Y Combinator Startup Podcast - #21 - Emily Weiss on the Insights That Grew Glossier - With Amy Buechler at the Female Founders Conference

Episode Date: July 26, 2017

Emily Weiss is the founder and CEO of Glossier.Amy Buechler is Batch Director at YC.Video and transcript are on the YC blog.

Hey, this is Craig Cannon and you're listening to Y Combinators podcast. Today's episode is with Emily Weiss, founder and CEO of Glacier, and Amy Beechler, batch director at YC. This conversation was recorded at our fourth annual female founders conference, which took place here in San Francisco this June. All right, here we go. I am Amy Beakler from Y Combinator, and I have the distinct pleasure of introducing Emily Weiss here.

Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. It's so good to see everybody. So, Emily, you founded two brands that have a pretty beautiful symbiotic relationship. Your first was Into the Gloss, which began as a beauty-focused blog in 2010 as a side project, when you were a fashion assistant at Vogue, and you later used the audience and the content that you built there to launch Glacier in 2014. And Glossier is a direct-to-consumer beauty brand with a stunning line of products, which basically power the external appearance of all women.

who work at Y Combinator. So thank you so much for making us all feel beautiful every single day. So you've said that both Into the Gloss and Glossier focus on beauty as an element of personal style and celebrate women sharing their own makeup reviews, product recommendations, and beauty routines with one another. And Into the Gloss now attracts nearly 1.5 million unique visitors every month. So something that you're doing is really resonating with women. How did you first identify the women needed a platform to have these kinds of conversations?

Yeah, it's a good question. So the one common thread that still motivates all of us at Glossier today, and we're 95 people in Soho in New York, were actually 77% women. We have over 40% female tech team. And also, just before I dive right into it, I walked in here when you guys were all like lining up around the front. And first, it was actually, unfortunately, probably all the women in San Francisco, I feel like, we're all in this audience. So, like, God forbid something happens. Like, we're all human race is going to like, but, no, it's really cool. I mean, I go to a lot of these

things, as I'm sure many of you do, and to see, like, just the whole thing flipped and the energy in here is just so awesome. So it's great, great to be here. But the conversation around beauty, it's a really interesting time to be in, not just in startups and in technology, but in beauty. And beauty is something that, you know, when we were pitching, when I was pitching by myself, you know, our seed round, like, back in 2013,

beauty was not, you know, this, like, hot thing that it is right now. Like, I had meetings with, like, a couple venture capitalists yesterday, and, like, it's a good time to be in beauty. But I think the reason why is because beauty is this great conduit. You asked, like, how did I recognize that there should be this platform? beauty is this great kind of like activator for women to connect with each other and share with each other and to really develop and hone a voice and that might sound silly but everybody has something to share about beauty right like I remember this woman Jean Godfrey June she was the beauty editor at Lucky

magazine for a really long time and when I interviewed her she was like beauty's this like great connect equalizer like among women you can be you know like meeting someone for the first time really nervous, but if you're like, oh, I love your lip gloss. Like, what color is that? Like, you know, you're like, oh, I love this lip gloss. I've like 10 of them. I've been wearing it for 10 years. So everyone has something to say. So I think it's a really cool time to be in beauty because technology is just completely upended the traditional, you know, paradigm of like brand to customer, kind of like these, you know, mega brands who have this perfect look and this whole range of products and you have to sit down at a counter and they do your whole face. And then they make you

guilt trip you into buying all the products. And they expect that those are the only products you'll ever have in your bathroom. Really, you've got, like, an assortment. And so I think it's really cool that right now you should be encouraged to be your own curator of your own life in every arena, you know, whether that's, you know, what food you're eating or what blender you're buying. Like, I always use the blender analogy that if you're going to buy like a Vitamix on Amazon, I'm never going to read what Vitamix has to say about it.

