Kim Kardashian was announced as one of Fortune’s most powerful women, and she has graced a cover of the magazine’s list.
Kardashian, who elevated her shapewear line SKIMS to a $4 billion valuation, wants to find the next generation of unicorns with her new private equity firm SKYY. Announced by Kardashian and Jay Sammons, who worked for top private equity firm Carlyle for 16 years, SKYY Partners aimed to raise $1 billion by launch.
Kardashian said she will take confidence in herself into her private equity endeavors even though some people still don’t take her seriously.
“Maybe that’s part of my drive, always feeling like people have underestimated me. Maybe that’s what keeps me going,” she said.
Kardashian thought of SKIMS through her own experiences cutting up and dyeing shapewear to better fit her body and match her skin tone. The line includes products like one-legged shapewear. Her venture into private equity provides an opportunity to add to her fortune, which Forbes estimates to be around $1.7 billion as of July.
“I’ve always found that the most successful ones are where I don’t have a lot of middlemen, where I’m really close to the partners,” she said. “You definitely can see an evolution of the type of business that I’ve been involved in. I’ve been through it all.”
Kardashian has “capabilities that universally no other human being on earth has,” Sammons said.
Her rise to fame as a socialite and reality star, rooted in the already famous Kardashian family, gives her a firm foundation, and she learned many skills from her father — lawyer Robert Kardashian as well as her mother and manager Kris Jenner. Fortune also pointed out the “Kardashian-Jenner ecosystem, a universe of apparel, beauty, beverage, and wellness brands started by her siblings.”
With her level of fame, nothing in Kardashian’s life is completely private from the press, but Sammons admires her focus.
“The world often tries to invite her into dialogue about things that are either controversial or that she doesn’t really feel the need to weigh in to,” Sammons said. “She has a great deal of discipline in managing that.”
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