How I Built This with Guy Raz - Live Episode! Glossier: Emily Weiss

Episode Date: November 26, 2018

In 2010, while working as a fashion assistant at Vogue, Emily Weiss started a beauty blog called Into The Gloss. She quickly attracted a following of devoted readers hooked on the blog's intimate snapshots of style makers' beauty routines. Within a few years, Emily realized her readers were hungry for a new beauty brand, one that listened to them directly, and understood their lives. Without any prior business experience, she won over investors and found the perfect chemist to create Glossier, a line of beauty and skincare products with a focus on simplicity. Today, just four years after launch, Glossier is valued at an estimated $400 million. Recorded live in New York City.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com host. Hey, it's Guy here, and today we've got a brand new live episode of How I Built This featuring Emily Weiss of Glacier. But before we start the show, a lot of people ask, you know, how can we support how I built this?

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So we flew to L.A. We got our like Hertz rental car. And we drove during rush hour all the way down to this like middle and nowhere place. And we pulled into the parking lot. The parking lot's empty. There's a stray dog like roaming through it. Like tumbleweeds blowing. I mean, I was like, why don't we just go like let's just call it?

This is most certainly not our guy. But we went in and inside was this like 6-4 jacked like dad who's so excited about women. skin care. Like you just would not believe. From NPR, it's how I built this. A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz. And on today's show, how Emily Weiss turned her fashion and beauty blog into Glossier,

a brand that's now shaking up the entire cosmetics industry. So back in 2012, Facebook paid about a billion dollars for Instagram. And you might remember, we actually interviewed the Instagram founders back when we first launched the show. Anyway, what made Instagram a valuable proposition to Facebook at the time wasn't profitability. Instagram was basically a free app where people posted their photos. But what it did have was 20 million users. And Facebook saw in Instagram what it saw in itself years before. You build the customer base first, and then you figure out how to monetize the business.

business with those customers. Now, this isn't an easy way to start a business. You have to create something for free that's compelling enough to keep people coming after you introduce the product. And this is sort of the story of Glossier. And I say sort of, because when Emily Weiss started her fashion and beauty blog back in 2010, she didn't do it with the intention of one day creating her own cosmetics brand. But what happened was that blog into the gloss? It blew up. Up, hundreds of thousands of readers became obsessed with hearing about other women's skin care routines. And so as the blog grew, Emily started to wonder, could I actually create a cosmetics brand for my readers? So in 2014, she found a single investor, and she launched a small line of skin care and makeup products.

And today, just four years later, Glacier is valued at around $400 million. And her customer base of millennial women is the envy of the cosmetics world. So now, how did she do it? How did Emily Wise seem to come out of nowhere to disrupt an entire industry? Well, the first thing to know is she didn't come out of nowhere. Emily's been walking the walk since age 15. When she talked her way into an internship at Ralph Lauren, and then got a college job at Vogue where she ended up working for several years

before quitting to focus on her blog full-time. It's a blog that inspires fierce passion among her readers. And when I sat down with Emily for a live interview on stage at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York, you could hear that passion in the crowd. I think you've got a lot of fans here, Emily. That was amazing. I wish I could do that every day. Just walk into your living room and there's like a big cheering section.

Yeah, you know, just... All right, so... Can we, this is really, this is actually a very serious question. Can we clear one thing up? Is it, is it Glacier or Glossier? Glossier, okay. Do people, do people sometimes ask you that question? All the time.

Even in France. We just launched it in France and all the girls were like, it's glossier. And we were like, no, at least here. It's Glacier. You guys should know. Yeah. Let's start when you were a kid, right? You grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

It starts you an hour, hour and a half from New York City. Tell me what you were like as a little girl. I mean, I was really weird. I mean, I'm still really weird. I'm into a wide variety of things. So love animals. I had almost every kind of pet. I mean, I had like an iguana, like a turtle,

a pair of blue cap cordon blue finches. Yeah. Like I bred guppies, fancy tail guppies, and tried to sell them to the fish store. A guppy breeder and a makeup, you know, right. Who knew? At the same time, I was super into, I think fundamentally storytelling. Like, I was really interested always, and I always have been in the power of narrative and storytelling

and kind of imagining like complete worlds or like systems. Yeah. I was definitely, you know, very into makeup. I used to make my own costumes. Like I would like sew like butterfly costumes for Halloween and, yeah. Was it just something that you kind of, you kind of, you know, naturally gravitated towards just for sure yeah it's not even like fashion specifically or beauty specifically it's again that like power of creation like you can create yourself through fashion and

beauty and you can create different looks and you can kind of use them as tools so i've always been really interested in kind of you know beauty products are like crayons you know or or clothes are kind of it was an outlet for your creativity exactly so if if we were to hop into a time machine and go back to your high school era and we saw you there, would people have identified you at the time as like, oh, there's Emily Wies, she's really into fashion. And you would see this high school student sort of dressed, you know, different. Yes, yes, but it wasn't good. Like, I wasn't good at it. I was probably doing things way too young. Like, I remember, well, I'll tell you one thing I did. I went to my first day of middle school in a new school

and new town. And God bless my mom because Clueless had just come out. And I was really excited about wearing those outfits. And so I wore thigh-high stockings to my first day of sixth grade with high-heeled loafers and like a full kilt and like a feather pen in this like town where people were playing lacrosse and like, you know, like, and they were like, who is this? So, yeah.

