Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: The Glory of the Fundraise with Bubble Skincare founder Shai Eisenman

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GEMS: The Glory of the Fundraise with Bubble Skincare founder Shai Eisenman · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:13
  we started with conducting focus groups with 200 teens. Then we did like full quantitative research with 900 teens. And then we created a community of 4,600 teens that for,
• 0:25
  months and months. And until today, we're talking to them, spending all our time talking to them to really kind of understand what are they using? What excites them? What are they passionate about? How are they different from millennials like me? And how can we create something that they would actually love? So everything we've done was rooted in tons of research. And obviously, research costs money.
• 0:47
  We had to fundraise. And but I'm a huge, huge, huge believer, despite that, into how fundraising is not a milestone, but it's more of a tool to achieve certain milestone. It's a tool to launch a brand. It's a tool to achieve certain revenue thresholds. It's a tool to get into a retailer. So this is why we're not big believers like we've raised X amount of money from this and this investors. Yeah.
• 1:12
  but rather more of like, how do we get to, you know, nine figure revenues? How do we get to be in 10,000 doors? How do we get to be available internationally and focus on these milestones? We have some amazing partners and amazing investors, and we've been very, very fortunate to be able to
• 1:31
  to have some initial funding, but then to focus in a really great way on how to create the business to be profitable and focus. I wouldn't call it bootstrapping because obviously we fundraised, but how do we scale this with as little fundraising as possible and as little funding as possible rather than constantly get into the fundraising game?
• 1:55
  I think it's really interesting what you say about not publishing kind of the details of your fundraise. And that's something I wasn't able to find online at all. And it's funny because when you see people on the pages of Forbes or the pages of TechCrunch, it's really celebrating that enormous raise, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars
• 2:19
  versus like what you said, the milestones. And then there are these brands who are reaching those milestones, but also they've just been bootstrapped, but they're not being celebrated in that kind of like way. It's like the new hustle culture is like this new, you've got to fundraise to get on the pages or get this like stamp or something. So I think that's really interesting that you're taking that path. And I love that.
• 2:42
  I'm trying to understand like when you thought about the vision and I guess I don't know how you want to like, which way you want to take this, but like when you thought about the vision, were you thinking like, Hey, I'm going to give away a lot of equity straight up to fundraise a lot of money and basically grow this huge ginormous business or like, what was the kind of thought process for you? I guess what I'm trying to say is when I think about myself and my own journey, when I'm,
• 3:11
  thinking about money for raising the non-alc brand. There's so many different camps and thoughts of advice out there. And of course, you've just got to like find what's comfortable for you and like which direction you should go. But I speak to people, for example, I spoke to someone in M&A recently and his advice was like, hey, if the US is your market that you want to focus on in the beginning, raise a lot of money, like give away a lot of equity, just go out there, take market share, like
• 3:36
  spend the money to get in those doors that you want, spend the money to acquire customers, do all that stuff. And then of course, there's the flip side of people being like, wait as long as you can, bootstrap for as long as you can, and then go and raise money or see if you can not. And it's hard to know which direction to take. So I'm always interested to see what other people's thoughts are. So I think,
• 4:00
  The way I look at it is, first of all, every business is different and every path is different and every founder is different. For us, it was, we had to manufacture the products. It was, we had like minimum for manufacturing. We had to conduct a lot of market research and we wanted to create a really thoughtful brand. So this had to come with fundraising. I wouldn't say serious. I would say very minimal fundraising for a company in our stage, but we had to get external funding.
• 4:27
  I also invested a lot of my own personal capital, but still like it was very minimal compared to, I would say, other brands in our stage. I think it really depends of like what's the industry, what's the product, what's the milestone that you're looking to achieve. Every path is very, very different and every path.
• 4:47
  has so many different factors, right? Like for example, if it's, what's your margins? What's the retailers that you can get to? Some of them have slotting fees. Some of them have, you know, additional things and additional ties attached to it. What is your ability to manufacture? What are the payment terms that you can get with your suppliers?
• 5:06
  It is so many different combinations. What is the marketing strategy? Is it the type of industry that requires extensive marketing? Or I think every industry requires extensive marketing, but I think some industries requires a lot more. I like to call it like how many times does a user needs to see you before they actually make a purchase? So some industries requires like nine, 12 times.
• 5:29
  before they make that decision, like skincare, just because skincare is a very emotional thing. And you're very nervous, especially when you're younger, to try something on your skin. And some industries requires less of convincing, right? Like, I'm more likely to try some new cool water than I am likely to try a new skincare product on my skin. So I think it really depends. And I think a big thing, and that's something that
• 5:56
  was challenging to me at first, because this is my second startup. And I think in the first one, I was kind of trying to find what is right for me based on looking at other founders and like what other people have done. And, you know, I have friends that raised $600 million and I have friends who completely bootstrapped the business to be generating 200 million in revenues. So it was really, really challenging to see and try to think, okay, what's right for me and what's
• 6:22
  And it's so many different factors. You know, margins is a huge part of it. Because some industries truly allow you to bootstrap beautiful business just because of the crazy margins. And because of the fact that it doesn't require a lot of manufacturing. A lot of services businesses are like that. So I think it really depends. For me, you know, I never looked at funding. And I never looked at fundraising as something, you know, when I saw all these headlines like,
• 6:50
  X company just raised $200 million. For me, that seems like this is actually, you know, and it's very, as somebody who, you know, wants to be successful in the beginning, you're like, they're so successful. And this is amazing. But then I started looking at it as like, wow, that's a lot of capital to take from investors. And you actually need to justify that valuation now. And you actually need to like.
• 7:17
  to get your company to be acquired or IPO in a price. So obviously funding makes your chances better and money makes your chances better to achieve these milestones. But this could also end up in like this huge, huge, just very bad situation. Because if you took 200 million from investors and you're not finding the end path to actually justify that, that's a very, very, very challenging situation.
• 7:44
  Totally, totally. And we're seeing that kind of thing, like businesses who have taken on, you know, huge amounts of funding unraveling. And yeah, you can see that sometimes there can be a lot of stress on the founders. I 100% agree. But I think it's more than that. I think there's like culture in today's world.
• 8:02
  Because there's a lot of money out there, because there's this huge inflation. There's this culture of like, let's pay $2 for a user that is going to give us $1. And it's something that, again, I think at a certain point of time of your brand, it could make sense. But generally speaking, I think a lot of us forget the fact that eventually the goal of the business is to be profitable.
• 8:28
  And I think so many brands are so focused in this fundraising game and into getting into certain milestones based on investing so much money in marketing that they forget the fact that the true goal is actually to show that this business can be profitable. It could take three years, it could take five years, it could take 10 years, but that's the end goal. And I think this is why it's like,
• 8:51
  Sometimes it's so easy to get caught up with these big headlines of like X raised Y, um, and forget that it's not about that. That's not a true milestone. I totally agree. I totally agree with you. I think about this kind of thing all the time.
• 9:08
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• 9:33
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• 9:55
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