Womansplain

Allyse Cirillo helped scale a shapewear brand from $25M to $400M, then lost 85 pounds while building her own skincare company. Her manufacturer flew in to back her, and SAINT JŌ is now a plant-based, five-step ritual with a 40%+ repurchase rate, stocked at John Bell & Croyden in London.

SAINT JŌ is in two of our holiday gift guides. The Complete Travel Set ($99) is in The Corporate & Travel Guide and the Brighten Serum ($90) is in The Beauty Guide. You can gift either one on its own or in The Frequent Flyer ($149) and The Glow ($189) boxes, both shipping before Christmas: womansplainpod.com/gift-guides

We cover the margin fight that pushed her to go out on her own, why every bottle is numbered 1 through 5, earned media in Glamour, Cosmo and Forbes within six months, angel investors who came to her before revenue, a UK launch that started with one event connection, and only four returns on 5,000+ bottles.

Allyse spoke on our Fashion & Beauty panel at the first Womansplain Summit last week and sent every speaker home with SAINT JŌ. The Womansplain Collective is open for 2027: founder matching, members-only dinners, and a ticket to next year’s Summit. womansplainpod.com/membership

Find SAINT JŌ: shopsaintjo.com | IG @shop.saintjo | TikTok @shop.saintjo Find Womansplain: IG @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

The best moments from Season 6 of Womansplain, from Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild to a $3M round raised at 26. Hosts Sola Park and Brooke Sowa revisit the founders behind Scarlett Chase, Sonsie, Nelle Atelier, Mize Dining, Sundays, Wayan, Musaafer, Barrière and more.

Summit weekend only: use SUMMIT15 for 15% off Womansplain Collective+ membership at womansplainpod.com/membership, through Sunday, October 18.

Inside: five years spent perfecting one pump, a $600 sample quote that ended with a fast exit from an LA factory, a two-month deadline to leave corporate for good, a furniture brand launched three months before the pandemic, a recipe learned from a cab driver’s wife, why one founder went to Germany for her supplement formulas, and the sunk cost fallacy in relationships.

The inaugural Womansplain Summit is this Friday, October 16, at The Malin Chelsea, keynoted by Robinhood CIO Stephanie Guild. It’s officially sold out.

The Womansplain Collective+ is open: founder matching, member dinners, and next year’s Summit ticket included. womansplainpod.com/membership

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

Classical oboist turned Wharton MBA and healthcare VC Lisa Rhoads couldn't find a white shirt that fit, cost less than $1,000, and survived a spilled glass of wine, so she and her daughter Bryn, a Parsons-trained stylist, rebuilt it from scratch as The Anteros. They redesigned the collar, cut, and button spacing for women and sourced from a sister-run Italian mill and ultra-fine Australian Merino.

Free shipping at theanteros.com with code WOMANSPLAIN.

We talk about getting into closed European mills, the double button at the chest, three to five rounds per color, cutting the wholesale markup with an affiliate-style model, natural fibers without the fearmongering, a petite pant that's reproportioned instead of hemmed, and running a company between Italy and New York.

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 The Anteros: theanteros.com | IG @the.anteros | brynrhoads.substack.com Find Womansplain: IG @womansplainpod | [email protected] | womansplainpod.com/newsletter

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