This week’s episode focuses on Jaleh Bisharat, the co-founder and CEO of NakedPoppy, a e-commerce site that helps users find the makeup shades best suited to them and offers a marketplace of clean beauty products. Bisharat talked about her personal journey toward launching the company after a long career working in marketing for companies including Amazon and Eventbrite. She also talked about the benefits of launching a company when you are a little older and what it has been like building a company in a space where public perception has changed so much in five years.
Becca Szkutak 0:02
Hello and welcome to found TechCrunch his podcast where we bring you the stories behind the startups from the folks who build them. And today I'm joined as always by the lovely
Dom Davis 0:11
Dominic Midori Davis.
Becca Szkutak 0:12
Hey, Dom, how's it gone?
Dom Davis 0:13
I'm doing okay, what about you?
Becca Szkutak 0:16
I'm also doing okay, I'm getting sad about summer ending, but also excited for Disrupt.
Dom Davis 0:22
I know, it's like the last few days of summer. Fall is the best season by the way. But I'm so excited for disrupt as well and excited for what we have planned with Windows Snyder.
Becca Szkutak 0:35
It's gonna be a great show. For those who are coming Disrupt. If you haven't decided yet, you should definitely join us there. But we also have a great show for you today. Today, we're talking to July, the shroud from naked Poppy, which is a marketplace that curates clean beauty products.
Well, Hi, Julie. How's it gone?
Jaleh Bisharat 0:57
Great. Thanks. How are you
Becca Szkutak 0:58
hanging in there? Happy to be here, though. Why don't you tell us a little bit about naked puppy?
Jaleh Bisharat 1:03
Well, shall I tell you the origin story and leading to naked, Poppy? Sure, because actually, the company started a lot earlier with a personal experience than 2019. When we launched, actually, it was the very end of oh seven, I stepped in the shower four months after a clear mammogram. So let this be a warning to all women to always do yourself check. And I found a lump. And I thought, Oh, my mammogram is clear. This is probably nothing. But I did go get it checked out. And I did get bad news. And it was breast cancer. And it was very much of a windy moment. Because I had been doing all the things are so I thought, but I started reflecting on not just what I ate, and sleep and so on, but also environmental toxins. And so I carried this feeling with me for many years. And around 2017, I started noticing that beauty products, which I had been buying in the health food store, which is a very fun shopping experience that the clean beauty products, the ones that are better for you. And what ultimately became the focus of naked Poppy, we're getting more and more performance and more and more fun to use. And so I actually started doing a bunch of experiments at the farmers market interviewing customers. And one thing led to another and I decided to research the idea of whether there this was back in 2017, when clean beauty had not become the trend that it is now. And I was just really motivated to start a company that would bring clean beauty products to more and more people. Because of my own experience with breast cancer. I will say like any entrepreneur, and I know you've interviewed many of them on this on your show, what you set out to do and what you end up doing, of course changes once you hear from customers. And so one of the very first things that I learned was, a lot of people would say, Oh, I like this idea of switching to clean brands. But it's overwhelming to me like, first of all shopping for beauty products overwhelming to begin with. And I feel this way I walk into the store and I'm like 90% of this has nothing to do with me, you know, I like don't like it. It's not fun for me, much less if you finally figure it out what you like, and then you're switching to clean products, which is what we were saying they should do. So we decided to offer a technology solution. And we got really, really good at matching you with your best skincare and your best makeup. Skincare isn't it's hard, but it's not insurmountable. It's not we're not the only people that do it. What turned out to be really hard was figuring out what colors would suit each person for makeup because makeup is all about color. And then matching products to people actually telling you what are your perfect matches your great matches your good matches, and so on, we actually have a store now of over 750 products from a variety of clean brands. That was the other piece of early learning, we originally thought, oh, we'll just you know, create clean beauty products. But what we quickly found out is the average person has seven brands in her makeup bag, meaning people don't want to buy all their makeup from the same company. And so we decided to wholesale essentially products from clean brands that shared our value. So that's what we do. We have 750 products, they're all clean. But what really sets us apart is we do our colors. And we rearrange the entire store just for you with your best matches served at the top.
Becca Szkutak 4:26
And since you mentioned it already, what you set out to do is and what you're going to end up doing, especially when you're building a company, I am curious sort of like how did this idea evolve? Where did you start and sort of how did you end up this curated online shopping experience?
Jaleh Bisharat 4:42
So I worked at Amazon in the early in 99 and 2000, early 2000 And that had a huge you know, I was there for almost a year like it wasn't even a full year but it was worth five years of immersion and an obsession with customers. Experience and actually shopping online. So from those days, I brought forward this idea that you don't start a company without talking to like hundreds of customers, you want to get to a point where you complete their sentences in your head where, you know, to me a great customers Barents happens when the customer says, Oh, this company understands me, we've all had that experience, most brands don't create that feeling. But here and there were where you see something or some, you know, brand speaks here, and you're like, this company speaks to me, they get me there. For me, that's what you want to create. And so that was the mindset that we went in with, which is, we need to understand her DNA inside and out. And so actually, the main observations were, once she understood that clean beauty is, it's like organic food, you're not going to die if you don't eat organic food. But the more you layer on organic food, or the more the products you use, are free of known or suspected toxins, the greater the chances over a lifetime of a healthier life. So observation number one is once it took 30 seconds to get that and then people were like, Oh, I do want to do this. observation number two, too overwhelming. Right? You really have to acknowledge especially when shopping online looks like where do I begin? So that led to the creation of the beauty algorithm. And then the third one was the need for mixing and matching brands and not just having our own. That was at the very beginning, I'd say the biggest learning we've had since then there's been plenty, you know, if you want more, but the biggest one, actually, there are two. For the longest time, we just had the algorithm work under the hood, nobody really knew why they were getting recommended what they were getting recommended. And of course, the algorithm was getting better and better. But in June, we launched something we call your best colors, because people were saying, How do I know why. And also, tell me what color sent me if you're so good at this. So we launched your best colors, and it exploded. Because once we put up everybody's best colors. And also it extends to fashion as it turns out very easily. Because if you can figure out what looks good on her face, it's actually easier to figure out what's going to suit her to wear or him once we surfaced your best colors. It was really transformative. We got a lot of questions. Why are you recommending this? Why are you recommending this, but it was a lot of work to figure out how to present it in an interesting and appealing way. So we finally launched it in June. That was number one. Number two, we learned along the way that people have a lot of skin sensitivities. Four in 10 people have a skin sensitivity, whether it's peanut oil, or you know, you name it, sesame, or what have you. So we actually had to build in and we never expected this at the beginning, the ability to map allergies and sensitivities to other chemical names. There's a lot of chemical like peanut has 13 different chemical names, but it's actually really, really painful. If you're allergic to peanut can't put it on your skin, something like 13, maybe it's 12 or I don't know, you know, reading labels is like super, super, super painful. And that does bring me back to actually back to the customer centricity. It's not only listening to your customers, it's taking the onus off of them to do work. So like what's clean? I mean, if you want yeah, we can go into our definition. But you know, whenever people say do your own research, I'm thinking nobody can do their own research and beauty products or personal care products, there's 12,500 ingredients, you need a master's in chemistry to read labels, I've been doing this for five years, I still can't read labels, because I'm not trained in chemistry. So we hired a chemist to do the research for you take the onus off the consumer, likewise with these allergies and sensitivities. Sure, you can read labels, but it's it's like joyless, you finally fall in love with the product. And you realize you have to read the label to make sure there's no coconut derivative in it because you have that allergy. So that was another big part of our philosophy, which is we do the work for you. Because that's part of the joy of being a customer in a world where you can say this company understands me, or this brand speaks to me.
Dom Davis 9:09
You know what that was actually going to be my next question because I love clean beauty and clean makeup and everything. And I've been doing this since high school. One thing you know, doing research on clean beauty, something that always comes up is how Europe bans like a bazillion chemicals or whatever. And the US only bans a handful. So it's you really don't know what's in your products. And so I wanted to ask you more about your research process. And you've been teaming up with the chemists to kind of decide I guess, for the consumer, what is good and what's not good. And I guess also, in addition to that, do you abide by the EU standards?
Jaleh Bisharat 9:41
We do for sure, but we don't think that's enough. To be fair, the whole EU thing isn't and we've quoted it ourselves. So I'm not saying we're innocent of this, but it's not actually a completely fair comparison because some of the chemicals EU bans were never in beauty products to begin with. It's just a way of saying that the FDA doesn't regulate as tightly as we think they should. So as part of marketing, and in some cases crossing into fear mongering, and fear mongering is a very easy way to sell. But if you really care about people, it's actually anyway, we don't believe in fear mongering. Although people need to be educated. There's a lot of free of lists, and it's typically like free of phthalates, free of parabens, free of sulfates, whatever you know, is the buzzword free of talc of the day. The problem is you're not using what's not in your products, you're using what's in them, like, you know, my rice the other day said, free of gluten, and I'm thinking there's no rice that has like, that's just cheap marketing, right? There's this whole thing of this backlash against clean beauty, which you may have heard of, I don't think it's a backlash against the idea of clean, I think it's a backlash against the idea of clean washing, like misleading marketing that people are sick and tired of. So we don't subscribe to the theory about what's not in your products, we actually have a scientist who looks at every single ingredient that's in the products. So she looks at every single ingredient in every single product. And every single brand that we carry. There are even some brands where we exclude some products to make sure that there are no known or suspected toxins, she also looks carefully for the environment. There are examples of chemicals that aren't known to harm you. But when they like microplastics, they should not build up in the environment. And so that's part of taking the onus off the consumer, because there's no way your average person can look at a label and tell if it's clean or not clean. But it's also an affirmative, yes, this product is clean. It's not just free of this list. And we have tons of examples, I'll see a new brand come to market, I'll be like, Oh my god, I love this brand. You know, I'm so excited about it, can you please a qualified for clean at XYZ retailer, you know, and then she'll look at and she'll say GLA, there's this, here's the chemical that we don't allow that, you know, is a known or suspected toxin.
Becca Szkutak 12:10
One thing I was gonna ask about that, too, is because I back in my retail days when I worked in anthropology, and we carried a couple of brands that people really did consider to be clean. And then while it was there, some stuff came out. I don't want to say hidden toxins, because like they weren't legally required to disclose them. So they weren't necessarily doing anything wrong. But in the fragrance part of it, because they don't actually have to disclose like what's used in the fragrance, that other stuff. Yeah. And so I'm curious with going through the products and your chemists working as sort of like figure out what is actually in these products or not? Was that a hurdle? Or is that kind of information that like me shopping in the store can't get but you contacting them, it's much easier.
Jaleh Bisharat 12:48
Fragrance, in particular, synthetic fragrance is considered a trade secret, and they don't have to disclose and there can be phalates and synthetic fragrance. So we don't allow any synthetic fragrance. Okay, for the reason you just described, some of the products have small amounts of essential oils or what have you. But if she has a suspicion sometimes like if it's a suspected micro plastic, or that it would turn into micro plastic and in the water, she sometimes ask for documentation from the brand. So she does the kind of homework that you and I couldn't possibly do. But with fragrance, we just don't allow it for the reason you said it's called the precautionary principle. We're not saying products other people allow our bad, it's just that we use the precautionary principle, when in doubt, actually guilty until proven innocent might be a way of saying it. When in doubt, we don't offer it because we have plenty of other products to choose from people used to come to us more. I mean, they still come to us primarily because our products are clean. Now it's also to get their colors done. But we want them to be able to be confident that we don't have any doubts. I should clarify that doubts based on current studies, if a new study comes out, right, that can change things.
Becca Szkutak 13:56
You have it so many screws back because I know now with the system or sort of the strategy that you're doing now, you are a wholesaler, essentially for a lot of these products. And I'm curious what that has been like building up this sort of like E commerce side of the business as well, especially considering what you guys were thinking when you originally started. I know
Jaleh Bisharat 14:14
a lot of people ask, why would you wholesale when you could do consignment for example, or you could be a marketplace and just not have to carry inventory. And I'm not gonna say haven't wondered that myself. Because there's a whole component to forecasting and managing inventory and taking inventory and you know, dealing with shipping and returns and so on. But it comes back to this when you put the customer first we had to do it that way. The average person first of all gets at least three products in their order. It's so much nicer to have a come in one box. It's so much better for the environment. It's so much better for their experience, because we have this tech component this AI driven color matching and skincare matching. It's also been really important to make every customer feel how important they are to us. us and so we pack the box, we ship same day, if it comes in by two or three, like we kill our unless it's crazy busy, we kill ourselves to ship same day so that they don't have that delay, and we write a personalized note. And we find that that experience really balances out sort of this is a Tech experience that I shop online with, here's my personalized note, my beautiful package box, that got to me very quickly. That's number one. But number two, when you're trying to perfect a recommendation engine, that's never been done before. With I'm speaking about the color side, there's nothing like working directly with customers to get better at it. We offer free returns, we stand by our recommendations. But if we get if they say like I want to return this blush, or this lipstick, we say, we'll take it back, here's your free label, no barriers for you. But you just have to please give us as many specifics as possible, too dark, too light to orange. To pink to us, that's really useful information. So that's the other reason that we've taken on the end to end customer experience. It's to serve her better or him. And to get better at what we do.
Dom Davis 16:10
We're gonna take a quick break, but stick with us to hear more from July.
Becca Szkutak 16:16
And I know you've mentioned already in this conversation, things you learned from Amazon that have kind of helped you make different decisions or has helped craft your approach. But knowing that you've worked at a couple of startups after that as well, how do you think some of those experiences were able to help shape this as well? Because obviously, well, you didn't found some of those startups. It sounds like you got in pretty early at a few of them. So how do you think those experiences helped you make your own decisions when you were sort of in that position?
Jaleh Bisharat 16:43
Yeah, it's a really excellent question. I should tell you, I never thought I would start a company. I never had a need. People would say, Do you want to be a CEO and I always used to say, I don't want the weight of the world on my shoulders. You know, I didn't have that. Like I'm 28. And I want to start a company. Like I just I always enjoyed what I did, and enjoyed being early in startups and enjoyed other companies. So it really was around the idea of naked Poppy. I was in my 50s when I started naked, Poppy. And it was it's a passion project. It was that sort of cliche of I could not get the idea out of my mind that I did start naked, Poppy. But what did I learn from being at other startups, I mean, grit. Knowing that it takes a lot of humility, hard work, and luck to make a dent in the universe, every single time you start a company, it's like, people are running around doing their thing, and you are trying to change their behavior. You know, you have to earn that it was learning, you know, it's the carryover of getting your hands dirty, talking to a lot of customers early on being willing to turn on a dime, you want this balance of being able to respond to customers, but not rattle your team by constantly having new ideas like like having a focus and having a vision and keeping to it. Because it's also I've seen in my career, that it's really disorienting when leadership constantly changes their mind. You see what I'm saying? There's a difference between being focused, but reacting to customers and taking customer seriously versus panicking every time there's a problem are having a new idea every day, and people come in, and they're like, I can't even finish what I you know. So that balance has also been a big deal. And the big idea that we've really stuck to is in the beauty industry in particular brand is huge. The problem is that brand is very, very at the whim of culture. So we have never wavered from our commitment to build a technology that had lasting value and would be a differentiator. I don't think there's a world in which shopping for beauty in a less chaotic way where your colors are matched and your skincare is matched will ever not be valuable. In fact, I think it's the future, I think we'll look back and wonder how we ever experienced so much overwhelm and actually found products we liked.
Dom Davis 19:02
Yeah, and kind of on that. So you're a first time founder, and you have this amazing company. What was fundraising like for you?
Jaleh Bisharat 19:08
This is an interesting question, you would think okay, so here's the advantage of fundraising when you're older. I had worked for so many people, I had run marketing, early days in Amazon, then OpenTable, then Upwork, and then Eventbrite. And through the years, I had been on management teams and presented to investors at board meetings, and so on and so forth. So by the time I was fundraising for naked, Poppy, I knew a lot of those people. I never intended to go back to them to raise money. But here I had this idea that I couldn't let go. It was a passion project. And so fundraising is never easy. But it is easier. If you've proven yourself over a lifetime over a career and done good work for people and they've seen it and you've presented to them in other contexts. That is an advantage to start in company actually, when you're when you're not 28 B Bull in the ecosystem know you?
Dom Davis 20:02
How did you end up finding your lead for the round
Jaleh Bisharat 20:05
the lead for the round, we have three leads, essentially. And I knew all three of them from the past and I had worked for one of them, he was CEO of Upwork oDesk, before merged to become Upwork, I never thought he'd become a venture capitalist. So, of course, we had to prove out the idea and pull ourselves together, and so on and so forth. But it really made a difference. And it's not only fundraising, it's like you've made all your mistakes. I mean, you continue to make plenty of mistakes, but all your early career mistakes you've learned from, because you've had so much more time to make them leadership lessons, how to recruit people may try recruiting people to start up, you know, and keeping them motivated and keeping them feeling like they're doing the best work of their career. While you're a lot better at it. If you've managed teams for 30 years.
Becca Szkutak 20:53
And sort of following up on that. How do you think about fostering company culture with all of this experience you have had working on these various teams are companies of various sizes? And how do you think about creating that type of environment where people do want to come to work and want to work at a startup?
Jaleh Bisharat 21:08
Yeah. First of all, I think the mark of a great culture is when people believe they're doing their best work of their career. It's like, you can put a person in one environment and they're doing one kind of work, you can put them in another environment and their 10 acts like they're just so much better at what they do. And where they see no difference between Sunday and Monday, where they wake up in Monday morning, as excited as Sunday. I mean, that's the ultimate right, where they say this isn't even a job. Like I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this. So how do you achieve that? I think with entrepreneurs, it's sometimes easy to forget that you actually have two jobs. Your first job, of course, is to set the vision and the mission and like, what are we focused on? What are the top things we're focused on this quarter, and this, you know, six months into next year. But the second piece, equally important, forget the head of HR, you are the head of HR is creating culture, because culture gets set at the very top of an organization. We've all seen this where a new CEO comes in and culture flips overnight, people emulate their leadership. Do you want a culture of fear? Or do you want a culture of happiness? If you think like I do, that you want people to come to work every day feeling happy? Because might as well you're there all day? What are the things you do to make it joyful? And to how do you handle mistakes, so that people understand that you see them as a form of training and learning not as something they should feel terrible about and you know, devolve into, and waste time thinking about it. And actually, you know, another way to think about this is, let's say you have a huge pie 100% What percent of that time are people thinking about serving customers and making the company better, you know, competing better in the market, versus what I call emotional overhead. We've all seen a situation where like, a third of the time, people are like, trying to figure out how to get promoted, trying to figure out how to get a raise, upset that someone so took their idea upset about politics in the company or whatever. It's your job as CEO as the entrepreneur, to nip all that stuff in the bud. The goal is 100% of the time we're here together, focused on customers, and building a better product for the customer. Any emotional overhang? Politics, unhappiness is a waste. I'll tell you, I think one of the most important ways of achieving this, I can think of two Okay, the first is hire people who are better than you and let them know they are. Let them know what if someone emails you with what do you think of this? And you have your experts say, ask the expert, she's better than me, and really let them do their job. Because people have a way of spreading their wings when they have room to spread it. The second one is how you handle conflict. The ideal is there two kinds of companies, sometimes it's that people are too polite to each other, and you don't really get to the best ideas. And then of course, there's a super political where people leave the meeting, feeling bad, because conflict is unpleasant. What you want is a environment where people debate ideas, and get to the best idea, but it's never personal. Nobody ever feels like I Becca said something stupid, because you know what I mean? It's it's, it's that it's as a team, we've all come together with the best idea. I go out of my way not to say this was so and so's idea. Because actually, ideas build on themselves anyway. And as a team, you want to have healthy debate, have the best idea and I'll walk out feeling good. And that's an art.
Dom Davis 24:32
Yeah, within all of this, what are specific ways that you go about putting forth this positive company culture? Like, do you have specific policies or like employee, I don't know, happiness stays or you all go outside? I don't know. Yeah,
Jaleh Bisharat 24:44
I'm not a huge believer, actually, in the ping pong tables and those things. I mean, I know people can have fun, but it's actually more about how people are treated in the day to day so it's what I just said. It's and I'm explicit about we agree We disagree, we can say whether we agree strongly or not strongly, but it should never be personal. And if I ever noticed people personally seeming to have friction, I always talk to them and nip it in the bud and make sure that they talk to each other. That's number one. Number two, this is less true with naked Poppy. But there are some times where you have you just have a cultural problem, like you've given the person, every opportunity, and they just are not a team player. Unfortunately, you do have to take care of that it gives the whole group a bounce, when somebody who's not carrying their weight or is not being a team player has had their opportunity hasn't taken it is, you know, dealt with. So that's number two. And number three, I always think, you know, praise publicly and criticized privately, feedback is a gift. But people don't love criticism. In a group, I'm not saying I'm infallible at it, but I do I am careful to if there's a concern, to call up one on one and say, you know, here's what I'm saying, here's some ideas. But you need to work on this.
Dom Davis 26:04
On a semi related note, with you and your co founder, was it really easy splitting up, I guess, responsibilities? Was it as simple as Okay, they're gonna do data science and chemistry, and you're gonna do everything else? Or how did you split all of that up? Yes,
Jaleh Bisharat 26:18
very much. So that is exactly how it happened. Because I am not a technical founder, co founder, I came up through the business side, the marketing side, and she is a data scientist. Now, I will tell you, we actually had a second idea in the process of building naked Poppy, which was to create, essentially a marketplace for chemicals for suppliers, and brands, and retailers and so on. That was such a separate idea that we spun the company off into two. So my co founder now runs Novi Connect. It's a wonderful company. I'm on the board. And she's also remains on the board of naked Poppy and we're in constant communication. That's an unusual happening, but it was such a good second big idea. We decided to have to what is it called? Two shots at goal. Two very separate companies.
Becca Szkutak 27:08
Yeah, I've chatted with nobody before. Oh, great when they raised in 2021. Yeah, I think I covered the round.
Jaleh Bisharat 27:13
Oh, great. Okay, so there. Yeah.
Becca Szkutak 27:15
Yeah. And something I'm curious about, you mentioned a little bit toward the top of the call about how, even when you guys started the company, 2017, that, in theory doesn't feel like that long ago, but the clean beauty space has changed so much since then. And also just other threads that are relevant here. Like the inclusivity around makeup, and who's wearing makeup and who it's marketed to, as well as the environmental side of this, too, has just changed so much in five years. I'm curious how you guys think about sort of being able to keep up with those changes and making sure that you're not presenting something that does seem behind some certain both, like social and environmental progression? So
Jaleh Bisharat 27:48
I love that question. And the good news is clean beauty is now mainstream, it should be like that's the goal. There's a part of me that's like, Thank God, we, you know, we didn't achieve it. But as an industry, we achieved it. And so I can sleep better. Your question, though, about inclusivity. That was implied there actually is a huge one. And I will tell you, when we started working with makeup artists to figure out how does a makeup artist look at someone and figure out what colors are going to suit her or him, we realized that the color science to date around colors that suit you was horrifically limited to women up to around my skin tone, meaning with light and medium skin tones, women of color actually had very little I mean, you know, there have been brands that are good at foundation matching now. But like the nods to women of color are like, Oh, instead of going from light to dark, we go from dark to light. So we didn't think that was enough. It wasn't so much keeping up with the times. But just this realization as we were doing our work, that we discovered that figuring out what colors will suit you. There's a whole different actually set of rules for women of color. And so we built for extra, we call them seasons for women of color into our beauty algorithm. And it was its own effort we also did for extra color clusters, or we call them seasons for women with graying hair. That was another category. It's like older people. There wasn't a lot of work done in color science around, what colors should you wear, when your hair goes great, it actually changes up your makeup, and even what suits you what you wear. So I would say that's probably the biggest example of how things have evolved. Maybe the second one is though, that as clean beauty has become more mainstream, thank God, the color matching has just become a bigger part of our business because people have more alternatives, places to buy clean products, and we're delighted about that. And I'm gonna add a third which is that there's been more clean, but also more clean washing or more misleading marketing. We have had to do some education around that. It's not cool. Yeah. You know, to sell a product that's not clean just because it's sulfate free and paraben free,
Dom Davis 30:03
definitely, I would just, I'm trying to think, no, I was just gonna make a statement, which was that like, it's totally real. Like when I first started trying to make all of my makeup clean, I couldn't find any clean foundation in my shade. So I just didn't, I just I don't wear foundation, but like, I just never went back to buy any, because at the time, there was nothing there. So now I'm just like, now things have gotten a lot better in terms of more options. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, you know, clean beauty. It's rising through, I guess in terms of how things are right now, how much farther? Or like, what else would you like to see in the industry? Like, how would you like to see it further evolve?
Jaleh Bisharat 30:41
I mean, I hope that someday there's no such thing as clean beauty that all beauty is that all beauty products and personal care products are vetted by scientists, beauty scientists, or you know, people who understand this green chemistry, this aspect of chemistry to be better for you better for the environment. It's an industry that has a long way to go in terms of environmental waste, as well as health. So that's my biggest wish for the industry. But the second one is that I think we're going to look back someday and wondered how we ever shopped in such a chaotic way. I saw you nodding Becca, when when you know, when I walk into beauty retailer, even when I go on websites, I'm just like, ah, where do I start? Just show me my stuff.
Becca Szkutak 31:25
All right, no. And then like the kind of sales associates will ask you what you're looking for, like more specific, and you're like, Well, I don't know, there's 5000 options. Like I don't know which of those I want to pursue.
Jaleh Bisharat 31:35
And this is actually where machine learning is actually needed. No sales associate can carry 10,000 skews in their head. And then remember that you just said you're vegan and you're allergic to coconut. And you know, my undertone is this, my skin tones that and be able to go run across brands and assemble for you what's what you want to try on. Totally exhausting, and totally chaotic. There's a reason that makeup is one of the last categories to go online for shopping. Because it's so hard to do. Unless you're replenishing me, it's so hard to discover new products definitely. And
Becca Szkutak 32:09
sort of thinking about where you guys are at this point in the journey five years in, and what you've built thus far. What's next? How do you guys think about the next couple of years and sort of where you'll head from here?
Jaleh Bisharat 32:20
Yeah, I love this question. Now that we're confident in, it took time to get to develop the confidence in our color recommendations, and to get really good at the gray hair and the women of color, and so on. I think now it's really honestly about getting out there and getting distribution, we find that we actually do really well on Tik Tok. We get sort of outsize views because people just love seeing this notion of getting your colors done. So if we can transform shopping for beauty to go from overwhelming to enjoyable, and fun, I think we will have achieved our mission. And something that of course that you don't have to worry about because the products are clean.
Becca Szkutak 33:03
Fabulous. Thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. Hopefully, we'll continue to see these nice advances in the clean beauty industry. It's really, really has been a journey. Yeah.
Jaleh Bisharat 33:14
Well, thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. It's been fun chatting with you guys.
Becca Szkutak 33:22
And that was our conversation with July. Dom What did you think?
Dom Davis 33:25
I really liked it. I always love hearing more about Clean beauty and all that stuff.
Becca Szkutak 33:30
No, it's so interesting, because I feel like half the time you get news from like the cosmetics and makeup spaces. So is like x celebrity is launching a makeup line that's gonna look identical to like everyone else's. So it's fun to kind of like get to hear chat about things happening in that space that are not that.
Dom Davis 33:46
I know my gosh, another celeb line. It was good to talk to. Yeah, literally not that. But like I've been obsessed with clean beauty for like ever. Maybe I don't want to say like decades because maybe decades I might that old. I think I am that old. So seeing the behind the scenes of what it takes to build one of these companies and bring it to market was interesting. I feel like there's still so many things we could have asked that we just didn't get time to ask.
Becca Szkutak 34:13
I know, because it is interesting thinking about when the company was founded, and even just how much the conversation around clean beauty has changed in the last five years. And how there are so many more brands and how more people are just like more interested in this in general. So it's interesting to think of a company being so young are you going through so much transformation like in the space that they're building in? I know,
Dom Davis 34:34
like I remember like shopping at Sephora and there was a product that I would always use and this was literally 10 years ago and they didn't mark anything as clean or whatever. And then now it's like 10 years later and I still use that same product. But now people are very open about the ingredients and all these things and now it is marked clean by Sephora and it was like this massive transformation in terms of people really paying attention to what they are putting in their bodies and it's just Fascinating. Well, that's why this company was so cool. I also really liked the color matching thing. I mean, but that's also very timely, right? That's like a new detail I'm trying to think is that like, from Rihanna is Fenty beauty like, When did people start paying so much attention to the right shade?
Becca Szkutak 35:14
No. And that was one of the things that I wish we had asked her about a little bit more is the fact that while that is really interesting, I feel like a lot of brands aren't introducing their own color match type of services. And maybe I don't know, like, maybe the mode here is that you don't buy everything from one brand, which I know she mentioned, which is definitely seems true. And like, oh, they can help you find your colors like across brands. But then it's like, well, Sephora could build something very similar. And I feel like I get ads for something kind of similar flavor to this already from them. So I didn't worry about not worry. But wonder if they worry about competition, being able to adopt some of this stuff. If it seems popular. I mean, everyone loves to copy. Yeah, everyone else is doing that seems successful.
Dom Davis 35:55
I like how she mentioned, she understood that people don't want to buy the same product. From one brand, it reminded me a lot of blue mercury in terms of they have their own product line. But then they're also kind of a wholesale retailer where you can get a whole bunch of other stuff. And they can kind of play around with their ingredients and chemicals. But obviously, everyone doesn't want the same thing from one play, even if it works, I don't know why. But we want variety. I really liked hearing that she kind of understood that, like she understands her customer. And she spoke a lot about really being able to understand the customer, because she brought up something that I also found to be really, really interesting. And that was basically, when you have these type of companies, you are totally introducing a new behavioral pattern to consumers. And it's like, what is your brand that they should just completely, you know, up in their skincare routine and add you in it? Right. So understanding that I think it was also really, really fascinating to hear how that works behind the scenes.
Becca Szkutak 36:52
No, it's such a good point too, because I feel there's so many startups focused at consumers that I don't know if they don't avoid the kind of conversation around like having changed consumer behavior. But that could be the biggest hurdle like you could have the best product in the world or the best solution. But if customers aren't willing to change their behavior to use it, they won't use it, they won't be successful. And so it was good to hear her talk about that, because that is something that I think has killed a lot of startups in the past is sort of that lack of awareness around how it can be hard to kind of get consumers to change their behavior, even if you are offering them something great or cheaper or quicker. It's like if they don't change the behavior, like it's never gonna stick. Yeah. Especially
Dom Davis 37:30
in skincare. I mean, because you're testing chemicals on your skin, right? Like, I feel like once you find something that works for you, it's like, okay, this is my product, I'm tapping out. So I don't know, it's always like risky, trying new things. But I know some people are like that her startup experience, you starting this company in her 50s. She came from like some heavy hitting startups. I mean, she's she's been everywhere, Amazon Upwork, Open Table. I was like, Oh, my goodness, an Open Table employee. I was like, that's so cool.
Becca Szkutak 37:57
I know, that was also a good part of the conversation talking about how like, she thinks this leans into her leadership style to like, she actually has the job experience to kind of know, what works at companies and like, what doesn't, and how to talk to customers, and how to talk to employees at the same time. And like, that's something I've always wondered about with some of these companies that we've also talked to you that are started by people younger in their career, like, I've never had a management position yet in my career either. And like, I can't imagine just being like, Yep, I'm the boss. I'm in charge now. And I totally know what to do. It's just like, oh, okay, so her point about being like, well, I have all this experience. I'm further my career. Like, I literally know what doesn't work. And what does it's like, yeah, that's pretty valuable.
Dom Davis 38:38
Yep. And that's why a lot of these startup founders get caught in drama with their employees, because a lot of them are so young, they have never had management experience. They really don't know what they're doing. And they should not be, you know, leaders yet. You know, they need some training. But you know, she came with it. And it also really helped fundraising, because she just could tap back into her network. And for sure, yeah, I mean, like, that's the case for, I guess, starting a startup when you're a little bit later in life. Yeah,
Becca Szkutak 39:06
it's one of those funny things where there's like, so many studies that show these types of companies owned or started by people a little later in their career are generally more successful. But like, we still just like love to champion the 22 year old entrepreneur, which nothing wrong with that you can build a great business where you're trying to but it's just like, it is good to kind of shed light on these kinds of startups, because it's like, These generally are the more successful
Dom Davis 39:28
Yeah, because like, I feel like it's a society where like, life ends once you hit 30. And it's like, you know, the 20s is where you're supposed to make everything and but then the evidence says otherwise. So I don't know why we we still do this. I don't know what's going to fix that. But here's, you know, another success story. Another more evidence to prove you can start a startup at any time. We need to talk about this marketplace. What is it the chemical marketplace, which I loved hearing that they were like, yep, you know, we had this other business idea and we just decided to spin it off. And now it's there's a chemical marketplace, which I thought was fascinating. Yeah, cuz
Becca Szkutak 40:05
I chatted with Kimberly, probably two summers ago, I think at this point, maybe 2021. And they just raised like a sizable chunk of money for Novi. And I just don't think it was cool because it's kind of like the next iteration of this clean beauty movement, like, okay, get these brands and products like in front of consumers, but like the way Novi works, not only is it for like brands to go back and check the chemicals that we're using, but it's also just so good for new companies who are like, oh, I want to start a perfume line. I want it to be clean. It's like, Well, great. Well, there's a company that exists where you can go and just find the clean products, you need to build your clean beauty product. It's such a great sister business, I get why they didn't run them together, because they are like that much different that it would be kind of weird to think of them being under the same roof. But I am glad that that was like an offshoot of that, because that really just, you know, like further supports their mission at the end of the day, too.
Dom Davis 40:59
Yeah, it makes so much sense. Especially because I feel like someone in the US has got to regulate these chemicals that we absorb on our bodies and put like on ourselves, like someone has got to regulate that. And so just knowing that there's a place where people can go to say like, Okay, I need a bunch of chemicals, but I want them to be clean. I don't know how it works, but it's good to know that options exist for that. I'm excited to see what happens next with the company and the clean beauty movement. I mean, I don't know if it's so mainstream, but it feels pretty mainstream now that I don't see it going away anytime soon.
Becca Szkutak 41:33
No and especially because you see all the big brands starting to like release clean lines as well. Like it definitely shows like where the market is headed. Yeah,
Dom Davis 41:41
that's a win for us, of course.
Becca Szkutak 41:46
Found is hosted by myself. TechCrunch Senior Reporter Becca Skuta. Alongside Senior Reporter Dominic Midori Davis found is produced by Maggie Stamets with editing by Cal our Illustrator is Bryce Durbin funds audience development and social media is managed by Morgan Liddell Alyssa Stringer, and Natalie Kreisman TechCrunch is audio products are managed by Henry pic of it. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai