There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Henry Bou-Saba

In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba sits down with Mike, managing partner of Bullish, for a conversation that is funny, blunt, and full of hard-won opinions about an asset class he thinks has been badly misjudged. He is honest about the wins and what he calls the ouches, skeptical of almost every piece of received venture wisdom, and genuinely bullish on consumer at a moment when most of Sand Hill Road has walked away from it.

In This Episode:

• How a ten minute slot at a dive bar turned into the firm Mike has been building for fifteen years

• Why Bullish loved Peloton when no other VC would touch it, and how being one of 104 names on that cap table shaped the whole thesis

• The worst business model in the world: no salary, small checks, and a third kid on the way

• Why he answers "should I angel invest" with four or five more questions instead of an answer

• What actually killed the DTC playbook, and the exact month it happened

• How the firm's founders went from 28, 30, and 26 years old to 37, 57, and 54

• Why he hates pattern matching, and what Bullish looks for instead

• The obituary exercise he runs with founders, and the one who refused to do it

• Why Bullish is founder supportive and not founder friendly, and why he thinks there is a real difference

• Where he thinks exits are headed now that strategics, not IPOs, are driving liquidity

Chapters:

[00:00] Only the Paranoid Survive: Meet Mike Duda of Bullish

[02:20] One Part Venture Firm, One Part Creative Agency

[04:18] The Bratty Question That Started It All

[05:52] Ten Minutes at a Dive Bar With Josh Kopelman

[07:53] Seventy-Eight People, and He Got the Hour and a Half

[09:12] Everyone Passed on Peloton. Bullish Did Not.

[10:37] The Worst Business Model in the World

[12:55] Should You Angel Invest? He Answers With More Questions

[15:18] Get Your Popcorn Ready: What Really Killed DTC

[22:03] When a Marquee VC on Your Cap Table Becomes a Liability

[24:58] Write Your Obituary: The Exercise Jeff Raider Refused

[27:27] Our First Three Founders Were 28, 30, and 26

[29:16] Finding Founders in Maine, Minneapolis, and Scottsdale

[37:04] We Are Not Founder Friendly. We Are Founder Supportive.

[42:26] Six Firms Raised Seventy-Two Percent of All Venture Dollars

[46:47] Why Strategics, Not IPOs, Are the Future of Exits

[50:49] Why He Hates Pattern Matching

[53:35] Desert Island Product: Red Wine

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube

🌐 Full-length episodes at CXTInvestments.com

📍 Follow @tina_invests on IG for founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.

🎙 There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba

In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, sits down with Ali Kole, Strategic Advisor and Investor, for a conversation spanning Microsoft, Sephora, LVMH, Ole Henriksen, Kendo, and Amazon.

Ali started in consulting and technology, helping build some of the earliest e-commerce businesses at Microsoft, before a conversation with a friend convinced her it was not too late to move into beauty. That pivot led to nearly two decades inside some of the industry's most influential companies. She helped take Sephora into new markets, led the acquisition of Ole Henriksen and later became its CEO, helped build Kendo, and eventually joined Amazon to help bring prestige beauty onto a platform many luxury brands once wanted nothing to do with.

In This Episode:

- How Ali went from Microsoft to Sephora and why she says it is never too late to pivot

- What LVMH taught her about building brands that outlive their leaders

- How acquiring Ole Henriksen unexpectedly led her into the CEO role

- Why the best beauty leaders combine analytical discipline with instinct

- How Kendo helped pioneer the beauty incubator model

- Why Ali joined Amazon and what prestige beauty initially resisted about the platform

- What Amazon had to learn about price, luxury, and customer trust

- How consumer behavior helped bring major prestige brands onto Amazon

- What AI may change about beauty discovery and shopping

- Why Ali's most important career advice has very little to do with getting ahead

