Hey friends,
Back again with another edition of The Founder Newsletter - this is Episode 8. If youâre new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this weekâs episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less.
No idea what The Founder is? Read this.
Housekeeping
Podcast show link (direct to Apple Podcasts)
Discount codes (from our foundersâ companies)
Instagram (where I spend way too much time making quotes and audiogram content)
Recommended learning resources (from all our founders)
And who are you?
Iâm Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself.
Letâs get it.
This Weekâs Episode (Ep 8) đ§´
Meg Maupin, Co-Founder and CEO of Atolla.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google
Use promo code âFounderâ for 15% off your first month (www.atolla.com)
Listen to the podcast if youâre interested inâŚ
đ Why the skincare industry isnât built to help you achieve clear, healthy skin
đŽ The current and future landscape of skincare
âď¸ How Meg and her team built a product that spans physical, digital and data
đ How TikTok is driving growth for Atolla
đ How to deal with self-doubt and imposter syndrome
Summary đ
Whatâs Atolla?
Atolla was created to help you get healthier skin. Itâs that simple. What Meg (the co-founder) and the rest of her team realized was that everybody has different needs when it comes to their skin.
The problem is that skincare products arenât customized for you - so itâs almost impossible to build a routine without (i) knowing what your skin needs and (ii) knowing what active ingredients are in certain products that may/may not provide your skin what it needs. Thatâs where Atolla comes in.
After an intake assessment questionnaire, Atolla creates a custom serum based on their advanced data models. They use factors like your diet, lifestyle, environment and daily routine to create the perfect blend of ingredients that works just for you.
After your first month, they send you an in-home test kit, a simple strip that you put on your face to measure things like oil, moisture and pH. This helps Atolla understand if things have changed during your first few weeks that need to be adjusted in next serum. You simply scan your test strip in their app on your phone (no sending back to their lab) and boom, they create a tweaked version of the serum for your second month, and so on.
Overtime, as they hone your data, theyâre actually able to predict things like seasonality (e.g., your skin typically gets drier in the winter starting in October, etc.) and will proactively adjust your serum accordingly to account for it.
Their data-backed approach means you have a hyper-customized solution that changes as you change.
Today, they currently go to market with a serum, and plan to continue to expand their product line into other aspects of the skincare routine in the future.
Perhaps the coolest part of what they do is offer a recommendation engine on their site, so you can input all of the skincare products you currently use (donât have to be Atolla products) and theyâll tell you which work well together and which donât.
To get 15% off your first monthâs serum, use code âFounderâ when checking out!
Whoâs Meg?
After getting her start as a designer at places like FormLabs and Patagonia, Meg enrolled in a special dual degree program at MIT that enabled her to focus on both Product Engineering and Business.
During her first year in school, she started to experience some autoimmune issues that led her to keep a detailed skin diary to help diagnose the problem. It got her thinking, why isnât there a better way to figure out whatâs wrong with my skin?
When she combined her design background with the AI and Machine Learning capabilities she was studying at MIT, Atolla was born.
Megâs Startup Manifesto đÂ
Whatâs a Startup Manifesto?
At the end of every episode, I ask my founder guests the same question:
If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?
Hereâs what Meg had to say:
Choosing your co-founders is key. Those people are going to be like your family. I literally spend more time with my co-founders than I spend with my boyfriend who I live with. Not only look for good people skills (e.g., are they a good person I want to spend time with), but also, itâs important to have diverse founders in terms of skillsets. People get really excited about the idea initially, but think for the long-term and who are the right people to have around you.
What works for other brands, wonât always work for you. I canât tell you how many times weâve tried something that works well for another subscription brand that didnât work well for us. When youâre building a new product, you have to test stuff and listen to your customers.
Testing is critical. If I think why we had to rebuild part of our website, it was because of our launch timeline and we rushed testing. Make sure to build time for testing.
Build a team culture where everyone has a seat at the table. Weâre inventing a new product. Nobody has done this before including us - whatâs to say our ideas are more valuable than anyone elseâs when it comes to executing in a certain way. Inviting everyone to meetings in a collaborative way has allowed us to come up with some really creative solutions.
As an entrepreneur, you have to become an improv master. You have to expect things to go wrong and always have back-up plans. You almost donât have enough time to be upset about stuff - you have to immediately shift to figuring out what the solution is. Even if itâs not ideal, what can you do to solve the problem?
Megâs Thoughts đ
On where this idea came fromâŚ
âThe idea for Atolla came from an experience I had during my first-year of grad school at MIT. I started experiencing a lot of skin and digestive issues, food allergies as well as skin allergies that I had never had before in my life.
One day, I woke up and I had an epic rash on my forehead and was like, âWhat happened? Iâm not doing anything different in my routine. Yeah, Iâm a little more stressed outâŚâ but I started having these autoimmune issues and I wanted to figure out what I was allergic to.
