The Exchanges

Q So here you are, there are four other guys, probably talking about their software as a service product, and then you present, and what? What happens?

A So I presented with passion, I had a great presentation, and then after the stage pitches, there was a breakout room in which the five of us each had a table where we could display our product concept or technology. Um, and so for me, it was that, you know, poster board with the sketches of the product, And no one came to my table. It was so embarrassing. I was so upset. And at the very end, as I was packing up my table, a guy named Phil came by and said, you gave the best presentation. And he said, as you can tell, I have very little hair. I know little about hair care. But he goes, I don't really invest in the products anyway. I invest in the people. And he goes, you've got something, and here's my number, let's be in touch.

AI assessment note: “after the stage pitches, there was a breakout room... no one came to my table.”

Q So here you are, there are four other guys, probably talking about their software as a service product, and then you present, and what? What happens?

A So I presented with passion, I had a great presentation, and then after the stage pitches, there was a breakout room in which the five of us each had a table where we could display our product concept or technology. Um, and so for me, it was that, you know, poster board with the sketches of the product, And no one came to my table. It was so embarrassing. I was so upset. And at the very end, as I was packing up my table, a guy named Phil came by and said, you gave the best presentation. And he said, as you can tell, I have very little hair. I know little about hair care. But he goes, I don't really invest in the products anyway. I invest in the people. And he goes, you've got something, and here's my number, let's be in touch.

AI assessment note: “no one came to my table. It was so embarrassing.”

Q So I guess as a kid, right, you used to go to West Virginia to visit your grandma, who was, from what I understand, the, like, the local beauty guru. Like, what did that mean? What did she, she, like, gave people beauty tips?

A It was a little bit different than that. I think, you know, my, uh, grandmother, again, was really kind of faced with the challenge of providing for eight children with very, very little, and she was very thrifty. Um, I know one of the things that she used to do is she would stretch the little bits of product that she would get her hands on, so, you know, maybe she, uh, used some oils and extracts To stretch, you know, a quarter bottle of lotion to be able to fill it back up to a full bottle, and she learned how to distill her own essential oils, and this kind of natural chemistry created this unique situation that I think ultimately, too, inspired my mom to later become a chemist and then a MD-PhD.

AI assessment note: “It was a little bit different than that. I think, you know, my, uh, grandmother”

Q Hmm. I read that there was a point where you thought, alright, I want to do my own thing, and I probably need to leave finance, and I guess your brother, he's an entrepreneur too, and he started like a digital media company, and I guess at a certain point you called him and you're like, hey, can I come work with you? Is that, did that happen?

A Yeah, um, it did happen, and I'm just gonna be totally transparent with you. I was, um, while I was at Goldman, I was seeing a therapist, and prior to my mom's passing, I was even thinking about, you know, what life beyond Goldman looked like, and, um, she encouraged me to see if I could join my brother in his entrepreneurial ventures, and he said, you know, this is my thing, you should get your own thing, I was so disappointed and kind of offended, and I felt stuck, because at the time, my own thing, like, what was that? What was that gonna be? That was like this very nebulous, weird space that I just couldn't possibly think of, what would I do? And it really wasn't until my soul-searching journey after my mom's Passing between these childhood memories of making my own products, where my mom had gotten to in the development of her brand, and then thinking, wow, I could create my own beauty product line.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, um, it did happen, and I'm just gonna be totally transparent with you.”

Q So no, no music career, um, but instead you, you decide to study finance, and what, like, what was the idea behind that? Did it just kind of, like, seem like a good way to get a well-paying, stable job?

A So outside of wanting to be a, you know, musical pop star, I also had this hobby of creating and selling things. I was very, very entrepreneurial as a child. In middle school, this is when the movie Clueless came out, and those cool, like, feather pins were so popular, but no one, like, knew where they could get them, because Etsy wasn't around, and I went to Michael's, my local craft store, and got ribbon, pens, all sorts of stuff, feathers, and created replicas of those clueless feather pens, and I would sell them at school. Yeah, I, I have a lot of different stories of these, like, little mini entrepreneurial ventures. I loved creating, and then the validation that came from people actually wanting to spend their money on my creations. And so, ultimately, when I kind of gave up on the idea of becoming a famous pop star, I started to think more about how I could translate the passion for entrepreneurism into a career path and major. And so, that was really kind of the first part of my journey of even contemplating a career in finance.