[00:00] Great Brands Are Built to Outlive Their Leaders

[04:06] From Microsoft to the Beauty Industry

[05:08] ""It's Too Late for Me"" and the Career Pivot That Changed Everything

[08:32] The Moment Sephora Felt Like Home

[10:35] Inside LVMH and Learning From Luxury

[11:53] A Great Brand Will Outlive All of Us

[14:48] Acquiring Ole Henriksen and Becoming CEO

[17:04] Why Beauty Leadership Requires Head and Heart

[22:23] Building Kendo and an Early Beauty Incubator

[26:02] The Tension Between Luxury and Accessibility

[31:51] Why Ali Joined Amazon

[38:13] Why the Lowest Price Can Hurt a Luxury Brand

[40:05] Fixing Unauthorized Distribution in Premium Beauty

[41:53] When Prestige Brands Said ""No Way"" to Amazon

[43:02] Bringing Beauty Expertise Inside Amazon

[46:08] The New Luxury Became Having It Right Away

[50:18] Respect the Consumer

[51:39] AI, Beauty, and the Future of Shopping

[56:44] Ali's Best Advice Has Nothing to Do With Getting Ahead

[58:49] Desert Island Beauty Product: SPF
🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube🌐 Full-length episodes at CXTInvestments.com📍 Follow @tina_invests on IG for founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.🎙 There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba

In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, sits down with Jeff Lee, co-founder and CEO of DIBS Beauty, for a conversation that goes all the way back to his childhood.
Jeff started college at 16, went to Yale Law School, made it to one of the most selective corporate law firms in the country, and then walked away from it. Business school connected him to Alex Rodriguez, which led to JLo Beauty, which led to co-founding DIBS with creator Courtney Shields during the pandemic. He is also a certified personal trainer who has worked out at every Equinox in the world, a beauty pageant coach for Peru, and a CEO who has personally worked eight-hour retail shifts at Ulta stores in all fifty states. This conversation is candid, funny, and full of hard-won thinking on leadership, hiring, confidence, and what it actually takes to build a brand people keep choosing.
In This Episode:
- Why Jeff's mom took US News & World Report from the doctor's office, and the promise she pointed to on the page
- What a tiger parent upbringing gave him, and why he believes that kind of parenting is harder than the alternative
- The superiority and inferiority complexes that combine into what he calls an energy source
- Going deaf in his one hearing ear for two weeks, and what he learned about himself in that stretch
- Why he says the number one secret to his success is having generous parents
- Coaching Miss Venezuela, and why pageants and presidential debates are decided by the same thing
- Why the loudest person in the room is often the least effective, and how that changed his hiring
- Why he works full retail shifts at Ulta and sweeps the floors while his team sells
- How he and Courtney Shields decided DIBS would not be named after her
- The two-in-one product philosophy and why value has to be earned differently now than five years ago

Chapters:

[00:00] From Stanford at 16 to Building DIBS Beauty
[04:24] The Kid Who Obsessed Over Cacti, Egypt, and Gemstones
[05:26] College at 16 and a Tiger Parent Upbringing
[09:08] Yale Law School and Never Feeling Stupider
[10:37] The Magazine His Mom Took From the Doctor's Office
[12:11] The Chip on Your Shoulder Is an Energy Source
[13:45] Two Weeks Without Hearing and What It Taught Him
[18:22] The Number One Secret to His Success: Generous Parents
[19:30] Every Equinox in the World and 30 Non-Negotiable Minutes a Day
[23:35] Coaching Miss Venezuela Is Like Coaching Brazil in the World Cup
[24:54] Why Pageants and Presidential Debates Are Both Confidence Games
[26:09] Leading a Company of Women and the Bias Toward Loud
[28:13] Promoting the Quietest People on the Team
[30:32] From Big Law to A-Rod to JLo Beauty
[32:37] Meeting Courtney Shields and Why It Is Not Courtney Shields Beauty
[33:56] Working With Talent: What A-Rod Taught Him About Being the Smartest Person
[35:26] Don't Make Small Talk. She Knows What You Want.
[36:34] Building the Team and Understanding Everyone's Motivations
[39:12] Why the CEO Sweeps the Floor at Ulta
[41:01] Fifty States and Getting Close to a Customer Who Is Not You
[42:18] The Concealer Launch and Going Into Complexion After Five Years
[43:35] Two-in-One and Why the Customer Is Smarter Than Ever
[45:08] How He Turns It Off: Gardening and Chasing Pigeons
[47:17] Desert Island Product: Sunscreen

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube🌐 Full-length episodes at CXTInvestments.com📍 Follow @tina_invests on IG for founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.🎙 There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba

In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, sits down with Sarah Moret, founder and CEO of Curie, to talk about rebranding a seven-year-old personal care company that sells on Amazon, direct-to-consumer, and in 4,300 Walmart doors.