Like many teenagers, you were a babysitter, and you happened to do a babysitting gig for a family that would eventually land you an internship at Ralph Lauren. How did that happen? What's the story? I mean, that is, you know, people often ask me what amount of your success is attributed to luck. I really believe in kind of grit. And, I mean, I didn't make that up.

That's Angela Duckworth and her book, Grit. a very good book. But that actually just was luck. I mean, there was nothing gritty about babysitting for your neighbor's kid. And he happened to work at Ralph Lauren. The dad worked at Ralph Lauren. But you were like 15,

and how did the conversation come up? You were just like, oh my God, I love Ralph. It was a very brief conversation. I remember standing in their kitchen and at some point, I don't know how long I'd been, you know, how many times I'd babysat for them. And at some point, I asked her, he said, I work at Ralph Lauren in New York.

City and I said, how can I work at Ralph Lauren in New York City instead of babysitting her kids? And they were lovely. They were really great. And he was a real sport to propose, you know, to Ralph Lauren and HR. This is a long time ago. I'm sure this is illegal now, given I was 15. But I went in and I interviewed with HR and I went through the process and I think they saw something there. and I worked my butt off for two summers. And you were going to Ralph Lauren's headquarters on 650 Madison Avenue. It was on Madison in 60th. There was a hot dog stand in front that I would eat by, I was so excited about,

I'll never forget this. I was so excited about getting these hot dogs. I mean, I was in New York City. Like, I was like, this is what you do. They were like, oh, my God, what are you eating? Like, do not eat that. I remember, like, I didn't know. And what do you remember about?

like what did you what did you do there i mean you were 15 16 year old i did whatever whatever they had whatever they had whatever i was so happy you could give me anything i was scanning i was running errands i was i was the happiest in turn you've ever seen did you ever did you ever meet ralph oh yes you did yes so i uh no i remember i was in a room you know i was the like the note taker so i was sitting in the room in the back and in the corner and like you know everyone was I don't know, meeting and I was taking notes. And Ralph turned to me, you know, I think I'd actually maybe shaking his hand at him at one point, but he doesn't know me and, you know, and he goes, everyone just stops and he looks at me and he goes,

what do you think? I don't remember what I said. I don't remember. I just remember, like, the whole thing stopping and him asking because they were talking about something. I don't even know, yeah. Wow. So you did those two summers as an intern at Ralph Lauren and then, you did.

it was time for you to college. You went here to NYU as you studied. Studio art. And once you moved here, you got another internship at Vogue. Yes, at Teen Vogue. At Teen Vogue. And by the way, I know, I mean, a lot of us have an impression of what it might be like to work in, you know, like a Condé Nast fashion magazine from Devil Wears Prada. It's a great film. It's a great film. Is there any truth to that? I mean, so I was really fortunate because I had a great boss. So I was actually at, you know, Teen Vogue as an intern and then at Vogue, which was the job that I had before building this company.

Sure. And I was very, I think it's all about, it's kind of like anywhere, it all depends who your boss is. Like, it doesn't matter what company you're at. It's like, isn't there that thing? I just heard from someone that your personality as a result of the like three or five people who you spend the most time with. You know, if you work with great, smart, talented people, which I was very fortunate to do, then you learn a lot. When you were an intern at Teen Vogue and then you got your first job at Vogue, did you

envision that your career would be as a fashion writer or fashion editor? Is that what you thought? This is what I'm going to do with my life. Yes. I mean, you know, my dream was to be an editor in chief. So at the time, you know, in my early 20s, that was, you know, I looked at someone like Anna Wintor, and that was incredibly inspiring to me. So how did you, I guess at some point you were able to write for Vogue, you were able to write

an article, which was about, I think it's about self-taining? Yes. So this is kind of funny. So I'd interned in, I was always working in fashion, and beauty is kind of like this ugly step-sister to fashion in magazines and in media. it's really funny because all of the ad revenue or most a lot of it comes from beauty in these magazines. But if you think about it, like if you're reading an issue of a fashion magazine, beauty can sometimes at least, you know, 10 years ago be like five or six pages or 10 pages. You know, there's such little airtime dedicated to, you know, this topic that in many ways you're like forced to deal with on a more fundamental level every day than even what you're wearing, right?

It's like personal hygiene. So I'd never worked. I'd never covered this. Like I enjoyed people. and I love talking about beauty with people, but I'm not even someone who's wearing, you know, who's like obsessed with beauty in a way, if you define obsessed as being, you know, wearing a ton of makeup or spending like lots of time, I don't know, getting facials. Like that was not me. But I was on a shoot in Miami, Florida. This is like 2010? This was 2010-ish. And I was on a shoot in Miami, Florida with Dautzen, Crose. I don't know if I'm saying your name right. is the model.

And we were in a trailer, which is often the case. You're in this like, you know, RV. And at some point, the model doubts in, she said, she started talking about this, like, amazing self-tanner that she loved. And I don't even think I'd ever use the self-tanner.

And she was like, all the other ones are like crazy. But when you use this one, you exfoliate this way, and then you put it on, it's like air foam and it doesn't smell and, you know, all these things. I was like, I got to go get this frigging self-tanner. It's going to change my life. So I remembered it and I got it from the CVS in my, in Wilton, where I was for the summer.

And it was great. I mean, it was really a great experience, this self-tanner. So I wanted to write about it. Like, I was like, someone else needs to know. Like, I heard it because Dowdsen told me, which is a super crazy situation that no one else is going to be in. And I need, like, my civic duty is to, like, share this with the world. So I went to the beauty editor of Vogue, who was the full-time beauty editor,

and I hadn't met her. And, you know, she's this legend, Sarah Brown. And I was like, excuse me, you know, I have an article. I'd like to, if I can write for vogue.com, I think I would love to just submit it to you. And if you like it, you can publish it. If you don't, like, whatever, I just have to, like, tell someone.

Yeah. And she said yes. And I wrote this article. It was like little article about this self-tanner, and she published it. And so that was where I actually caught the bug, where I was like, I remember I had so much fun. writing this post. I'm sure you can find it and Google it. It's like I don't even know. It might be

terrible, but it was such a cathartic moment to have this conversation around a product that I never really felt around like a shirt. Like it was like I mean I wanted to like wear a cool shirt and look nice in a picture but I didn't feel the urge to be like is anyone else out there wearing this shirt like can we talk about how great it is? It's just it didn't get that buck. And it was just a few weeks or months later when you actually decided to launch your blog, which would become famous, into the gloss. Is that why you did it? It's connected to that article. You wrote that article and you thought, okay, I need to figure this out and do more of this. Yes. I mean,

you know, this was the era of personal style blogs. It was like when all the bloggers were starting and it was kind of this new thing, sort of not democratizing, but like really individual being like these are the human beings and how they actually put these things together, right? As opposed to sort of very tightly held images from fashion brands or campaigns. It was like, this is what's actually going on, literally on the street with fashion. And I remember thinking, well, why doesn't this exist for beauty? Like, why is there no, like, in-depth exploration of people's beauty identities and, like, beauty stories?

And there's really nowhere to find. I mean, certainly there's blogs that have existed long before into the gloss around beauty, but it was typically much more about kind of like what's new. Like it would be like, this new mascara from, you know, XYZ brand just hit the market and it's so great because of all of these things. Yet I often thought like it's not necessarily what's new that I'm most interested in. It's what's best. And this idea of what's best in beauty I think is fascinating because it's,

there's no single what's best. Yeah. Like I might love a, you know, matte lipstick and say it's five out of five stars, but you might love a shine. tiny lipstick and be like this lipstick's dry A.F. I don't want it. Guilty. It's zero out of five. So how did you actually launch

this blog? I mean, did you, was it sort of as simple as like going to, I don't know, WordPress or whatever blog, you know, hosting site and setting it up? So I'm not very technical. So WordPress is what hosted the first blog and I had a really amazing set of collaborators who I found. How much money did you have to put in to start into the glass? Literally, I mean, I'm going to contradict myself because I'm sure in another interview I've said like 900 or 700 or like 850, but under a thousand dollars. To launch into the glass. Yeah, because the website part was not expensive. The money literally

was just for the camera. To buy a camera because you knew you were going to take photos. Yeah, yeah. Canon DSLR. It was a great little camera. But what was the, what was the vision of it at the time? I'm sure it evolved. But when you went to like your parents or your friends, you said, I want to start this blog that's going to do what? That's going to give a voice through beauty. Give people a voice through beauty. And what was the first post about? First post was a publicist who worked at a fashion PR firm called Nikki Deem, and I thought she had like really cool hair and great sort of like style. And she was Australian and kind of,

and I just interviewed her and I took a picture on the street. Just asked her about like her whole routine. Yeah, beauty approach to hair, beauty, make up the whole thing and it was a very, very short. They'd progressively gotten much longer, and it was a picture of her, and that was it, and we were off to the races. Here's the thing. You are at that point, Emily Weiss, a young woman in the world, you don't have a giant network of people, you don't have a whole lot of money and access to media platforms. How did you, how did people even know about it? Yeah, so, I mean, listen, I definitely was in a great position to,

attract people to be featured on the blog. Now, whether or not they said, yes, I want to take an hour out of my day to go be featured on an unknown website with an unknown reporter was a different question. But I was sitting on, you know, the floor of photo shoots with like a 15-year-old Carly Closs, like tying her shoes. Now she's like, you know, a supermodel who's got nine million Instagram followers. So you would say to her, hey, would you mind talking to me? Yeah, I mean, we, you know, we're all kind of spending so much time together. It'd be like, hey, can I like, you know, take your picture for my new blog? And I had enough goodwill and sort of that some, a lot of people said no.

I mean, literally like 80% of the people I would ask. But I think once I started featuring, you know, if you have a couple people, then different media sites would start to, you know, hyperlink and say, oh, today there's a profile on, you know, Carly Klaus on this blog called Into the Gloss. And so that's how it took off. And you would basically feature a different person and their regimen. on the products they liked. And that was, that was it. That was, because that's a pretty clear model.

Yeah, it was very clear. And I think, you know, we've always, I've always focused a lot on good design. Like, my personal philosophy is just, like, don't put things out into the world. Don't, like, make work that isn't really great. Yeah. Like, it should be time well spent, you know, like, don't waste people's time with, like, bad content. So the fascinating thing about Into the Gloss is some of our most popular features, like, they're not celebrities, you know.

Like, we're in this celebrity culture. and we hear how much, you know, influencers have. And yet, like, if we all really take a moment to think about, like, who's the last person who told us where to eat or, like, you liked their outfit and, you know, you saw, it's like, they're probably not the biggest celebrity. It's probably someone who, like a friend from college that you follow on Instagram or, you know, someone you work with.

And I think that democratization of expertise and around, not just expertise, the democratization of influence, just like the power of the individual to influence another individual is something that's fascinating and part of the reason I think why Into the Gloss really resonated. You were doing this, just to put this in context. You had a full-time job of Vogue.

This was your side hustle. You were like doing this on nights and weekends? Yes. Yeah. I was like 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. On Into the gloss. Like transcribing or posting or editing. and then on the weekends I would do all the shoots and the interviews.

So I'd book the interviews and the shoots. And each one, I'd spend, I had your job. Like, I love interviewing people. So I would sit on people's floors and their bathrooms on their, like, closed toilet seat lids, you know, with my tape recorder out. Yeah. And it's amazing because it's so hard for women to be the right level of maintenance. If you're too low maintenance, then you're lazy.

You know, there's this stigma of, like, the person who, like, isn't doing enough. And yet, if you're wearing a lot of makeup or you're, like, look like you really care about, you know, beauty or appearance, then you're seen as sort of frivolous or, like, not to be taken seriously. So the kind of intricacies of beauty as, like, a... Even just, like, an anthropological tool is really, really, really fascinating to me. Yeah. I'm wondering, like, at what point after you launched... into the glass, did you start to realize that it was more than just, you know, some friends or a couple

dozen people or a couple thousand people, but like tens of thousands of people. Like, was that pretty soon after it launched? No, it's, you know, it was, it was a slow build, but within, within the first year, it was such that, you know, I had gone to my first brand and I had my first media partner with Longcombe. That was advertising? It was, cash money. And it was Lancombe? Yes, it was Lankom. And was it enough money to like sustain it?

No, no, it was $5,000. And, you know, this was more money than I'd ever had in my life, like, ever had in my bank account. I mean, I think it was two and a half years before, you know, after you launched into the gloss, you were still with Vogue for one year. One year. 12 months because at that point, you know, we had enough. You know, it's funny because people always say, well, how did you, I mean, this is one

of the key questions for entrepreneurs, right? like when do you quit your day job? How did you know when to quit Vogue to go full time on the side hustle? I mean, listen, super personal decision based on a ton of different, you know, very personal factors for any entrepreneur. For me, it was really just one decision to make, which was I have to pick one. This is taking too much time and there's too much momentum. It's impossible to continue to deliver the product that people want, like people, you know,

readers wanted, and at this point of a really big community was really wanting, that I felt like I really, there was really no choice. It's not even just follow your gut. It's like follow something that is really working, is really delivering, like, you know, changing things. And once you knew that, you knew it was time to throw everything into that. Yeah, it was time. I mean, I would have thought that at that point, you know, into the gloss was you were going to, you were sort of thinking about this as a media property, right? Like this is a blog, maybe you would spin it out into a podcast or a video show or something else or like a deal with cable TV. But that's not what happened. You decided to create a product. Was that, I mean, again, like, was that something that just kind of happened

on its own, or was it a really deliberative thought-through thing? Yeah. So it's a really good question. I think the thing that has led to every decision that I've made is this very central thesis that you can create conversations and connections through beauty. And into the gloss was the first version of that. Like that was the first step. It was the necessary beginning that showed a certain behavioral shift. You know, it was like encouraged people to be like, oh, okay, I'm sharing now. what goes on in my bathroom, you know, that I used to do totally alone.

