← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
The Truth About Beauty Brand Buyouts (And Why We Stay Independent)
00:22:20
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign welcome to biohacking beauty, the show where we simplify the science of biohacking your skin and skin longevity to help you take control of your skin aging process. I'm Amitai Eshel. Together with me, and together we founded a company called Young Goose, the world's first biohacking skincare brand, where we aim to target your skin's biological age and integrate longevity molecules into everyday topical applications. If you like what we're doing here, you can head over to young goose.com, use the code podcast10 to get 10% off your purchase. And today's episode is a kind of impromptu. Impromptu. Whatever. Impromptu impromptu episode. We have some time on our hands here at the podcast stage studio, and we decided to talk about a topic we're actually asked about extremely often, which.
- [01:06]
B
Is due to recent events of.
- [01:10]
A
Not only due to recent event, but definitely that's kind of sparked, I think a discussion, ignited the discussion, right?
- [01:18]
B
Yes. So I guess we were thinking about different things. You wanted to say that the topic that is often discussed and people reach out to find out is whether we want to sell our company or some shares to investors and raise money. So that is one question, and I think that's what you were alluding to. I was saying due to recent events, meaning the pretty big move and, you know, pretty big sale of road to E L F Beauty.
- [01:52]
A
Yeah.
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B
For, you know, crunchy billion dollars.
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A
For a crunchy billion dollars. Actually. That's. So first of all, rode by Hailey Haley Bieber. Hayley or Hailey?
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B
Hayley.
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A
Hayley. Hailey Bieber.
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B
We're not very close, so she didn't tell me how she prefers it.
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A
Okay, cool. H. Bieber and sold the company for a billion dollars. Actually, it's not. I mean, it's tremendous, but it's. Recently there were some big sales to say, the ordinary, which it's not the Ordinary. It's the company that owns the Ordinary. They own a couple other brands. Will SOL for 1.7 billion to Estee Lauder or L'. Oreal, one of them maybe L' Oreal.
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B
ASAP we can talk about. ASAP.
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A
ASAP. Two point something. Million. Billion. 2.7 billion, I think. Yeah, over 2.5 billion to Estee Lauder, I want to say. But not. Although there were a few. And not to say that Yungoos, you know, is worth a billion dollars or 2.7, but we get, I think probably like three serious inquiries a week about investment. But I think the conversation is even from our friends, like, hey, you know, this is happening. We heard about Hailey Bieber and how she sold the company. Like, what are you guys planning? And that's something that behind the scenes, we actually explain quite often, but we've never spoken about it on air, which is the. I think that investment is the end of innovation. Right?
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B
Yeah. And from personal experience and previous businesses that we have opened doors to other investors, we've seen that it's really hard to maintain the same ethos and control over your business. Business once somebody else has a. Has a say and expectations. And a lot of the times those expectations from later investors is really just the profit, you know, because they don't. They haven't put their soul and tears and sweat into making something like this happen. They already came, you know, to capitalize on, you know, early success or later success, doesn't matter. They're most of the time in it for the money. And also there are a lot of, you know, famous examples out there where once, you know, like even. It's funny to bring this into this conversation, but even McDonald's, you know, once was a small chain restaurant with, you know, probably better quality meat. And, you know, really genuine idea there.
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A
You're, of course, quoting the Reliable Source, the movie, the Founder, the documentary, I.
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B
Don'T remember what's it called. But, you know, once they took on another investor that had really, like, different plans, his plans was to really go global, go big, have McDonald's in every corner. And then he was, you know, for. For that example, like introducing not real ice cream. Right. Like, he didn't care that it's a powder with water. This was something that would yield better return on investment. So very similarly, once you take on investors, and we've had that in previous business, it wasn't any good where somebody else came in and was like, oh, my God, you paying this much money for this ingredient? I can get you much cheaper ingredient. The same exact ingredient, 25% cheaper, 35, whatever. These are huge numbers for a company.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But, you know, we source the highest quality ingredients, we make sure that they're bioavailable, they're at the highest concentrations. And yes, that, you know, results in certain price points. But we really take pride into something that we built from grassroots. Once you take on investors, all of these moments will change. They will want cheaper packaging. They will want, you know, not necessarily. Right. I shouldn't say that it's 100%, but there is a high risk of them.
