4.6 • 12 Ratings
🗓️ 8 August 2025
⏱️ 5 minutes
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Daniella Pierson has cozied up to everyone from Diane von Furstenberg to Selena Gomez, burnishing her image as her businesses unraveled. A case study in how hubris is bad for business.
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0:00.0 | Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Friday, August 8th. |
0:04.9 | Today on Forbes, Smoke and Mirrors, how this entrepreneur exaggerated and self-promoted her way into turmoil. |
0:14.2 | Daniela Pearson turned 30 on Monday, a milestone acknowledged by a bevy of successful friends, |
0:20.5 | from Spanx founder Sarah Blakely |
0:22.3 | to the singer Jewel to designer Diane von Furstenberg. It's an especially auspicious birthday |
0:28.2 | for an entrepreneur who spent her 20s building a lifestyle newsletter called The Nuzette, |
0:33.5 | which he launched as a student at Boston University in 2015, garnering a feature in USA Today in 2019, |
0:40.8 | debuting on our Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2020, |
0:44.5 | appearing on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine in 2021 |
0:47.6 | with Selena Gomez for a second company, |
0:50.4 | Mental Health Startup Wondermind, |
0:52.6 | ranking number 16 on Inc. 5,000's list of fastest growing |
0:56.3 | private companies in 2022, and giving talks and speeches throughout, at schools from Stanford to |
1:03.1 | BU and media gatherings from Forbes Power Women's Summit to Newsweek's Women's Global Impact Forum |
1:08.6 | just this past week. |
1:14.0 | Her high profile owes itself to brains and hustle. |
1:20.3 | And, it turns out, a consistent history of large exaggerations and extreme self-promotion, |
1:23.2 | those latter two traits reinforcing the other. |
1:28.9 | Over the course of the last three months, Forbes spoke to more than a dozen people who've worked closely with her and reviewed documents, press releases, and videos of all four of her recent business ventures. |
1:35.1 | What emerges is someone who fails to understand the difference between entrepreneurial zeal and extreme hyperbole, |
1:42.0 | and now faces a potential reckoning. |
1:45.2 | For all the celebrity plotts and press love, Pearson's businesses seem to be unraveling. |
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