#LATechWeek Sustainable life in beauty & fashion, and fintech.

Odile Roujol
8 min readOct 18, 2024

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🎤 a Panel Beauté In Tech: a panel with women in tech and female founders, discussing the unique challenges faced by founders in CPG and consumer brands.

Odile roujol FaB Fashion and BeautyTech and Fab co-creation Ventures.

Christina Rodriguez

Rachael Kim

Delaney Delponti, founder of sustainable fashion platform Cherry Pick ( Los Angeles)

“We explored how bootstrapping can offer more control over one’s business, yet also presents significant challenges. It was an enriching conversation that highlighted the balancing act many founders navigate.” Founder Attending.

Questions and answers to me, Odile:

1- Given your experience in leading a major global brand like Lancôme ( L’Oréal,) what advice would you give to creators who are trying to balance their creative vision with the demands of building a sustainable, scalable business.

Odile:

How many creators are in the room today? Are they founders or want to be entrepreneurs? (More than half the audience raised their hands; we are in L.A.!)

When I invest, I always do it from the perspective of corporations and global brands. In the beauty and fashion space, an exit via a future acquisition is the best scenario compared to an IPO.

Of course, what makes a company valuable is first a brand, unique content, and an engaged community; we can return to that.

You still need to be focusing on the path towards profitability.

The EBITDA matters, not growing at all costs, and I suggest you also focus on the knowledge of your customers and audience, as it’s part of the value of your company.

Insights vs blind big global brands.

When I was the CEO of LancĂ´me, a leading brand in the selective market available in 135 markets and generating billions of revenues, I had to rely on cold data (tests, surveys, with retailers making us pay for accessing their mailing list and sending messages to the customers!)

Repurchase, loyal customers give much value to a company, my standard is high, 30%+. 40% I love it…

Some founders have asked me why some corporations didn’t purchase Glossier a few years ago. At that time, they were pure D2C, and they could have great insights about their customers. I don’t know why. My guess is that they were not profitable enough, with the expected repurchase rates, for the potential purchasers to be excited by the high valuation.

To return to an engaged community, it’s better to have a small one with sharp insights than to be too broad, grow too fast, and not know much about it.

I could share a few examples in my portfolio:

-Googlightworld, inclusive, Korean beauty, millennials,

-WinXHealth women’s rights and activists after Potus decision ;

-Bubble, teen skincare, they were with conversations on the Genev platform, had signed long-term contracts with diverse influencers, and content, were supporting mental health non-profits for teens during the pandemic, then secured partnerships with retailers, and entered new markets such as UK/Australia

Prescribers matter too. Who are your advocates? your experts? (K18 hair, the hairstylists).

And, of course, the products must be performing and innovative; the brand must be unique.

A loved brand with a mission, a unique and authentic tone of voice.

2- As the founder of FaB (Fashion & BeautyTech) and an early-stage investor, what key factors do you look for in a startup when considering an investment, especially in the beauty and tech sectors?

a-Founders! Founders! and Founders!

A vision. Self-aware (superpowers, and surrounded by talent, a team and an advisory council if not a board, being good listeners (not too defensive), learning fast, and with an ability to execute.

I’m skipping meetings with the founders, already obsessed with their next round. Fundings are here as a way to make founders successful, and raising the right amount of money for executing the strategy is the smart approach..

b-Category

I did a lot of investments 4 years ago, when cac was low in consumer brands. Now I invest more in the longevity space, in biotech and bioscience.

For instance:

Novos labs supplements and epigenetic tests measuring biological aging, now available at Erewhon.

Function health, measuring blood biomarkers to stay healthy (hormonal change, cholesterol, glucose, heavy metals).

Veracity, metabolic health.

3 -With your experience in both corporate and startup environments, how do you see the convergence of fashion, beauty, and technology evolving, and what trends should investors be paying attention to over the next few years?

For sure GenAI, I’m just coming back from SF. We are all aware that it’s a revolution underway as big as the internet.

For the moment it’s key players backed by billions of dollars, building the infrastructure, but soon it will solutions by vertical.

I believe in customized beauty.

a- Data, AI.

How to use your microbiome data, or blood biomarkers to be healthier longer and look younger longer, with the right routine: sport, sleep, diet, supplements, and topical skincare or haircare.

Each individual is unique. And customized solutions reading your own data are the future

ex Hellobiome swap test, Veracity hormonal change the test. Bloodbiomarkers Function Health (andreesen horowitz did lead the 53M dollars round as a series A, following our early investment, while they were still in betatest, and AI is part of why they invest, guidance for users/patients

https://a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-function-health/

b- New commerce

As you are aware, live streaming is huge in China.

Not yet in the US. But retail media has become important, and video content that considers who you are for education purposes; TikTok shop, Amazon, is about to become one of the biggest retailers in the US.

Learn and explore with partners.

I invested in Nectar social AI , the best in retail media, Trendio for expertise on Tiktok shop , and Buywith, the best in videos to one or many.

If you’d like to work with them as brands and partners, ping me on Linked in!

c- Sustainability!

Measuring it. Not third-party certification, heavy and costly,

Saas solutions.

I invested in BlueBirdClimate, which was sold to a bigger platform last year, for good reasons. There are huge needs! Let’s be more transparent, measure and track progress, and compare ourselves to competitors as a brand.

To conclude,

-Purpose and data-driven founders.

-An engaged community: authenticity matters, take care of your advocates,

-Care about customer satisfaction, and repurchase (fundamental!)

-A deep knowledge of a targeted population is an unfair advantage!

-It’s better to be small for a long time, if not spending too much money, and then scale exponentially rather than grow too fast, not have the best experience and products, and lose many customers…

-Take your time. Be lean. Raise only what you need.

-First BAs, then VCs. Try to be profitable.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to be part of the Beauté in Tech event at Snapchat HQ during LA Tech Week! I’ll be joining an incredible panel to discuss all things consumer tech, fundraising, and more. It’s an honor to share the stage with such a dynamic group of women, stop by and join the conversation.”

Delaney Delponti

Bio Odile:

Founding Partner of FAB Co-Creation Studio Ventures,

investing in Consumer Tech and New commerce, early stage. Now Fund II actively investing. I invest in sustainable Fashion and conscious Beauty (therefore FaB!), and new commerce.

Founder of FaB, the Fashion & BeautyTech community

(15,000 founders & VCs, 19 chapters US Latin America, US, Europe, and Asia), 4000+ subscribers to the newsletter, and 10k followers on linked in (group, local pages)

I’m what we call an operator.

ex L’Oréal (CEO Lancôme, now 4billion. revenues if we read the media , part of L’Oreal corporation)

and Orange (Chief Strategy and Data Officer), a leading. telcos company in Europe and Africa, based in France, with a 40 billion market cap.

I’m also a board member for companies between 20M to 150M revenues in the consumer space.

https://www.beautytechcommunity.com/#

Talk to you soon! thank you to our host Christina and Rachael, and our host Snap for their warm welcome in Santa Monica, during a busy LATechWeek.

And thank you to the attendees for their great questions, the book mentioned in the conversation: The Energy Advantage, by Ricardo Sunderland.

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Odile Roujol
Odile Roujol

Written by Odile Roujol

Founder Fab Ventures and Fab Fashion & BeautyTech community - Conscious Living -Women. BA, Board member, ex CEO LancĂ´me @loreal /CDO @Orange - L.A. / SF

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