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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.