Billion Dollar Moves™ with Sarah Chen-Spellings | Global Venture Capital "Admiring someone else's gifts without questioning your own" with Rachel Lim, LoveBonito
In 2005, three Singaporean teenagers set up a secondhand clothes blog.
They didn't realize it at the time, but it laid the framework for this multi-million dollar empire, one of the largest omnichannel womenswear brands in Southeast Asia, that has gone global, delivering to 18 countries with its most recent pop up store in SoHo New York.
This week we dive into the story of Love, Bonito, in the business of serving the modern Asian women; which last raised a $50M Series C in 2021 led by Primavera Capital Group, China’s second-largest private-equity firm which previously invested in Alibaba and ByteDance. We chat with Love Bonito’s co-founder Rachel Lim about risking her mother’s entire savings to overcoming jealousy of her new CEO and finding herself as a leader even as they scale profits, revenues and markets, and build to an exit for their investors. This is a conversation you don’t want to miss.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:28 - Love Bonito: From Secondhand Clothes Blog to Multimillion-Dollar Empire
05:44 - Family struggles, financial crisis, Rach dropping out and betting on herself
14:50 - Bonito Chico to Love Bonito. The business of women beyond fashion, building with co-founders
23:22 - Rach bringing in a CEO, accepting her limitations, hiring to scale
34:29 - "Everything rises and falls on leadership"
40:33 - Taking venture money, the pressure for an investor return
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On Billion Dollar Moves, we travel across the globe in search of the unexpected leader.
Every week, it is our job to deconstruct the Billion Dollar Moves of unicorn founders & funders; many of them, underestimated, long before they became iconic.
Many of them, unexpected leaders, just like you.
This show is about unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, and courage in the pursuit of the next big thing in tech and venture.
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FOLLOW RACHEL:
LoveBonito: https://www.lovebonito.com/
PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://sarah-chen.com/billion-dollar-episodes/
Watch on Youtube : tinyurl.com/sarahchenglobal
FOLLOW SARAH:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sarahchenglobal
Instagram: instagram.com/sarahchenglobal
Twitter: twitter.com/sarahchenglobal