I'm going to go straight to like the stars and the reviews and everything. And that's really cool that commerce is being so democratized. And beauty is just another category where it's all about, you know, the woman electing brands and electing her products and, you know, searching for the best. And I think Into the Gloss is really just a reaction of that and sort of an aggregator and like an instigator of that behavior. Yeah, Glossier is really well known now for listening to customer feedback in your product development cycle. And essentially now, anyone on your team can put a blog post up on Into the

Gloss, saying, we have this brand new product idea, what are your opinions, what do you all want, how would you describe the most ideal texture or fragrance or shade or price point? And how do you know whose opinions to listen to? I don't know, how do you listen to your gut? What is that like for you? Yeah, so it's interesting. I mean, you know, traditionally, I'm not sure how beauty brands arrived at what products to make, but for us, there's really only one logical conclusion, which is, like, talk to people, whether that's, you know, I mean, I have my opinions about products that I like, but having interviewed, you know, hundreds of the most influential women from, you know, politics to art to fashion, to, you know, girls on the street who have, like, cool pink hair color, and you want to

know where, why. I have certainly, like, a lot of opinions, but what's really interesting, more interesting is again that like just just having a lot of conversations and what's better than you know posting something on instagram and within like 20 minutes having a thousand responses about you know whether that red lipstick that we're working on is like skewing a little too blue or a little too red and you know you've got everyone from like a girl in her bedroom in ohio with 200 followers to like make up by mario who's like kim khrashian's makeup artist who has like you know 10 million followers writing like i think it's a little blue so i mean someone's paying him like a lot of money to like give that feedback but he's giving us for free on our Instagram. So I think it's nice that, you know, you can kind of sift through that.

And it's really an art and more of an art than a science. Like we don't one for one crowdsource. We don't say like, you know, tell us exactly what to make and we'll shade match it and we'll send it to you. We really kind of combine our editorial background as beauty editors with, you know, hearing, you know, 30% of those people saying it's too blue. And then you're like, oh, okay, well, I guess it's a little too blue. Was there ever a time when sort of the beauty hive mind was incorrect and you followed an opinion that in fact turned out to be wrong? I don't think, I mean beauty is so subjective. We were just debating this backstage.

You got into a big fight over mascara because I was like, nobody needs a mascara. And she was like, oh, no, no, no, no. I really need one. But, you know, you're not talking about, like, you know, underwear. It's like you can skip mascara. So you can't be writer. you can't be right or wrong. So we haven't been led astray,

but we've definitely had to make some tough calls. Like, you know, when we were making our priming moisturizer rich, a bunch of respondents said, oh, we really want it in a pump instead of a jar, but when we worked with our chemist and developed this formula that included a lot of their responses about ingredients, we realized we couldn't fit the product into a pump. It wouldn't come out, so we had to go the jar route,

That was, then we explained to everyone, this is why it's not in a jar, and now it's one of our best-selling products. So I think it's just about that transparency with the customer and, like, you know, really letting people know that we're indexing on quality, like always about everything else. And I think that goes a long way. Yeah. What have Into the Gloss and Glacier taught you about women in beauty over the past seven years? So much. I mean, again, I think, you know, personally, I love products. I mean, I grew up really liking, like, like, Stela.

and like, you know, a lot of beauty products and trying a bunch of stuff. But beauty pre-instagram, pre- YouTube, really, YouTube, you know, it's like the number one or two category after, like, tech unboxing or unboxing of other things, which I did know. But I think pre-that, it was really this very solitary endeavor. Like, it's you in the morning, kind of like just you, by yourself, like, doing your thing. And now it's such a connected, like, shared activity. or, you know, like, knowledge, knowledge research.

But the one thing that I think overarchingly has been interesting is the number of women who, like, I start the sentence, you know, when I'm like, when I used to do these interviews in their bathrooms, and I'd be like, hey, can I come over and, like, you know, rifle through your medicine cabinet and, you know, ask you about your beauty routine. And you'd have these really powerful women from, like, you know, Ariana Huffington to, like, Jenna Lyons being like, oh, me, like, no, I'm really low maintenance. And I'd have to be like, well, like, really? I mean, okay, like, let's talk about it. What does that

mean for you? You know, can I come over? And then you go there and you open the cabinet, it's like flowing. It's like there's like there's so many products. And so I'm like, why is there this weird like beauty shaming kind of like deeply ingrained thing where you have to be like, oh, like, you know, like, no, I don't really like me, beauty, what? And I think I think that's really like funny. And I think it's because, you know, we're made to feel so much like we don't know. Like we can't have these opinions, like there's some, you know, brand or makeup artist or someone somewhere who, like, knows way more about, you know, you. And also, if you like product, then that means you're not just waking up naturally, just looking beautiful. You're actually using many things. And, you know,

that's kind of, like, frowned on by society. So I think there's a lot of cool, like, anthropological, like, things around beauty that are getting unpacked now thanks to things like Glossier and flew off and YouTube. And I'm curious about those interviews that you conducted because as you're saying, you are asking really high profile, powerful women to let them, you're asking them to let you into their house, like into their bathroom with them.

