She Built a 10,000-Person Waitlist Using This Organic Strategy with Experiment Cofounder Lisa Guerrera

0:00Hey, welcome to Female Founder World. It's Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the creator of the female Founder world universe. Today I'm chatting with the founder of Experiment of Experiment. Lisa Guerrera. Let's get into the show. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host Jasmine Grinsworthy. Lisa, welcome to Female Founder World. Hi, I'm happy to be here. For people who don't know Experiment and what you're building, talk us through it. Yeah, so Experiment at kind of the highest level is a Gen Z science-backed beauty brand. We make hyper-effective, thoughtfully sustainable, and ridiculously fun skincare that basically is trying to reinvent Gen Z's medicine cabinet through that lens.

0:44So, you know, all of our products are clinically tested. We actually formulate them in our own lab in-house, which makes them really unique. And we verify all of our sustainability stats, protect us from greenwashing, which I think is really important for brands of the future. And then lastly, all of our stuff is fun because we really feel strongly that science doesn't need to be boring or sterile or black and white. It should be whimsical and fun and interesting. And so we're really kind of calling back to a time where science used to be fun for us, like when we were kids, and bringing that into kind of the consumer landscape today.

1:25I see that in your branding when you just said that around like science was fun when you were a kid. And I'm looking at branding. I'm like, oh, that really is a through line. Yeah. So you started this a few years ago. I've been following since literally day one. Yeah, a long time. And you started with like$8 ,000. Is that right? Yeah. And now what are some milestones? What have you done in that time? Yeah. So we actually, me and my co-founder, Emmy, so we started this company during the pandemic really from kind of the thought process that, like, cool, there's a bunch of science-backed brands in the space that we love that have done a lot to educate consumers.

1:59But we feel strongly that the next generation of science-backed brands are going to make science cool. They're going to make it fun. They're going to make it interesting. and they're going to be really differentiated through their own branding versus kind of the previous generation, which is all kind of hard to differentiate between. So, you know, we started that with that kind of idea and we wanted to bootstrap the business because I'd actually done a business prior to Experiment. And I was kind of like honestly burned out from like that hamster wheel of trying to raise funding. And I was 22 right out of college.

2:33I didn't really know what I was doing. I was able to raise a little bit through like angels and pitch competitions, but really nothing significant. And we wanted to try bootstrapping. Yeah, we started with like basically$8 ,500 total is what we put into the launch. And we just kind of pulled together our savings, honestly. And I didn't have much savings. I was actually working at Apostrophe as head of brand, which is a teledermatology brand. And I had some money saved up from like working there for about a year. So we literally pulled all that together and started. And so we started with Avant Garde, which is our reusable sheet mask.

3:09Which is like a bright green. Very distinctive. Yeah. And if you like scroll on our feed, you'll see it immediately. It's one of the things I think we basically consider it the billboard of our brand. And it's one of the things that, you know, when we were fundraising the first time, a lot of VCs were like, hey, I think I've seen this product before. And they don't necessarily remember the name or remember the brand, but they remember that weird-looking green mask. I'm like, that's all I need. Cool. That's my end. So, you know, we stuck in people's minds that way. But we started with that mask because, A, it was like a low cost to entry, low barrier to entry.

3:45Making a skincare product is really expensive. And you're a chemist. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, you can make it. Yeah. And so is my co-founder. My co-founder is the one who actually formulates all of our skincare. But we actually started, ironically, with a physical product and not kind of a softer liquid product. And so we started there because it was just more cost effective. And we were able to source a manufacturer, customize that mask, and then we launched it kind of with our own money. And we didn't spend any ad dollars or anything like that. So I was a TikToker. I still am. But I was a newly minted, I would say, like TikTok skinfluencer at the time.

4:24and so I basically called it a bunch of favors from friends, sent them the product. They really liked it and they're like, well, I'll post about it. That's fine. And that's kind of how we gained our first traction. And in five months since that launch, we ended up selling out of our product. And we had in total about 1 ,500 units that we sold through. So nothing crazy, but we were working other jobs. But we wanted to kind of test the market and see like, is this weird looking mask that honestly doesn't look pretty traditionally in beauty where everything has to like look pretty? can we lean into the ugly and the weird and do people and does that resonate with people?

