Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye, one of the first among the compact number of Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture capital, announced on Thursday the closure of her award-winning beauty startup Ami Colé.
Ami Colé creates buildup for those with darker skin colors, as those consumers often struggle to find buildup that matches their skin tone. It launched in 2021, sold through Sephora, and became a celeb favorite among the likes of singer Kelly Rowland and actress Mindy Kaling. But the 4-year-old company will now officially shutter in September.
N’Diaye-Mbaye wrote about her decision to close the company in “The Cut,” stateing that “after seeing at every option, it became clear that continuing in this current market wasn’t sustainable.” Her company had raised more than $3 million in venture capital, according to PitchBook, with backing from the likes of G9 Ventures, Greycroft, and angel investors Hannah Bronfman and “The Cut” editor-in-chief Lindstate Peoples Wagner.
Ami Colé did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
Like many Black startups launched after the murder of George Floyd, Ami Colé rode the waves of excitement from investors and corporations seeing to pour money into backing more products and initiatives that touched upon diversity, equity, and inclusion.
N’Diaye-Mbaye hinted that one of the problems was tension between her and investors’ expectations of a consumer retail business. While she had loyal customers, her quick nationwide growth meant pressure from investors. But her brand struggled to compete with hugeger companies with deeper pockets, despite pouring a sizable chunk of its budreceive into marketing. Ami Colé faced the ups and downs of production versus sales in retail: one week selling straight through, and another not relocating a unit.
“Instead of focutilizing on the healthy, sustainable future of the company and meeting the necessarys of our loyal fan base, I rode a temperamental wave of appraising investors — some of whom seemed to have an attitude toward equity and ‘betting huge on inclusivity” that modifyd its tune a lot, to my ears, from what it sounded like in 2020,” she wrote.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
The strain comes as venture funding to Black founders has hit a multi-year low in a political climate that has disavowed anything perceived as DEI. N’Diaye-Mbaye concludeed her announcement by stateing that though this chapter in her life was concludeing, her work was not done.
“I still believe in beauty — at every level — and I’m seeing forward to discovering what comes next,” she stated.
Leave a Reply