1803 – Launching new beauty consumer brands with Oliver Goulden of FounderSix

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2:08Let's push the boundaries of customer experience together.

2:17With us right now, Ollie Golden. Ollie, you are the co-founder of Founder 6. You're found on the web at founder6.com. Really excited for this conversation. Oli, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, Josh. Really, really happy to be here. Yes, absolutely. So give us an overview of your work. By the way, very exciting. And I'm excited for the person that's listening to our conversation because what we're talking about is just, it's something that just didn't really, we were talking about this ahead of, like this method of product launches and marketing, like it just didn't really exist 10 years ago, But now it's just so powerful about these just huge launches.

2:58But I'll let you kind of fill in and give us the context of what we're talking about here. Sure. No worries. Thanks for the introduction. So at Founder6, we partner with digital native talent to launch their own brands, otherwise known as influencers. And we focus primarily on the beauty category. and we we're not really just investors in the businesses although that's obviously a valuable thing to to offer but we're also very hands-on as an incubator and operator so my me and my business partner peter have got you know many years experience in scaling e-commerce brands from scratch to multi-million dollar valuations so we're there to really partner with the influencers to to build their brand from scratch and i guess the the model there which you were alluding to is it's really based around the influencer creating the majority of the marketing materials and being able to sell to their organic audience and and founder six then does everything else behind the scenes so that's everything from the branding to the product development fulfillment supply chain management customer service accounting legal uh all the stuff that we say that they probably hate, we love.

4:12If we want to have a line, that's our line. And the model really also means that we spend very little funds on marketing in the early stages. And that's an obvious advantage to get to profitability very quickly. Yeah. So let's illustrate an example of a campaign or product launch that you've been able to do. And again, people go, oh yeah, nope, I've seen these. And yep, they make a lot of money. You know, again, make a big impact, you know, with the product launch here. But I'll let you kind of describe maybe an example or two. Well, I mean, I would say probably a very famous one is Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty or Hayley Bieber's Road.

4:52But to use one of our own examples, we work with influencers who've probably got a slightly less large following than those two. Yeah. We actually launched two of our brands in October. one is called Anna Blue, which partners with Lauren Perez. And the other one is called Ravi Beauty, which partners with a makeup YouTuber called Ali Gleins. So that's a perfect example. If we take Ravi, for example, Ali's been running her YouTube channel for six years. She's got an incredible loyal following. If you look at the comments in her YouTube channel, it's literally, we call it the kindest, safest place on the internet because it's just so amazingly supportive and loving.

5:35All the people that follow her are just incredible. And we've been talking to her for over two and a half years on how we launch this brand together. And her vision for the products is amazing. We work with an incredible manufacturer in Italy to make the products. And like I said, we launched only two months ago and it's been an absolutely phenomenal success so fall. Yeah. All right. So I'm so curious about kind of like where you fit in, like how you, like, who is it that's conceiving these ideas? Is it the manufacturer? Is it the influencer? Is it you saying, wait a minute, I think we could find the perfect influencer, kind of work with them to figure out if they're ready for prime time.

6:23And then if they're interested, we could put together everything and do some really great business together. Tell me how it works behind the scenes. Yeah, sure. I mean, no two deals are the same. So they always come from different places, but it usually starts with the influencer first. So we don't find a product and say, wow, this is amazing. Let's go and find an influencer that we can launch this product around. We do it really the other way around because I think that that feels more authentic and we want the influencer to be part of that whole process from the very beginning. And very often they bring the expertise and vision, you know, that is what makes it successful in the first place.

7:03So usually what happens is that we approach an influencer who fits our criteria that we have behind the scenes. We would sign a co-founder's agreement with them. So it's a legal contract where we both have equity in the business. No money is passed between hands. It's really a business that starts from scratch for each brand. And then we work together very closely on a business plan on a product roadmap. And I think you know, the days of of a celebrity or influencer just putting their name on a on the side of a packaging and expecting it to sell really well over we've seen plenty of big names fail in this space, especially in the last five, five or so years.

7:47And I think the scrutiny on influencer brands is actually higher than it's ever been before. And so you almost need to go beyond expectations. You need to surprise the audience that you've been able to come up with a product that is significantly different from anything else on the market that solves a market need and is truly innovative. And that's what we're really there to help guide the process. And that's where also the manufacturers come in really well too. So working with great partners is obviously what we need to do. And our team personally, the product team is very, very forward thinking.

