Sainabou "Sai" Lowe started SAIbysai by painting a pair of thrifted pants in her college dorm and selling copies to classmates for $20. Now her hand-painted wearable art has been on a SoHo billboard through a Gushers x Hypebeast collab, and she still runs the whole brand herself.

Sai tells us how she went from Pace to LIM College and graduated into COVID. She talks about the Hypebeast call she thought was a scam, vetting 20 manufacturers, and the five-color wool sweater that became her first manufactured piece. She also covers the origin of the Sai face, producing a runway show nearly solo, why pop-ups outsell Instagram, pushing to be heard as a woman of color in streetwear, and her plan to hire her first core team member.

The inaugural Womansplain Summit is October 16 at The Malin Chelsea, NYC, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. 120 seats, most already spoken for: luma.com/7bxd1137

The Womansplain Collective+ is open: founder matching, member dinners, and priority Summit access. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find SAIbysai: saibysai.com | IG @saibysai_

Find Womansplain: IG @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

Cleo Davis-Urman is the co-founder and CEO of Barrière, the transdermal vitamin patch brand now in more than 4,300 retail doors including Target, Walmart, and Anthropologie. She got there from luxury fashion, employee number five at Moda Operandi and later fashion director at Saks Fifth Avenue, by way of 100,000 medical-grade masks she sold during COVID and a blood panel that showed she was dangerously deficient in iron, B12, and vitamin D after ten years of taking a reputable oral supplement.

In this episode she explains why up to 98% of a swallowed supplement can be lost in digestion, why the real problem was adherence rather than formulation (about 85% of Americans start a supplement routine and fewer than 40% stay with it), why she manufactured to German and UK standards rather than take the faster route through an unregulated US supplement market, why she still refuses to make a magnesium patch, how Dear Dairy and Steady Motion push the brand past vitamins, and why she believes waiting for a perfect product is how most people talk themselves out of a company.

🎁 20% off Barrière with code WS20: mybarriere.myshopify.com/discount/WS20

🎟️ The inaugural Womansplain Summit is October 16 at The Malin Chelsea, NYC, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. Cleo is on the Women's Health panel, What Medicine Still Gets Wrong, at 10:05 AM. 120 seats, most already spoken for. $275 through September 30, then $300: luma.com/7bxd1137

💌 Womansplain Collective+: founder matching, member dinners, priority Summit access. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find Barrière: mybarriere.com | @mybarriere

Find Womansplain: @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

Mithu Malik is a trained pharmacist who co-owns Musaafer, the Michelin-starred Indian restaurant in Houston, now with a second location in Tribeca and a speakeasy, SAAQI, downstairs. She and her husband Shammi built the business from an ice cream import route in Lagos, where he slept on top of the shipping container at the port so the power cut wouldn't melt the stock.

She talks about the pint of Blue Bunny that took a bullet during the coup in Ivory Coast, the 400-question franchise exam that taught them the restaurant business, opening The Spice Route as the first Indian fine dining room in Lagos, opening Musaafer one month before COVID shut it down and becoming the first Houston restaurant to announce it publicly, the 100-day journey through India that sourced their spices and one recipe from a cab driver's wife, the three-week staff training that covers ancient civilizations through modern Indian politics, and what she tells anyone starting a company, beginning with mopping your own floor.

🎟️ The inaugural Womansplain Summit is October 16 at The Malin Chelsea, NYC, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. 120 seats, most already spoken for: luma.com/7bxd1137

💌 The Womansplain Collective+ is open: founder matching, member dinners, and priority Summit access. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find Musaafer: musaaferrestaurants.com | @musaafernyc | @musaaferhouston | @saaqinyc

Find Womansplain: @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

Amy Chan got laid off and cheated on in the same stretch, then built the first science-based breakup bootcamp from what she learned crawling out of it. Twenty years a dating columnist and a former CMO of SPIN, she's run Renew Breakup Bootcamp retreats for ten years, landed press from The New York Times and Good Morning America, and gets 80% of her one-on-one clients into relationships within a year. Her new book is Unsingle. We talk about why hiding your success is a bait and switch, preferences vs. deal breakers, the nine-date experiment, love bombing (Amy dated a con artist for three months), the four pillars of lasting love, sunk cost fallacy in relationships, and doing 100% of your 50%.

The inaugural Womansplain Summit is October 16 at The Malin Chelsea, NYC, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. 120 seats, most already spoken for: luma.com/7bxd1137

The Womansplain Collective+ is open: founder matching, member dinners, and priority Summit access. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find Renew Breakup Bootcamp: renewbreakupbootcamp.com | @renewyourheart | @missamychan Find Womansplain: @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

Robyn Berkley spent seven years as fashion director at Kelly Cutrone's People's Revolution before her health forced her out: 16 shows in a New York season, midnight most nights, and a body that stopped cooperating. She quit, flew to Bali for yoga teacher training, and came home with a name and no plan. Live the Process is now one of the first luxury activewear brands, made in its own California factory, stocked at Net-a-Porter, Selfridges, Lane Crawford and Le Bon Marché, with collaborations including the David Lynch Foundation, Moon Juice and the Whitney Museum. She has never raised a dollar.

We get into the stranger at The Dutch who called her idea the dumbest thing he'd ever heard and then became her co-founder, the two years it took to source a fabric that costs triple, the corset bodysuit that sold out on launch day at Net-a-Porter, why they went all in on DTC after building a global wholesale business, going full time in April 2020 and posting their best month ever, the Whitney x Alvin Ailey shoot on the museum rooftop, and what "our plan is no plan" actually looks like after more than a decade.

