Hawthorne is a New York-based direct-to-consumer men's fragrance and personal care brand founded in 2016 by Brian Jeong and Phil Wong. It pairs data-driven personalization with renowned perfumers to deliver affordable, high-performance colognes and grooming products. Built around its 'Surround Scent' system of layered colognes, body sprays, soaps, deodorants, and skincare, Hawthorne has grown from an online quiz-driven storefront into a brand sold through Ulta, Nordstrom, SSENSE and 1,000+ retail doors.
Henry Rose is a radically transparent line of genderless fine fragrance founded by actor Michelle Pfeiffer. Built with the Environmental Working Group and International Flavors & Fragrances, it was the first perfume line to earn both EWG Verified and Cradle to Cradle Gold certifications while disclosing 100% of its ingredients - proving a luxury scent can be both sophisticated and clean.
Alex Wiltschko is the founder and CEO of Osmo, a company teaching computers to read and write smell. An olfactory neuroscientist who spent roughly 18 years studying scent, he led the team at Google Brain that built an AI model predicting how a molecule smells from its chemical structure - work published in Science in 2023 as the Principal Odor Map. Osmo spun out of Google in 2022, and in 2024 it pulled off 'scent teleportation,' digitally capturing a fresh-cut summer plum and reprinting its smell in another room. In February 2026 the company raised a $70 million Series B led by Two Sigma Ventures.
Brian Jeong is the CEO and cofounder of Hawthorne, a New York personalized men's personal care brand he launched in 2016 with his childhood best friend Phil Wong. Hawthorne built its business on a data-driven quiz that matches men to fragrances, skincare, hair care and grooming products tuned to their body chemistry and preferences. With no prior beauty experience, Jeong reverse-engineered the fragrance world through roughly 100 industry interviews in three weeks, growing Hawthorne from an online storefront into a Series B company stocked in thousands of retail doors, including the vast majority of Target stores.
Marc Gallagher is a beauty and luxury executive with 25+ years turning storied brands into digital-first businesses. A would-be architect who detoured through the dot-com boom, he spent nearly a decade inside LVMH building the digital engines of Benefit Cosmetics, Marc Jacobs and Fresh, then doubled Elemis revenue during the pandemic as Chief Brand and Digital Officer, and became the first-ever CMO of British skincare challenger Facetheory. He is associated with Michelle Pfeiffer's clean fragrance house Henry Rose in Los Angeles. His operating creed, inherited from a mentor: if it does not make you nervous, it is not worth doing.