AI assessment note: “translate the passion for entrepreneurism into a career path and major.”

Q I mean, so you're looking through just like doing research, right? You know you want to do something in natural hair care products. And by the way, what does that mean? Like, because you see a lot of hair care products that say natural on them or, you know, free of this or free of that. But what did, I mean, this is 2010. What did that mean?

A Yeah, it's a great question because the word natural is not, um, regulated the way that organic is. So natural means different things to different people. And for me, it meant utilizing a high, high percentage of naturally derived ingredients. And so basically what I mean by that is instead of, you know, pumping our products with silicones, which are synthetic polymers that give the illusion of shine on the hair, um, We actually used real natural oils to do that because not only is it natural, but the benefits, the vitamins, the nutrients, uh, the minerals within natural oils actually serve a purpose in enhancing the hair's health that silicones do not. So that's really the foundational goal of why we do use natural clean ingredients in our products.

AI assessment note: “for me, it meant utilizing a high, high percentage of naturally derived ingredients.”

Q So how did you, like, what What do you, how do you find out who to contact at Sephora? Is it like info at sephora.com?

A No, it was, it was definitely a bit of a puzzle, and I remember one of the, uh, women in that group who was kind of like the leader of the group, she had a unique, memorable name. Her name was Margarita, and that's all I remembered. So I did some Google searching, and I found out her full name and who she was, and there was this website. I can't remember the name of the website, but it would help you to determine what the format of email addresses is, And I emailed her. Just sent a little follow-up email. I attached our brand book and told her that I would love the opportunity to come to San Francisco to meet with her in person to discuss the opportunity further, and I never got a response. So I waited a month, and then I said, all right, I need something that's going to make it like a no-brainer to meet with me. So I decided to collect all of the Press that I had gotten over the past couple of months, and I put together this really beautiful press book, and then I just decided to tell her that I was planning a trip to San Francisco, that I was going to actually be there. And so, um, I finally got a response, which was a forward to her junior buyer, and she asked her, uh, junior buyer to, to take over the conversation. She's like, yeah, let's meet up at Pete's Coffee and And, uh, let's, let's chat.

AI assessment note: “I did some Google searching, and I found out her full name and who she was”

Q So I guess as a kid, right, you used to go to West Virginia to visit your grandma, who was, from what I understand, the, like, the local beauty guru. Like, what did that mean? What did she, she, like, gave people beauty tips?

A It was a little bit different than that. I think, you know, my, uh, grandmother, again, was really kind of faced with the challenge of providing for eight children with very, very little, and she was very thrifty. Um, I know one of the things that she used to do is she would stretch the little bits of product that she would get her hands on, so, you know, maybe she, uh, used some oils and extracts To stretch, you know, a quarter bottle of lotion to be able to fill it back up to a full bottle, and she learned how to distill her own essential oils, and this kind of natural chemistry created this unique situation that I think ultimately, too, inspired my mom to later become a chemist and then a MD-PhD.

AI assessment note: “It was a little bit different than that. I think, you know, my grandmother”

Q And you did a summer internship at At Goldman Sachs, I read, um, and what, what did you do there?

A Yeah, so I actually interned for two summers. Um, I spent my first summer in legal and compliance, and I quickly realized that that part of the firm was just not something I was interested in. I was very, very bored, and while I was in legal and compliance, I was actually sitting on the sales and trading floor, and I was so intrigued by what was going on around me, and I said, I don't know what that is, but I want to do that. That is where the action is at. I mean, people are standing up in their They're shouting across the room. People were having fun. There was so much energy. And I thought to myself, I have another summer that I could spend at Goldman. I want to spend it in sales and trading. And so, voila, that next summer I did a sales and trading internship. And you come in each morning and you never know what you're going to get. Markets are constantly moving. They're so dynamic. And not only that, there's just a lot of camaraderie on that sales and trading floor, which is so incredible. Um, so to me, it was one of the most exciting things that I could be doing in the finance world.

AI assessment note: “first summer in legal and compliance... next summer I did a sales and trading internship”

Q Yeah. And during that time, did you start to kind of reevaluate your own, like, I don't know what your life was about and what you wanted to do with it, and did your mom's death kind of force you to think about, well, what, what is this all about? What am I doing?