8:23We've got chemists on the team. The R &D segment of what we do is really, really strong to help get that product to market. Yeah. All right. So here's what I'm curious about. What are the elements of a failed launch that maybe you've seen in the past that you know, oh, whatever you do, don't do these three things, which we've seen. And whoosh. I think the most important thing is authenticity. I think consumers are really savvy these days. They can sniff it out. If they feel like someone has come in last minute and then they come and say, I've been working on this brand for many years, but they're announcing it a day before launch.

9:05and it's obviously not them that's been part of it. I think the audience smells that a mile off. I mean, I love the guy, but Brad Pitt, when he launched his skincare brand and then said he doesn't use skincare was like a bit of a faux pas. But I would say authenticity, super important. I would say the strength of the product, you know, it's like any other brand, right? There needs to be product market fit. You need to be doing something different in the market And it needs to be something that the customers want to buy when they see it. So those two things, I think, are probably the most important.

9:42And we see too often than not, people not doing it right. I think that that is perhaps ego at play or, you know, not being an expert in the category and thinking that they can suddenly go into someone else's territory and dominate it. And ultimately, you know, if we're talking about skincare or makeup, you know, you want to be buying from someone that knows really what they're doing. Right. So, you know, maybe maybe you've got the science base and then a celebrity can help endorse it. But like having a celebrity as a founder, they need to be really experts in the area. Yeah. And that's interesting.

10:21And I think that that's been an evolution that I think that we've realized. Whereas back in the day, I think we learned this pretty quickly, that just being a celebrity is not enough. Like it's you can fail at that. Right. Right. And I think we've all seen some failed celebrity campaigns. You noted a couple of some big ones. Yeah. But I agree with you. Right. I've studied lead on consumer behavior for about 16 years now. And I agree with you. Listen, you can't snow consumers like someone's going to sniff it out. Then words going to get out and everyone's going to be like, yeah. And we all know, too, how critical it is that the delivery is done well by the influencer themselves, right?

11:01Because if they don't believe in it, everyone's going to know. And I wonder, do they kind of huddle with you in terms of like, okay, I've been thinking about this for some time. This sounds like it might be a good time, but I'm nervous as heck because I don't want to screw this up. Can you help me? Absolutely. Yeah, that happens a lot. And like I said, every single person that we've partnered with so far comes from a very different place. Again, if we take Anna Blue as an example, Lauren Perez, her parents are both Moroccan heritage. And so, you know, she's been using natural ingredients, natural oils that she's had shipped from Morocco to L.A.

11:42all the way through her life. So she's been concocting these hair oil remedies at home based on traditional remedies that her grandparents shared with her, parents shared with her. And, you know, we were really captivated by that story. We love that story. But obviously, she's never started her own business before. She's never run an e-commerce company before. And so what we're able to do is take that kind of that dream and that vision and really, you know, bring it to life. And also not just bring it to life exactly how it was, but like add science on top of it, add research on top of it, add our entire team's expertise into how to position it in a way that is going to be even more interesting to the audience.

12:28So I think that's a perfect example of kind of the value that we bring. But obviously there's lots of different variations. Some people, we've been having conversations with dermatologists who have got like a precise formula that they've been working on for years and using on their patients that they then want to commercialize. We speak to other people that have never really, they don't have the idea, but they just really want to become an entrepreneur and move away from just doing content creation. And so, you know, equally for us, it's very exciting to have those conversations. We've had many, many over the years.

13:06It's incredible. And what we look for is a great story, a territory that we feel like we can go into confidently together. And above all else, like a very good working relationship with the talent. We're going to be co-founders for a long time. So we need to work together. Well, congratulations on your funding round, by the way. 12 million is going to give you a little bit of runway to work with. So that's exciting. What does growth look like for you at this point? I mean, are you at a position where you pretty much know all of the influencers that are kind of on deck or on your radar? Or like, how do you grow in scale?

13:49The amazing thing about social media is it's so ever changing and fluid. So, you know, whoever was great last year is maybe not so great this year. And there's new people emerging. But, But, you know, I would say we have a pretty good handle. We've got great tools that we've built ourselves that help us keep track of those things. And a team that kind of keeps their finger on the pulse about where things are going. We've got a great network of talent agents that will feed us promising new talent that they're getting on their books. So I feel like we have a pretty good sense of who we want to work with and where they're going to be coming from.

