I Need Nyakio Grieco's Fundraising Skills
My thoughts on the latest— and very staunch—allegations against the Thirteen Lune founder.
On yesterday’s sunny afternoon I was on the phone with the SBA discussing my business loan—the one I’m still saddled with even though I shut my company down. The Established, rest her soul. I was just getting off hold when my other line started buzzing incessantly.
It was a beauty founder friend—someone who used to share a retailer with me in Thirteen Lune.
I texted them to give me 5.
CHECK YOUR DM’s
They messaged me when I told them I couldn’t talk right now.
After I hung up with SBA, I opened my messages.
My jaw dropped.
From Kirbie Johnson Instagram
My jaw dropped.
—whose Substack I’ve been following—published a major story: Nyakio Grieco, co-founder of Thirteen Lune, is being sued by her investors for securities fraud and alleged misuse of funds.According to the recent lawsuit filed by Thirteen Lune’s own investors, Nyakio and other defendants are being accused of fraudulent concealment, misuse of company funds, and orchestrating an insolvency process that effectively wiped out equity—while placing herself as CEO on the other side of it.
The lawsuit, filed by Beauty Generations Fund I, LP and Relevance Capital IV, LP, outlines allegations that Nyakio used the company credit card to fund personal vacations, beauty treatments (including a $13,000 cellulite service), streaming services, concert tickets—even Taylor Swift seats—while the company was deep in debt. And while vendors and brand partners waited for payments, the company entered a little-known insolvency process called “assignment for the benefit of creditors,” or ABC, which functions as an alternative to bankruptcy.
According to the suit, this move was both orchestrated and concealed from investors.
“Nyakio Grieco wasted no time focusing that goal on herself as she sought millions of dollars from investors, while personally enriching herself and her family... ignoring shareholder requests and later, demands, for information.”
— Beauty Generations Fund I, LP et al. v. Nyakio Grieco et al., filed March 4, 2025, Los Angeles County (as reported by Kirbie Johnson’s Substack)
There are 17 formal complaints in the suit—ranging from aiding and abetting securities fraud to breach of fiduciary duty.
This isn’t just some case of messy bookkeeping or an eyebrow-raising receipt. It’s deep, it’s institutional and it’s now public.
My phone had been pinging all day—founders, past customers, friends—people who knew about my early ties to the brand asking for my thoughts.
Honestly, though? I’m not too surprised the story came. The signs were stacking. Nyakio—someone who has come under growing criticism over the past several months—had already been a point of conversation in beauty founder circles long before the lawsuit dropped. First came whispers about the restructuring led by one of their debt collectors (I got the mass email as a former vendor). Then came rumblings—public and private—about unpaid brand partners tied to the JCPenney deal.
I feel so many ways about the recent news.
My ex-brand, The Established, was one of the original 13 to launch with Thirteen Lune in 2020, back when their mission was to center and elevate Black-owned brands. I was excited to grow so early with the platform. Nyakio saw a ripe opportunity—and capitalized on it (as I regrettably should have!). If there was ever a time to raise money, pitch your vision, and grab the checks, it was then—when it paid off to be Black in beauty and investors were more likely to throw money at you.
That window was wide open. Now in hindsight I know how fleeting that moment really was.
From where I’m seated in 2025, I never would’ve predicted the tides turning the way they have. The state of the industry has painfully regressed, the dream of staying indie while growing huge has gotten harder, and many founders now either get acquired, partner with PE, or flame out as casualties of a system they were never built to survive.
As the Thirteen Lune platform grew and took on more funding—most notably from a round that included the now-disgraced Sean Combs and Miss Vagina Eggs herself, Gwyneth Paltrow—I noticed a shift from its original ethos. Thirteen Lune began onboarding non-Black and non-POC brands as “allies,” even bringing in more mainstream brands like Vintner’s Daughter.
With each new dollar raised it seemed like a further departure from the brands original mission. I saw it at that time as pressure from investors. If you want those big institutional dollars, sometimes that looks like selling out a little. I thought we all quietly had that understanding, but maybe that was just my understanding of it. She was just playing a very unfair game her way.
It was around the time of their first big cash injection that I let go of the idea that Thirteen Lune was the promised future of minority-owned beauty. Still, as a top-selling brand, I enjoyed the benefits of being on the platform and was often singled out by Nyakio, which brought me precious brand visibility. Naturally, I always liked her. She was sweet and felt almost motherly to me at an event the day we finally met in person. I felt that she championed The Established. My product ended up in a Harper’s Bazaar video, landed in the hands of her friend Joanna Vargas, and I even recorded a bit for Good Morning America, the first request I’d ever had like that at the time.
But for many founders I knew who had joined the platform after me, the experience didn’t always seem to live up to the promise. The initial excitement had faded and some felt overlooked and that their partnership with the retailer was unsuccessful.
With each new round—eventually totaling over $12M—founders I knew, especially those actively raising, were watching closely and curiously.
Where was the money actually going to go?
The conversation online has been heavy—and not just about Nyakio. A friend of mine, Tomi Talabi, the founder of Black Beauty Club spoke out in a brave post I pulled from her IG Story. It captured what I think many in the entrepreneurial beauty collective have been feeling:
Via Tomi Talabi Instagram
“It brings to light broader concerns about how funding and opportunities were distributed during the height of the social justice movement... Instead of fostering collective progress, we saw the rise of a select few who maintained gatekeeping practices, leaving behind many Black founders who had been building businesses for years without the same access to capital.”
In other words—when you have the ball you’re supposed to pass it, not drop it!