A It did. You know, another thing that was really sad for me is I remember, you know, the weeks and even months leading up to my mom's passing, so much of our conversations were just around the fact that I was working way too much, and I was exhausted, and even some nights I would call her crying because I felt like I couldn't do it anymore. And I wish that our conversations would have been more substantive. And, you know, after The experience of losing my mom so suddenly, and realizing that this life isn't necessarily promised to me either , I knew that whatever I was gonna do, I wanted to wake up every day and be excited about going into the office.

AI assessment note: “It did. You know, another thing that was really sad for me”

Q First of all, what, how would, what was your experience like at UVA?

A Um, I had a phenomenal experience at UVA, um, but I think one of the things that was so different starting out there was that a lot of the other black men and women didn't have the same type of diverse high school experience that I had. So I know that there were a lot of people where it was the first time really ever in their life they were around, um, white people. So there were elements of Self-segregation that I witnessed during my early times at UVA that I didn't quite understand in terms of, you know, black groups separating themselves in the libraries or in the dining halls, and it was so new to me because it just was so different than my experience in high school where everyone sat with each other. Yeah. But one of the things that I focused on or Made emphasis of was that I was able to really build a community of close friends that span all different sorts of ethnicities and backgrounds.

AI assessment note: “I had a phenomenal experience at UVA, um, but I think one of the things”

Q So how did you, like, What do you, how do you find out who to contact at Sephora? Is it like info at sephora.com?

A No, it was, it was definitely a bit of a puzzle, and I remember one of the, uh, women in that group who was kind of like the leader of the group, she had a unique, memorable name. Her name was Margarita, and that's all I remembered. So I did some Google searching, and I found out her full name and who she was, and there was this website. I can't remember the name of the website, but it would help you to determine what the format of email addresses And I emailed her. Just sent a little follow-up email. I attached our brand book and told her that I would love the opportunity to come to San Francisco to meet with her in person to discuss the opportunity further, and I never got a response. So I waited a month, and then I said, alright, I need something that's going to make it like a no-brainer to meet with me. So I decided to collect all of the press that I had gotten Over the past couple of months, and I put together this really beautiful press book, and then I just decided to tell her that I was planning a trip to San Francisco, that I was gonna actually be there. And so, um, I finally got a response, which was a forward to her junior buyer, and she asked her, uh, junior buyer to, to take over the conversation.

AI assessment note: “I did some Google searching, and I found out her full name and who she was”

Q I read that there was a point where you thought, alright, I want to do my own thing, and I probably need to leave finance, and I guess your brother, he, he's an entrepreneur too, and he started Like a digital media company, and I guess at a certain point you called them and you're like, hey, can I come work with you? Is that, did that happen?

A Yeah, um, it did happen, and I'm just gonna be totally transparent with you. I was, um, while I was at Goldman, I was seeing a therapist, and prior to my mom's passing, I was even thinking about, you know, what life beyond Goldman looked like, and, um, she encouraged me to see if I could join my brother in his entrepreneurial ventures, and he said, you know, This is my thing. You should get your own thing. I was so disappointed and kind of offended, and I felt stuck, because at the time, my own thing, like, what was that? What was that gonna be? That was like this very nebulous, weird space that I just couldn't possibly think of, what would I do? And it really wasn't until My soul-searching journey after my mom's passing between these childhood memories of making my own products, where my mom had gotten to in the development of her brand, and then thinking, wow, I could create my own beauty product line.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, um, it did happen, and I'm just gonna be totally transparent with you.”

Q All right, so you're there presumably, hopefully, to get some kind of deal, somebody to purchase, to make a purchase order, and what, who ends up ordering from you?

A Yeah, so the first day I was handing out just lots of samples, and buyers were very intrigued because they're always intrigued by newness, and they had never seen the brand before, but the buyers that I gave samples to, most of them came back the next day and said, I used the products last night, or this morning, like, tell me more. And so some of those buyers included, you know, Urban Outfitters, Nordstrom, And then on the very last day, the Sephora team came by, and that was, what's really funny is that I didn't even know that they were the Sephora team until they left, because there was a group of four of them, and their badges were turned the other way, because they don't want to be kind of, like, smothered by everyone who's looking for the Sephora team. So when they came by, I actually had no idea. And when they walked off, Um, another brand came up to my booth and said, oh my gosh, how did the conversation with Sephora go? And I was like, what do you mean? And she was like, oh, those four women were from Sephora.

AI assessment note: “some of those buyers included, you know, Urban Outfitters, Nordstrom”