And essentially, those interviews created a really beautifully detailed snapshot of that woman's relationship with themselves that, as you mentioned, is usually a secret, and maybe only a significant other or a really close family member might know what that woman does to take care of herself. And when you were first starting out,

how other than pestering them, it sounds like, did you sort of get to the yes? I mean, asking is something I've always, for better or for worse, like, I just always do it, so I'm not very self-conscious about, like, putting myself out there and getting rejected, and we still get turned down. I mean, I'm personally not doing the interview,

anymore, but we get, you know, turned down all the time. I think, I think, you know, especially with where technology is right now and social media is every, you know, there's, it's double edge sore, this idea that everyone can start something, right? And, and you're all here because I'm sure you're many, many entrepreneurs and, and I think just like a product of quality is, it really speaks for itself. So I think when you're, you know, trying to get that, that yes, I mean, for us, a lot of it was like, look at this, look at this, here's a link to something we did. with this person. Like here's, you know, you could,

you will also look and sound, you know, like hopefully there'll be something you'll be proud of if you do this. And so I think quality really begets quality. And again, in this kind of like fast fashion age where everyone can like put up an Instagram in like 10 seconds and, you know, you can really make a lot of content quickly. I think that kind of like premium attention to detail content

or product just goes a long way. you've spoken a bit about how Glacier is really reinventing the traditional beauty experience can you describe that and explain how you plan to transform it yeah so we're i mean we're really um a pretty young company it's like two and a half years old almost three years old in october um we are purely direct to consumer so um all sold through glossier dot com and um have many hundreds of thousands of customers now in in the in the United States and soon internationally we're launching in in October in the fall and actually my business partner and I Henry he's our president and COO he came from index ventures in London

and we've worked together since launching it was funny so you were doing our board deck yesterday we're in town for a board meeting and he's always said and we've kind of always said you know sometimes you just say things over and over and then you wake up sometimes you say and you're like wait that's not true he said he said us being direct to consumer is the value proposition to the customer. And I was like, I know we always say that, but like, she doesn't care that she's getting it, like, directly from us. That's not, like, the value proposition.

Like, maybe she even wants to just go get it right, you know, at Sephora, like, the next day. But what is, you know, really interesting about how we're reinventing the beauty experience is that relationship she feels with Glossier because we have such a direct one-to-one connection with her. So we have everyone's emails. We're able to, you know, offer special, like, access to things, promotions to things. We're able to make replenishment easier. We're able to ask her

specific questions about what product she wants, all of which, you know, a brand that sold through Sephora or sold at the drugstore is unable to do because they don't know you. They don't, you know, they don't have any of your data and they can't make that experience really special for you. So I think, you know, that's kind of the business case, but the impact case, which is, you know, why those 95, 77% female, you know, employees are all doing this is the impact with Glossier is that, you know, I was, I was doing all these beauty interviews and I was realizing that there was this big disconnect between, like, the affinity for the beauty brand and the actual product. So you might say, for example, like,

I really love Mabelian Great Lash, but, like, do you really have a relationship to Mabelian? Like, are you, like, do you, like, do you, like, ascribe to their set of values? Do you, like, understand, like, you know, where they came from or, like, what they're up to, like in the background. And so I thought there was just this great opportunity really to have this super connected, really modern brand in every sense of the word. So, you know, I guess we've reinvented it in the sense of direct consumer online, but we also are, you know, going into like our own retail and we have a showroom in New York

that's more like an art gallery or like a clubhouse than it is like a, you know, Sephora. There's actually barely any product in it. We have 22 products. So, you know, it's few and far between. and it's become this meeting place for women to actually, like, meet up before brunch or, like, you know, help each other kind of pick their shade. And there's, like, almost a little need for actual salespeople. So I think the opportunity to think about, like, what is beauty offline? And kind of, like, you know, I think that's really interesting, too, how it can bring women together.

