There are moments you don’t realize will define your journey until years later.
When WSJ profiled me in 2019, Beautycon was in full motion. What started as a gathering of YouTube creators had scaled into a global platform, bringing together culture-makers, brands, and consumers across cities like New York and Los Angeles.
At the time, we were designing immersive events, launching pop-ups, collaborating with partners like Macy’s and Laneige, and generating sales numbers that rivaled traditional retail.
It was fast.
Intense.
Nonstop.
But more than anything, it was personal.
Beautycon wasn’t built in a boardroom. It came out of questions we were asking in real time:
What happens when creators don’t just endorse products, but shape the system?
What does beauty look like when Gen Z leads the conversation?
How do we turn events into ecosystems that actually reflect culture back to the people building it?
We didn’t have all the answers, but we were willing to work 18-hour days to figure it out.
Every “Instagrammable” room was a signal.
Every panel was a blueprint.
Every festival was a bet on the next wave of identity and influence.
The WSJ article caught us mid-momentum—inside the mess, the velocity, the urgency.
At the time, I didn’t have the language for what we were building, only the instinct.
It gave a glimpse into the movement we were shaping.
But what it didn’t show was what came after.
When the pandemic hit, the lights went out—on Beautycon, on the industry, on the model we had built.
And in that silence, I realized something: we hadn’t just created a brand.
We had created infrastructure.
We had proven that when you organize influence with intention, it becomes strategy.
That commerce built with community creates more than transactions—it creates trust.
That experience reshaped how I think about power, about systems, and about what founders really need.
Not just capital, but context.
Not just a pitch deck, but people who’ve lived through the pivots.
Now, as an investor and operator, I carry those lessons with me.
Into every conversation.
Every deal.
Every founder I back.
Because what we built with Beautycon wasn’t just a moment—
it was a prototype for what’s possible.
📰 Read the original article on WSJ
If you want a snapshot of that chapter, what we were building, why it mattered, and how it changed the game, this feature captures it mid-disruption.
Got thoughts? Drop a comment. I read them all.
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