Sarah started Curie with $12,000 of her own savings and designed the original packaging herself. Seven years later, walking the aisles at Walmart, she realized the brand that had worked beautifully online was not working hard enough on a physical shelf. This episode is a candid, tactical walk through what a real brand refresh actually involves, the ten-month timeline, the agency decision, the buyer conversation she was dreading, and the thousand small things nobody warns you about.

In This Episode:

• Why Sarah realized her packaging was not working hard enough after two years of walking Walmart aisles

• Why Curie 1.0 was trying to say too much, and how she narrowed the brand down to strength and performance

• Why she deliberately hired a food and beverage agency instead of a beauty agency

• The ten-month timeline and everything she did not anticipate, from subscription pages to archiving years of social posts

• The manufacturing change from top fill to bottom fill, and why it upgraded the entire product experience

• What is next for Curie, including new products

Chapters:

[01:54] The Aha Moment: Our Insides Did Not Match Our Outsides

[03:35] Curie 1.0 Was Trying to Say Too Much

[05:41] Why She Chose a Food Agency Over a Beauty Agency

[07:35] What Nobody Tells You About a Brand Refresh

[08:46] The Walmart Buyer Who Saw the Vision First

[11:10] Why She Did Not Raise Prices

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube

🌐 Full-length episodes at CXTInvestments.com

📍 Follow @tina_invests on IG for founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.

🎙 There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba

In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, sits down with Griffin Spolansky, co-founder and CEO of Mezcla, to talk about building a protein treat brand from a UVA lacrosse locker room into a fast-growing presence in over 10,000 doors nationwide.

Griffin started Mezcla in college after a chance hallway conversation with a guest speaker turned into a year of nightly recipe sessions in her kitchen. What followed was a year and a half of trial and error to commercialize a product, a launch funded by friends and family, and a fundraising philosophy built on never juicing the numbers, even when other founders told him it was the easier path. Griffin brings the discipline of a Division I athlete to building a company, and this conversation is full of concrete, hard-won lessons on team culture, capital efficiency, and what it takes to scale in one of the most crowded categories in consumer.

In This Episode:

The four months he spent pitching a manufacturer in person before they would take a chance on a 25,000-unit minimum run

Why he refused to juice his numbers for investors, and how that decision turned a $50,000 first check into $3 million reinvested by the same investor over time

The "team, not family" culture he built directly from his lacrosse locker room, including two-way accountability and a depth chart mentality

Why athletes make some of his best hires, and what competitive sports taught him about taking criticism and pushing through rejection

His framework for the growth-versus-profitability tradeoff: margin has to be right before you ever pull the growth lever

How Mezcla has stayed lean at around 12 people while scaling into 10,000+ doors

Chapters:

[00:00] Do What You Say, Say What You Do

[01:00] Welcome: Meet Griffin Spolansky of Mezcla

[02:52] What Is Mezcla: The Space Between Protein Bars and Empty-Calorie Snacks

[04:24] The Social Entrepreneurship Class That Started Everything

[06:09] Walking Onto UVA Lacrosse: From Unranked to Number One in the Nation

[09:10] Team, Not Family: Building Culture Without Coddling

[11:29] Resilience, Rejection, and Why He Looks to Hire Athletes

[14:00] Nightly Kitchen Sessions: Testing Recipes for Five Months Straight

[15:19] When the Bars Went Moldy in Week Three and Rock Hard in Week Six

[16:15] Four Months Pitching a Manufacturer With a 50,000-Unit Minimum

[18:05] Two Years Living at His Grandmother's Apartment, Working Sixteen-Hour Days

[19:46] The Over-Roasted Chickpea Batch and What It Taught Him About Product Feedback

[20:40] The Real Sign of Product-Market Fit: Friends Actually Eating the Bars

[21:29] The Fundraising Arc: From $400K Pre-Seed to a $10 Million Round

[22:47] Why He Refused to Juice His Numbers — and What It Earned Him

[24:35] Building an Advisor Bench Always Two or Three Steps Ahead

[27:37] Standing Out in a Category With 500 Different Kinds of Bars

[29:04] Why People, Not Product, Are the True Moat in CPG

[36:10] Growth Versus Profitability: Why Margin Has to Come First

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube

🌐 Full-length episodes at CXTInvestments.com

📍 Follow Tina on LinkedIn for founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.