Yeah, sort of in listening to you speak, it sounds like your starting, like your starting point was having, women create a relationship with themselves, then you're sort of sharing that outward with other women. And there's sort of this big question is, like, how do you scale that relationship, that relationship that you have with your clients, that they have with one another? And I've heard you name a couple of things,

but just like, how do you think about that? Because, again, it's such an intimate thing that you're hoping to scale to the masses of the world. Yeah, so we think about it all the time, and, like, my head of comms will kill me because I'm going to say something really weird right now. but I think about it a little bit like how are like religion scaled, right?

Like you have, like you have, like we always say about glossier, like it's the first beauty lifestyle brand. And the reason we say that is because not only are we like addressing like multiple categories and kind of like, you know, maybe there'll be a glossier deodorant, maybe they'll be like a glossy lip, you know, like, I don't know, tampon. Like our customers want kind of, they trust us and they really want like the, the Glossier version of X. But the other thing is, you know,

you're interacting with engaging with Glossier throughout the day in ways that you choose. So it's like, okay, I want to follow on Instagram. Okay, I want like X number of emails. Okay. Or you're just like, just shut up and give me my moisturizer and I like don't want to talk to you. But in how you scale that, like, I mean, technology certainly helps,

but I think like every woman can have whatever relationship she wants like with Glossier, you know, and whether that's like stickers on the back of her phone to remind her like throughout the day, like she likes this like or, you know, like, whether she wants to come every Saturday to, like, our showroom, I think it's up to her to, like, really decide, like, what kind of, how involved she wants to be in the brand and in the building of the brand.

And I think that's what's really interesting, too, in terms of the relationship. It's, like, the relationship to the customer in terms of creating brands, I think, is going to be beyond just glossy and beauty, like something that most of the great next generation, like, you know, CPG companies are going to be. to be built around this notion of like this these relationships with customers and and this this real like two-way street um late last year you raised a 24 million dollar series b late congrats on that how are you planning to take over the world with that what's your plan actually we're planning on keeping it all in the bank like literally i looked at our balance sheet yesterday and it like was all there

this is good um we've been really conservative actually so we've we've raised um i guess i'd probably like 40-something million, but we were actually like accidentally profitable a couple months last year, which was like cool to see. I mean, I don't know if we should clap or not. That's the other thing. I'm like, is that good? And my partner's like, well, it depends. Like we could always like spend more in marketing. So I went to art school, by the way. So I did not, I did not go to business school. But to the point of our, of someone on stage before, like that curiosity is really important, right? That kind of like naivete of being like like, huh?

Explain this to me. That's served us well. But in terms of what we're doing with the money, I think, I mean, we're really lucky we've had 600% growth in the last 12 months,

600% growth the year before that. And it's really been a result of two things. I would say incredible focus and discipline. We say no to way more things than we say yes to. That's really hard, especially because we could

put ourselves in a Sephora tomorrow and probably like 4x revenue. But I, I don't know that that would really help us achieve the long-term impact we want in women's lives. And the other thing that's really driven that has had nothing to do with the money we've raised. I mean, 79% of our growth last year was all based on peer-to-peer recommendations. So it's not through paid.

It's not through like an acquisition machine. It's just been through women telling each other how much they love our products. And for that, we're really grateful. we're investing much more in community efforts, much more in a little bit in offline, but really just on continuing to make amazing product that people want to talk about. Yeah, and I know one of the things that you said is that you're opening some retail, and that's super exciting. And when you think about the Glacier retail experience, in your own mind,

what is your fantasy of that like? What do you want it to look like in a dream Emily world? I mean, well, that's a heart. That's a really scary question. Because I want like birds and like candy. Actually, we just had a kickoff meeting about this, and I referenced Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and like the wallpaper that you can lick.

So I'm not saying we should have lickable wallpaper, but I like the excitement and the energy of like going into something that's like this mecca and this kind of like, because who needs stores anymore? You know, like, why are you opening like an offline, like, store? If you can just order it and it'll get there in an hour or, like, the next day. Like, truly, like, that is the question we should all be asking ourselves because if we really take a hard look and think about, like, you know,

what you're doing in shopping this weekend, it should be cool. Like, it shouldn't just be about, like, procuring, you know. There should be more birds. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. is going to be birds, but I think it should be more, it's much more experiential, and so I think more about hospitality than I do about, like, you know,

sales per square foot. Yeah, for sure. When you think about the beauty space, what is it that sort of makes you the most energized thinking about the future? What are you most looking forward to? I'm most looking forward to the customer just like always being right.

