L-R: Melody McCloskey, Rebecca Kaden, Emily Weiss, Lauren Remington Platt, and moderator Carrie... [+]
For decades, the beauty industry has been run by a handful of large, publicly-traded behemoths. In recent years, women entrepreneurs have started modern, tech-enabled companies aimed at filling gaps in a market that's both enormous -- worth $60 billion a year in the U.S. -- and staid.
They're making inroads: Lauren Remington Platt's on-demand hair and makeup company Vênsette, Melody McCloskey's appointment booking firm StyleSeat and Emily Weiss's thoroughly modern cosmetics startup Glossier have raised well over $50 million between them.
These three entrepreneurs were joined by consumer venture capital star Rebecca Kaden, a partner at Maveron, at Forbes' Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, to talk with moderator Carrie Hammer about how they're disrupting the beauty sector.
As fashion designer Hammer noted, none of these women came from traditional beauty backgrounds, all finding their way into the startup and VC worlds almost by accident. Both Weiss and Kaden worked in journalism; McCloskey was in tech, and Remington Platt in finance.
All four women described how the changing way women consume media has informed their businesses. For Weiss, it's meant using Instagram as both a way to crowd-source information on women's beauty rituals and market year-old company Glossier's products socially.
"'Sex sells' is going to become an increasingly outdated notion," she said. "We think that self sells -- as do brands that embrace authenticity."
Remington Platt concurred, describing how she relied on telling her own story -- that of a harried finance executive, seeking a blowout and makeup application before heading to an event, but not wanting to spend hundreds of dollars -- as a marketing tool in the early days of Vênsette, before she'd raised any money.
"For a while, it was hard being first to market," she said. "It was 2011; Uber didn't really have traction. How do I get all these women to trust that these people coming into their homes are vetted?"
The proliferation of both Uber and new competitors to the on-demand beauty market have helped Vênsette grow, she said.
Like many entrepreneurs, McCloskey started StyleSeat after finding herself frustrated with existing options. She moved to San Francisco and struggled to find a good hairstylist or colorist, spending over $1,000 testing them out and emerging unsatisfied.
"Beauty professionals are entrepreneurs, but didn't really have ways to market themselves and grow their business," she said. She bootstrapped StyleSeat for years before landing her first investment, finding a hair startup a tough sell in the VC community.
"I'd walk into a room in the Valley in 2011 and know if there was more than one bald guy, it was over for fundraising!" she joked. (She's since raised just under $40 million.)
For Rebecca Kaden, who has overseen Maveron's investments in high-profile beauty companies Julep and Madison Reed, modern beauty brands like the three founded by Weiss, McCloskey and Remington Platt have been successful in turning their customers into fans, spreading the word on their behalf.
"Passionate, loud users advocate for you," she said, adding that all three startups have benefited from this rare "virality factor."
All four panelists agreed that as more women move up the ranks at venture capital firms, more beauty startups will secure funding.
"There's a lot of pattern recognition going on," said Weiss, adding that male VCs still have a lot to learn. "They can hear there've been 10 billion-dollar exits in beauty, but they still don't know the difference between mascara and eyeliner."