There was a window post-2020 where the industry could have shifted for good. Real money was moving and there was an energy, visibility, and a clear demand to support Black founders. But instead of building a sustainable ecosystem, that momentum got funneled into a few shiny figureheads. And when the spotlight narrowed, so did the capital.
I don’t know that I expected every founder who got funding to carry the whole community on their back—but when you accept the role of being a symbol, people expect you to build more than a personal brand — even more so when you build a platform shaped around championing the very people now left feeling shut out.
So much of the grief lives in the irony.
In conversation after conversation, I’ve heard the same fear echoed: this just fucked it up for all of us. I’ve even said it half-joking. As if the fallout from one founder’s decisions might close the funding doors indefinitely for every Black person in beauty.
But what I can’t stop thinking about: If this was the catalyst, does that even say much about the shot we had to begin with?
Have white women stopped being funded en masse after Elizabeth Holmes? (She’ll be rewarded with a doc, a biopic and a book deal soon, I’m sure of it.)
If one founder’s downfall is enough to unravel all the progress, I think we have a lot more work to do.
Is it fair to place the burden of systemic change on one person? Normally I’d say no —I’m all for rejecting the expectation to perform perfection in ways my counterparts never have to—me, PERSONALLY. But when your brand raises millions off of empowerment—when your mission is marketed as a movement—you don’t just represent yourself anymore. And when that story falls apart, it doesn’t land quietly.
Should she have done better? Mmm.
Is this punishment for “actively gatekeeping,” as Tomi names it? Mmm.
I don’t feel qualified to make those distinctions—I just want to name the tension between individual ambition and collective expectation. And nothing hits harder than the weight of Black expectation (just take a trip to Target’s comment section on Tiktok — if they’ve turned them back on).
Let’s talk about what Nyakio actually did pull off, and what that says about fundraising, visibility, and power.
A quick trip to her Instagram and it’s obvious the woman is connected. Very LA.
What Nyakio did—and what her digital footprint always conveyed—was that she moved with the kind of fluency and confidence that the system rewards. It takes social capital. Proximity. A curated, respectable brand of ambition. The kind that reads as safe to investors because it mirrors the success stories they already know.
Even though I still have a $24 outstanding invoice with Thirteen Lune from last year’s brand closure, there’s still something underneath all of this that I admire, something no one’s really talking about. It’s not the alleged fraud, of course—but the sheer audacity, that unapologetic entitlement to scale.
So many of us, relegate ourselves to shrinking and self-funding.
And to be fair—this also wasn’t her first rodeo. Nyakio sold her original namesake brand, Nyakio Beauty, to Unilever in 2017. That kind of exit holds weight. So when she came back to the table with Thirteen Lune, she had the track record and the rolodex.
To even be considered “fundable” as a Black—woman, no less—in beauty, you have to perform a very specific kind of conformity. The right co-signs. The right language. The right signals. It’s a tightrope. And she tiptoed straight to the bank.
This is where my thoughts split.
Do I think that what Nyakio is accused of doing while her company is deeply in debt is groundbreaking, unheard of, earth shattering news?
No. And certainly not as someone who binges American Greed before bedtime.
What company isn’t in debt? That’s what being rich is all about—DEBT. Even those It-Girl brands you guys love to analyze on here every hour-on-the-hour don’t have it on their P+L like you think they do, and are simply leveraging debt.
I think with this news, the salaciousness is what’s doing the heavy lifting. (We were all gripped, initially!)
But who hasn’t whooped it up a little off of company funds? Some of us get lashes and go to dinner, some of us spend almost 9 grand on Amazon in 5 months (allegedly)—what was in that cart? But on the flip-side, is $20,000 on flights really all that bad? That can’t even buy you a long-haul trip private. If you ask me, I think the expenditures had room to be a little bit more shocking. If she was gonna go there (allegedly), I low-key wish she went all the way. $165,000 doesn’t seem worth the trouble.
Beneath the spectacle, the silent truth is this is not unusual behavior. It might be irresponsible. But it’s not unprecedented.
In theory, I also don’t think inflating your company valuation is inherently wrong. That’s what a valuation is after all, isn’t it? A number you pulled out of your ass. You can configure it around almost anything, from projected partnerships to clout and vibes.
I think the misstep, though, is also in her biggest power play—her business maneuvering around retaining ownership without personal investment.
According to the suit, the ABC was filed without adequate notice to shareholders. It also alleges that Nyakio kept substantial ownership in the company without ever investing her own money. Meanwhile, Thirteen Lune allegedly held significant credit card debt and sold off its assets for zero cash, all while flaunting a $10 million valuation built on misrepresented future investor interest.
Pause.
Zero cash. Full ownership. No personal investment. Still holding onto the CEO title on the other side of the filing.
It’s the level of strategic and calculated I had to wrap my head around several times before I wrote this. It reads to me like a wealth transfer— with everyone else taking the hit, except the one holding the reins on the other side.
But I think for her, this may have toed too far outside the lines. With all of her power plays, the game players may not have liked that she never put real skin in the game—no capital, no financial risk, just control.
Maybe that’s the part she could have underestimated?
And now, she’s in the hot seat.
I’m seeing this through so many different angles, and this is one of those instances where multiple things just are going to have to be simultaneously true.
Although undeniably disappointing news for the Black beauty collective, I’m tethered to this overarching truth: Nyakio’s not doing anything differently than what white founders do everyday and completely under the radar.
The biggest crime to me, if anything were those Taylor Swift tickets.