Founder Leadership

Slutty Vegan

“Being a founder is ghetto,” Pinky Cole Hayes told Founder Brew. “Being a founder is probably the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do.”

The entrepreneur and reality television personality—Cole Hayes joined the cast of the Real Housewives of Atlanta in April for Season 17—shared her advice for other founders about bouncing back from bankruptcy and the lessons she’s learned running the Slutty Vegan plant-based burger chain.

After launching the restaurant brand in 2018 first via Instagram and then as a food truck business, Cole Hayes built a brand around a cheeky name, bold marketing, and a whole lot of buzz. The original Atlanta location quickly drew traction, with customers waiting hours in line after it opened. By 2022, the company was reportedly valued at $100 million.

But she eventually realized operations was one of her biggest blind spots, a founder lesson she had to learn the hard way. After restructuring the business and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February, she’s now rebuilding Slutty Vegan with a different approach to growth, leadership, and the people around her.

“It’s a lot of pressure when you’re a public figure and a founder at the same time,” she said.

In a conversation with Founder Brew, Cole Hayes talks about what she had to unlearn about being a “bad boss” and why building a business that lasts requires more than getting people in the door.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Looking back, was there anything you overlooked because you were so focused on growth? When did you realize you’d missed it?

I’ll be honest, when I was running the company, I didn’t know a thing about operations. What I’m really good at is marketing. I know how to market really well. I know how to story-tell really well. I learned operations just by experience, not by trade. I had to learn that the hard way. So now operations is my focus.

When I think about me growing Slutty Vegan 2.0 and all that I’ve went through to get to this point, I’m only picking operators to franchise with. I’m only picking people who have the level of expertise that I don’t have. I want people who have scaled companies before because they can teach me a thing or two in business. And I think that this is a call to action to founders everywhere trying to scale. You’ve got to make sure that that operations is right. It’s not enough to just look good and not be good.

Read more about Pinky Cole Hayes’s experience with bankruptcy and how she’s rebuilding her company.—JH

      

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Founder Leadership

Morning Brew Inc, Photo: Adobe Stock

When starting a company, head count at first is simple—just you, maybe a co-founder or two. But as a company scales, increasingly complicated questions can eat up a founder’s time.

How should I classify certain employees? How do I attract talent and then keep them from leaving? When is it time to hire a HR person?

To help answer that last question, Founder Brew spoke with Katie LaFranchi, an HR expert with over two decades of experience in technology and startups.

After starting her career in HR with small Seattle-area tech companies, LaFranchi eventually moved on to massive organizations like Google and Amazon. In 2024, the Austin, Texas-based LaFranchi started working as a fractional HR exec for startups across consumer products, wellness, and semiconductors. Currently, she serves as the chief people officer at agentic AI startup NinjaTech AI.

LaFranchi offers a road map for founders: what percentage of your time should be dedicated to HR, what questions to ask when starting to hire, and what kind of help exists for the in-between stages. Though you may not need a dedicated HR person right away, LaFranchi recommends thinking about the topic from day one.

“When you are hiring your very first employee, even if that’s yourself, you should be putting your HR cap on and going like, ‘Okay, am I establishing this company and paying myself and others on the team correctly?” she said.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How soon should a founder be thinking about HR?

Your first real HR hire is not so much a number of people that’s the threshold. It’s the complexity of your business and the amount of time that you’re having to spend on it, or other leaders who find themselves handling HR. I’ve talked to leaders who are like, “I spent three hours last night investigating HSA plans and to answer an employee’s question, and I still don’t know the answer.” That is not the founder or CEO’s best and highest use. If you’re the CEO and you’re finding that you’re spending 20% of your week on sourcing candidates, hiring, onboarding, all of those things, and dealing with employee questions, that’s when. That’s the point.

Read more about the right time to bring on HR help.—DL

      

Golf media company Pro Shop reportedly raised $24 million in a Series B led by the family office of Arthur Blank, the co-founder of Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, and was joined by Causeway Partners, Ares Capital, and returning investors including PGA Tour and Powerhouse Capital. (the Hollywood Reporter)

Instinct, the personal AI assistant platform, secured $1 billion in a Series C funding round. Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Coatue backed the financing, which set a $10 billion valuation for the year-old company. (TechCrunch)

Kahua reportedly scored $250 million in growth funding from Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, which is taking a minority stake in the company. The Georgia-based construction management platform helps enterprises manage complex capital projects. (Bloomberg)

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Stat: 40%. That’s the percentage Uber and Affinity say restaurant sales increased when businesses used sponsored listings on Uber Eats in an attempt to defend the value of the platform. At physical restaurants, sales increased just 5% when eateries used the listings. (AdWeek)

Quote: “It’s a process that’s deeply flawed.”—Asher Rapkin, who owns a watch retailer, on waiting nine months to recoup tariff refunds through package carriers like FedEx and DHL (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: The Bank of Mom and Dad? Seed-strapping is gaining traction among founders looking to keep costs low and avoid the pressure of outside investment. AI agents are also making it easier for solo founders to run businesses without a big payroll. (Business Insider)

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