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A
I think I want to break it down even from why someone would give you money. Why would someone give you money? And that is, I think we've already talked about companies that are built to sell or built for investment. I think we've covered it before in a podcast where we said they normally prove the proof of concept is, hey, how can we champion one ingredient and basically then are able to show that we can expand as a company? Because people now believe in this ingredient, that this is a panacea that's going to solve all their problems. And then we can create, you know, if we had a face cream, now we can create an eye cream, body cream, hair serum, whatever that is. And we have the proof of concept here that people are going to go for it. But this is quite disingenuous because, you know, even if you've proven it works in one capacity, it never translates that well to other things. Right. But we've covered it. I just wanted to make sure, like, we're saying that. But the other thing is this, like, why would someone come to you and tell you, here's my money, take my money? It is because there are two reasons. The first reason, and that's definitely someone that a sane company would want, not want to take their money, are people who want to be cool. And we know those people. We know very, very, very, very rich people. Like, you know, some of them are friends that wanted into a business, even our business, because they thought it's a cool business to be a part of. But that is. That motive is really not great for a company that is built to change people's lives or something like that, or to improve people's lives or whatever the credo is, because they are coming with a motive that is different from what the company is built to do.
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B
And it's also, I think there is a company culture. So because we build it from ground up, we have employees with us that started when there was no employees. And we had the employee number one and we had employee number two shout out to Vega, Vega. And then Javier. And they had to. They all juggled all of the different roles, you know, all of them seen those incredible feedback from our customers, you know, about how much they love the products, how much they see the difference. And they. Every day that they come to work, they really feel like they're making someone's day better, someone's week better, someone's month better, someone's special occasion better. Like, you know, boosting someone's confidence. So it's like something that they live and breathe and then versus someone else. Just, you know, heard you on a podcast, Thought it actually happened. Awesome. Yeah. Thought you're awesome thought. The company has a huge potential. Wanted to be associated with you in particular with the movement of biohacking and being that go to biohacking skincare and say that they're co founder and they have the financial resources. So that's not the right motive. They, they, you know, but I would say.
- [09:15]
A
So that's one thing, but the other thing is let's talk shop now. Let's talk business. Who really wants to invest in a business? These are, you know, venture capital firms or whatever that their job is to create profit and not only to create profit, is to create more profit or a better margin than what the company has had until that point.
- [09:43]
B
Yeah. And on that note, speaking of like very famous acquires that happened recently, there is a very famous acquire that didn't happen. So last year another company, Rare, founded by Selena Gomez, was projected to be sold for 2 billion and then a year went by and nobody bought them. And one of the reasons is that when you compare, let's say Rare and Rhode as a portfolio, Rhode has low amount of SKUs, which we also have compared to other skincare companies, we have very low amount of SKUs. So there is a big opportunity to expand and create more. When you look at Rare, like all of the shelves are full. Like they have so many different. They've made every single product possible for your beauty and skincare. It's already exist in their line. And then also Road is very local to United States. It's not really sold and distributed overseas or Rare is already sold and distributed overseas. So the opportunity.
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A
Growth opportunity.
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B
The growth opportunities is much smaller. So when you compare Road and Yangos, it's very similar. Like we do have that positioning where we're still mostly sold in U.S. we ship overseas, but we don't have that strong presence overseas. We have a lot of. We concentrate.
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A
We have a strong presence in Albania.
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B
Yeah. I mean, shout out to.
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A
Shout out to Kitsa.
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B
Yeah. We also have strong presence in Ukraine, you know, and I'm just saying like in smaller countries where you don't expect.
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A
Yeah.
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B
To have that.
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A
Norway.
