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The good face app Interview · Skin Anarchy

• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a wonderful technology that helps us.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: All of the ingredients are it tells us more information about that.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome, Eva.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're so happy to have you here.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's my pleasure, Ekta.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell us a little bit about your background and your career?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up in Bulgaria during like the end of the communist uh era and a bit after it in a very tumultuous time both economically and politically.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: And uh when I was 19, I um decided that I really wanted to come to the United States and uh chart a path for myself.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and my parents uh borrowed about$3,000 from friends and family and sent me with that in my pocket all along uh at the age of 19.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um and my first entry to the US was actually Nebraska, rural Nebraska.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: That is so random.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: Not random at all.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, I had searched for months um the year before that, uh, for cheap college and the United States in all of the permutations and combinations of of that search on Yahoo because Google wasn't the thing back then.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so so there were there were um, you know, somehow I found this macouk community college, which I found to be the cheapest college in the United States.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was a two-year, it was a two-year school.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: I applied to it.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: I had phenomenal, like 99th percentile SAT.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I applied there and I got the presidential scholarship, which amounted to something like a thousand bucks a year.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: But oh wow, the yeah, but the college itself, you know, like room board and books, like I called them and I said, Can you tell me exactly how much it's going to cost me to go there for one semester?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: And they said, Oh, you know, about three thousand dollars.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I begged my parents to go and borrow money from friends and family, and they sent me uh into the unloan.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: So that's how it all started.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you have some amazing parents.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they are fantastic.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: They like I I owe everything to them.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: We grew up extremely poor.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we had barely uh ever any luxuries, and the fact that they just always, always vote for me with you know, going and asking, you know, people to give them 500 bucks a piece and and just um putting all of this together and saying, you know, we can send Eva and she will she'll return the loan.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's okay.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so this is uh I I really have one of the few true immigrant stories that I have actually heard in my generation because I'm um I'm kind of a cusper between X and Y.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, I I started my uh career, if you let's call it a career here in the United States from college.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: I went to um slowly but surely I put myself through school.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: I have a PS in math and business, and then I um really am uh an engineer by training.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I have a master's in industrial engineering from the University of Michigan.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um and after a few really, really meaningful experiences in the consumer world, I decided to also get an MBA from Harvard Business School.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's uh it's been a crazy amazing ride.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and about 10 years ago, I graduated from Harvard Business School and I started working for uh Bain and Company, which is a very large consulting company.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: And there is where I actually, for the first time, encountered the world of beauty.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: I um was a strategy consultant to a number of beauty brands, uh like Fortune 100 companies that uh have huge beauty brand portfolios, and from the vantage point of um being a strategy consultant, I was able to see how those businesses operate at the at the high level, you know, like how how they're built and and what what are the triggers for success, and things like that.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's where I really got my uh first exposure to the world of uh beauty and skincare.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: That is such great, that is such a great experience to start off with, you know, like to be able to work for such large companies and then see everything firsthand.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: That must have been so amazing.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: That that was amazing.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we we solved problems for very like very, very well-known brands that have to do with distribution, with pricing, with product selection, and you know, SKU proliferation and just super, super interesting problems that always touch the consumer, but never really like I was working with the people inside the companies, looking at their sales data and and making making sense out of the trends, but I never really got to speak with consumers.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so for me, it came full circle when uh one day I was invited after I had left um Bain and had launched uh into the startup world.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I was invited by a very large company to help them think through why consumers in in you know the early 2000s uh 2000s are starting to pull away from some very well-established brands and what is what is the trigger there, like what's happening.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I had the opportunity to speak with 116 women um in their 30s and 40s and to kind of like really understand what it is that they're missing in their skincare specifically.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: And what these women told me was top of mind for them were two very surprising things.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: The first thing was, you know, I want the assurance that my products are clean and that I will not be, you know, suffering from um cancer or obesity or hormonal disruption, endocrine disruption in any way because just because I'm using certain products.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I want my products to be safe.