And in doing, you know, in working on Into the Gloss for the first year, I was exposed to all of these beauty companies. So I was working with Longcombe. I was working with Estee Lauder. I was working with, you know, every big conglomerate. And beauty is a huge industry. It's a $450 billion global market. It's going to be $750 billion in six years.

Wow. And why is that? Because of social media. Because of sharing. because of the ability to have conversation, that beauty is now something that is not just tightly held in the hands of salespeople at, you know, a counter. You know, when was the last time any of you have, like, really relied on that?

50% of people who go into a Sephora take out their iPhones. You're Googling, you're texting your friend, I'm in Sephora, should I get, what was that thing you told me about? You know, that's how things work. And what's interesting is these companies, I was hearing in these interviews from women, as I was sitting on the bathroom floor. I was hearing this like disconnect

that would have been answered if beauty brands just listened. Like if the actual beauty brands were listening to, well, first of all, if they knew who you were, which they don't because their client is the retailer, beauty brands build products and clients for the needs of, you know, Macy's and, you know, Sephora and Alta and CVS

and those are shelf space needs and seasonality needs and margin needs. needs and all of these different needs that have nothing to do with you as the customer. So that results in this kind of subpar like product experience and kind of brand relationship. There's not really this like personal like you get me relationship. And that was what led to the creation of Glossier because all of every beauty brand that I've ever known has been built tops down. And the idea for Glossier is what would happen if you could build a beauty brand bottoms up?

you could ask a question like who makes your dream facewash and get a thousand responses who would play your face wash in a movie and have them say, Eddie Redmayne. It's like, what the fuck? Yeah.

So that was where the idea from Glossie came from was, you know, this is the next phase. Like this is the next way that we can bring together this mission of giving voice through beauty. I mean, weren't you, I mean, didn't anybody say to you, do you really think you can take on, you know, L'Oreal and Este Lodder and Revlon.

I don't even know the names are the biggest. I mean, these are huge, enormous multinationals. Like, did anybody say, you know, this is, this probably is not going to work. Oh, yeah. For sure. I mean, literally all the odds are against you, like, or against, you know, or maybe not all of them, but, you know, a lot of them. I mean, for one, you know, 4% of venture capital,

deals last year went to female CEOs. So four out of a hundred deals went to women. So already, it's like, well, how am I going to fund this thing? Because, like, you know, no one's going to give me money for this. You needed money, obviously, to create a product line. For sure, yeah. And did you have a number in your head of what you needed to start? In fact, I do.

And it was based on precisely nothing. I was like, it is going to take $1 million. That's what you said. A million dollars. I was like, I bet you. I need one million dollars to make this happen. When we come back in just a moment, how Emily got her million dollars, found a chemist in the middle of nowhere, and a new tribe of customers just about everywhere. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. So it's 2013, and Emily White. has decided to make her own beauty products.

And she thinks she'll need about a million dollars to make it happen. How did you know where to start? I mean, you're in the New York fashion world. Obviously, you've got the successful blog, but a lot of that is Silicon Valley. It's like VC money's out there, and that's a whole world. How did you know where to start? Well, first of all, I was like, what is VC money?

Like, what is VC? I'm like, oh, venture capital. what is that? I mean, let's not forget, I went to art school. Like, I did not go to business school. I did not, I did not work at a tech company. And by the way, a lot of founders of, you know, fast growth venture-backed companies worked at a fast growth venture-backed company, right? So as an outsider, really hard to sort of understand this. They're intimidating, probably. Very intimidating. But again, back to that power of grit, I just kind of plowed through on this, you know, exploration.

Like I think my personal superpower, if there's like one thing that I think I'm really good at, I'm super curious. And so I kind of made a list, frankly. It wasn't even just about raising money. I remember having a whiteboard. Yeah. Like what are all the steps it's going to take to build this company? And I wrote, you know, VC, like raise money, build website, find chemist, you know, make logo.

you know, shoot... You just like wrote this in a whiteboard. Yeah, I still have the picture. Like, what are all the ingredients that this is going to take? And of course, you don't know until you find out from one conversation what the other ingredient is you're missing.

