herself with her newsletter, The Newsette<\/a>, which she founded in 2015 during her sophomore year at Boston University.<\/p>\n

Until graduation, she would write the entire newsletter between 6 and 10 a.m., covering the latest news in beauty, fashion, and business, before rushing to classes. Then she’d work on it in the evenings and weekends too.<\/p>\n

“Even after we made a million dollars, I still wrote it,” Pierson said. “I didn’t have fancy VC money to fall back on.”<\/p>\n

In 2021, The Newsette had a team of 14 and brought in revenues of $40 million in one year and made a profit in the tens of millions. The following year Pierson launched another newsletter, Wondermind, cofounded with Selena Gomez and the actor’s mother, Mandy Teefey.<\/p>\n

That year, Forbes named Pierson the world’s youngest, wealthiest self-made woman of color.<\/p>\n

Numerous barriers <\/p>\n

It took Pierson more than five years of hard work to become successful beyond her “wildest dreams.”<\/p>\n

Pierson said she grew up as “the dumb twin \u2014 that’s not a nickname I gave to myself. That’s something my lovely teachers and peers called me in public to my face.”<\/p>\n

She faced numerous barriers and challenges as a female entrepreneur. She failed her business project at college and was almost kicked out a semester before graduation. She was diagnosed with OCD when she was 14, and also lives with ADHD, depression, and anxiety.<\/p>\n

Pierson doesn’t want it to be this hard for other women like her.<\/p>\n

The amount of funding<\/a> all-women teams receive is low. In 2022, they accounted for 2.1% ($5.1 billion), BI previously reported. In 2023<\/a>, it dropped to 1.8% ($3.1 billion).<\/p>\n

“That made me really mad,” Pierson said. “So I was like, what am I going to do? I’m going to close the gender gap.”<\/p>\n

\"Daniella<\/p>\n

Daniella Pierson launched CHASM to help close the gender funding gap.<\/p>\n

CHASM<\/p>\n

CHASM, which launched on May 20, has a “mentor-to-many” business model. Fifty high-profile entrepreneurs and investors, both men and women, pay a $25,000 membership fee to help aspiring female entrepreneurs from pitch to exit, offering insights, networking opportunities, and grants.<\/p>\n

Pierson said she wanted to provide women the tools, knowledge, and connections they need to thrive as entrepreneurs without facing the same roadblocks that she did.<\/p>\n

Wider gap<\/p>\n

Pierson said women start out “50 feet below the playing field” when launching a business. She believes men are part of the solution.<\/p>\n

“The gap has opened wider because we’re isolating men,” Pierson said.”That could be a controversial statement, but I don’t think it is, because guess what? If 99.999% of the money, power, wealth, all of that belongs to men, we need some of them on our side.”<\/p>\n

Pierson said she doesn’t want to “just throw money at the problem.”<\/p>\n

“I’d rather teach a woman how to fish than just give her a fish,” she said. “I want to put them in the best position for success by giving them the ultimate Bible of everything.”<\/p>\n

Some members already signed up for CHASM include Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx and Sneex; singer Lionel Richie; Fidji Simo<\/a>, the CEO and chair of Instacart who is joining OpenAI later this year; and Tony Robbins, a motivational speaker and coach.<\/p>\n

“This is putting my heart and soul, and my time, where my values are, and I hope people really use this to become the most successful versions of themselves, no matter what industry they’re in,” Pierson said. “If I can do it, anyone can.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before building her multimillion-dollar business, Daniella Pierson said she was “the poster child” for “do not invest in.”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3094],"tags":[59913,51,9695,59915,59914,3134,3143,59916,33828,3144,1232,59917,45863,9711,6097,16,15,3137,3118],"class_list":{"0":"post-137300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-29-year-old-entrepreneur","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-business-insider","11":"tag-chasm","12":"tag-daniella-pierson","13":"tag-entrepreneurship","14":"tag-female-entrepreneur","15":"tag-gender-gap","16":"tag-graduation","17":"tag-man","18":"tag-money","19":"tag-newsette","20":"tag-newsletter","21":"tag-side-hustle","22":"tag-team","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom","25":"tag-woman","26":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114582714071865933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}