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: And the second thing that I heard from these women was that they really, really are quite um ambivalent to uh the way things are in terms of marketing in in the world of beauty and personal care at this time, where it's all driven from celebrities and driven from you know the the um uh influencers that are out there, while they pay attention to them.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: What they were telling me was that they pay attention and they see you know what Jennifer Anniston likes or what Gwyneth Poultrow recommends, but they take it with a grain of salt because they realize that their own skin is unique to them and has specific needs that need to be answered.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: And there's just very, very little out there that actually solves for that personalization need, if you will.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so with these two insights, um, I came back from the study that I was doing with uh this large company, and I started researching, you know, like are there opportunities for me to help uh these women?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Are there opportunities for me to build something that uh helps them find clean products that work specifically for them and the and for their skincare needs?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how the Bitface project was uh uh conceived as an idea.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that's a really that's a really cool brand journey because it's like you really got to see the inner workings of what's going on and where the disconnect is with the consumers.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I really love that.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I feel like it's like right now, I feel like in Instagram and I you know, I know a lot of things are on Instagram for skincare right now, and I think there's still this kind of underlying confusion in the in women in terms of like, you know, well, is this gonna look good on my skin?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Or I mean even if you see your favorite influencer using a product, you like I know I you know always step back and I always think like, well, is this gonna suit my skin?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I I completely understand where they're coming from, you know, the the women that the women that you interviewed.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: And especially um, you know, what we ever since we started the company, uh together with my co-founder, who by the way is the the only rocket scientist that currently works in skincare.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh she was um she was uh she was a researcher at the Ukrainian Space Research Institute doing image recognition software algorithms before she started working on the Goodface project with me.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: So she's kind of like really the person behind all of the personalization and algorithms and safety algorithms that we have on the Goodface app and behind the Goodface Project's website.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh, you know, as we have as we started working on the Good Faith Project, uh Lena and I have just made sure that we never, ever, ever forget where where the idea was conceived, that it was like firsthand speaking with the actual consumers that are very much like you and me.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: They just want to solve a problem, they just want to feel uh beautiful, they just want to feel comfortable in their own skin.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: And um throughout the whole development of what we have done so far, we have really always been very, very intent on listening to the customer.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's kind of like in our in our uh DNA as a company.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, it it it's interesting because your your technology is basically helping people match the correct ingredients, right, for their skin.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's right, that's right.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: So if you download the Goodface app, uh which is available in the App Store, um you are um from the get-go, you have to take a uh a skin quiz, which is very, very carefully designed to remove your own perception bias about what it is that your skin needs and to just supply the facts to us.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then our algorithms crunch up on in the background what your personal needs are uh in terms of uh, you know, do you do you need to be working on things that bring down irritation because maybe you have eczema?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Do you need a lot of hydration because you you have um you have answered questions that lead us to believe that you have very dry skin?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um do you have um, you know, uh did you say that you have very often blocked pores?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in that case, we will need to be uh thinking about how sabum is um uh aggregated in your pores and like thinking about ingredients that that uh help you regulate that, right?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: So we basically ask these really, really simple questions of the consumer that downloads the app, and then on the back end we define what what her needs are, and then we take all of the information that we have aggregate aggregated for over a hundred thousand individual ingredients in the cosmetics industry, um, and these 100,000 ingredients we have mapped across 15 dimensions of safety and efficacy.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so, for example, we know that vitamin C, and we know to what extent actually, vitamin C is a bleaching ingredient.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: We know to what extent vitamin C is good for collagen regeneration and so on and so forth.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, and if you need collagen regeneration or if you need um you know brightening uh of your skin based on what you have told us in your quiz, then we match you to products that have that are very, very rich on vitamin C or that are very rich in the particular ingredients that you need.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so we kind of like match you to the products that have the ingredients that you need.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: And in essence, we have built the first of its kind ingredient-driven recommendation engine for skincare.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: That is amazing.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I'm just sitting here thinking about all the different, like the complicated coding that must have gone into this.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean that is really, you know, because I I had I had a year of like my IT phase where I went and became a data modeler for a year.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I know how much work, you know, goes into anything in terms of um app development or anything.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that that's that's insane.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that must have been how long did it take you guys to like develop the app and like get it up?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: So actually the app was the easiest part because it's just basically a pretty interface that is you know useful to the people that are uh working with it.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um what what took a long, long time and what we painstakingly did for two years, uh almost incognito, uh was actually to build our large ontology of ingredients.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the database that I told you about the 100,000 ingredients.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um and to actually we we we um challenged ourselves to make this a true ontology.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: It means that it lives on and that it grows in insight and in size as new ingredients and new insights arrive.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: And the way that we do this is we basically have a bunch of algorithms that go out to PubCem and PubMed any given minute, of any given hour, of any given day of the week, and they find the newest and and um you know the un uh the undigested yet by us information about every single ingredient.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: So basically, our ingredients are being reviewed by algorithms like as we sit here, you know.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: So you're matching all of this stuff to actual publications that are outright.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: That is amazing.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, okay.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: So so we're science, science-backed.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: We're we did not sit down with some chemists and with some dermatologists and decided and decided, okay, we're gonna name vitamin C brightening.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: No, yeah, like we had to, we challenged ourselves to find those papers that actually show the action of every single ingredient.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then the papers are being sourced as we speak, new papers are being sourced as we speak, and these papers are being mined for the like the sample type keywords and source, right?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and for keywords, exactly.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: So, in essence, what's running all of our technology is this massive literature research, literature review tool for cosmetic ingredients that we have built.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that gives us the opportunity to not just provide really, really um honest and objective and science-backed recommendations to the consumer, but it also helps us work with brands on um the helping them basically formulate more uh potent and and more um and cleaner basically products.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: And effective and so right.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly, exactly.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like so um brands very often um that work with us, we have a uh we while we're serving the consumer with the solution that um that I described, the good face app, uh, we actually um our our core our core customer is the brand.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: And brands come to us with uh basically three specific needs.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: One of them is to develop products.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: So they need they need our insights, our ontology to decide what ingredients to use uh if they're going to develop uh stretch mark cream, for example.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and then uh you know they use, we have a task platform for them.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's called the Good Faith Formulator.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um they subscribe, they subscribe on a monthly basis for it, and they both basically their RD people subscribe to it, and it's like a um a sandbox where they can figure out what they should put in their formula.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like building their own formula through your through your resource.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: So they go in the formulator and they say, Um, I want to develop a stretch mark cream that will qualify for the European Union, specifically for the United Kingdom.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the United Kingdom left the European Union, but like let's say I want to formulate this stretch mark cream for the United Kingdom, uh, that will basically meet the regulatory restrictions in the UK.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: I want it to be uh highly moisturizing, I want it to be non-cumetogenic, and I want it to be, let's say, good for eczema.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so they flip on these little uh switches in the formulator, and then the formulator does and it spits out basically the uh ingredients that are required for them to include into the formula in order to be able to make these claims about the product, and then also it tells them what ingredients they should stay away from if they want to be accepted by regulators in the UK.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so with that information, it's like superpower information because these people don't need to go and do the research on every single ingredient every single time they're doing a product.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: You basically create a cheat sheet for all of the research out there.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's good.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like a little, like a little, like a little drop, uh, you know, like a little sandbox for them to play with, you know.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um so so that's what we that's one of the things that we do for brands.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: The second thing that we do for brands is actually when the regular when the RD person is done formulating and they're ready to hand off the product to um product marketing, there are two there are two really high value things that we provide.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: The first one is we offer the Good Faith Index certification, which is very similar to EWG verified, but for brands who have developed their products on our in our sandbox, it's literally a two-minute um like flag.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: You just clip on a flag and you immediately are submitted into our queue for approval.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: And if you have developed your product on our platform, we know everything about it.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: So for us, it's super, super easy to actually certify you as a clean brand.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: More specifically as a clean product, that particular formula is a clean product.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: And and that is um now growing very, very fast for us.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: We have over 200 brands that are members of the Goodface Index, and those have gone through certification.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and then the the second thing that the marketer actually also needs as a handoff from the RD folks is proof for the claims on the product.