The New hi-BB is here!

There is a joke I have told my team more than once over the last two years, usually somewhere between excitement and mild panic, that if startup founders had any idea what they were getting themselves into, nobody would ever do it, because there is a special kind of insanity involved in spending years of your life building something you are convinced the world needs, only to wake up one morning and realize that perhaps you were solving the right problem in completely the wrong way.

Which, as it turns out, is exactly what happened to me.

The problem itself was never in question. After more than twenty years in beauty, I know with absolute certainty that the overwhelm is real. There are simply too many products, too many opinions, and too many launches to keep up with. Consumers are overwhelmed; what they need is something different. Two years ago, the idea of finding a CTO, scraping the internet, and calling OpenAI to filter recommendations felt new and exciting, but it was ultimately too rational and lacked the human touch that this industry is built on.

So I went back to the drawing board. I believed in the idea and, thankfully, so did my team, so we fixed what needed fixing.

First, the quality of the recommendations. My team evolved, and I assembled the right mix of beauty obsessives and experts to create what we now call the hi-BB List, a collection of products that are human-selected, human-reviewed, and chosen because we genuinely believe they are among the best of the best. We use technology, of course, but we are not simply scraping and ingesting information. Every recommendation starts with people, experience, judgment, and, yes, a fair amount of healthy debate.

We completely rethought the look and feel of the site and leaned much harder into editorial, creating little vignettes and edits of products we love, products we obsess over, and products we cannot stop talking about.

We made the experience more playful and more fun, because beauty should never feel like homework.

As much as I wanted to become the next Sephora, I have come to terms with the fact that hi-BB taking on that as its business model is not in the cards, and honestly, that’s okay. We pivoted to affiliate links, which reflect what our users were already doing anyway. Nearly 80% of recommendation links point to Amazon, with the remainder split between Sephora and Ulta, so instead of fighting reality, we embraced it.

And because data is fascinating, we can now see what people are looking for, what they love, and perhaps most interesting of all, where there are gaps and white spaces that deserve filling, which becomes particularly exciting when you have a team that has developed, formulated, and manufactured beauty products for decades.

Everyone talks about community, and we have one that we will continue to build, centered around creating the best repository of beauty recommendations in the world.

Beauty is emotional. Always has been. The more time I spent building hi-BB, the more I realized that I had tipped too far toward the rational side of the equation. I had built something that could tell you which product was the needle in the haystack, only to forget that most women are not actually looking for a needle. They’re looking for confidence, delight, trust, and mostly, they’re looking for someone who has already done the homework.

And that is where the fun began.

New Feature #1 » Steal to Splurge

One thing I have always wanted was the ability to see all my options for a particular category, from affordable to aspirational, because if you sort by price on Sephora, you’ll miss mass brands, Amazon is largely a popularity contest, and Ulta, wonderful as it is, doesn’t always give you the whole luxury side of the equation. So we built our own version. Move the slider and explore the best products from steals to splurges. Honestly, I could play with this thing all day.

New Feature #2 » Spinner

Want to try your luck? We created a beauty slot machine organized by category that gives you a little tongue-in-cheek fun and perhaps introduces you to something wonderful you weren’t expecting. There is absolutely no reason something useful can’t also be entertaining.

New Feature #3 » Magic Beauty Wish

When I was younger, I used a Magic 8-Ball for all of life’s important decisions. Did it actually help? Debatable. Was it fun? Absolutely. So we built one. Type in a skincare goal, click to shake, and reveal a recommendation. It is fun, nostalgic, and strangely addictive. Go ahead and shake it up, there’s no limit!

New Feature #4 » Editorial Picks

Some of my favorite parts of the site are the editorial features. The Indies Nobody Knows Yet. Top Rated. Climbing. Products we’re obsessed with. Products we’re watching. These stories and collections are curated in-house and updated weekly, giving you fresh reasons to come back and discover something new.

New Feature #5 » The New Quiz

And finally, the crown jewel.

If there is one thing I hope every single person tries, it’s the quiz.

It is faster, smarter, and much easier to complete. It can recommend multiple products at once, clearly links to purchase, and allows you to quickly explore additional options. In less than two minutes, it learns about your concerns, preferences, goals, and personality before introducing you to products that fit your life, because the best moisturizer in the world isn’t actually the best moisturizer in the world if you hate using it.

We want hi-BB to become the place where the best of the best in beauty lives, almost like a repository of the greatest films ever made. Trust is earned, and through this new lens, we hope to earn yours. My dream is one day overhearing a woman turning to another and saying, with complete confidence and perhaps a little excitement in her voice, “You have to try this.”

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Bina

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