A question that keeps landing in my DMs: how do I build income that isn't just more content?
There are a few answers to this. And I used to answer this question in a couple of ways.
I've been building income streams for years, some are passive, some very active, some compound and grow exponentially, and some are like one hit wonders. The 6 core income streams I have now: brand strategy, speaking, books, courses, consulting, brand partnerships.
Each one made the next one more possible. And, so far, none of them has replaced the others.
But there's one I've been learning about in the last few years that most people in our world don't even know is accessible to them.
Angel investing.
Tbh, I didn't think this was for me either for a long time. I thought it required knowing a VC or having serious cash sitting around. It doesn't.
I got my first call to join an angel investor round a year ago — the ask was that I invest $25K for a vested interest in a creator affiliate tech tool. I ended up passing, but it made me start asking: if I had a chance to bet on a diamond in the rough, what companies would I support? Which founders would I have full faith in to become the next great cult brand?
So what actually is angel investing?
An angel investor puts money into a company at an early stage — often before it's on shelves, before the world knows what it is. You receive equity in return. An actual ownership stake.
The most accessible structure that makes this possible is called an SPV — a Special Purpose Vehicle. It pools a group of people together into one entity that holds a stake in a company. So instead of writing a massive check solo, you come in as part of a group. Minimums in many rounds start at $2,500.
That's the door. That means you can give a company $2,500 and have an ownership stake.
Why this conversation is different for creators
A brand's biggest line item is almost always marketing. Customer acquisition, ad spend, building awareness from zero. Creators don't have that problem. We have a built-in audience, a community that trusts our taste, and organic reach no media buy can replicate.
When a creator invests in a brand early, they're bringing more than their money. They bring credibility, visibility, a community that moves things. That's worth so much, and I predict brands will wake up to this.
Btw, this is exactly what my friend Jaclyn Ling, CEO of YC-backed Bento, who's worked with 80K+ creators, has been saying: investors have never taken creators seriously as founders or investors. And that's changing. She’s also the lead investor in my SPV round for Casa Noon, and she sees the creator-to-investor pipeline so clearly.
How do you actually make money?
When a brand gets acquired, the investors who hold equity get a payout proportional to their stake. So if you own 0.2% of a company that sells for $500 million, that's your 0.2%. The earlier you got in, the more of the company you own, and the bigger that slice.
Let's look at a few examples from the world I'm closest to (beauty!), these brands that have become household names.
Rhode is probably the most talked about right now. Hailey Bieber launched it in 2022 — direct-to-consumer, no retail, 10 products. That's it. Three years later, e.l.f. Beauty bought it for up to $1 billion. The brand was doing $212 million in net sales the year before the deal closed, and Hailey stayed on to lead creative. Of course she’s probably the biggest influencer on the planet, but it’s a worthwhile case study.
Summer Fridays is the one that hits different for me because Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Ireland are creators. They built the whole brand from Instagram before it ever touched a shelf. TSG Consumer Partners took a majority stake in 2024 — estimated $100M in sales — and both of them stayed on to run it. That one is worth sitting with.
And then there's Anomaly, which just happened three weeks ago. Priyanka Chopra Jonas co-founded a clean haircare brand in 2021. Reliance Retail — India's largest retailer — just made it their first-ever global beauty acquisition. Five years from launch to exit.
And it's happening in prestige skincare too:
Tatcha was founded by Vicky Tsai in 2009 after a trip to Kyoto where she discovered geisha skincare rituals. She built an entire brand around that moment — Japanese botanicals, a very specific aesthetic, a woman behind it who actually believed in every ingredient. Unilever bought it in 2019 for a reported ~$500 million. Ten years in.
Drunk Elephant came from Tiffany Masterson, sitting in her kitchen, convinced that most of what was in her skincare was making her skin worse.
She started removing ingredients. Built a brand around a "suspicious six" list — the things she'd eliminated. No compromise, no exceptions, a very specific point of view. Shiseido acquired it in 2019 for a reported $845 million. Seven years after she founded it.
Youth to the People started as two cousins who believed skincare should have real ingredients — the kind you'd actually put in your body. Kale. Green tea. Spinach. Vitamins. L'Oréal Luxe bought it six years later for a reported ~$350 million.
All three: founder obsessed, ingredient specific, community first.
What the math looks like (Smart Girls love math!)
If someone had invested $10,000 in Youth to the People at a $5M valuation early on and held through the ~$350M exit — accounting for typical dilution across funding rounds — that could have returned somewhere between $70,000 and $420,000.
The same $10,000 in Rhode at a similar early valuation, through a $1B exit, could have returned between $200,000 and $1.2M.
Early-stage investing carries real risk. Brands fail. Exits don't always happen. But this is what it looks like when it works — and the earlier you get in, the more meaningful your initial investment can be.
A few reels worth watching if you want to go deeper:
Personally, angel investing is one of the income streams I'm actively building right now — alongside everything else.
The goal has always been to layer income that compounds, that builds equity over time, that doesn't require me to show up somewhere every day for it to work.
This felt like the piece of that puzzle I hadn't touched yet. And once I started understanding how it works, I couldn't stop thinking about how many people in this community should know about it too.
We’re also raising angel investor funds via an SPV for Casa Noon.
If you have questions, reply here, happy to chat!
This email is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security.
One more thing before you go: we turned part of the Cult Brand Blueprint™ into a free guide — How to Build a Brand World — and it's built for the founders who are ready to go deeper than aesthetics.
Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe for a weekly dose of No Gatekeeping Strategies, Cult Brand Thinking, and Smart Ideas.
Want more Unschool in your ears? Listen to the Unschool Podcast here.
