Good morning, Broadsheet readers! News veteran Campbell Brown is leaving Meta, broadcaster Gretchen Carlson is creating an index to protect women from potentially abusive employers, and we have the exclusive story on Kim Kardashian’s new private equity firm. Have a wonderful Wednesday!
– Star power. One year ago, Kim Kardashian made a surprising announcement. The entrepreneur, influencer, and reality TV star said she was launching a private equity firm.
Most people would agree—a private equity firm is a significant endeavor. Unlike a brand deal or an angel investing check (a more common celebrity move), a PE firm requires a yearslong time commitment, operational resources, and significant funding. But for those paying close attention to Kardashian’s rise in business, the announcement wasn’t so surprising—she doesn’t do things halfway. “I wouldn’t be involved in anything if it wasn’t fully hands-on,” she tells me.
In the new issue of Fortune—our annual Most Powerful Women issue—I profile Kardashian as she gets SKKY Partners off the ground. Our digital cover story is the first in-depth feature about SKKY since its formation last year.
Entrepreneur, influencer, and reality TV star Kim Kardashian.Grace Rivera for Fortune Her partner in the firm is Jay Sammons, a 16-year veteran of Carlyle known for his deals with the brands Supreme and Beats by Dre. With additional expertise from senior advisers Kris Jenner, Kardashian’s mother and manager, and Angela Ahrendts, the former Apple SVP and Burberry CEO, Kardashian and Sammons have a plan to help build the next generation of consumer brands. (Ahrendts talks about her decision to join the firm—her “natural next step”—here.)
While some might be skeptical of a reality star-backed private equity fund, Kardashian’s expertise sets her up well to shape the consumer landscape. Skims, her apparel brand, is now valued at $4 billion. Even before Skims’ success began to convince skeptics to take Kardashian’s business bona fides seriously, she displayed a savvy understanding of the modern consumer. An early Twitter adopter, she turned to followers as her own focus group, gaining granular consumer insights that helped her understand what consumers wanted.
Kardashian and Sammons plan to invest in categories where she has particular expertise, like fashion and beauty, but they’re also considering food and beverage and hospitality, among others. More than six months into fundraising, with a reported target fund size of $1 billion, they haven’t closed their first deal yet but are getting closer.
With SKKY, Kardashian aims to cement her legacy in business as a trendsetter and operator who can apply her skills not just to her own family, but to a new cohort of founders who don’t have the built-in advantage of a famous name.
Read my full feature in the October/November issue of Fortune and online here.
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
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- Brown signs off. Longtime TV anchor Campbell Brown joined Meta in 2017 as vice president of news partnerships before eventually overseeing the company’s global media partnerships team. Brown joined the company during its push to make Meta a go-to destination for quality news, but scrutiny from regulators regarding the algorithm’s censorship of certain stories has caused the company to abandon such plans. Axios
- Keeping a record. Former Fox News broadcaster Gretchen Carlson became a fixture of the #MeToo movement in 2016 when sexual harassment allegations she made against then-Fox News CEO Roger Ailes eventually led to his resignation. Her newest venture is a list of America’s 3,000 largest public companies ranked by their use of NDAs or other means of sweeping allegations under the rug. Fast Company
- Search surveillance scares. Around 20% of students report being worried that surveillance on school computers could flag their reproductive health and gender-affirming care searches, according to a report released yesterday from the American Civil Liberties Union. Attention paid to surveillance technology surged when students transitioned to remote learning during the pandemic. Bloomberg
- Men hack conference. Attendees of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, self-described as the largest gathering of women and nonbinary people in tech, are complaining on TikTok that men looking to network and apply for lucrative tech jobs swarmed last week's event. AnitaB.org, the event’s organizers, acknowledged the complaints, expressed their own frustration, and even alleged that participants had misreported their gender identity to ensure admission. Wired
- Siemens head pleas. Barbara Humpton, the U.S. head of German conglomerate Siemens, is becoming one of President Joe Biden’s biggest corporate supporters as she continues to urge other corporate leaders to get behind Biden administration policies like clean energy tax breaks. She's vouching for measures like the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year, which offers tax breaks and subsidies to companies like Siemens that are transitioning to clean energy sources. Financial Times
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