4:58And it did. It basically turned into its own like meme, right? People are saying it's giving Shrek, it's giving, you know, Jim Carrey's the mask, like it's alien. And we were tapping into something I think that we're seeing very clearly now in the landscape that people wanted something weird and a little different. And so that's, that's how we started. So you built some confidence with that. You've been in business now for what three, this is your third year? Yeah, it's our third year. We definitely had a hiatus once we sold out of our first or our like soft launch first round to raise money. And we actually, you know, redesigned the mask and everything.

5:34And now it's patent pending on the design. But we, yeah, this is basically our third calendar year. Wow. And can you share like some revenue milestones since then or that fundraise that you did, how much you were able to raise to kind of like help people pinpoint how you have kind of like, you know, you've really shot up since that first year? Yeah. Oh my gosh. So what we raised initially, so we did that soft launch. We took that hiatus to redesign our mask and raise that funding. We raised that funding specifically because we realized through that test, which is why I always encourage people to like test bootstrap if you can.

6:15We realized that, cool, this is a bigger brand than just like a mask brand. We can really reimagine what science looks and feels like for the consumer, right? And that was really compelling. And so we ended up raising a million dollars in a pre-seed. We did that through a safe note and we got some really great investors. It was definitely a long journey to get there. I had started that, I soft started that fundraise in the summer, started talking to people. Ironically, Clubhouse is what kicked that off, right? Oh, really? Throwback. What, you were like talking on Clubhouse? Yeah. With investors?

6:48Yeah. And that, well, it was like first, none of them ended up investing, but it's what started the conversations and you need that momentum to get going. And so we relaunched our avant-garde mask in April of last year. And that was with a new design that we worked on with our customers. And now it's patent pending. We actually moved manufacturing to the US to save carbon emissions. So we actually reduced our carbon emissions by like 73%, which was really amazing. So, but yeah, since then, in our first year, so first year after, you know, 2022, rather, in 2022, we only did like 150K in revenue.

7:31It was great for us, but, you know, it was also far more than we did the first time in our soft launch, which we made about like 30K just from like, you know, selling that mask online. And then this year, we're actually about to hit like 1.4, 1.5 by the end of the year. So that's really exciting. So we basically 10x revenue. Yeah, it was great. And I think, you know, the biggest learning lesson from that was that organic really can work. But it takes time and it's a little unpredictable. So our first year, we were like, oh, like, are we really doing the right thing? It's just doing so much better because we have super saturated.

8:08We have buffer jelly. We actually have skincare products on the market. Okay. Talk to me about what your launch strategy is for new product. I know that you've been able to really successfully build like big waitlist. How have you done that? This is something that all of us want to do. Talk us through your strategy. Yes. So waitlists, I think are the number one reason we've been able to like build fast momentum on product launches. So for new avant-garde, we may be at a thousand people on that waitlist. So nothing crazy, but we didn't. It's not pre-sale. It's capturing an email. Exactly. So this is not we're not capturing credit card information or anything.

8:44This is simply just building essentially an email list of people who have said that they are interested in this product. So we started with like that thousand person wait list. We had about a 20 percent conversion rate on that wait list to purchase. So basically what that means is like we send an email out saying, hey, you can buy it now. And about 20 % of the people on that list ended up buying the product, which is great. And we usually offer some kind of incentive for signing up for the wait list. So whether it be free shipping or 15 % off, something where it should be only if you get on the wait list and it should be ephemeral.

9:21So like 48 hours after the product launches, you have to get 15 % off. And if you wait, you're not going to get that discount again. And I think that really drives people to buy within the first 48 hours, which is how we measure our conversion as well. So I think that that's really important. And then kind of the way we build up those waitlists, the next time we built a waitlist was for Super Saturated. That was building – What's Super Saturated? Oh, right. So I should explain that. But Super Saturated is our hero skew. It's a 30 % glycerin serum. I've seen it all over the years. Yeah. It's blue in this like pill-shaped bottle.

