Tristan is the Founder and CEO of Walker & Company, a leading CPG company making health and beauty simple for people of color. Walker & Company products included the Bevel shaving line for Black men and FORM Beauty, a women’s hair care collection designed for all hair textures launched in 2017. Walker & Company raised over $30M in venture funding from funds like Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, Collaborative Fund, GV, Upfront and Felicis. Walker & Company was acquired by Proctor & Gamble in 2018. Tristan is also the founder of CODE2040, a non-profit dedicated to promoting diversity in the tech industry, and is on the boards of both Foot Locker and ShakeShack. Tristan has been named USA Today’s Person of the Year, was on Fortune’s 40 under 40 list, and was on Ebony’s 100 most powerful people list.

In this episode, we get into:

How Tristan leveraged his own unique lived experience

The importance of identifying an opportunity based on your own unique lived experience

How to turn your unique experience into a strength

How to react when someone tells you the market you’re in isn’t big enough

The power of optimism and authenticity

Why focus is so critical in the early days and what happens if you lose it

The six values that guide all of Tristan’s decisions

Why the secret to freedom is ownership