🎙 There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba

In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, talks to Sergio Tache, founder and CEO of Dossier Perfume, about building one of the fastest-growing and most innovative brands in beauty: a fragrance house that has made luxury-quality perfume accessible to everyone.

Sergio attended business school and trained as an investment banker. He founded two previous entrepreneurial ventures before landing on the idea that would change everything. The insight was deceptively simple: why is fragrance so expensive? What followed was a masterclass in unit economics, influencer-led growth, and relentless execution. Sergio went from filling perfume bottles by hand with a funnel in a windowless Brooklyn basement to becoming the number one perfume brand at Walmart and selling a majority stake to PE, all on less than $4 million raised.

In This Episode:

How Sergio launched Dossier with 20 dupe fragrances and the simple but brilliant idea of telling online customers exactly what each one smells like

Why he filled the first batch of bottles by hand with a funnel in a Brooklyn basement and walked the orders to USPS himself

How a [email protected] email that the customer care team almost deleted turned into a Walmart partnership now spanning 4,000 stores

Why Dossier raised less than $4 million total, had $33 in the bank at one point, and still built a business that just closed a private equity deal with American Pacific Group

How the influencer strategy evolved from reaching out to thousands of small creators in Excel to co-creating Machine Gun Kelly's own perfume line

The unit economics framework Sergio has applied across three companies: if you cannot cover your COGS, marketing, and fixed costs at your current AOV, you do not have a real business (yet)

Sergio's take on raising large venture capital rounds in beauty: know what you are signing up for, and what you are giving up

Chapters:

[00:00] The Almost Deleted Email That Became a $50 Million Walmart Deal

[01:30] Welcome: Meet Sergio Tache, Founder of Dossier Perfume

[02:00] Romania, Venezuela, South Africa, New Zealand, Belgium, Wharton: The Origin Story

[03:00] From Investment Banking to Beauty Entrepreneurship

[04:00] The North Star: Making Great Perfume Affordable for the 99%

[06:30] Launching With Impressions: How Dossier Solved the Problem of Selling Perfume Online

[08:30] Building the Supply Chain: 50 Supplier Calls and a Perfumer in Grasse

[11:30] Filling Bottles by Hand With a Funnel in a Brooklyn Basement

[13:00] The Early Days: Doing Everything Yourself When There Are Two of You

[15:00] Influencer Marketing From Day One: Small Creators, Video, and a Very Large Excel Sheet

[17:00] Price Points, Unit Economics, and Knowing You Have Something in Month One

[24:00] Dupes, the Dupe Economy, and What Dossier Actually Wants to Be

[27:00] The Walmart Email: How a Customer Care Team Almost Deleted a Partnership

[29:00] DTC to Wholesale: A Completely Different Ballgame

[32:00] Raising Less Than $4 Million and Having $33 in the Bank

[34:00] What Sergio Actually Thinks About Brands Raising Tens of Millions

[36:00] The American Pacific Group Deal: What Attracted Institutional Interest

[38:00] How to Get Your House in Order Before a Fundraise

[40:00] How the CEO Role Changes as the Company Grows

[42:00] Execution Is Everything: The Difference Between Acceptable and Unacceptable Failure

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube

🌐 Full-length episodes at CXTInvestments.com

📍 Follow Tina on LinkedIn for founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.

🎙 There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba

In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, speaks with Maharukh Dalal, founder and head coach of The Career Accelerator for Women, a coaching company that helps ambitious mid-to-senior level women rise to the next level of their careers with measurable outcomes.

Maharukh spent two decades building a corporate career across four industries and four countries, finance on Wall Street, hospitality, consulting, and global leadership at a Fortune 500 company. When she was passed over for a VP role she was certain she had earned, she didn't just process the disappointment. She found the language for what had gone wrong, and eventually built a coaching practice around it. The insight at the center of everything she does: being the most reliable expert in the room and being seen as the obvious choice for leadership are two entirely different things.