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B
No, but. Yes, but what I'm getting at is that it also kind of sort of goes back to what we were saying. We could have put the same ingredient in every single product, but we didn't because it wouldn't be kind of genuine. If you give enough in one product, you don't need it in every single product. We also didn't make five cleansers even though we could. We didn't make five everything toners because each One that we put out there, in our opinion is the best. It's going to work, you know, across the board. But for a potential investor, they look at it and they're like, oh my God, they do so well. I could easily make them make four more cleansers and this, those are also going to sell. And you know, there is so much potential for Yangus making more money that for people that are only about money, they're like, I can help you guys make money 10 times more in this one seat, in one, you know, session. But all of that advice, when we look at it, yeah, it's very actionable, it's very doable, easy money. But it's not what we're about.
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A
Yeah, it's not, it's not. Definitely not longevity forward or ethics forward or whatever. Another thing I would say is again, the, the idea of, of, of innovation and how it is stifled by the need to make high margin. I don't know if to talk about the products that are not out here yet, but we can even talk about the body cream. Right. Like we had thousands of people, thousands upon thousands of thousands of people demand that we release a body cream many years ago. I mean, for sure, two years ago.
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B
And more from the beginning.
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A
From the beginning. But I'm saying like two years ago it became, it became like a million dollar loss of not, of not. Yeah, right. So like we could have just again, like we said in the episode about body cream, we could have just watered down our face cream and you know, supplied that. But it took us say three and a half years of research to come out with a formula that is really not only effective from an ingredient standpoint, but from a delivery system standpoint point of view, especially around the peptides, the lipopeptides. Right. Like, so I think it's important to understand the, that the being a fiduciary, like having other people's money that you now need to justify the growth that you promised in order to get that money would limit how much innovation and how service oriented you could be.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And also I think you and I as people, early on in our relationship, we set the goal of like what is our ideal life is and what is happiness for us? And above certain very not, you know, extremely high income, it doesn't make you happier. So we don't have like the dreams of flying on the private jets and you know, owning huge yachts. I'm, I'm not trying to, to say that, you know, we're just not ambitious enough. It's just the Ambition is different.
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A
It's innovation ambition. It's, it's, it's being movers and shakers of this industry. I feel like that is the ambition.
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B
No, I think that the. What, you know, what, yeah, what motivates us is like we're now being consulted with for really, you know, big changes into what skin, how skin health is, you know, translates into longevity and it's not money oriented. It's like, you know, it's really earning that trust and notoriety as a research lab.
- [15:07]
A
Yeah. You know, we have the opportunity to affect other brands. Right. Like other brands are coming to us and asking us to formulate for them and stuff like that. And we have the opportunity to, you know, kind of, you know, obviously everyone has their own price point. Like we, I'm not going to name any names, but there's a company that, you know, said, hey, we need, you know, our products to cost like a quarter of what your product's going to cost or have, then we need to innovate within their confines with the, what they need. And actually that's a pretty cool thing to do for us. A good game to play. So this is kind of what we came to talk about. It's like, where is Yangoos going as far as like, you know, I am actually extremely happy and you know, shout out to Dave Asprey, like one of the things that he told me off air obviously is like, it's incredible to see how you regard other players in the field and how happy you are for other people's success and how you work with other, with other companies. I don't even know how he knew that but how you work with other companies. And we are happy, we are happy like one skin got, you know, $7 million invested in it or we were, we were happy for the owners of, you know, mito pure like timeline that they got bought out by Nestle and you know, l' Oreal basically took on, you know, l' Oreal is, it's a skincare line by l'. Oreal. So like, obviously we don't like Nestle that much, but we like the idea of this business being as successful as it is to merit that investment. Right. And that's their trajectory and it's a very understandable trajectory and we've done it in the past with other companies so we understand that completely. But the trajectory of Yangoos is a different trajectory. It's a trajectory of, you know, a lot of the times we get, we get, we actually working on an ad, putting it take a while but then on the ad, kind of explaining it, but we're getting a lot of messages like, hey, I wish I could afford your product, or yeah, that's nice that you're, that you're using, you know, bioavailable NAD precursors or whatever. But you, you are. I can't. That. That's not a price point. I can, I can. I can, you know, justify that to me, is still a positive notion. It's still a positive thing to hear. And that's because I know. And we can give many examples whether it is nad, whether it is ektoin, whether it is, you know, ergothioneine, probably in the future, maybe even spermidine in the future. All of these things are ingredients that we've innovated in, that we've started and other companies are or will follow suit. And that joint pool of companies using those ingredients is going to lower their costs.
