Livvy Dunne’s rise feels almost too scripted. A gymnast who started posting on social media at 10, exploded during the pandemic, and turned millions of followers into a seven-figure bank account by 19. The narrative practically writes itself. But what’s happening now, as the 23-year-old moves into the next phase of her career, is far more interesting than the origin story.
She’s stepping away from being a brand ambassador and toward being a business partner.
This shift matters more than it might initially appear. In the world of influencer partnerships and athlete endorsements, there’s a massive difference between slapping your name on a product and actually owning a piece of it. Most creators never make that leap. They take the check, do the posts, and move on to the next brand. Dunne is doing something different.
According to an interview with Entrepreneur, Dunne says her mindset has fundamentally changed. She’s no longer chasing one-off deals or padding her resume with every brand that comes knocking. Instead, she’s becoming selective about partnerships that align with her actual values and, crucially, come with equity.
From Exposure to Ownership
Her partnership with Accelerator Active Energy exemplifies this evolution. Dunne has worked with the energy drink brand for three years, going beyond typical influencer work to help develop her signature Cotton Candy flavor. That product has become the brand’s No. 1 SKU across retail and e-commerce, sitting on track to surpass one million cans sold by April.
That’s not lucky. That’s work.
What’s more telling is how she talks about it. “Accelerator was the first brand I had equity in,” she told Entrepreneur. “In a sense, it’s like my baby.” The language matters. She’s not describing a sponsorship or a promotional deal. She’s describing ownership, even if it’s partial.
The difference between being the face of a brand and owning a piece of a brand is the difference between being an employee and being an entrepreneur. One requires you to show up, smile, and collect a paycheck. The other means your success is directly tied to the product’s success. You actually care whether it sells.
Building Equity in a Landscape Stacked Against Female Athletes
What makes Dunne’s repositioning particularly interesting is the context surrounding it. She’s not just securing equity for herself. She’s established the Livvy Fund specifically to help LSU’s female student-athletes access NIL deals and close a persistent gap in opportunities.
“It’s so important for female athletes to capitalize during college, because there aren’t many professional opportunities afterward,” Dunne said in the Entrepreneur piece. That’s a blunt acknowledgment of a structural reality that most athletes won’t state publicly. The professional landscape for female athletes is thin. The window to monetize in college is narrower than people realize. And for most female athletes, unlike their male counterparts, there’s no lucrative professional league waiting on the other side.
Accelerator became the first brand to contribute to the Livvy Fund, which adds another layer to her equity partnership. It’s not just a personal brand play anymore. It’s part of a larger project to shift how opportunities flow in college sports.
The Self-Taught Operator
What’s worth noting is how Dunne got here. She wasn’t trained for this. She didn’t attend a business school or apprentice under a seasoned entrepreneur. Instead, she’s described herself as “pretty self-taught” because, as she points out, “this isn’t something you learn in school.”
That self-education involved obsessively studying her own analytics, testing what resonates with her audience, and adjusting her approach based on real-time data. Long before NIL rules changed and monetization became possible, she was already thinking like a businessperson. She was paying attention to metrics, engagement patterns, and what actually worked on her posts.
When the NIL era finally arrived and created the legal framework for college athletes to profit from their image and likeness, Dunne was already positioned to capitalize. She’d spent years building an audience and understanding how to keep them engaged. That groundwork matters more than people realize.
The Strategy of Making Light and Building Resilience
There’s also something shrewd about how Dunne handles the inevitable friction that comes with being an internet personality. Last September, she was caught on camera with visible armpit sweat while cheering on her boyfriend, pitcher Paul Skenes, at a Pirates game. Instead of defending herself or disappearing, she turned it into a brand deal with Secret deodorant, creating an ad centered on stress sweat.
“Social media is supposed to be fun,” she said. “It’s not the news, doesn’t have to be serious all the time. I try not to take anything too seriously.”
This isn’t just clever PR spin, though it is that. It reflects a deeper understanding of how to operate in spaces where criticism is constant and often beyond your control. As she notes, gymnastics conditioned her for this. It’s a sport built on judgment. Social media is the same. Learning to laugh rather than fight back is a survival skill that most creators never develop.
The Real Question Moving Forward
What Dunne is doing right now, at 23, is worth watching closely. She’s demonstrating that the most valuable outcome of building a massive personal brand isn’t the endorsement checks, even though those are substantial. It’s the leverage to actually own pieces of the things you’re promoting.
The real test will be what happens next. Can she scale this model? Will other athletes follow and learn to value equity over immediate payouts? And perhaps most importantly, will building ownership stakes actually protect creators from the whims of viral moments and algorithm changes that have made social media careers notoriously precarious?
For now, Dunne seems to be playing a much longer game than most people in her position. She’s not just building a personal brand. She’s building a business where her personal brand is the entry point, not the end goal. That distinction might sound subtle, but it’s the difference between having influence and having leverage. Between being an asset to other people’s companies and building your own.
The pandemic created the conditions for her rise, but strategy is what’s keeping her there. That’s the part worth learning from, far more than any viral moment ever will be.