And just, you just have to start. You have to start somewhere. So, you know, the money needing to get raised happened pretty early in that process. What was your, like, elevator pitch to VCs? So you go in and they'd say, okay, next. Yeah. My pitch to VCs in the beginning was,

you know, we have this great community, We understand beauty and people and stories, and we have this robust community who we believe deserve a better brand, like a brand that really hears them and understands them. And there's a lot of room in the market because this is a huge, huge industry, really right for disruption. There weren't very many direct-to-consumer brands at the time. Now you have, you know, Colorpop and Kylie and Kim Kardashian and all these different, you know, D-to-C kind of brands. But that hadn't happened. Yeah. I read that you pitched, I don't know, 13 or 14 VC companies and mostly men,

and only one eventually agreed to give you that initial funding. It was the VC was a woman, Kristen Green. How did that happen? Yeah. So 6% of venture capitalists are women. And hopefully that will go up. So, listen, we have incredible partners. I think, you know, initially so much of funding is around pattern recognition.

And so you have venture capitalists whose job it is is to make smart bets on companies that are going to grow super, super fast and become the next Facebook, right? And so it's hard to, I think, look at like a female CEO who does not have business, a business school degree. and sort of say, we're going to take the bet. And it felt, you know, it's exhausting. And I think I know a lot of entrepreneurs, and I think it's hard for everyone. It was exhausting to go, and we would hand our COO and I, we would hand our products.

You know, we'd have our little goodie bags and bring them to different rooms full of guys and have them get the bag and say, oh, that's so nice, thank you. I'm going to give it to my wife and, you know, ask her what she thinks. And I would say to myself, if some financial technology company came to me and pitched me, I wouldn't be like, oh, I'm going to go ask my husband to, like, explain this to me.

I would, like, learn about it. I would be like, show me your product. Let me understand this. Let me put it on the back of my hand. Like, can you tell me about, like, how people use this product? And the best people did do that. And we have, you know, a handful of really amazing venture capitalists. We have a 50% female board.

and our first investor, Kirsten, I spent a lot of time with, and she was that $1 million check. She believed in this idea. She wrote you that check. Yep. Do you know why she decided to take the risk? She has a really gut and data-backed knack for identifying consumer product companies. She invested in Warby Parker.

She invested in bonobos. She invested most recently in a way. So she's got good instincts. She has really good instincts. Yeah, around what are people going to care about? What do they want to live with? You know, like what do they, what moves people? I mean, this is a really emotional category, beauty.

You know, again, there's no, like, single truth, right? So it's really just about, like, opinion and preference and so many other ingredients. All right, so you've got this million bucks, right? We raised two. Oh, wow. Because you can't spend everything that you, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. And so how do you start a makeup company? Like where do you go? Like who do you call up and what do you say? Like, oh, can you make me this makeup? There's chemistry involved. Like how do you make makeup? I mean, you know, let me tell you how I built this.

So, okay. So my first hire. So first of all, always hire for your weaknesses, right? And surround yourself with just the most brilliant people you can ever convince to come work on the shared vision that you have. And my first tire was an incredible director of product development who had over a decade of experience at Matt Cosmetics. That was my first tire because I've never made a product

and I don't know how it works or vendors or how long things take. Like I have no idea. And I remember she ended up getting a recommendation for a chemist from someone who she knew from the beauty industry who was based outside of L.A. So we flew to LA, we got our like Hertz rental car, and we drove during rush hour all the way down to this like middle and nowhere place. And we pulled into the parking lot. The parking lot's empty.

There's like a stray dog like roaming through it like tumbleweeds blowing. I mean, you know, it was very, it did not look like this was going to be our chemist. And there's this little mirrored building. It was literally like mirrored so that you couldn't see inside. I mean, I was like, why don't we just go? This is most certainly not our guy. But we went in, and I am so glad we did, because inside was this, like, 6-4-jacked, like, dad who, like, has, who's, like, building game-changing skincare products for some of, like, the biggest brands that you've, you guys are literally sitting here wearing products that he's created. Wow.

Who's so excited about women's skincare, like, you just would not believe. Wow. And that, he became our chemist and he's actually developed like, I don't know, almost all of our skincare products. And what do you say to him? You say, I want, you know, this, this scent or I want it, like, how do you tell him what you want? Yeah, it's really a huge collaboration. I'm trying to think of, like, what I can equate it to. Maybe, like, the relationship between you and, like, your architect, like, if you're, you know, building a house. Right. It depends, because there's lots of, like, each of us would have a different relationship with an architect.

Like one of us might go to them knowing exactly what we want with exactly the ingredients and the exact approach to sustainability and an exact budget and like might be super involved. And other ones of us might be like, I kind of want like a white house, you know. And so like where we were is we were more in the former camp. And so we came and said we have these four products. We want them to do these things. We want them to, you know, have these ingredients and not have these ingredients.