14:29like you say uh the the funding round that we just secured is is amazing and our our investor katie capital is has been extremely supportive through supply chain delays and and issues they they're just really got our backs and that's an amazing thing to have as an investor and really the mandate is to create more brands in the next couple of years so um you know we we're very selective with who we work with we have a lot of conversations with a lot of different people and all the pieces of the puzzle need to fit together for us to go ahead and for us to invest our time and money into launching a company with them.

15:09But the mandate is to really launch multiple brands into next year and the year after. And hopefully they're as successful as the ones we've launched so far. Yeah, right, right. Well, again, just kind of baked into this method of product launch, I think about all of the things that you don't have to do, right? It's like if If the influencer already has a built-in audience, you know, you think about previous product launches that were just based on store shelves or starting a Shopify store from scratch and just dumping, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars into paid ads and hoping that it gets traction and then hoping that you get the attraction of the influencers, right?

15:52And this is just, it's exciting. What an exciting world and just that we live in. and what will you get to experience now? Well, Josh, you hit the nail on the head there. I mean, really that was Hila and I, before we started Founder6, that's exactly the problem that we faced. The amazing thing that's happened over the last, honestly, five to six years is that Shopify has made it super easy. You can set up a store in 24 hours, right? And be selling to customers immediately. The level of entry for kind of minimum orders with manufacturers has come right down. they've seen the opportunity in working with smaller brands.

16:30And so we've seen this explosion of new e-commerce brands, which is amazingly exciting, but it means that it's super, super competitive out there, right? So that has driven the costs of advertising through the roof. Your customer acquisition costs are insane. You know, there's no channel that is like just the pure channel. For every success story that you hear where something's gone viral, you've got 200 other brands that haven't managed to go viral, you know, it's a really, really competitive landscape. And so, you know, the basis of Founder6 really is to skip over that initial phase. So we believe that our brands can hopefully scale to be doing 5 to 10 million in revenue, obviously with marketing support, but that first six months, especially, we wouldn't spend that much on advertising because is you've created a brand that already has an audience.

17:26How many brands get to launch to an audience that's already engaged, right? I mean, that is just such a magical formula. And so if you get the balance right of that storytelling and product market fit along with that, you're really in a great position. Ali, who should be reaching out to you? Like, I'm just curious about, you know, folks that are listening to this podcast, who should go to your website, engage and have a conversation? Sure. Well, I mean, of course, you know, if you're an influencer listening and you've always dreamt of launching your own brand, especially in beauty and you have a decent sized audience, we'd love to speak to you.

18:07But also, you know, people that know influencers who've had this dream or maybe you're a manager of an influencer or an agent of an influencer who's had this amazing idea or doesn't really know where to start. All of those people we'd love to have a conversation with. And every week we have conversations with aspiring entrepreneurs in this space. And we always offer as much advice as we can. We don't see everyone as competition. We see the ecosystem as a really important place and we love sharing our knowledge. But we're looking for those special people that we would want to start a business with.

18:43So I think if you fit into that category, we'd love to hear from you. Hello at founder6.com would be the best way or on LinkedIn. But I'd also say, you know, there's other companies and founders who may believe that they can help founder6 brands. And so of course, we'd, we'd always like to hear from them. You know, unfortunately, if with marketing agencies, we're not the ideal target, but we do work with marketing partners, you know, that absolutely we do at different stages of the company life. But, you know, So really, if you feel like you can contribute to what the vision of Founder6 is and help our brands grow, then we'd always love to say hi.

19:26Excellent. All right. So I'm a clean cut, young 50s podcaster who loves great hair care. All right, let's do this thing. You've got great skin, Josh, as well. For all the listeners that can't see you, you've got very good skin. So that's that's my finished DNA, my my genetics. So thank Mama Elledge for that one. But yeah, well, listen, Ollie, it's been a great conversation. Your website, once again, is founder six dot com. That's S.I.X.com. Ollie, it's been a great conversation. Again, congratulations on the funding round. Really, really exciting topic. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh.

20:06Good luck with all your other podcasts.

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