This 27-Year-Old Entrepreneur Almost Failed Out Of College. Then She Built a $200 Million News Brand

Daniella Pierson, who founded women-focused newsletter company The Newsette when she was 19, is now one of the wealthiest women of color in the U.S. and is younger than just about any self-made female entrepreneur with a nine figure fortune.

A Latinx founder, Pierson built The Newsette from nothing to $40 million in revenues and profits of at least $10 million last year, she says. Two weeks ago she sold a small stake in The Newsette to an investor in a transaction that values the company at $200 million. It’s the first outside money she’s taken (besides a $15,000 loan from her parents, which she repaid), and she remains the company’s majority shareholder.

She is also a cofounder and co-CEO of less-than-year-old mental health startup Wondermind with singer and actress Selena Gomez and Mandy Teefey (CEO of Kicked to the Curb Productions and Gomez’s mother). Her stake in that company, combined with cash and other investments she’s made, puts Pierson’s net worth at $220 million, Forbes estimates. (On August 11, Wondermind announced on Instagram that it raised $5 million at a $100 million valuation led by investor Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures.)

When Pierson was a sophomore at Boston University in 2015, she couldn’t find time to visit her favorite websites, so decided to create a newsletter that would curate the culture, business, beauty and wellness content she and her friends wanted to read. She first told people she was working as an intern for a cool newsletter company. “I didn’t want to say I was the founder,” she explains, partly because she lacked confidence. But she hustled, printing out copies and putting them in the common areas and lobbies of buildings around the university.

It wasn’t until after she graduated that Pierson started soliciting advertising. She says revenues went from $1 million in 2019 to $7 million in 2020 to $40 million in 2021, with partnerships and advertisers that have included Bumble, Fidelity, Old Navy, Twitter and Walmart. She made the Forbes Under 30 list in the Media category in 2020, when she was 24.

Now her free newsletter–which blends news and links to articles about things like natural beauty products–has more than 500,000 subscribers, mostly women ages 18 to 35. It’s mostly smarter than the Daily Skimm with an irreverent attitude similar to that of Morning Brew’s daily email. Subscribers get points for referring new readers via a personalized referral code; the points can be used to redeem anything from an “exclusive Sunday newsletter” (3 points) to a variety of swag: a coffee mug (15 points), a “cool” sweatshirt (55 points) or free coffee for a year (350 points).

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