So I started keeping a skin diary. This is what I ate, these are the products I used, this is my routine, what is it thatâs causing this reaction? And I had a really hard time even though I was writing down in such excruciating detail trying to figure out what it was. And it sort of clicked, since I was at MIT and I was learning a lot about AI and ML and new kinds of user experience, like why was it so hard for me to figure out what it is?
And I realized skincare is one of those industries where itâs just acceptable to buy something and if it doesnât work, throw it away. And I was like, thatâs messed up.â
On skin trends she observed through early research and experimentationâŚ
âI think itâs personal and the trend is that there is no trend. I think thereâs some really interesting early indications from our data that lifestyle and geography can play a greater role than genetics in determining how healthy someoneâs skin is.
For example, weâve been studying people in the same family, like an aunt and her sister and two people, like an aunt and a niece, could be more similar if they have the same lifestyle (e.g., theyâre out in the sun, theyâre at the beach all the time, they smoke, etc.) vs two sisters that share more of the same genetics.
So thatâs a big theme that comes up a lot for - seeing trends by geography - and those trends are actually more similar for people than ethnicity.â
The emergence of K-beautyâŚ
âThereâs something that happened in the skincare/beauty industry in the last 5-10 years, which is that K-beauty really took over with the 12-step routine. It is the opposite of what most dermatologists recommend, which is, keep it simple.
What happened is, K-beauty originally intended for people to use 12 products from the same line and people took it upon themselves to choose 10-12 products from different lines with ingredients that donât work well together.
So most peopleâs routines are made up of products that donât work well together, either that theyâre not very effective or theyâre too harsh on their skin which is making their issue worse. A huge part of what our algorithms do now is help people manage their entire routine and look for interaction conflicts even with products that are non-Atolla.â
What Got Me Thinking From the Episode đ¤
After reflecting on my conversation with Meg, hereâs something that really got my wheels spinning:
Co-Founder Selection đ§âđ¤âđ§
Meg shared an interesting story about how early on, there were 3 Co-Founders who started working on Atolla together. She quickly realized that she had overlapping skills with one of her other Co-Founders and found it difficult to divide roles and responsibilities. After a while, that Co-Founder chose to leave the company and it was one of the hardest things they had to go through in the early days.
Meg also shared Co-Founder selection as one of her top five most important lessons in her Startup Manifesto and it got me thinking about this how important this decision is.
When youâre starting a company, most people talk about how you need to be in love with the idea, problem and industry so much that youâd be willing to dedicate the next 10 years of your life to it. I think itâs safe to assume most successful founders take this into consideration before starting.
What they donât often say, is that choosing your co-founder(s), is often just as important. The fact is, itâs really hard to go at this alone, and most founders are more successful with co-founders than they would be without them. I think thereâs a couple sides to this topic that interest me:
Technical vs. Non-technical Background
Do you need both a technical and non-technical founder to be successful? When I think back to some of the conversations Iâve had thus far, Connor Wilson and Nolan Walsh from Thursday Boots were both non-technical and have scaled a solid apparel business. Dan Morozoff and Joe Ellis from Vidrovr were both technical, and while they struggled a bit to find product-market fit in the early days, they hired a non-technical business hire ASAP to fill the gap. For Justin Mares and his brother Nick, neither had ever worked in CPG or DTC before starting Kettle & Fire, and theyâve built a massive business. The reality is, there isnât one playbook that works better than all the others.
My take, from my personal experience trying to build a software business with two non-technical Co-Founders, is that it really helps to have someone technical. Not only can they own and manage all of the technical tasks, but also, they can lead the technical hiring process. And thatâs a critical piece of the growth puzzle. One of your main jobs as a founder is to bring in exceptional talent that can essentially run the business for you. If neither of the Co-Founders are technical, how will they know what to look for when making a technical hire?
Some may say that you can hire a dev shop/agency or use a technical advisor to vet the technical talent for you, but I just donât think itâs the same. Having someone technical from day 1 (or close to it) that can help build the boat in ankle-deep water seems to be very helpful when something goes wrong in the middle of a hurricane.
Alike vs Different
The other thing that has always fascinated me about Co-Founder selection is personality matching.
Do most founders tend to lean towards people who have similar interests or less in common?
The default answer Iâve gathered is that you definitely want to bring in diverse perspectives so there are multiple sources of ideas and thoughts at the table. And that seems like a no-brainer to me.
On the other side, I canât help but wonder how early founder friction cause by differing attitudes, life outlooks, or personalities could cripple the business before itâs even off the ground.
This is a tough one for me to analyze because I havenât been in a position to truly scale a startup with a Co-Founder, but Iâm curious to find out what seems to work best overtime. I think it goes without saying that having different functional expertise or ownership areas in the business is absolutely critical, but when it comes to things like personality and interests, how important is it to be aligned?
Wrapping it Up đ
I hope you found this semi-interesting and inspiring/helpful in any way. If so and you want to help support The Founder, hereâs a couple things that would be valuable to me and the show:
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Till next time âď¸
Kallaway
Want more? Check out other companies weâve featured on the show!
â Kettle & Fire | Justin Mares
â Alpha | Nis Frome
â Loopie | John Lee