Behind Her Empire: Olivia Landau on Her ‘Clear Cut’ Vision for the Diamond Business

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Behind Her Empire: Olivia Landau on Her ‘Clear Cut’ Vision for the Diamond Business
Clear Cut Founder and CEO Olivia Landau

On this episode of Behind Her Empire, The Clear Cut founder and CEO Olivia Landau talks about how she turned her side hustle into a business and shares how founders can leverage social media to create community and build brand awareness.


Despite growing up in a family of jewelers, Landau’s family discouraged her from getting a job in the industry because they felt the diamond business was dying.

“I never set out to be an entrepreneur or business owner,” Landau said. “I was actually told my whole life by my parents not to do that and to take a safe corporate job.

As a first generation American, Landau was taught the value of education. Her parents wanted her to have a corporate job, and while she would have loved to work in corporate for Tiffany & Co., her path to entrepreneurship came naturally.

Landau graduated from New York University in media communications, but it was her master’s at Carlsbad-based Gemological Institute of America (GIA) where she fell in love with gems.

“I'll become a graduate gemologist and maybe I will get into corporate at a big jewelry house,” she said of her thought process at the time. “So that'll be my corporate route. But I enrolled and I really fell in love with diamonds and gemstones. I guess it was in my blood all along.”

Landau landed a job at Tiffany & Co. right out of GIA school, and was introduced to the world of bridal jewelry. She then transitioned over to work at a large diamond wholesale company to get more hands-on experience, and learned there that most people don’t know anything about buying a diamond.

Landau launched Clear Cut with her husband in 2018 — a digitally native, natural diamond brand that offers a personalized selection of diamonds to customers.

“So I started Clear Cut as just an educational blog for our friends to read about before coming to work with me and then sort of posting some of the designs on Instagram,” she said. “That's where strangers started following the account. It was a lot easier to grow at that time because when you just post pretty things, people would follow you. Then they were DM'ing me asking me if I could create their custom ring so it turned into this accidental side hustle that I never anticipated.”

What started as a side hustle, rapidly became a booming business. She made the decision to go all in only if she got into an accelerator.

“I’m a very risk averse person,” Landau said. “So it took a lot of time to think about it…If we get into Techstars, I will quit my job. I wholeheartedly thought we were definitely not getting in because at that time we were not a tech company.”

To her surprise, Clear Cut was accepted into the program and the rest was history. While accelerator programs are not for everyone, Landau benefited from it immensely.

“I think for me, it was something I really needed because I never had a business background,” she said. “So it's kind of like a startup bootcamp and the best part is you're with other startup founders because starting your own business can be very, very lonely and isolating and hard, and other people may not be able to relate to you.”

Six months after the accelerator, Clear Cut raised a small round, but Landau said it was difficult to raise institutional capital after that.

“We wanted to, but it just didn’t happen and it was kind of a blessing in disguise because we have full control of our business and we're able to do whatever we want without slowing down or needing permission,” Landau stated.

Throughout her entrepreneurial journey, Landau has learned that community is one of the most important factors to having a successful business.

“We started an educational blog and the content really translated to education on social media,” Landau said. “The diamond industry is historically known for being a bit opaque. I would say previous generations would do the opposite. They would try to hold back or withhold a lot of information, which is why there’s some sort of sketchy idea about the diamond industry.”

Today, Landau is focused on creating more short form videos to help educate the community about diamonds and rings.

“On TikTok, we are able to be a little bit more raw, maybe a little cheeky or funnier,” she said. “You have more bandwidth there especially because of the way TikTok’s algorithm is.”

Whereas on Instagram, the community already follows her and knows the brand, “so it's really understanding the audience of both and who is getting your content.”

One piece of advice Landau shares with early stage founders is the power of following through with your idea.

“If you’re not embarrassed by your launch, you waited too long,” Landau said. “I’m a big believer in throwing something out there, getting feedback, continuing to iterate, get better and better because otherwise that feeling of needing everything to be perfect before you present it out into the world can hold you back.”

dot.LA Reporter Decerry Donato contributed to this post.

This podcast is produced by Behind Her Empire. The views and opinions expressed in the show are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of dot.LA or its newsroom.

Hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.

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LA Tech Week Day 5: Social Highlights
Evan Xie

L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.

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LA Tech Week: Six LA-Based Greentech Startups to Know

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

LA Tech Week: Six LA-Based Greentech Startups to Know
Samson Amore

At Lowercarbon Capital’s LA Tech Week event Thursday, the synergy between the region’s aerospace industry and greentech startups was clear.

The event sponsored by Lowercarbon, Climate Draft (and the defunct Silicon Valley Bank’s Climate Technology & Sustainability team) brought together a handful of local startups in Hawthorne not far from LAX, and many of the companies shared DNA with arguably the region’s most famous tech resident: SpaceX.

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https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la

LA Tech ‘Moves’: LeaseLock, Visgenx, PlayVS and Pressed Juicery Gains New CEOs

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

LA Tech ‘Moves’: LeaseLock, Visgenx, PlayVS and Pressed Juicery Gains New CEOs
LA Tech ‘Moves’:

“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.

***

LeaseLock, a lease insurance and financial technology provider for the rental housing industry named Janine Steiner Jovanovic as chief executive officer. Prior to this role, Steiner Jovanovic served as the former EVP of Asset Optimization at RealPage.

Esports platform PlayVS hired EverFi co-founder and seasoned business leader Jon Chapman as the company’s chief executive officer.

Biotechnology company Visgenx appointed William Pedranti, J.D. as chief executive officer. Before joining, Mr. Pedranti was a partner with PENG Life Science Ventures.

Pressed Juicery, the leading cold-pressed juice and functional wellness brand welcomed Justin Nedelman as chief executive officer. His prior roles include chief real estate officer of FAT Brands Inc. and co-founder of Eureka! Restaurant Group.

Michael G. Vicari joined liquid biopsy company Nucleix as chief commercial officer. Vicari served as senior vice president of Sales at GRAIL, Inc.

Full-service performance marketing agency Allied Global Marketing promoted Erin Corbett to executive vice president of global partnership and marketing. Prior to joining Allied, Corbett's experience included senior marketing roles at Disney, Warner Bros. Studios, Harrah's Entertainment and Imagi Animation Studios.

Nuvve, a vehicle-to-grid technology company tapped student transportation and automotive sales and marketing executive David Bercik to lead the K-12 student transportation division.

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