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B
Yeah. So, yeah, and I think also one of the reasons we, we sort of also wanted to record is because people were asking us, like, how do you feel about road being only like two or three years old, I don't remember, and being acquired for $1 billion where, you know, you were longer in the market and you haven't. And I think they were also. I've also seen other brands and founders of brands talking about it where this Rhodes acquisition made them feel a little deflated because their companies are not on a trajectory to be acquired for this much, even though they put a lot of efforts. And they also felt like they're, you know, they're deserving of this type of exit. And I think for us, we just do what we do and we're just not, you know, we're not looking to get acquired for the reasons that we've mentioned. We want to maintain creative control in a, you know, control of innovation. But overall, the fact that companies are being acquired, you know, doesn't deflate us.
- [18:36]
A
Not only that, yes, 100%, but I think there is a. There is a. It's just, there is a door number three here. You know what I'm saying? And actually I've spoke, I've spoken with a wonderful lady that has a children's skincare line like, you know, like care, like shampoo, stuff like that. And she has a couple businesses and she was really deflated due to that. And she, she said, you know, I've been doing it for 25 years and I am. I'm on, I think, Target shelves or something like that, but I'm nowhere close. I'm never going to be. I'm not. There is no trajectory for me to be purchased for that amount of money. And I think, you know, very respectfully, because I went ahead and, like, bought her products that support, but I think that was her goal, to be purchased for a lot of money. And she did not do, you know, the, the. The. Her luck or, you know, luck is what is being prepared. Preparedness meets good timing or something like that. But, like, her decision making did not bring her to be as successful as a brand and be bought for that amount of money. Our goal, I think we are the road of what our goal is. Right. Like, I think we are the, you know, Aesop is 2.7. So we are the AESOP of what we're aiming to do, which is target functional skin aging or biological skin aging. Right. And we're not even done yet. Right. That's what we keep talking about, innovation. That's like, we want to innovate more within that, but we are that ASOP or road or whatever of that. Like, we are living our dream. So I think it's even different than saying, oh, we're not deflated because of X. The opposite. Like, every day we see the fruit of. Of our kind of. Of our trajectory, and every day we actually get inflated.
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B
Well, yeah, and that's because we do have that interest, which she maybe doesn't, but I also think. Yeah, I think this is about it.
- [20:31]
A
This is about it. So this was a little bit of a different episode. I'm sure you didn't learn, like, you.
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B
Know, it was whatever was impacted with a lot of strategies to improve your skin health.
- [20:43]
A
Yes, exactly.
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B
And, but.
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A
But this is a little psa.
- [20:47]
B
Yeah, this is a psa. And also, a lot of our listeners, you know, are being very sweet and kind in, you know, messaging us that they love to hear our conversations, they love to get to know us as founders, and this is just a little bit of, you know, insight into our heads and where we are with it.
- [21:04]
A
Yes. So, yeah. Thank you, everyone, for listening.
- [21:08]
B
Thank you.
- [21:08]
A
If you like what we said, if you feel like you align with this messaging, you can go to youngles.com, use code podcast10 to get 10% off your purchase. If you really align with what we're saying and you think that other people could benefit from our normal episodes where we try to educate people and you want to see the podcast being, you know, again, the more reviews, the more shares, all of that things, the more of those things we get, the podcast becomes bigger and we can make a difference. In more people's lives. So if you like this episode again, subscribe, comment, like, share, shout it off the rooftops, send it to your best friends, and we'll see you here next time. Thank you.
- [21:55]
B
Thank you.
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A
Bye.
- [22:04]
B
Sam.