9:57It's got this gooey snail mucin-like texture, and it has one of the highest percentages of glycerin in a serum on the market. It's really, really difficult to formulate with glycerin, especially in a serum format because glycerin can get really sticky. So you might have seen it in maybe cleansers, right? There's a few like high glycerin cleansers coming out. That makes sense because you're washing it off, but this is actually staying on your skin. And so when you formulate with high amounts of glycerin, it can get kind of sticky. So most of your skincare products, if you turn around the bottle, they've got glycerin in it.

10:29But it's usually in about 5 % to 10%, usually below 5%. In best case, usually about 10%. Okay. So you've got this like super differentiated product with like your fun, weird branding around it. People want it. People want it. They actually don't even know what it is when we're building this wait list. I think that was part of the mystery. It depends. I think it depends on the kind of brand you have. But I didn't want to say anything until we launched because I knew that this was going to be a really, really interesting product. The second we said 30 % glycerin to influencers, for example, they lit up, right?

11:07So I wanted to kind of keep the element of surprise because I think that would drive more purchases when they just hear 30 % glycerin. They're like, okay, I have to have that. So you kind of have to understand your product to figure out if you should announce it before or after, before as you're building the waitlist or not. But we basically lab sampled the product to a bunch of influencers. They would post about it on their stories. Right. So influencers were allowed to make videos about the lab samples, just not say what the main, you know, kind of sell was. They were only really saying basically this is the best serum I've ever tried.

11:47How did you get them to do that? A, make a great product. That is number one. Like even a lot of them are my friends. But like it would still be hard to get them to post if they didn't feel strongly about the product. And we also lab sampled early and often. So as early as six months before the launch happened. So once you had your formula set and you're like then working on packaging and like all of that. We usually, so the key for formulating in-house is that you have more flexibility than when you're working with an R &D house. So when we were basically done with the formula, there were small tweaks maybe we could make.

12:29But basically formula was done. We packaged it up to 10 influencers who we really trusted, who we knew would like it. We pre-vetted just based on what we know about them. So I picked people specifically, not because I talked to them beforehand, but because I'm like, she would love this. I know she would love this. And it takes knowledge about the people you're working with. You have to pay attention as a founder to know who's going to like what. So we curated that list and we gifted them those lab samples. They loved it. They wanted more. We asked for their feedback. We asked for anything they'd want to change, how they would describe it.

13:07That actually helped us market the product too. So there's a lot of steps that go into it to build up confidence in the product. And then the second I said, okay, now you're allowed to talk about it, they're like, oh, I'm talking about this. Because they've been using it for a few months already and asking constantly for more lab samples. And they're like, I just can't get enough of this. And so it's a really strong endorsement. And that is actually what helped build the wait list. So the call to action for them, and again, we didn't pay for any of this. The call to action for them, I just let them know.

13:39Just tell people to get on the wait list. That's all we care about. Just get on the wait list, get on the wait list. And so, you know, that's really how we built it is through TikTok, through word of mouth, social media. And what we did is we set up a landing page on our website and basically had like this mystery component, right? That was the pill shape of experiments component. and gave almost like a poetic description of what it is without revealing any of the information. It's like this mysterious blue goo is going to keep you high. It's like using intriguing words and stuff they haven't heard a beauty product described as before.

14:18We leaned into the gooeyness and the stickiness, quote unquote, the weird texture of the product to get people interested. And then that's what really made them want to put in their email. And then, of course, there was an incentive of you get 15 % off your order. if you order within the first 48 hours. And you communicated that incentive once the product went live or as people were signing up? As people were signing up because I think that actually just really incentivizes people to put in their email. And they're like, okay, I want the optionality of getting 15 % off, right? I don't have to buy it, but I want the optionality to do it.

14:52And that helps you build up that wait list. And the wait list is important because the more and more people you have on it, as long as they're engaged or quality, You don't want just people putting in their emails for the sake of it. But as long as you can have a certain conversion rate, you're just converting more and more people. So it's important to have that wait list grow. And so that was my singular focus, literally up until the day of launch. The night before, we sent out an email that said, like, last chance to get on the wait list. And I think that's really important as well because it just makes the wait list feel more and more important.

