Most founders who sell control of the company they built are negotiating their way out the door. Nima Jalali sold control of Salt & Stone and negotiated his way into staying exactly where he was.
A snowboarder’s sunscreen
Jalali founded Salt & Stone in Los Angeles in 2017, after a career as a professional snowboarder. Beauty Independent’s reporting traces the brand’s start to that athletic life directly: Jalali went looking for body-care products that could keep up with an active routine without compromising on ingredients or scent, didn’t find them, and started making his own — beginning with a mineral sunscreen.
The brand built out from there into deodorant, body wash and fragrance, developing scents with the flavor and fragrance house DSM-Firmenich and leaning on active ingredients drawn, in the brand’s own framing, “from the sea and mountains.” It found retail distribution first outside the US — Sephora in the UK, Australia and Southeast Asia in 2023 — before landing at Sephora and SpaceNK in the US the following year. In 2024, the growth-equity firm Humble Growth took a stake in the company, according to FashionUnited’s coverage of that round. By 2025, Salt & Stone was reporting more than $165 million in revenue, with double-digit growth across every channel it sold through — DTC, its retail partners and Amazon alike.
That is a large, fast-growing DTC beauty brand built by a founder with no dedicated encyclopedia entry, in a category — premium body care — that private equity has been circling hard as it looks past the more crowded skincare and color-cosmetics aisles.
What sold, and what didn’t
On March 24, 2026, Advent International announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake in Salt & Stone. Humble Growth exited its investment in the same transaction. The deal was expected to close the following month, and its financial terms — price, resulting valuation, the exact size of Advent’s stake — were not disclosed by either party.
What Advent did disclose was who was staying. Jalali remains founder and chief executive and keeps a minority equity stake in the company he started. Meagan Rosson stays on as president and Abby Tellam as chief marketing officer. The one new name at the top is Chris Elshaw, a former Revlon chief operating officer and board veteran of Paula’s Choice, Medik8 and Orveon Global, who becomes Salt & Stone’s chair.
Jalali’s own comment on the deal, released through Advent’s announcement, was about continuity rather than exit: “From day one, I set out for Salt & Stone to be a legacy brand, built to last for the next hundred years and beyond.” Advent director David Paresky framed the fit in similar terms, calling Salt & Stone “a truly exceptional brand that stands apart in the premium body care and wellness space.” Advent said its capital was earmarked for scaling Salt & Stone’s direct-to-consumer and retail channels, both domestically and internationally — the standard growth-equity rationale, aimed at a brand whose own numbers suggested it didn’t need rescuing so much as reinforcing.
The other DTC founders who made this trade
Jalali’s deal sits in a pattern this magazine has now covered from several angles. Lucy Aylen sold majority control of Never Fully Dressed to Refined Capital Partners in July 2026 and, like Jalali, stayed on as CEO — giving up equity ownership while keeping the operating job. Hyrum Cook made close to the opposite bet at Adanola: he kept his stake and handed the CEO title to a Gymshark veteran, betting that scaling the operation past nine figures needed different skills than building the brand had. Ben Francis took outside capital into Gymshark in 2020 and spent four years buying it back rather than let it dilute his control for good.
Jalali’s version is Aylen’s, not Cook’s or Francis’s: give up majority ownership, keep the chair. The reasoning, on the public record so far, is that Salt & Stone’s constraint isn’t who runs it day to day — it’s the balance sheet and distribution muscle a nine-year-old, founder-funded body-care brand doesn’t build on its own. Whether that bet pays off the way it appears to be paying off for Aylen, or the way it paid off for Cook at Adanola, won’t be visible until Salt & Stone reports its first full year under Advent’s board.
Related founders
- Lucy Aylen Sold Control of Her Brand. She Kept the Top Job. — the closest parallel: a UK DTC founder who made the identical trade, majority equity for continuity in the CEO seat, five months earlier.
- Adanola’s Founder Gave Up the CEO Seat. Revenue Grew 48%. — the mirror-image bet: kept his stake, handed the operating job to an outside hire.
- How Dagne Dover’s Founders Chose Patient Capital Over VC — another DTC brand’s founders, in a different category, on why they avoided this trade for as long as they could.
Nima Jalali’s background as a former professional snowboarder and Salt & Stone’s 2017 founding, including the account of the brand starting with a mineral sunscreen, are per Beauty Independent’s reporting on the Advent acquisition. Salt & Stone’s international and US Sephora and SpaceNK distribution, its scent development with DSM-Firmenich, and its “from the sea and mountains” framing are per Advent International’s own acquisition announcement and Beauty Matter’s coverage of it. The 2024 Humble Growth investment is per FashionUnited’s reporting. The March 24, 2026 announcement of Advent International’s definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake in Salt & Stone, Humble Growth’s exit in the same transaction, the expected April 2026 closing, and the statement that deal terms were not disclosed are per Advent International’s own press release, corroborated by Retail Dive, Beauty Independent, Personal Care Insights and Beauty Matter. The 2025 revenue figure of more than $165 million with double-digit growth across all channels is per the same five sources. Leadership continuity — Jalali remaining founder and CEO with a retained minority stake, Meagan Rosson continuing as president, Abby Tellam continuing as chief marketing officer, and Chris Elshaw’s appointment as chair, including his prior roles at Revlon, Paula’s Choice, Medik8 and Orveon Global — is per Advent International’s announcement, Retail Dive, Beauty Independent and Personal Care Insights. Nima Jalali’s and David Paresky’s quotes are per Advent International’s own announcement. No valuation or deal-price figure appears in this piece: a single-source estimate surfaced in research and was dropped as uncorroborated, and neither Advent nor Salt & Stone disclosed one.