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: So if we're saying that this product should be um labeled as highly moisturizing or good for sensitive skin, now the information came from research about each of the ingredients that were included, right?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: But actually, in order for the brand to safeguard itself from any sort of litigation.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: or any sort of um problems with with consumers and to be able to freely make these claims, the brand really should be doing also consumer studies, right?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right, of course.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: And and asking consumers to test the product for, let's say, a month and to objectively take some surveys and then um have that information and those statistics in in its back pocket moving forward.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well the brand is not um necessarily allowed if you will to do these uh studies by itself because they would not be deemed as objective studies, right?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: There are a bunch of ways in which in which um incentives who are exactly so what we do is actually um people who are using the good face app our users of the good face app are actually because they're clean beauty enthusiasts who also are super super interested in matching their own skin with the products that work for them first of all we can select the right users of our app for every product.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: So for example if you have dry skin and there is a product that needs to be tested that is supposed to be highly moisturizing then you we will match you to that to that panel if you will.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so we basically have launched this third um service for brands that is called the Goodface Experts and it's just a community of uh people who use the Goodface app and so we understand everything about their skin and we can very very um uh in a very curated way put together panels that test the claims of these products before they launch and at that point in time then the handoff for the RD people to the marketing people is complete right the RD people have made sure that the product will be meeting all the regulatory restrictions they have made sure that the product is labeled as clean and they have also made sure that they have set up the marketing folks to be able to make all the claims that they want to make on the label of the product.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: So we do all of this for brands.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I have okay so this makes me very curious because I'm curious from the standpoint of when you first were creating your index of um ingredients which did you reference certain brands um the like more so than others I mean how was it really like I I'm a little confused there.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like did you just did you look through ingredients and say you know what we're gonna just have these ingredients listed and then you ping PubMed and you extract that information or is it more of like using brand um ingredient decks as like a starting off place?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like how did that that's right we we used we used the brand ingredient decks of basically what we currently have in our databases um 4880 some brands and we aggregated all of these ingredients and then we went to PubMed and PubCem and we searched searched for results and what we came away with was okay we can we can actually find consistently these particular keywords that pertain to safety and the keywords are allergen irritant um uh hormonal disruptor and carcinogen and so we decided that it basically we let the data speak to us it's there's tons of scientific data about the action of every single one of these ingredients in those four dimensions okay and then we asked ourselves okay but wait a minute we just got a bunch of data about these ingredients and it's not just about safety it's actually talking about their cosmetic benefits as well so let's mine it for cosmetic benefits as well and that's where we found that's where we found all of the dimension of dimensions of cosmetic benefits and that's really how it all evolved uh it we really were very very um we had uh the strong hypothesis that consumers want to have more information that is presented to them in a in um in a way in which it's not confusing but it but actually the the consumers can handle more information in the in the beauty and personal care space and that's what these women that I was interviewing initially before I even started the Good Faith project were telling me.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know they want to know the facts right so that's the big thing right now Eva is that everyone is really hyper focused on that and I don't blame them.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone wants to know the facts and I and I really kind of see here's my problem you know this is something I don't understand maybe you can help clarify this for me is that the when I go into PubMed or I go onto any kind of source for peer-reviewed journal articles, I often find that so for example vitamin C, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: One paper will talk about vitamin C's brightening effects or um you know anything for hyperpigmentation they'll talk about um you know just like the mechanism for it.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: But then every paper has this like a different set of data that they're presenting right and like it's for like different demographics it's a it's different populations of people living different places so how did you guys deal with that aspect of the research because dermatol dermatological research right now I in my opinion is very very sparse in the sense that you know there's not a lot of studies that are recreating the results you know what I mean so like it's it's like maybe you find one study that has you know certain results but then you're not going to find another one.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: So how did you account um you know account for that in your development absolutely so basically every paper that we are sourcing uh information from we have indexed with the sample size um of the of the you know of the study um and we have also and so therefore if a paper is claiming that I don't know snake oil is um absolutely fantastic for inflammation for acne for inflammation whatever um we we have calcul we have basically taken down the sample size of that of of the study that this paper was published on top of and then what we what we also have uh like tried to our to to a great extent is to understand the demographics not always the demographics are published so that is very very sparse there but also but also the the piece that we uh take down is whatever statistical uh inferences are made so basically if we if we have um uh like a more granular information on okay the the average outcome was this but then there was a like a very very high standard deviation around it then we also have this recorded and and then it's just a bunch a bunch of really complicated algorithms that run um on top of it to make sure that every single paper is aggregated in the right way and it's a it I it's a beautiful mess.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it's it's just really really hard to do that if you think about it.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost like indexing the world of information in the cosmetics industry, right?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it's almost like a like what Google does.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's an encyclopedia it's basically like a beauty in cosmetics encyclopedia that you've created.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean exactly yeah and wow and so that took that took a lot of time and a lot of gray hair and uh you know Lena and I basically worked on this for a couple of years like I said before we even launched the uh the app um and we like I was actually continuing to do my consulting so that we could pay for a team of engineers that Lena was leading in and uh managing uh in order to create that and that is that is like um we're so proud of this accomplishment because we are not aware of another uh solution that can um not just that not just crunched up a whole bunch of information but continues to do so it's literally like our our ontology is consuming consuming the world of um scientific publications for cosmetics and personal care.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: I really this is honestly like from my scientific mindset I'm just like my mind is going like crazy right now because I have so many questions for you.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is just so cool.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: This is the coolest thing I've seriously come across.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean just to just to be able to say that you guys have found a way to compile and categorize data is a giant giant accomplishment.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I really want to congratulate you guys on that.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: That is truly genius and brilliant.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: My biggest thing I I'm seeing is that I feel like right now you know skincare and beauty and everything is shifting more towards this like personalized personalization aspect.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you guys are really kind of ahead of the game with that in a in a lot of ways where you're putting a lot of power in the hands of the consumer, in the hands of the brand and I think that's so important.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: But more so I what I find to be the most intriguing about this is that dermatology research is very, very hard to figure out like in terms of what you should be studying, right?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like you can you can start a project on like something that you know for example collagen everybody sells some a collagen product but there's so I don't think the re like the research community in dermatology understands where these gaping holes of information are you know what I mean so like I feel like using your app could even benefit the research community because you could they could easily see that you know these are the this is the information available about collagen.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: So what can I like what project can I come up with that's going to further advance this research you know so that's right and we're super excited about that then we have some upcoming um collaboration announcements with the dermatology community um and and um and we also have uh some collaboration announcements with very large um new product insights um research companies that um that basically constantly collaborate with brands to to help them understand what the ecosystem uh is evolving to on an almost like on an annual annual basis.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yes um so we I mean what we have built is very useful for everyone who is looking for insight and almost like a like a compass through through the industry but in a very very factual way that is um driven from being the the scientific yeah the scientific insights yeah so one one thing one thing I'm curious about is that you know how right now a lot of people and a lot of brands are coming out with these random ingredients.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you know what I mean but like you know like for example like Ayurveda right like there's so many ingredients and so many things that can be used that are considered Ayurveda ingredients but there's not research out there.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you do you guys have a plan for accommodating such ingredients um and you know even though the the data is missing in the in the literature so this is really hard we we have made it our mission to not um make statements we cannot back up with uh scientific data points right and this is where the invitation for the scientific community is to actually catch up we are a data company we are not a research company uh that's a very very strong distinction that we try to make you know we we have toxicologists and chemists uh and dermatologists working with us but they are working with us to ensure that our that our data aggregation methods do justice to the science rather than to uh to you know further the science we would like to uh see scientists do that and then we will really shine the light on their work um and I'm uh and I have to say you know like there there's just so very little that we understand about um um medicine systems like Ayurveda and China uh Chinese medicine uh and by the way I'm uh I'm an Ayurvedic practitioner that got certified as one um during my 300 hour uh yoga certification course oh my gosh it's like what have you not done uh Eva seriously I I don't I'm I'm uh you're making the rest of us you're making the rest of us I just have a lot of energy and I need to channel it someplace you know actually no it's amazing I'm so impressed like this is this is such a huge project and I mean the amount of thought and you know just just brilliance that goes behind something like this is truly extraordinary I mean I I'm really blown away um I just you know and and I have to say you know like what what what you need to remember is that you know we have we have started this task this uh this type of thing uh you know if you think about how how long it took uh for Google's first search engine to be to be created it really is like is actually not a not a not a very different task from that because you're indexing on a whole bunch of things and then you're trying to figure out how to map those things to the way that people search or the way that people think right yeah so this is really just the beginning for us um and we are building a very large um data science driven uh you know technology and infrastructure to do this but this is you know by no means you know we will will we ever be able to say okay we're done we we built it and it's now and it's now you know it's now it's over.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: So it's done like it's a finished product yeah yeah exactly that's the that's the structure right what's I'm sorry I interrupted you no no that's all right no no you you you you got it right and and um you know uh uh the part the science part of data science also is like that right like our algorithms are continuously learning as well so so we just were brave enough to say okay we can start we can start from a very very humble place and see what we can do.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: See this is this is so cool because I know that right now there's a lot of apps coming out for skincare.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: I actually recently interviewed um the founder of the Do app and it's interesting what their vision is because they're not can they're not focusing on like the ingredients like you guys are they're more like it's like a um what do you call it like a categorization app where it's like you can figure out who's buying what and then you know what I mean like if your friend buys this foundation like you know that in their drawer they have this.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like I'm just curious how I mean if you guys have thought about the possibility of just this big collaborative effort with other apps that are you know what I mean that add to the value of what you're providing already.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you know because I think there's so many ways like I I really believe that technology is the next step in skincare in terms of just you know app development.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: I really do genuinely because everything is personalized now you know everyone wants something personalized and everybody wants something that they know is going to work for their skin type.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: So this idea of not only the ingredients but then also incorporating in the you know the aspect of well what's my best friend using versus what's my you know like my favorite influencer what are they using so that is also I think maybe a parameter that um you know I would love to see in you know in addition to what you guys are doing.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely definitely and we're always open to collaborations which is why uh you know we we have uh some really amazing ones in the works yeah we we view ourselves as uh almost like an open open platform and that's why we opened up um access to our platform for the R and D folks of brands and we opened up access to our uh good faith app community to marketing folks and brands you know like we are we are like you know the gatekeeper but we're we're all about giving access and making making like connecting all the hubs with meaningful folks and drawing drawing continuing to draw more and more data around it so that we collectively all of us can become smarter about uh what helps and what doesn't in in this aspect of our life.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well that's I think that's such a great point because I don't think um you know when I was do just in doing the influencer thing on my other account I often was you know always thinking to myself that I don't think brands are understanding um this disconnect between the influencer community and them you know what I mean because I I kept seeing dermatologists and people asking for that information and that data but then here's your app you know what I mean that is basically solving all of these problems and I I'm I'm sitting here wondering now like you know so where is the problem?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you see some brands that formulate something that just does not fit well for most skin types or all skin types that makes me really think you know what I mean it's like did you put in the research like did you guys even do research you know so like especially with a tool like yours that's available to them.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you know it's very interesting.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah so we um we see actually that brands want to do better.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: They want to uh develop products that um are um you know uh really making sense um but sometimes it is about uh just time constraints sometimes it's about supplier constraints sometimes it is it is about um you know honestly um someone someone just taking taking their regular you know base formula putting it into a product and then and then adding a couple of actives into it and calling it a new formula because it's very easy to do that right and you know the previous base formula was accepted at target so why not just use it again right so the thing the thing the thing about it is that um while these people are doing this the retailers and the regulators and science about these ingredients is evolving and so there uh it's it's hard for them to catch up unless they have it at their fingertips in the development process right so it's there's great desire and great uh um you know curiosity for doing better on the brand side uh which is exactly what we're tapping into.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: Wow I'm just I'm very impressed Eva seriously this is truly truly amazing and it's great work I mean truly I applaud you for it.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean we need this in the skincare not only skincare we need this in the medical community.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not even gonna lie to you we we need these kind of technologies because even when I look at something like pharmaceuticals you know what I mean like it's so uh so like cluttered and it's like you know I feel like your app and what you guys are providing could even be such a great resource for dermatologists and and their clients that they have you know what I mean somebody could easily show them like hey look these are the products or these are the ingredients that work for my skin and then that dermatologist is able to create a better plan of care for that patient you know so there's just I just see so many, so many uh potential benefits of this this is amazing.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Totally agree with you totally agree with you and we're looking forward to growing together with the field and and with um all of our brands that are working with us adding new ones and also um continuing to evolve our value proposition to our community of uh good face app users wow well thank you so much Eva this was such a great conversation I would love to invite you back on with with your co-founder if you guys ever want to come back on just to talk absolutely absolutely we're always up for jazz up and very very interesting conversation thank you for the great questions and really uh it sounds like you have a fantastic um uh you know point of view on on the whole industry and on what's needed so so it's also very exciting to speak with someone who understands the industry thank you so much that is the nicest compliment I've ever gotten that's very sweet yeah I just am a scientist you know I mean I'm I'm a heart I'm a scientist at heart I my training is a science so I'm always thinking you know we all think alike engineers scientists we're all like you know I think very like minded in my opinion so yeah thank you very much for the compliment um of course of first thank you to everyone out there who has listened to this episode um we are so grateful for Eva taking time and coming on here to speak to us I hope this episode was um helpful and insightful for you guys as it was for me please make sure you go on to um Google Podcasts or iTunes or whatever platform you're listening to us on and give us a rating.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: Also make sure you follow the Goodfaith project okay on um Instagram and give them a like and you know check out the app for sure I I know I'm going to so um thank you so much guys and I'll talk to you next time.
• 44:50
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• 45:22
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• 45:35
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• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.