A Houston-built sapphic dating brand, a CEO and founder you'd be building alongside, and a category jump for the brands you grow next. Three lanes, mutual upside, one conversation.
Ryan — most pitches open by explaining themselves. This one opens by acknowledging that you're already great at what you do, and that's not the pitch. The pitch is what your work compounds into when it's pointed at the right brand at the right moment, and what the right brand and the right moment open up for you.
She & HER is a sapphic dating app — for women and nonbinary people who love women — built the way the category should have been built the first time. Houston-based. Engineered by ex-Google, ex-Microsoft, ex-Etsy. Beta opens September. NYC Pride float locked for June. AfroTech Field Partner status confirmed for November. Disney sapphic day reserved for National Lesbian Day 2027.
The rest of this document does three things. It maps your existing work against what we have. It shows you the math of the category you'd be entering. And it draws — explicitly — the ladder of capital and access this opens for you. The ask is mutual upside, not a favor.
Five patterns from your portfolio, each one already pointed at the kind of brand She & HER is. Tap a row to see the extension.
The category isn't niche. It's underbuilt. The capital is real, the consumer base is real, and the window for category-defining brand operators to claim it is about thirty-six months.
10th-largest economy in the world if it stood alone. Over-indexes on travel, fashion, financial services, electronics.
Decelerating to 2.2% growth in 2025 as DEI policies weaken. Brands pulling back creates a moat for brand-owners with conviction.
Up from $2B in 2025. 15% CAGR — fastest segment of an otherwise mature category.
Houston-built, Black-founded, Black queer-aligned brand sits at an over-indexed intersection.
Brand budgets for LGBTQ+ media are decelerating because corporate DEI is in retreat. That's not a category problem — it's a brand-builder vacuum. The sapphic operators with conviction this year claim the visual register, the press infrastructure, and the audience trust that the rest of the category will spend the next decade trying to buy back.
Each rung is a different kind of money and a different kind of access. Where you are today is rung two. Where She & HER + Desi as a node lives is rung four. The jump matters because the rung matters.
Estimates derived from public benchmarks for senior brand-strategist comp at each tier. Your actual numbers will vary; the shape of the ladder is the point.
The seat is a strategist who shapes story before any creative goes near it. It runs on two parallel tracks — both lanes need to move in tandem for either to compound. Most brands separate them and lose the leverage.
PR, press, and brand marketing for the company itself. The seat that owns story, voice, and earned media across every surface.
Founder-as-asset positioning. Press, stage, and board-adjacent visibility for Desirée Yvonne Mayon as a category-defining founder voice — independent of and compounding with the brand.
The founder lane isn't abstract — it's a graph. Each connection here is a real handshake or ongoing conversation. What it opens for you is in plain language. Tap any node.
Each node is a relationship Desi already holds. Some are warm, some are active, some are confirmed partnerships. The connections aren't decorative — they're how the founder lane converts into capital and access for whoever holds the strategist seat.
Confirmed float in the parade, brand activation, Greyhound busing initiative. Press angle: Houston-built brand showing up in NYC the way New York shows up to Houston.
Two anchors, your home market. The Pearl Bar (Julie) co-host slot. The No Homo Show episode. Local press dovetailed into the Dream Con cultural moment.
Distribution is set. Story isn't. The press moment that decides whether the category remembers a new entrant, or remembers a new thesis.
Sevanne's "Who's Your Human?" workshop. Founder keynote. Brand presence engineered through your eye, not through a sponsor table.
Phyll Opoku-Gyimah and UKBP. Amsterdam Pride. The European press cycle that compounds Year 1 — Vogue UK, Monocle, Wallpaper, Time Out London.
Marquee year-two moment. Category-first cultural placement. Press rollout for this is built in 2026.
If any of these feel closer to what you'd want, say so and we'll either reshape it or wave each other off cleanly.
Tap a shape to expand it. Anchored at the category-defining brand operator tier from the ladder above — not at "regional retainer."
Monthly cash + bonuses on named moments.
Smaller cash, meaningful equity, founding title.
Defined scope around named moments only.
Modest monthly + equity + milestone bonuses.
Modest monthly retainer + an equity grant on a vesting schedule + milestone bonuses tied to named moments (NYC Pride, Beta launch, AfroTech, Disney 2027). The most common shape for senior strategist-as-partner roles, and the one I'd put in the middle of the table first.
It rewards the steady work, gives you exposure to the brand's compounding, and pays out distinctly when the press wins land. The cash floor protects the floor; the equity protects the upside; the bonuses protect the credit.
The next move is a conversation, not a contract. Thirty minutes, your tempo. If the read lands, we shape the seat together. If it doesn't, we'll have at least named the right thing out loud — which is more than most pitches do.