And we want the price to be this. and so we have to figure out how to find the most amazing ingredients. And it's really just a back and forth and we would spend, you know, on average maybe like two or three months or four months of just shipping samples back and forth to each other.

But a lot of it was just nerding out in the lab. He had like a little room full of ingredients, like raw materials is what they're called. So literally like there'll be like a vat of like cupa cow butter from like, you know, the Amazonian rainforest just sitting there. Like that's like part, one of the things you see listed on the back of your, you know, whatever, will just be in bulk sitting in a thing.

So he would say like, undo a jar and be like, smell this, you know, or scoop out a thing and put it on your hand and say, it's like being in a chef's kitchen. And so it really is all about that personal relationship that you have and your ability to work with someone, your ability to like riff off each other that has led to some of the most amazing innovations. It seems like baked into the business model from the beginning was this very very, very deliberate idea that you were not going to have your product in the CVS or Sephora or at Bloomingdale's or Lord and Taylor, wherever, that this was going to be direct to consumer.

Why? Why wouldn't you, you know, make it available at these other places? Because we can build better product by having a direct relationship to every person. How? We don't have to make decisions for anyone other than the end user, like full stop. So first of all, that alleviates a ton of things that don't matter to you holding something and enjoying it and using it. It also enables us to like ask you questions. It enables us to like send you like questionnaires.

You know, have you been happy with this? Do you like what you got? You know, how would you improve it? What should we make later? It allows us to create platforms that connect our customers. with each other to talk about, you know, shared experiences around beauty. So, you know, we've put a thousand of our top customers in a Slack channel who exchange over 10,000 messages a week. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I was talking to several people about Glacier.

And, you know, it's many people, many women will go into a Sephora and try stuff on. And with the question is, how do you know what this is going to look like? and what's amazing is that you can just go on YouTube and type in, you know, Glacier, this. Boy brow, right, exactly. And you will find dozens and dozens of videos from women with different skin tones and shades, and you can almost see what it looks like.

Absolutely. It's almost like you, you know, most companies start with a brand and then build a customer base. You had a customer base and then you introduced your brand to them. Yeah, Although, you know, our customer base now is, is much wider than, you know, readers of Into the Gloss.

For sure. But I think what you just described is, again, this kind of like shift of influence. And it's not about, again, the influencer being this two million follower, three million follower thing. It's the ability for your feedback on Boybrow. Like that can be our customers video, right? Like, it's like, this is how I use this and this is how it works for me. And if you go into our stores, we have two flagships, one in New York and one in L.A. That is what is happening in there.

I mean, women are waiting in line down the block, meeting the person in front of them, the person behind them, talking about whether or not they'd used Glossier before, like what they like, what they don't like, where they're from, do they need a roommate? Like suddenly they work together. Like, you know, these are like lifelong relationships that are being formed. And then you go upstairs and people are up there for like an hour and a half and they're talking to each other in the mirror saying what color is that,

and they're barely even talking to the people who work here. But what about for women who don't have access to those stores? I mean, makeup is such a personal thing. I mean, most of your customers are buying the products without trying them on first. So how did you know that people were going to be willing to take that leap of faith? Well, I think part of it is by having a product philosophy and an approach to content that facilitates that leap of faith. What do you mean?

Well, I mean, if we had, you know, a super high coverage foundation product, then that would require us to make, you know, 50 shades or something, or 55 shades or something like that, which would be almost like impossible to sell online. I would have a really hard time, like shade matching myself if there were 50 shades of something. Like, I would not know how to do that. But what we can do is create, you know, a product like Boybrow

that's super intuitive, that's super easy to use, that doesn't deposit too much, that is sheer enough that it can span a wide range of eyebrow hair colors, you know, something that facilitates that participation. You launched this company in 2014, four years on. First of all, how many employees do you now have? Oh, we have, so it changes every week because we have like five people starting, like even this Monday. Now we're, I think, 186 full-time employees and 150 showroom editors. I think since that first million or two million in seed funding, you've raised more than 80 million.

The company is now valued at more than 300 million, maybe close to $400 million. Four years. That's crazy. I have to imagine that the big cosmetics companies, the L'Oreal's, the Estée Laudders, are really paying attention to what you're doing and really want to buy this company. They really want to own this brand. I mean, you know, you can go down the list. Bobby Brown and, you know, some of these other iconic brands that were purchased by the larger brands.

What happens if and when they approach you? Maybe they already have. So the companies that I most admire are companies that create a company. iconic products that really stand the test of time. The other thing that I think a lot about is our mission. So I think about how else can we connect people through beauty? How else can we help people sit up a little taller, feel better about themselves through beauty? We have a really long way to go in terms of actualizing that vision.

