A Prominent Entrepreneur Saw Nothing Extraordinary in Ami Colé

01.05.2026, 18:23 allure.com

Emma Grede, a British entrepreneur known for her work developing brands such as Skims, Good American, and Safely, has been catching flak lately. During an appearance on the She’s So Lucky podcast, she was asked why she never invested in Ami Colé, the makeup brand founded by Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye.

Her answer, “I don’t invest in first-time founders unless I think there’s something extraordinary about that founder and about that proposition. To me, I didn’t see that and I was like, it’s okay. It was going to come and go.” Yet she later hired N’Diaye-Mbaye, apparently seeing something extraordinary in this one-time founder.

So what has changed?

Speaking on her own podcast, Grede reiterated that she didn’t see long-term potential in Ami Colé, arguing that her later decision to hire N’Diaye-Mbaye at Skims was the better outcome. In her telling, the role offers access to the kind of infrastructure, mentorship, and resources that building a brand independently often can’t.

But it’s this positioning that has drawn the most criticism. Commentary circulating on social media has pointed to a broader pressure placed on Black women founders to be exceptional, with scrutiny that extends beyond their products to their perceived “fit” as business leaders. Grede went further still, suggesting that N’Diaye-Mbaye may have lacked the business acumen to start a company in the first place.

To be fair to Grede, not every investor is the right fit for every brand, and there is a version of this discussion where her comments are simply an honest account of her own decision-making process. If you think of Shark Tank, sometimes someone walks in with a product and none of the Sharks are feeling it, only for it to be on shelves a year later, hitting the very numbers everyone in that room said were unrealistic.

Sometimes you don’t invest because you didn’t connect with the brand, didn’t think it would go anywhere, or didn’t find the founder particularly compelling. Now, Grede’s assessment isn’t entirely wrong as Ami Colé did indeed close. But the excitement it generated and the space it occupied in beauty at the time, along with what its founder has gone on to achieve, makes the idea that it just came and went feel a little cavalier, even if it's technically true.

N’Diaye-Mbaye was clearly extraordinary enough to build a brand that became a cult favorite before she was out of her early 30’s. Grede couldn’t see that at the time which means she wasn’t the right investor, and she isn’t obligated to be the right investor for everyone. But to now imply, with the benefit of hindsight, that there was nothing extraordinary about Ami Colé, doesn’t seem fair.

Ami Colé was a no-makeup makeup brand built specifically by and for Black and Brown women. To talk through what went wrong, N’Diaye-Mbaye was invited onto Grede’s podcast and spoke with characteristic clarity about what she brought to the brand (which was a lot) and where her blind spots were. N’Diaye-Mbaye has said herself that she made mistakes along the way.

She was recruited directly by Glossier CEO Emily Weiss in 2018 and made the pivot from social media strategy at L’Oréal into product development and innovation, working on exactly the kind of minimalist, skin-first aesthetic that Ami Colé would go on to center for an audience Glossier was not then speaking to. Meaning, she started her own brand with both product knowledge and marketing instincts. This wasn’t a first-time founder with a dream and a mood board.

I know people who stockpiled the lip glosses when the closure was announced, it was that beloved. So it’s hard, in that context, to square Grede’s earlier dismissal with what the brand actually became in practice. Ami Colé closed but the demand it was serving didn’t disappear with it, nor did the founder’s insight, nor the customers who were buying the products. If anything, the response proved the appetite was real and the execution had landed.

The question of what went wrong is answered in N’Diaye-Mbaye’s own words. She describes a temperamental wave of investor enthusiasm, one that had been loud about equity and inclusivity in 2020 and considerably quieter about both by the time she needed it most. Essentially, the investment moment that helped launch Ami Colé wasn’t the same she was operating in four years later.

From what I hear in this conversation between N'Diaye-Mbaye and Grede, N'Diaye-Mbaye had the product, community, pedigree, vision, and even investors, but maybe not the operational infrastructure to execute at the level the business needed. It’s one of the most common reasons scaling startups fail—less about the product or the market, and more about the gap between what a founder can build and what it takes to sustain it at speed.

Pat McGrath is another recent example of a Black woman whose business has faced difficulty, where the products are loved, the community is real, the vision is sound, and the conversation still somehow circles back to what she did or didn't do, had or didn't have. Grede has built her career on understanding how access, investment, and the right infrastructure can make or break a brand, which is exactly what makes the way she explained this harder to sit with.

The irony is that the businesses Grede has been a part of are proof that you don't necessarily need traditional business acumen to build a successful company, but rather access to it.

What Ami Colé needed was an extraordinary investor to build alongside its extraordinary founder.

I'm not trying to be cheeky or take anything away from these women, but Khloé Kardashian didn't come from a traditional fashion or business background when she co-founded Good American with Grede, who serves as CEO. Grede has spoken about their model as deliberately pairing a strong product (the jeans) with leveraging “talent” to unlock the audience. In this way, Good American combines Kardashian’s reach and visibility with Grede’s operational experience to build a customer base and grow the business.

A similar structure is seen at Rhode, where Hailey Bieber co-founded the brand with Michael D. Ratner and Lauren Ratner, who have described their role as building the brand architecture and scaling the business around Bieber’s creative vision. Lauren Ratner has said that the brand was built by focusing on marketing, content, and community, which helped drive its growth and eventual $1 billion acquisition by e.l.f Beauty.

In both cases, a founder with cultural insight and influence was paired with experienced operators who knew how to build and scale a business, as well as strong and patient investment. Whether any of that was ever genuinely on the table for N'Diaye-Mbaye is another question altogether.

In implying Ami Colé was nothing extraordinary, Grede reinforces the expectation that Black women must be exceptional in ways others are not. It's hard for women to secure investment, and harder still for women of color. So when N'Diaye-Mbaye rode what she called a temperamental wave of post-2020 investor appetite, she was doing what you do when you have some of what you need, believe in what you’re building, and a window opens: You go for it.

The language we use can oversimplify something complex after the fact. N’Diaye-Mbaye has already spoken about what she learned from Ami Colé with clarity and generosity. Let’s just leave it there.

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