In this episode, Maharukh and Tina get into the real mechanics of career advancement — the frameworks, the blind spots, the internal work, and the advocacy architecture that most high performers never think to build.

In This Episode:

Why the Expert Trap keeps high performers stuck, and what it actually takes to be seen as leadership material

The Name It and Claim It framework: how to articulate your ambition to the people who can help you get there

What the CLAIM framework is and how it guides clients from clarity to mastery in six letters

Why coaching is not about giving advice, and why advice doesn't stick even when it's right

How to design your identity as someone who does hard things, so your actions follow automatically

Why you cannot scale a service business one-to-one, and the cohort model that changed everything for Maharukh's practice

What a great executive coach actually does, and the questions to ask before you hire one

Chapters:

[02:09] Hype Song: A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman

[02:33] Maharukh's Background: Four Industries, Four Countries, Two Decades

[03:16] The Inflection Point: Ikigai, an HBS Coach, and a New Direction

[04:17] The Mistake: Leading With Skills Instead of Thinking Like an Entrepreneur

[06:00] The Story That Started It All: The VP Role She Didn't Get

[07:43] The Expert Trap: What Holds High Performers Back From Promotion

[08:18] What Is an Executive Coach? The Best Description Maharukh Has

[10:04] How She Works With Clients: Group vs. One-to-One Coaching

[11:30] The Right Cadence: Why Bi-Weekly Sessions Work

[12:42] The Patterns She Sees: What High Performers Are Missing

[13:23] Name It and Claim It: The Two-Step Most Ambitious Women Skip

[15:05] What Makes a Great Executive Coach

[17:00] Why Coaching Is Not Advice — and Why Advice Doesn't Stick

[17:49] The Whole Person: Why Personal and Professional Are Never Separate

[20:00] Maintaining Energy and Resilience as a Coach and Entrepreneur

[22:30] What Actually Moves the Needle: How Maharukh Runs Her Business

[24:21] Why One-to-One Doesn't Scale — and the Cohort Model That Changed Everything

[25:16] The CLAIM Framework: Clarity, Liberation, Authority, Influence, Mastery

[29:16] Who the Career Accelerator Is For

[29:45] The Next Five Years: Corporate Workshops, Keynotes, and a TEDx Talk

[30:57] Designing Your Identity as Someone Who Does Hard Things

[32:09] Why Coaching Is a Secret Weapon, and Why Maharukh Has a Team of Coaches Herself

[33:15] Desert Island Product: Smith's Rose Lip Balm

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube

🌐 Full-length episodes at CXTInvestments.com

📍 Follow Tina on LinkedIn for founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.

🎙 There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba

In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, speaks with Dr. Brent Ridge, co-founder of Beekman 1802, bestselling author of Goat Wisdom, and champion of kindness and community, to talk about building one of the most distinctive and purpose-driven brands in beauty over the past 18 years.

Brent and his partner Josh did not set out to build a beauty company. They bought a farm in upstate New York, said yes to a neighbor who needed somewhere to graze his goats, and when the 2008 recession wiped out both their incomes simultaneously, Googled what they could make with goat milk. What followed is an journey from soap bars wrapped at the dining room table to a nationally distributed brand with a Harvard Business School case study, a landmark deal with Ulta Beauty, and a private equity partnership with Eurazeo.

In This Episode:

• How a note in a mailbox from a neighbor with 100 goats became the founding act of kindness that started Beekman 1802

• Why Brent drove three and a half hours every day for eight weeks to sell soap at Henri Bendel: and what he learned from watching master saleswomen work the floor

• How one Instagram post asking "Ulta vs Sephora" got the CEO of Ulta to fly to Albany and drive an hour to the farm

• The midnight phone call that changed everything: firing their CEO the night before a major deal closed

• How they navigated the pandemic after investing millions to launch in Ulta, then watching every store close

• Why Brent believes the world does not need another beauty product, and what brands actually need to offer instead

• What the convergence of beauty, health, and wellness means for the next generation of consumer brands

Chapters:

[01:30] Welcome: Meet Dr. Brent Ridge of Beekman 1802

[02:45] From Longevity Medicine at Harvard to Martha Stewart Living

[04:00] Apple Picking, Sharon Springs, and a Million Dollar Mortgage

[05:40] The Note in the Mailbox: Farmer John and 100 Goats

[06:28] The Recession Hits: Googling What to Make With Goat Milk

[08:13] OG Content Creators: Facebook, Blogging, and Telling the Story

[11:19] You Can Make Us the Butt of Every Joke — But Everyone Else Is the Hero

[13:16] How the Docuseries Documented the Founding of Beekman 1802

[15:00] Henri Bendel, a Three-by-Three Table, and Eight Weeks of Driving

[17:00] The Sales Lesson That Changed Everything: Get It in Their Hand First

[18:19] Vanity Fair, Anthropologie, and Their First National Retailer

[21:10] You Are the Salesperson — Until Your Customer Does It for You

[22:26] The Skin Science: Goat Milk, pH, and the Microbiome

[27:32] Better Aging: Why Beekman Thinks Differently About the Skin

[28:00] Kindness as an Official INCI Ingredient: The Science Behind the Glow

[30:38] Harvard Longevity Research: The Only Thing That Predicts a Long Life

[33:12] The Instagram Post That Got the Ulta CEO to Fly to the Farm

[34:21] Pandemic Hits the Week of the Ulta Launch

[37:31] William Hood, Moelis, and Shepherding the Fundraise

[39:02] The CEO Question: Mitch Hera and the Harvard Business School Case Study

[42:00] Eurazeo, Jill Scalamandre, and the Next Chapter of Leadership

[43:41] Omni-Channel Is the Future: What the Past Decade Got Wrong

[46:08] The Beauty Reset: Going Back to Pre-Pandemic Growth Expectations

[48:45] Advice for Early-Stage Founders: Play the Long Game, Find Your Purpose

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube

🌐 Full-length episodes at CXTInvestments.com

📍 Follow Tina on LinkedIn for founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.

🎙 There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba

In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, sits down with Sali Christeson, founder and CEO of Argent, to talk about building the workwear brand that is redefining what professional women wear, and what they deserve.

Sali spent a decade in banking, grad school, and tech before leaving her job cold turkey in 2015 to build the brand she could never find. Ten years later, Argent has grown from a pop-up at a women's conference to a multi-city retail presence with a devoted community of professional women. This episode is candid, tactical, and full of hard-won lessons on brand-building, fundraising, COVID survival, and what it actually means to be a mission-driven business.

In This Episode:

How Sali launched Argent by popping up at a women's conference and selling $30,000 in one day

Why female-founded, female-focused, and apparel are three strikes against you in fundraising, and how she overcame these major hurdles

Sali’s approach to fundraising her own way: family offices, values-aligned investors, and no check minimums

What it means to “not hear no,” and where that powerful conviction comes from

How Sali survived COVID at eight-and-a-half months pregnant by going lean overnight and pivoting a hot pink suit into a viral voting campaign

Howard Schultz’s crucial hiring advice that she ignored and then learned the hard way

Why brand-building cannot be shortcut with paid advertising — and why this is finally paying off for Argent

Argent's all-time bestselling product (hint: it is not a blazer!)

Sali’s advice for female founders: do not give up your power

Chapters:

[00:00] Ambition Suits You: Meet Sali Christeson of Argent

[01:45] Hype Song: Unstoppable by Sia

[02:00] The White Space That Became Argent

[02:53] A Decade Across Banking, Grad School, and Tech

[03:30] The 2015 Study That Changed Everything

[05:22] Born to Build: Sali's Entrepreneurial Roots

[05:34] How She Structured Her First Six Months Before Launch

[07:26] The Conference Pop-Up That Became Day One of Business

[09:28] Why Men Running Fashion Explains Everything About the Gap Argent Fills

[10:38] Fundraising With Three Strikes Against You

[11:46] From Convertible Note to Series B: How Sali Built Her Capital Stack

[13:32] Doing It Her Own Way: Throwing Out the Fundraising Playbook

[15:51] The Clear End Goal That Drives Every Fundraising Conversation

[17:09] I Don't Hear No: Where Sali's Conviction Comes From

[20:12] How She Psyches Herself Up: The Women Argent Dresses

[24:18] Never Above Customer Service: How Sali Still Shows Up

[25:27] The Art of Brand Building: Why It Takes Ten Years

[27:37] The DTC Era: What She Got Right and What She Missed

[30:20] Allbirds and the Cautionary Tale of Growth at All Costs

[34:21] COVID: Going Lean Overnight Eight and a Half Months Pregnant

[36:26] The Hot Pink Suit That Went Viral and Made Their Year

[37:31] Team Building: The Howard Schultz Advice She Had to Learn the Hard Way

[40:25] Building in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York

[42:54] Argent Today: Distribution, Scaling, and Converting Awareness

[44:50] Where She Wants to Open Next: Secondary Cities and London

[45:47] The All-Time Bestselling Product (It Is the Straight Leg Trouser)

[47:32] Quality, Pricing, and Why Fashion Gets a Bad Rap

[48:24] What She Would Do If She Were Not Running Argent

[49:21] The Reluctant Face of the Brand

[50:33] Advice for Female Founders: Do Not Give Up Your Power

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube🌐 Full-length episodes at

CXTInvestments.com

📍 Follow me on LinkedIn for more founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.

🎙️ There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba

In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, sits down with Manica Blain, investor and advisor at Top Knot Ventures, to talk about early stage consumer investing, working side by side with founders, and what it takes to build and back great brands.

Manica's career spans investment banking, private equity, and venture capital — including co-founding Campfire Capital alongside former Lululemon CEO Christine Day and CFO John Curry. Today, through Top Knot Ventures, she backs consumer brands doing $1–5M in revenue and rolls up her sleeves to help them scale. She recently celebrated her first exit, which returned 2x everything she deployed over four years. This episode is honest, tactical, and full of hard-won perspective for founders and investors alike.

In This Episode:

• How Manica went from investment banking and private equity to early stage consumer venture

• Why she co-founded Campfire Capital with the Lululemon executive team — and what she learned

• The founder quality she looks for above everything else: the ability to convince people to do things they wouldn't normally do

• What her first exit taught her about the emotional reality of selling a company — and why founders and investors are never fully aligned

• Why not every business should take capital, and why if, when, and who matters as much as how much

• Her hot take on raising money to be on a list versus raising money to actually build something

• What keeps her up at night in today's unpredictable macro environment

• How she balances building Top Knot Ventures with two young kids and no team — and why she wouldn't have it any other way

Chapters:

[00:00] A Founder's Worst Nightmare: Selling Too Soon — or Not Selling at All

[01:45] Welcome: Meet Manica Blain of Top Knot Ventures

[02:30] Breakfast as a Religion and the Top Knot Origin Story

[04:00] Career Journey: From Investment Banking to Private Equity

[06:00] How Lululemon Executives Led Manica Into Venture Capital

[08:30] Co-Founding Campfire Capital: A $32M Fund Backed by Lululemon Legends

[10:30] Moving From Institutional Investing to Early Stage Consumer Brands

[13:00] Why She Started Top Knot Ventures With Two Kids Under Two

[15:00] 15 Investments in Four Years: What She's Learned

[17:00] What Manica Actually Looks for in a Founder

[19:00] The Ability to Convince People to Get on the Train

[21:00] Drive vs. Flexibility: The Hardest Founder Quality to Underwrite

[23:00] Why She Takes a Long Time to Say Yes — and Why That Has Made Her Better

[24:00] Her First Exit: What a 2x Return Taught Her About Founders and Investors

[27:00] Are Founders and Investors Ever Truly Aligned?

[29:00] The Challenge of Running a Solo Fund — and What Comes Next

[31:00] Balancing Top Knot Ventures With Motherhood and Marriage

[34:00] Be Open: Careers Are Long and the Best Chapters Are Unplanned

[35:00] What Keeps Her Up at Night: Tariffs, Whiplash, and a Wildly Unpredictable World

[37:00] Fundraising Advice for Consumer Founders: If, When, and Who

[40:00] Do You Want to Be Rich or Do You Want to Be Famous?

[42:00] Closing Reflections and What's Next for Top Knot Ventures

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube

🌐 Full-length episodes at CXTInvestments.com

📍 Follow me on LinkedIn for more founder stories, investor insights, and candid conversations.

🎙️ There Is No Alternative: Lessons in Entrepreneurial Leadership with Tina Bou-Saba