A 29-year-old entrepreneur’s side hustle brought in $40 million in a year. Now she wants to help other ‘uninvestable’ women.

• Daniella Pierson is launching CHASM to help women secure venture capital funding.

• Pierson said she was laughed out of meetings with VCs when pitching her newsletter called The Newsette.

• She built a multimillion-dollar business anyway, and wants to help other women do the same.

Before building her multimillion-dollar business, Daniella Pierson said she was “the poster child” for “do not invest in.”

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.

“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.”

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.”

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

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.

“Even after we made a million dollars, I still wrote it,” Pierson said. “I didn't have fancy VC money to fall back on.”

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.

That year, Forbes named Pierson the world's youngest, wealthiest self-made woman of color.

It took Pierson more than five years of hard work to become successful beyond her “wildest dreams.”

Pierson said she grew up as “the dumb twin — that's not a nickname I gave to myself. That's something my lovely teachers and peers called me in public to my face.”

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.

Pierson doesn't want it to be this hard for other women like her.

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