15:30And so on that wait list, I think we grew to about 2 ,000 the first time or 2 ,500 the first time. And we had, again, about a 21 % conversion rate. So it was pretty consistent across the board for us. It depends on your email kind of engagement. But the benchmark that I was put against was like 10 % to 15 % conversion. So 20 % – 20 plus percent is really, really great. So just aim as high as you possibly can. And so that's kind of how we build up the first wait list. And then, you know, this is basically famous at this point, but Super Saturated was sold out for about three months from March to middle of June.

16:15It was one of the hardest times of our business. I would say the second hardest time of our business after, you know, when we first launched, like obviously it's hard to do that. But it was hard to keep momentum. But the only thing that really kept momentum is that wait list. So when it's sold out, the product page turns into a wait list. So the add to cart button becomes an add, you know, join wait list button. They get the incentive of 15 % off when it comes back in stock. And we knew it was going to be out of stock for a while. We didn't plan for it. We just had a big influencer talk about us and it nearly wiped all of our inventory.

16:52Yeah, it was wonderful, but like definitely stressful. And so for that wait list, we did something very similar, which was instead of lab samples, we made sure to keep like a very important like 50 units of super saturated. And we really didn't have much. And the reason we were sold out was supply chain. You know, there was just our packaging was taking a very long time to come. So we would make lab samples if we could for influencers. We wanted to make sure to keep the influencers stocked, our most like loyal influencers. And we kept them stocked as much as possible. And they even knew like we were like, OK, we can't send it to you right now, but we can send it to you like in a little bit.

17:36But there was this mindset of shortage where like you don't want to do this too often. But, you know, it really worked in this case where we created this kind of, yeah, like shortage effect where it was a product that was hard to get to get your hands on. And so through that, by keeping influencer stock, they were still able to talk about it. Towards the end, it was like they're like, I'm running out. And they would make videos where they're like, oh, my God, I'm running out. Yeah. Yeah. And people would be like, well, do you know when it's coming back in stock? And I would keep them posted about where we were.

18:11And honestly, we didn't always know when it was coming back. The date got pushed by two weeks. And so they'd be like, I don't know, but I talked to the brand and they said maybe next month or in a week. And so we just kept that wait list as the CTA constantly. And that's how we built it up to 10 ,000 people. So again, social media was really the way and time, right? You don't want to do this last minute. You want to build those wait lists for as long as you possibly can. That's incredible. And then how did the conversion go? Yeah. So that one was 24%, which was really, really great. I mean, I think it's higher, honestly because it's I'm really basing that off of kind of like Klaviyo um but but there's definitely you know so much more happening there and then the other strategy we used um when we restocked which I also think is something really powerful for launches as well um but specifically restocked because we knew that like super saturated was super popular the second any influencer made a video about it restocking people would go and buy it right so they were the people that were like spreading the word that it was back.

19:23So there are plenty of people who don't sign up for a wait list, right? But they want to know when it's back. So, you know, you want to use your network of people as your, um, as your kind of amplifier. And so what we did was we, uh, we actually do commission through shop. My, um, which is kind of a platform that's great for beauty brands. Um, you want to get your brand on shop. My, um, lots of skincare and beauty influencers put products on their shelf and they get an affiliate. Yeah. No, Shopmye, I would say for beauty, it's the best. Maybe not as much for fashion or things like that, but beauty specifically, if you are a beauty brand, I highly recommend Shopmye.

20:03I think there's just so many great creators on there. And put a link in the show notes, everyone. Yeah. And it's very easy to set up commission. I think one of the issues that a lot of founders face and even a lot of influencers like so many platforms to get commission off of there's nothing centralized shop mine we actually do all of our commission through that platform um and so uh all of our i would say like 85 of our creators are on there so um we use that platform and um And we basically increased their commission during that restock period. Smart. Yes. So we increased it from 15, which is our standard, to 20 % commission.

20:48And that actually drove a lot of videos talking about that it's back. And they also got rewarded for making that content. I had our top influencer, who is also a friend of mine, she messaged me and she opened her shop my account. And she had made so much money off of that restock that she was like, is this a mistake? And I'm like, no, you really did make that much money. So it's possible to really reward your creators just for making one or two videos through that commission model. You just have to do it in kind of the authentic, you know, right way. And then those people are going to be supporting you forever.

