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NADIA BOUJARWAH BUILT A $100M+ COMPANY FROM A PROM DRESS SHE COULDN'T FIND ● DIA&CO RAISED $120M+ FROM SEQUOIA CAPITAL AND UNION SQUARE VENTURES ● 5 MILLION WOMEN. 90% OF U.S. ZIP CODES. SOME GOT TATTOOS. ● FULLBEAUTY BRANDS ACQUIRES DIA&CO - APRIL 2024 ● NOW BACKING FOUNDERS AT FOUNDER COLLECTIVE ● 67% OF AMERICAN WOMEN WEAR SIZE 14+. ONLY 17% OF FASHION DOLLARS GO THERE. ● HARVARD MBA. WHARTON UNDERGRAD. CUBAN-KUWAITI ROOTS. MIAMI RAISED. ● INC. FEMALE FOUNDERS 100, 2019 ● NADIA BOUJARWAH BUILT A $100M+ COMPANY FROM A PROM DRESS SHE COULDN'T FIND ● DIA&CO RAISED $120M+ FROM SEQUOIA CAPITAL AND UNION SQUARE VENTURES ● 5 MILLION WOMEN. 90% OF U.S. ZIP CODES. SOME GOT TATTOOS. ● FULLBEAUTY BRANDS ACQUIRES DIA&CO - APRIL 2024 ● NOW BACKING FOUNDERS AT FOUNDER COLLECTIVE ● 67% OF AMERICAN WOMEN WEAR SIZE 14+. ONLY 17% OF FASHION DOLLARS GO THERE. ● HARVARD MBA. WHARTON UNDERGRAD. CUBAN-KUWAITI ROOTS. MIAMI RAISED. ● INC. FEMALE FOUNDERS 100, 2019 ●
Nadia Boujarwah - Co-founder of Dia&Co and Founder Partner at Founder Collective
Founder / Investor / Force of Nature

Nadia
Boujar­wah

The Woman Who Dressed 5 Million Women the Fashion Industry Forgot

She turned a lifetime of dressing room frustration into a $120M company, a 5-million-strong community, and a market the rest of retail finally had to notice. Then she handed it off and started writing checks.

Dia&Co Founder Collective Size Inclusivity Sequoia-Backed HBS / Wharton
$120M+ Total Raised
5M Community
9 yrs At the Helm
The Story

She Walked Into Macy's
Before She Wrote a Line of Code

Before the pitch decks, before Sequoia Capital, before Rebel Wilson called - Nadia Boujarwah was walking the floors of Macy's and JC Penney, personally shopping for women she'd never met. Not as a stunt. As research. She did this for thousands of customers before Dia&Co had any real technology to speak of, because she knew something most founders have to learn the hard way: you can't build for people you haven't listened to.

The problem she was solving had been hiding in plain sight for decades. Sixty-seven percent of American women wear a size 14 or above. The fashion industry was directing 17% of its dollars toward them. That gap - 50 points of market mislabeled as a niche - was where Nadia built a company.

She grew up in Miami and the Middle East, the daughter of a Cuban mother and a Kuwaiti father, both academics who had no map for entrepreneurship. English was her second language. She'd spent her teenage years unable to find a prom dress. The frustration of standing in a dressing room, surrounded by clothes that weren't made for your body, is the kind of thing most people complain about and move on from. Nadia kept a tab.

In 2015, she and Harvard Business School classmate Lydia Gilbert founded Dia&Co. Before writing a single algorithm or hiring a single engineer, Nadia walked into stores and shopped - in person, one woman at a time. The first $1M in fundraising took nearly a year. Within 18 months, they had over $100M.

By the time the company found its stride, Dia&Co was something more than a fashion marketplace. It was a community of women who trusted each other, traded outfits, planned vacations together, and - in at least a few documented cases - got the Dia&Co logo tattooed on their bodies. The company had become load-bearing infrastructure for how 5 million women felt about getting dressed.

That kind of loyalty is not an accident. It is the result of someone who understood, at a cellular level, what it felt like to be excluded from the conversation.

$100M+ Annual Revenue at Peak
600 People Hired in a Single Year (2018-19)
Current Role Founder Partner, Founder Collective
Heritage Cuban-Kuwaiti American
Education Wharton '08 • Harvard MBA '13
Exit Dia&Co acquired by FullBeauty Brands, April 2024

"You can divorce your husband before you can divorce your investor."

- Nadia Boujarwah, on choosing who to take money from
The Gap That Built a Company

The $100 Billion Oversight

Women Size 14+
67%
Fashion $ to Plus-Size
17%
Dia&Co Community
90% US ZIP codes

Source: Industry data cited by Nadia Boujarwah • Fortune, Inc., TechCrunch coverage

Building Dia&Co

When Rebel Wilson's Team Called

In 2017, Dia&Co took out a full-page ad in the New York Times. Not a product ad. A challenge. The ad called on fashion brands to design for all sizes, with a phone number at the bottom for interested parties to call. It was audacious in the way that only makes sense in retrospect.

Rebel Wilson's design team called.

That ad, and everything it produced, is a window into how Nadia thinks. She isn't interested in incremental progress through polite requests. She wants the industry to feel the weight of what it's been missing. Venus Williams followed. The CFDA partnership came next - Dia&Co funded inclusive design education at fashion schools, because, as Nadia put it, "when you're making change one brand at a time, progress is going to be slow."

The company's growth ran on a similar logic: go to the source and change what's being made, not just where it's sold. Dia&Co evolved from a personal styling box subscription into a full online marketplace. By 2018, the company had raised $40M in a Series C from Union Square Ventures, on top of earlier Sequoia Capital backing, for a total of $120M+. They hired 600 people in a single year. The community grew to 4-5 million women across 90% of U.S. ZIP codes.

When Nadia went through her own bridal shopping experience - visiting 8 salons and trying on over 60 wedding dresses - she used it as product insight. Dia&Co launched The Wedding Suite shortly after. She ultimately chose a dramatic lace trumpet gown: the opposite of what she thought she wanted going in.

The Dia&Co community built something unusual. Facebook groups where customers bought and sold items, planned group vacations, swapped style advice. These weren't users. They were people who'd found, through a fashion company, a space where they actually belonged. When some of them got tattoos of the Dia&Co logo, Nadia didn't treat it as a quirky footnote. It confirmed the theory the whole company was built on.

She kept the co-founder relationship - with Lydia Gilbert, her HBS classmate - on exactly equal financial terms from day one. Not because it was conventional. Because trust and alignment matter more than complementary skill sets when things get difficult, and things always get difficult.

Quick Profile

Nadia Boujarwah
New York City
American (Cuban-Kuwaiti heritage)
Founder Partner, Founder Collective
Co-founding Dia&Co, the leading plus-size fashion marketplace

Education

Wharton School, UPenn B.S. Economics • Class of 2008
Harvard Business School MBA • Class of 2013

Personality

Resilient Community-First Pragmatic Voracious Reader Immigrant Mindset Equal Partnership Hands-On Candid

"Success in entrepreneurship is dependent on one thing above all else: resilience."

- Nadia Boujarwah
The Exit & The Recovery

Nine Months to Come Back to Herself

On April 3, 2024, FullBeauty Brands acquired Dia&Co. It was the company's third acquisition in under a year, following CUUP and ELOQUII. For Nadia, it was the end of a nearly decade-long sprint.

Most founders, when they exit, talk about the win. Nadia talked about the aftermath. She said it took approximately nine months for her to mentally recover after stepping down as CEO. Not nine days. Nine months. The candor is unusual and worth sitting with. Running a high-growth company at the level Dia&Co operated is not something a person simply walks away from refreshed. The physical and emotional debt is real, and most people in her position quietly disappear until they're ready to announce the next thing.

She didn't disappear. But she did rest. And then she came back.

"This will be so much clearer in the morning," she has said. It usually is.

Now: Founder Collective

The Check Writer Who Still Has Calluses

Nadia joined Founder Collective as a Founder Partner in 2019 - while still running Dia&Co. The timing wasn't accidental. Founder Collective, which manages approximately $75M seed-stage funds, had been one of Dia&Co's earliest backers. She knew how it worked from the other side of the table.

The Founder Partner model is built around operating experience. Fellow partners include Jack Groetzinger (SeatGeek), Andy Palmer (Tamr), James Tamplin (Firebase). What they all share is the memory of what it actually felt like to build something - the decisions made at 2am, the hires that went wrong, the board meetings nobody writes about.

Nadia brings something else: a decade in a market that was consistently underestimated. The instinct to look where the industry isn't looking. She also co-authored a guide for female angel investors, actively advocating for more women to participate in early-stage investing. She is an Expert Advisor at Harvard Innovation Labs and Harvard Business School's entrepreneurship program.

Her advice to founders on investor selection is characteristically direct: "You can divorce your husband before you can divorce your investor." Choose accordingly.

Career Arc

From Investment Banking to Changing What Fashion Looks Like

2008
Perella Weinberg Partners

Began post-Wharton career in investment banking. Built the financial architecture instincts she'd later use to run a $100M business.

2010
COO & CFO, Frieda and Nellie

Joined a New York jewelry brand as both COO and CFO - her first taste of building an operations and financial backbone for a consumer business.

2013
Harvard Business School

MBA. Attended with the explicit goal of starting a company. HBS gave her the co-founder she'd need: Lydia Gilbert.

2015
Co-Founded Dia&Co

Launched with Lydia Gilbert to serve plus-size women (sizes 10-32). Before any tech, she personally shopped for thousands of customers in Macy's and JC Penney.

2017
Full-Page NYT Ad & Rebel Wilson Partnership

Challenged the entire fashion industry with a newspaper ad and a phone number. Rebel Wilson's design team called. So did Venus Williams.

2018
$70M from Sequoia & Union Square Ventures

Series C brought Dia&Co's total raise to over $120M. Hired 600 people in a single year. Revenue crossed $100M.

2019
Joined Founder Collective as Founder Partner

Named to Inc.'s Female Founders 100. Began investing in early-stage founders while still running Dia&Co. CFDA partnership for inclusive design education launched.

2024
Dia&Co Acquired by FullBeauty Brands

Successful exit after nearly 10 years. Nine months of genuine recovery followed. Then: the next chapter, fully focused on Founder Collective and backing bold founders.

In Her Own Words

Things Worth Writing Down

"There's a fundamental attribute of being an immigrant - you think that the locus of control in your life is inside of you."

"The most advanced fit technology in the world is a fitting room because it always gets it right."

"Inclusive fashion is the largest opportunity in retail today."

"Building Dia has been the hardest, most growth-inducing experience of my life."

"When you're making change one brand at a time, progress is going to be slow. We need to go to the source - and that's education."

"This will be so much clearer in the morning - and usually, it is."

Track Record

The Ledger

  • Co-founded Dia&Co in 2015; grew to $100M+ annual revenue
  • Raised $120M+ from Sequoia Capital and Union Square Ventures
  • Built community of 4-5 million plus-size women across 90% of U.S. ZIP codes
  • Named to Inc.'s Female Founders 100 list, 2019
  • Partnered with Rebel Wilson and Venus Williams on Dia&Co collections
  • Full-page NYT ad campaign that shifted the industry conversation on size
  • CFDA partnership funding inclusive design education at fashion schools
  • Hired 600 people in a single year during hypergrowth phase
  • Successful acquisition exit to FullBeauty Brands, April 2024
  • Joined Founder Collective as Founder Partner - investing in next-gen founders
  • Expert Advisor at Harvard Innovation Labs and HBS Entrepreneurship
  • Co-authored guide for female angel investors
The Founder Philosophy

How She Thinks

Nadia distinguishes sharply between two types of decisions: those that are correctable and those that aren't. For correctable ones, she moves fast and accepts being wrong as "just a step toward the right answer." For critical decisions - a co-founder, a lead investor - she is deliberate to the point of obsession.

She is a voracious but non-linear reader. English is her second language, and she reads with the deliberateness of someone who still finds the act of comprehension a gift. She'll have multiple books going at once - Steve Jobs's biography and Nassim Taleb's Antifragile at the same time is one documented pairing. The reading isn't decorative. It's operational.

Every morning she walks to her office. She finds New York in the early hours - before the crowds - remarkably inspiring. The walk is not a habit. It is a practice. The distinction matters to her.

On AI and retail: she expects artificial intelligence to improve the operations of apparel - inventory, supply chain, logistics. She does not believe it will transform the core shopping experience. "The most advanced fit technology in the world is a fitting room."

For the Record

Ten Things About Nadia Boujarwah

01

She couldn't find a prom dress that fit. That frustration, two decades later, became a $120M company.

02

English is her second language. She still reads every word with deliberate attention - and is a prominent public speaker.

03

Some Dia&Co customers got the company logo tattooed on their bodies. Nadia didn't call it a data point. She called it proof.

04

She tried on over 60 wedding dresses across 8 bridal salons. Ended up with a dramatic lace trumpet gown - the opposite of what she planned.

05

She met her husband at a speaking event and didn't remember him. He remembered her. They matched on a dating app a year later.

06

The first Dia&Co fundraise - just $1M - took nearly a year. Within 18 months, they had over $100M in capital.

07

She and co-founder Lydia Gilbert maintained exactly equal financial stakes from day one. Trust over complementary skills.

08

After stepping down as CEO, she took nine months to mentally recover. Rarely does a founder say this out loud. She did.

09

Her parents are Cuban and Kuwaiti academics - not entrepreneurs. No map. All instinct.

10

She walks to her New York office every morning before the city wakes up. Not as a habit. As a practice. She'll tell you the difference matters.

"There's a fundamental attribute of being an immigrant - you think that the locus of control in your life is inside of you."

- Nadia Boujarwah
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