I think it's so cool, and she's always been right, and that's why that phrase exists, but I think the phrase has never been truer than it is today. So it's actually not even from like the CEO founder perspective, but just from like a consumer perspective, like how cool that there are so many options, but more importantly, because there's always been so many options,

that's been the problem. Like there's too many options. More importantly, it's like there's just so much great information. There's so many ways to cut through those options. There's like, you know, so many ways to connect. If you want to know how to do a black cat eye, you know, you can find like, you know, 50,000 videos and like 10 minutes on how to do that. So I love that the power dynamics and beauty have just completely shifted. And I think they're going to shift more and more and more.

And maybe it's like some weird anarchist streak that, like, I didn't know I have it. I just think it's really cool that women are really like the authors of their own lives when it comes to, you know, beauty in many of. other things. Around the time that you first launched Glossier, right, you were sort of launching into a hardware space, like a company that had now a physical product, which is traditionally

very difficult. Was there ever a time that you thought you wouldn't make it? That it was the wrong thing. What am I doing here? I don't think so. And that's not to say that I was not... So you asked two

questions. Like, is it the wrong thing? Never. Always knew it was the right thing. Um, um, um, would we not make it? Like, sure. I mean, there's a million things, you know, we like scraped by for, I mean, into the gloss was totally bootstrapped. I spent like $700 of like my own money to, you know, get it, get it off the ground. And then we just relied on advertiser dollars. And you don't know when, it was basically like freelancing. You don't know when the next thing is going to come through. And of course, when we first launched Glossier, we pressed, you know, I'm not an engineer, but whenever the site went live, I don't know what we pressed. It was six in the morning, and like, we didn't know who was going to come or if anyone was going to order anything.

Like, we didn't start with a wait list. There were no pre-sales. Like, it was just like, it's on, you know. Does anyone, does anybody want it? So there's definitely been, like, those moments. So, yeah, it's been scary, but we just, you just keep going. Like, there's no other option. I don't know what I would be doing if I weren't doing this.

Yeah, that's a good point. What has it been like for you, sort of your evolution as a manager and a CEO? What has that been like? That's a great question. Presentation right before she was saying, you know, sometimes the best creators are not the best managers. I'm not a good manager, but I'm a very good hireer. Is that a word?

Yeah. hireer. And it's because I love people and I really believe in women and I really believe in people. And I love when women especially like really surprise themselves. Yeah. And so I, my job changes every, I would say like three months as a CEO. Like I really go focus on something else. So for example, the next like three months I'm going to be really focused on opening our European headquarters in London and I'll be, you know, over there all the time. but as of now and probably for the last 12 months I've spent over 50% of my day on HR people and hiring so that's everything from interviewing every single new employee from intern level to COO level to you know taking people out for coffee I have probably

two to three I probably have three to four job interviews a day and one to two coffees a day with different members of our team from you know associate level you know graphic designers to our senior engineers in tech. And I think that's just really important. Like, I sit with everybody. Like, sometimes I say I'm like the mom and mean girls who comes in. She's like, you kids need anything? Condoms?

And they're all like, we're good. Like, leave us alone. But I think it's good to some of the best. There's no, like, hierarchy in ideas. You know, so you can be an intern and have some great observation about, you know, workflow management and your idea really needs to be listened to. So, and the other thing I would say

we do really well at Glossier, and I don't take credit for this, this is really, like, ingrained in our culture, is we take big bets on people. So, like, our SVP of marketing, Allie Weiss, no relation, although I always wish their work, because she's really smart. She graduated HBS, like, two years ago

and had never worked in marketing. But given the nature of marketing today and how quickly it's evolving and, you know, the playbook, people with playbooks, it's not so much about a playbook, right? You have to say, like, what matters right now? Like, what matters today and what matters for your product and your company, and which social channel matters and which social channels don't matter? And Ali had never done marketing, but now she's, you know, our SVP of marketing,

and she's crushing it. So we take really big bets on people, and I think, given, especially in fields like marketing, You know, it's changing so much that experience is, you know, sometimes not even the most important indicator of success. Thank you so much for sharing that all with us today. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Okay, thanks for listening. So if you want to read the transcript or watch the video, you can check out blog.commodator.com.

And as always, please remember to subscribe and rate the show. All right. See you next time.