Serial Ecommerce Entrepreneur and Brand Builder
Van Riel’s story is the story of a founder who treated audience and brand as inseparable. She became known for building consumer products with a strong visual identity and using Instagram not simply as an ad placement, but as a network of communities, creators and social proof. Her success made influencer marketing look less like celebrity endorsement and more like an operational discipline: choose the right people, create a product worth showing and design launches around concentrated attention.
Van Riel is a successful serial entrepreneur associated with consumer brands and large social audiences. Her public identity has been closely linked to influencer-led product launches, community building, and the disciplined use of Instagram as a commercial channel.
Van Riel helped demonstrate that social distribution can be designed into a brand from the beginning. Rather than treating influencers as a late-stage promotional add-on, her approach places audience, visual identity, community behavior, and shareability close to product strategy.
Van Riel started SkinnyMe Tea at 22 with very limited capital and used Instagram communities to build demand before influencer marketing had become a standard ecommerce function. She later applied that audience-first approach to brands including The 5th and Drop Bottle, learning both the upside of rapid social distribution and the expensive lessons that accompany repeated experimentation.
At Affiliate World Europe 2018, the conference framed her session and interview around achieving one million dollars in a day and harnessing influencer marketing. The useful part of the talk was not the headline number alone. It showed how a launch can coordinate product, creator relationships, timing and audience anticipation so that demand arrives in a burst. For attendees, this expanded the meaning of performance marketing. Measurable acquisition did not have to be isolated from brand; community trust and a compelling product could improve the economics of the campaign.
For affiliates moving toward owned products, her work provides a valuable model: start with a community insight, shape the product and creative around it, then build a network of advocates who can carry the message further than conventional ads alone.
Her public career continued through multiple ecommerce ventures, investing and education. The appearance now reads as an early snapshot of ideas—creator distribution, founder-led brands and community-powered launches—that became increasingly central to direct-to-consumer marketing.
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