21:27Oh, yeah. They want to know the announcement. Yeah. Next time you have the relaunch, they want to be the one that's like hyping that up because it is leading to real money for them. Exactly. I think when they see that talking about your brand actually rewards them too, huge. You know, you want to use that specifically, but when you use it at the right time and it hits, you can really, you know, create a lot of loyalty. You're someone I think who has really, I don't know, you think like really deeply about marketing and brand. And you were kind of early, I think, on this Gen Z aesthetic that we're seeing like a lot more of now.

22:05I'm really curious about what your thoughts are about this kind of style of branding becoming more dominant, whether we're going to have like another swing towards more minimalist. Like, how do you feel, how do you think about your brand and how it sits within this aesthetic and like the, the shifting kind of consumer behavior around that? The consumer soup. Um, yeah, the soup. The soup. Yeah. No, I think it's a really – also, it's an interesting point that you bring up, like, are we going to swing back to minimalism? You know, we were – yeah, we were very early. So, for context, we had started in October – like, we officially incorporated in October 2020, but we'd been working on the branding for, obviously, before that.

22:55It was like you and Youthphoria. Yeah, yeah. They actually launched, I think, right before we did. So we were probably thinking in the same exact vein of like, you know, this kind of brighter, you know, poppier, that green, right? You know, the Gen Z green as people are calling it now. But yeah, we were very early to that. I mean, our hero flagship product is that color. And the reason we went with it, though, I think is a lot, I'd say, different than I'd say what I see most Gen Z brands doing right now. And I think that's what allows experiment. We've gotten questions before of like, do you guys feel like your brand is going to, you know, become out of trend, right?

23:43And we actually started experiments specifically because we were learning lessons from brands of the past. Like Glossier is an amazing brand. And I think one of the things that we've learned, though, from their trajectory is branding and how too high and too strict brand walls actually restrict your ability to grow with a generation, right? Or be able to stay fluid in a market. moving too quickly now I think exactly like super rigid about it exactly so um it's kind of in the name right we we stay fluid we experiment with our branding um but yeah we were very early and we chose that green not because it was gen z green to us it definitely felt that way but it's because it was the opposite of millennial pink and it actually spoke a lot to the science of the brand So when I think, you know, that really like, you know, we call it acid lime.

24:43And so it's kind of got this almost toxic waste energy to it. And for us, we were trying to rebrand science and especially chemistry into something that didn't feel toxic or scary, right? When we think chemicals, most people think negatively, right? Or they think of pollution or toxic waste or things or a beaker with like bubbling green liquid, right? Like how do we almost rebrand that to be interesting? How do we lean into that kind of toxic waste vibe and make it something not aspirational but something more interesting? And so we chose that green specifically because of its relation to chemistry and not necessarily the relation to Gen Z, which I think does allow us a bit more fluidity as we think about the brand in the future.

25:32Now, to your point around us turning towards minimalism, potentially, I do think we will eventually. I think, you know, it all works in cycles. But I do think it's going to look different than kind of the millennial predecessor. And I think we're actually already seeing the transition. I agree. We're already seeing it. And even experiment is actually leaning into that transition too. We've gone more chrome as we've, you know, kind of progressed, you know, in 2020 and 2021, our look was very different than what it is today. And I think it just speaks to the fact that, you know, we're putting our finger to the wind and seeing where it goes.

26:12And the brand at its heart is not necessarily rooted in a Gen Z aesthetic. It's rooted in kind of what we call, you know, future nostalgia. That's kind of the essence of our visual branding. And so we take that future nostalgia lens and apply it visually. And sometimes green comes out of that. And I think green will continue to be our color. But Chrome really starts kind of coming out of that, thinking forward about, you know, science and kind of science optimism. And like that all comes out visually. So I think for experiment, while we see the parallels, I think the direction that we're heading is a little different because it comes from a very different place than just like we're looking at the market trends and we want the color to be trendy.