In fact, I think about where we are today as truly just the beginning. Like being four years in for me, I wake up every day. I think it's day one. And typically when you sell to a larger conglomerate, it's because you need more distribution. Because the benefit of having, you know, being a L'Oreal or an Estee Lauder company or something like that is that they have this vast network of retailers.

Yeah, store around the world. Macy's and all those things. And you don't need that. We don't need that. We create, you know, our own channel through our digital platform, through Glossia.com. And one of the things that we're most fascinated by right now is the fact that this beauty shopping experience,

this experience of walking into a store and yet wanting to be connected to someone who you pick and wanting to find information through a person that you relate to or that you are inspired by or choose, there's really nowhere to do that online. Like you can go on YouTube, but it's really like looks-based.

It's really about kind of like, I want to do a cat-eye or I want to do a unicorn Halloween makeup or something like that. But in terms of finding that individual story for beauty, it's really, really tough. So we actually just hired

the person who built DMs and camera at Instagram. And then we also made another hire of the guy who was employee nine at Instagram, who's an amazing product designer, digital product designer, because we're spending a lot of time thinking about how to create

that digital platform, that channel, Because we've already built these tools, right? But where is the place where people can come together to talk about beauty, to share what they've learned from Glossier and all of the other brands and products that they use and talk about? And how can they find each other? Like they do at our flagships. I have to imagine that the big cosmetics companies

are looking at your customer base, very young, multiracial, it's a super coveted demographic that you've got. hard to recreate, right? Because there's an authenticity to what you do and there's a risk of inauthenticity when you try to manufacture it. Are you watching your competitors as well? Do you keep an eye on what they're doing?

Well, it's interesting because beauty is not that competitive in my mind because how many different brands are we all using every day? Like how many different lip products do I have in my purse right now? You don't want to know. From like all different brands, like eight different lip balms and lip glosses and lipsticks. And I'm not interested in like consolidating that.

Like that is like not a realistic expectation of any of us. Like no single brand can make every, can meet, you know, all of your needs when it comes to beauty, at least in my mind. So for us it's just about how can we be a part of this conversation? How can we be a part? And how can we most importantly facilitate the conversation happening? Yeah. When you think about, and you partially answered this earlier,

but when you think about the arc of your career and you're still so young and you have so much to do ahead of you, you may build two or three more companies, who knows, how much of what's happened to you and what you've accomplished do you attribute to your persistence, hard work, grit, and how much to lucky breaks? I think I definitely believe in luck, but I don't rely on luck and I don't attribute luck to where I am today. I really believe that it is a combination of this passion and this perseverance and probably a little bit of having a very short memory.

I think it's such a gift. I just keep going. I think when you fall or when someone says no or when something, you try something and it doesn't work, the ability to just continue, like just pick up. There's a resiliency, right? Like, that's really when I hear the word grit. That's what it says to me is there's a resiliency to just, to just brush, shake it off, right? And keep going.

Yeah. Just one last question for you. If you were sitting in this audience 10 years ago and you were watching somebody like you, and you had a dream or an idea in your head, what would you have wanted to know? What do you now know that you wish you knew when you were starting out? I don't know.

I would use the Phil Knight quote from Nike of like, just do it. You know? I mean, as cheesy as it sounds, be courageous. Like, be curious and be courageous. Because the worst, it's like my friend says about dates. It's either a good date or a good story. And I think that's really good advice. Like, try things. It's going to help you grow and learn, you know, learn something, learn something about yourself.

I really do believe that. Emily Weiss, founder of Glacier. Thank you. I spoke with Emily on November 1st at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU in New York City. And just a few days after that, Glacier opened its first permanent flagship store in New York at the very same address where the company was founded. The new space is painted in Glacier. POSier Pink and is ready for the camera, which means if you couldn't be there, you may have seen it on your Instagram feed. Our episode was produced this week by Rachel Faulkner with music composed by Rumtin Arablui.

Thanks also to Neva Grant, Jeff Rogers, J.C. Howard, and Sanaz Meshkampur. Our intern is Mia Venkatt. And look out for another live interview coming your way this Thursday. On Thursday, November 29th, check out our next bonus episode from The How I Built This Summit in San Francisco. It's my conversation with John Zimmer, founder of Lyft. Oh, and one more quick thing. If you want to actually attend a live taping of how I built this, we just released a few

more tickets to our sold-out L.A. show on December 5th at the Theater at Ace Hotel. I'll be talking with Michael Dubin, founder of Dollar Shave Club, and you can grab those few remaining tickets by visiting nprpresents.org. Life Kit is like your friend with really good advice. So can I really be truthful? Yeah. It's just me and you, right? Well, sure, let's say it is.

Three times a week, LifeKit is in your feeds with episodes on health, personal finance, personal growth, and so much more. Listen to Life Kit from NPR.