The Shade Room Founder Reveals She Declined $100M Offers To Sell During Election Season

The celebrity blog caught the eyes of political organizations for its influence, especially during election season.

Angelica Nwandu, founder of The Shade Room, talks about the company’s rise to receiving $100 million offers, especially during election seasons.

During an appearance on the “On Par with Maury Povich” podcast, the CEO shared rare insights on her journey to The Shade Room and its tremendous growth. Despite her platform’s major following, Nwandu has kept a relatively lower profile. However, the Nigerian-American has remained steadfast in keeping The Shade Room under Black ownership, especially at a time when influence means everything.

As the former television host revealed that Nwandu has turned down 9-figure offers to sell her company, she explained why she passed on the payday to remain true to her Black audience.

“It’s because of the community that I have and that we serve. I really love them. I’m really protective over where they’ll go,” she responded when asked by Povich about her refusal of the offers.

Notably, these sizable checks would come during election season. Given The Shade Room’s massive Black audience, new owners could have marketed certain candidates or political views to its viewers. However, Nwandu wanted to maintain the integrity of the platform she built and was willing to forgo the payday to do so.

She explained, “Because a lot of times when the offers would come, it would be during an election year.”

“So they would change it for some partisan reason,” inquired Povich.

Nwandu responded, “Exactly.”

Nwandu built The Shade Room from the ground up, starting the celebrity news blog in 2014 after she lost her job as an accountant. She has since grown the primarily Instagram-based platform to over 28.7 million followers, whom she fondly refers to as “Roommates.”

However, protecting the “roommates” has become a big priority for Nwandu. Knowing the Shade Room’s influence within the Black community, and with more young voters getting their political news from Instagram, she declined to switch owners for the sake of a check.

“For politics, because it was a large Black audience, and like, you know, their voting ability, and so, like, they would, it would usually be election year,” she continued. “So 2020, 2024. So on Instagram, we are the, well, in the last 30 days, the No.1 source of politics on Instagram…we built a really big community.”

Not only were politically minded organizations on the prowl, but so were celebrities featured on the page. Although she did not name any famous offers, she insisted that keeping ownership in her hands was the best play for the TSR audience.

“If someone bought it out, they would change it up completely,” she added. And to me, like I didn’t want to do that…or it would be like an entertainer, who would be someone that we report on, that would want to buy it, would want to gather investors to buy it. So it just wasn’t the right play.”

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