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It was around 11 a.m. on January 7 when Mary Ralph Lawson Bradley and Kennedy Crichlow—2025 30 Under 30 Retail listers and cofounders of leisure wear company Daily Drills—noticed smoke traveling outside the windows of their Palisades office. They didn’t think much of it. California is, after all, prone to wildfires, they thought.
Evacuation orders had not yet been issued, but one concerned employee whose grandparents were already stuck in the fires (roughly two miles from the Daily Drills office) was enough for the cofounders to ask everyone to pack up. Bradley and Crichlow, who also lived in the Palisades, grabbed a few belongings from their houses. “I packed one little carry-on suitcase,” Crichlow said. “Thinking there was no chance that either of our homes would be in danger.”
By Wednesday—the same day Daily Drills dropped brand new clothing on their website—Crichlow’s home and their office were found burned to the ground. Bradley’s home was saved by firefighters, but is no longer liveable. Both are expecting babies this spring.
Even in the devastation, the cofounders decided to focus their energy on the business—and on giving back. Their warehouse was safe from any impact, allowing them to put up a new collection for pre-order by Friday. They immediately set aside $100,000 of the money made, and donated it directly to 10 families in the Palisades last week. Today, they’re dropping a Palisades crew neck with 100% of profits going back to local businesses. They also ensured 3,000 articles of brand-new Daily Drills clothing were handed directly to victims.
“It’s a coping mechanism to help other people because every time I’m able to do something for somebody else, it makes me take my eyes off myself,” Crichlow said. “There’s a lot of heaviness happening around us, but finding ways to give back has really helped me process.”
The Daily Drills cofounders are not the only local business owners stepping up in the time of need. Leah Marcus and Yasaman Bakhtiar, who made the Food & Drink list for 2025 after launching Good Girl Snacks and its flagship product, Hot Girl Pickles, just last year, are also based in LA.
With a group of friends and fellow business owners, Marcus and Bakhtiar launched a pop-up donation center called For LA and The People We Love. They collected thousands of items from more than 30 brands and 60 individual donors—including everything from toiletries, outerwear, bedding, shoes, food and water. The organization has already helped about 100 families get replacements for things lost in the fires, Marcus said. And while the physical center will only be open through this Friday afternoon, they’ve also created care packages to send to families around the area.
“We’ve been balancing running a business and running the center at the same time this week, which has been proven to be kind of impossible, honestly,” Marcus said. “But we’re humans. We saw people around us suffering. We are super well connected in the LA space and are running a business, so we know how to organize people. We stood up and were like, ‘We need to help our community right now. Our business is going to be fine [if we shift priorities] this week.’”
From afar, founders like Retail & Ecommerce lister Lynn Ma, who runs water filter company Filterbaby based in New York City, and Anushka Purohit, the cofounder of Breer, a Hong Kong-based brand that turns unused bread into beer, are also taking part.
From this week until the end of this month, or longer depending on need, Filterbaby is donating 1% of all sales from their website to organizations like the LA Fire Department, Baby2Baby, and GoFundMe campaigns for individual families who have lost their homes in the fires. They’re also replacing any existing Filterbaby products customers have lost, and offering 40% off their products to anyone in the LA area.
Meanwhile, Purhoit has used her network in the California region (where she spent time as an exchange student while starting her company) to donate food to those in need. They have rerouted bread and other carb-heavy foods that they would otherwise be using to brew their beer to unhoused people and those displaced by the fires. They’re also donating funds to organizations around LA.
“One thing that I think we can agree on is that it’s been really nice to see the community here get together to really help everyone,” said Good Girl Snack’s Bakhitar. “People really step up in times of disaster and especially in the food industry. It’s been really inspiring.”
See you next week,
Alex and Zoya
This AI Avatar Startup Raised $180 Million To Make Corporate Videos Less Boring
Victor Riparbelli’s AI startup, Synthesia, is now worth $2.1 billion. The Under 30 alum and British founder’s venture reportedly generated more than $70 million in revenue last year, more than doubling the $31.3 million it made in 2023. That, plus $180 million in fresh funding, is helping the media company create corporate training videos that “people will actually watch.”
Lister Lowdown
-2020 Enterprise Technology listers Nicole Hardson-Hurley and Sargun Kaur announced this week their startup has been acquired by Karat. The engineer-hiring company was particularly interested in Byteboard’s proprietary talent assessment technology—which was initially created by the Google alum to improve the technical interviewing process, particularly for women and people of color, with identity-blind software that assesses engineering skills through real-world projects, according to the press release.
-Nadya Okamoto, the 2020 Law and Policy lister who went on to launch menstrual care company August, took the stage at a NYC-based “Powerhouse Live” event hosted in collaboration with Refinery29 and bag brand Dagne Dover. They spoke about how to mobilize audiences (online and off) to protect ourselves and our planet.
-2014 Under 30 Healthcare lister Surbhi Sanha announced this week a $30 million seed raise for her new startup, Collate, which says it’ll use AI to help life science companies automate tedious paperwork. Sanha made the list for founding medtech company nVision Medical and sold it for $275 million before becoming partner at Y Combinator. Now her fresh-out-of-stealth company Collate, backed by Redpoint, is already valued at over $100 million.