The inaugural Womansplain Summit is October 16 at The Malin Chelsea, NYC, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. 120 seats, most already spoken for: luma.com/7bxd1137

The Womansplain Collective+ is open: founder matching, member dinners, and priority Summit access. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find Live the Process: livetheprocess.com | @livetheprocess

Find Womansplain: @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

Ochi Latjuba Vongerichten co-owns Wayan and Ma•dé, and Wayan is the only Indonesian restaurant on the Michelin Guide in America. She got there by leaving Jakarta at 18 for the Culinary Institute of America, interning for Daniel Boulud, and working every job at Per Se from food runner to manager, with a mother who catered 3,000-person weddings telling her to finish what she started. In this episode: the call home where she almost quit, opening Wayan in an old Spring Street bread shop with her husband Cedric Vongerichten and partner Ezra J. William, the corn fritters Indonesians say beat Jakarta's, Padang-style dining at Ma•dé, expanding to Aspen, the Hamptons, and Miami, women-owned liquor brands, the fall 2027 cookbook, and her advice for young founders: goal, ambition, consistency, finish what you started.

The inaugural Womansplain Summit is October 16 at The Malin Chelsea, NYC, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. 120 seats, most already spoken for: luma.com/7bxd1137

The Womansplain Collective+ is open: founder matching, member dinners, and priority Summit access. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find Wayan & Ma•dé: wayan-restaurants.com | ma-de-nyc.com | @wayan_nyc | @ma_de.nyc

Find Womansplain: @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

Barbora Samieian went from nonprofit fundraiser to co-founder of Sundays, the award-winning furniture brand she launched with her husband, his sister, and a 20-year friend, three months before the pandemic. She also co-founded Vancouver salad chain Field & Social and Sundays' sister brand Hetta, all while raising four kids. We cover the chef who quit mid-shift days after she took over her first business, the shuttered restaurant that became the first Sundays showroom, why free delivery and assembly lowered their returns, keeping the collection small when more SKUs mean more revenue, and the immigrant parents who shaped her appetite for risk.

The inaugural Womansplain Summit is October 16 at The Malin Chelsea, NYC, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. 120 seats, most already spoken for: luma.com/7bxd1137

The Womansplain Collective+ is open: founder matching, member dinners, and priority Summit access. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find Sundays: sundays-company.com | @sundaysfurniture Find Hetta: hetta.com | @hettahome Find Womansplain: @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

Laura Rubin spent 15+ years running a marketing boutique after leaving a top job at USA Networks, then shut it all down to bet on AllSwell Creative and a belief that journaling had a PR problem. Today she's a Simon & Schuster author (The Big Unlock), a New York Times feature subject, and has led hundreds of science-backed workshops at Adobe, Goop, Google, and the CAA (Creative Artists Agency). We cover the day she cried at her desk over a "dream" promotion, why she gave her agency away instead of selling it, the 4x4x4 method for reluctant journalers, the UCLA research on men and journaling, when journaling can do harm, and the creative block that hit her the moment the book deal was real.

The inaugural Womansplain Summit is October 16 at The Malin Chelsea, NYC, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. 120 seats, most already spoken for: luma.com/7bxd1137

The Womansplain Collective+ is open: founder matching, member dinners, and priority Summit access. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find AllSwell: allswellcreative.com | @allswellcreative | @lauralrubin Find Womansplain: @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

Odellia Etaat left three years in corporate financial planning to launch Mize Dining, the luxury private dining brand that made her the chef New York's most discerning hosts call first, from Manhattan to the Hamptons. It started with her sister's birthday brunch: the group skipped hiring a private chef because "Odellia cooks," and she woke the next morning to a hundred screenshots of her food by 8am. Weeks after quitting, a stranger's phone call handed her a 60-person investor dinner for The Coconut Cult with one week's notice; her aunt and sister were the staff. We cover the month she tested 10-course menus on her family, her quit-or-go-back deadline, the overbooked stretch of four dinners a week on two hours of sleep, building a team of sous chefs and servers, four pounds of caviar, why no client has ever gotten a repeat menu, and her advice for leaving a stable job for the thing you'd stay up all night thinking about.

The inaugural Womansplain Summit is October 16 at The Malin Chelsea, NYC, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. 120 seats, most already spoken for: luma.com/7bxd1137

The Womansplain Collective+ is open: founder matching, member dinners, and priority Summit access. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find Mize Dining: mizedining.com | IG @mizedining | TikTok @mizedining

Find Womansplain: IG @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

Madeleine Cohen built her career inside the hottest consumer brands of the DTC era (Estée Lauder, Casper, Bala), then got laid off from her dream job and found her next company in her own closet: 30 pairs of jeans, none that fit her 5'1" frame. Today Nelle Atelier is a premium petite denim brand for women 5'4" and under, made in LA from Italian denim, past $1M in revenue and sold on Nordstrom.com.

🎁 A gift from us + Nelle Atelier: use code WOMANSPLAIN at nelleatelier.com for 15% off orders of $200+.

We get into the 500,000-person Reddit thread that validated the idea, launching in 11 months, the factory that tried to rip her off, why rise and knee placement can't be tailored in, and building a profitable-minded brand on $290K while her old employers raised millions.

🎟️ The inaugural Womansplain Summit is October 16 at The Malin Chelsea, NYC, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. 120 seats, most already spoken for: luma.com/7bxd1137

💌 The Womansplain Collective+ is open: founder matching, member dinners, and priority Summit access. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find Nelle Atelier: nelleatelier.com | @nelleatelier Find Womansplain: @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter