Tagged: skincare
23 results
Evolved By Nature
Evolved By Nature is a Boston-area biotechnology company that turns discarded silkworm cocoons into a liquid, renewable protein platform called Activated Silk. From that platform it builds a library of natural peptides and biopolymers used as petrochemical-free alternatives across three markets: clean skincare and cosmetics ingredients, biodegradable finishes for leather and performance textiles, and injectable biomaterials for medical aesthetics. Founded in 2013 by silk-chemistry veterans Dr. Gregory Altman and Dr. Rebecca Lacouture, the company has raised roughly $190M including a $120M Series C and counts Chanel among its investors and partners.
goop
goop is a wellness and lifestyle brand founded by actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 2008 that began as a weekly email newsletter and grew into a direct-to-consumer company selling clean beauty, skincare, supplements, fashion, and home goods alongside editorial content, a podcast, and events. It pairs aspirational storytelling with 'contextual commerce,' turning wellness articles into shoppable curation for a largely affluent, female audience. The brand is known both for pioneering the modern wellness-media category and for the controversy its more provocative products and health claims have generated.
Fount Bio, Inc.
Fount Bio is a Somerville, Massachusetts life-science company that builds long-lasting hyaluronic acid (HA) matrices directly inside living tissue. Its proprietary Flī-HA platform uses Nobel-Prize-winning bioorthogonal (click) chemistry to deliver HA building blocks that self-assemble in situ into a biostable, high-molecular-weight matrix - overcoming the delivery and degradation barriers that have long forced HA to be injected as pre-formed filler. The lead product, Flī-Derm, is a needle-free liquid for aesthetic dermatology that reduced fine lines and wrinkles in a blinded clinical study and won IMCAS 2024's Innovation of the Year. The tunable platform extends toward ophthalmology, joints, mucosal tissue and women's health.
OneSkin
OneSkin is a San Francisco biotech and direct-to-consumer skincare company founded by four Brazilian women scientists who set out to slow skin aging at the molecular level. Its flagship OS-01 peptide - identified from a library of 900+ candidates using computational screening and tested on lab-grown human skin models - targets senescent 'zombie' cells that drive wrinkles, thinning and loss of firmness. The company sells topical 'supplements' for the face, eyes, body and sun protection, and frames skin not as a cosmetic surface but as the body's largest organ and a lever on overall healthspan.
ACTIVZ
ACTIVZ is a West Jordan, Utah-based health and wellness company that bills itself as the first direct-selling brand built around epigenetics - the idea that lifestyle and nutrition can influence how genes express themselves. Founded in 2017 by David Brown and Ryan Thompson, the company sells supplements (LINQ, AIRO, Optimend) and an anti-aging skincare line through a distributor network paired with an omnichannel e-commerce model. It launched first in Spanish-speaking Mexico before expanding to the US, Peru, Japan and beyond.
Dermalogica
Dermalogica is a Los Angeles-born professional skin care company founded in 1986 by skin therapist Jane Wurwand and her husband Raymond. Built out of the International Dermal Institute - a training school Wurwand launched three years earlier - the brand pairs clinically minded, irritant-free formulations with rigorous therapist education, selling only where a licensed skin professional can advise. Now a Unilever Prestige brand sold in more than 80 countries, Dermalogica is widely regarded as the world's number one professional skin care line, known for franchises like BioLumin-C, Age Smart, Active Clearing and the teen-focused Clear Start.
MALIN+GOETZ
MALIN+GOETZ is a New York-founded modern apothecary that makes uncomplicated, high-performance skincare, fragrances and candles for all skin types. Started in 2004 by Matthew Malin and Andrew Goetz - a couple who met the beauty and design worlds head-on - the brand launched with six essentials gentle enough for Malin's own sensitive, reactive skin. Two decades later it is a cult grooming staple sold in dozens of countries, known for its grapefruit face cleanser, eucalyptus deodorant and its 19th-century-apothecary-inspired packaging.
Aurelian Lis
Aurelian Lis is the Global CEO of Dermalogica, the professional skin-care brand owned by Unilever Prestige. A self-described 'nerdy physicist with a love for cosmetics,' he took the top job in January 2016 after quadrupling Benefit Cosmetics' Americas business to roughly $500 million as its general manager. Trained in physics at Oxford and business at INSEAD, Lis built and sold his own customized skincare company before bringing a science-meets-emotion philosophy and a habit of relentless iteration to one of the world's leading professional skincare houses.
David Brown
David Brown is the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of ACTIVZ, a West Jordan, Utah direct-selling company he launched in 2017 with longtime partner Ryan Thompson. A self-described 'recovering lawyer' with a J.D. from Cornell and a Japanese degree from BYU, Brown traded corporate law for the nutrition business in 1994 and went on to lead some of the industry's best-known turnarounds - tripling Natural Balance, building Metabolife into the world's largest retail diet brand, and taking LifeVantage from roughly $3 million to more than $200 million. With ACTIVZ he built a multinational from day one, launching in Mexico before the United States and reaching markets across Latin America and Japan.
Emily Coleman
Emily Coleman is the Chief Executive Officer of (MALIN+GOETZ), the New York apothecary-inspired skincare, fragrance and personal care brand. A 20-plus year veteran of luxury beauty, she spent two decades at L'Oreal across Paris, Hong Kong, New York and California in digital, marketing, travel retail, retail operations and supply chain, finishing as Senior Vice President of Urban Decay. She then served as CEO of Chantecaille Beaute, succeeding founder Sylvie Chantecaille, before taking the top job at (MALIN+GOETZ) in March 2025. She is known for building global brands with local relevance.
Michael Pollak
Michael Pollak is a New York based serial founder who keeps spotting personal-care rituals stuck in old-fashioned settings and rebuilding them as warm, branded experiences. He co-founded Heyday, the company that pulled the facial out of the spa and grew it into a national chain, then in 2024 launched Great Many, a hair growth studio and telehealth brand in NoHo that treats thinning hair with the comfort of a lounge and the rigor of a clinic. Trained at the Cornell Hotel School, he leads with hospitality instincts and gut-first decisions.
SEEN Haircare
SEEN Haircare is a dermatologist-developed hair and scalp care brand built on the idea that 'haircare is skincare.' Founded by Harvard-trained dermatologist Dr. Iris Rubin after her own haircare products caused facial breakouts, SEEN makes shampoos, conditioners, serums, masks and styling products clinically proven to be non-comedogenic (won't clog pores) and safe for sensitive skin. The brand is sold direct-to-consumer and at more than 700 Ulta Beauty doors, and closed a $9 million Series A in September 2024.
Good Health Company (Mars by GHC)
Good Health Company, known by its flagship brand Mars by GHC, is a Hyderabad-based direct-to-consumer men's health and wellness platform founded in 2021 by Samarth Sindhi. It pairs free online doctor consultations with science-backed products across hair, beard, skin, sexual health, weight, and general wellness, then ships personalized treatment courses to customers' doors. A women's vertical, Saturn by GHC, extends the same full-stack model to female personal care.
Hawthorne
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.
Marc Gallagher
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.
Function of Beauty
Function of Beauty is a New York-based beauty company that makes personalized hair, skin, and body care products. Customers take an online quiz about their hair type, goals, and preferences, and the company's in-house technology mixes a formula made to order - down to color and scent. Founded in 2015 out of MIT, it helped popularize mass personalization in beauty and has since expanded from a pure DTC model into major retailers like Target and CVS.
e.l.f. Beauty
e.l.f. Beauty is an Oakland-based, publicly traded cosmetics company (NYSE: ELF) built on a simple disruptive idea: prestige-quality makeup and skincare that almost everyone can afford. Founded in 2004 as e.l.f. (Eyes Lips Face) and reshaped under CEO Tarang Amin since 2014, it has grown into a multi-brand house spanning e.l.f. Cosmetics, e.l.f. SKIN, Well People, Keys Soulcare, Naturium, and Hailey Bieber's rhode. Every product is vegan and cruelty-free, most cost under $20, and the company has become a case study in social-first, community-driven brand building.
Kendo Brands, Inc.
Kendo Brands is a San Francisco-based beauty brand incubator and operator owned by LVMH. Named as a play on the phrase 'can do,' Kendo creates and acquires beauty brands and scales them into global businesses, blending startup energy with the backing of the world's largest luxury group. Its portfolio includes Fenty Beauty, Fenty Skin, Fenty Hair and Fenty Fragrance by Rihanna, OLEHENRIKSEN, and Lip Lab, distributed in 60+ countries.
Paula's Choice Skincare
Paula's Choice is a Seattle-based, research-backed skincare brand founded by consumer advocate Paula Begoun in 1995. Built on the radical idea that beauty should be judged by ingredients rather than marketing, the company sells fragrance-free, cruelty-free, science-driven products direct to consumers around the world. Its cult 2% BHA Liquid Exfoliant and a culture of ingredient transparency turned a self-published 'Cosmetics Cop' into a roughly $300M brand that Unilever acquired in 2021.
Faiz Ahmad
Faiz Ahmad is the Chief Executive Officer of Paula's Choice Skincare, the Unilever-owned, Seattle-based science-driven beauty brand. He spent two decades building direct-to-consumer machines at Apple, Delta Air Lines, Optum and YETI before stepping in to steer Paula's Choice through a sports-meets-skincare era anchored by the FIFA World Cup 2026 sponsorship.
Tarang Amin
Tarang Amin is the Chairman and CEO of e.l.f. Beauty, the affordable cosmetics company he took public in 2016 and grew from a $135 million equity story into a multi-brand portfolio anchored by e.l.f. Cosmetics, e.l.f. SKIN, Naturium, Well People, Keys Soulcare, and - as of May 2025 - Hailey Bieber's rhode in a $1 billion deal.
Katia Ameri
Katia Ameri is a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) focused on the intersection of consumer and technology. An LA native of Iranian descent and Stanford graduate, she was the first investment hire at Pear VC, then founded Mirra - a skincare company that grew to 200,000+ newsletter subscribers with zero ad spend - before joining a16z in 2021. At a16z she leads consumer investments, runs the Speedrun accelerator program, and is the founder of Tech Week by a16z, a decentralized conference series in SF, LA, and NYC that drew 40,000+ attendees and 1,000+ events in New York alone.
Sahil Bloom
Sahil Bloom is a New York Times bestselling author, investor, and creator who left a Vice President seat at a $3.5B private equity firm to build one of the internet's most-followed newsletters. His Curiosity Chronicle reaches over 800,000 subscribers weekly with ideas on wealth, time, and purpose. His 2025 book 'The 5 Types of Wealth' became an instant bestseller, and in late 2025 he co-founded Wild Roman, a 100% natural men's skincare brand named after his son. A former Division I pitcher at Stanford, he runs sub-3-hour marathons and deadlifts 525 pounds in his spare time.