L’Oréal and digital accelerator and incubator, Founders Factory, announced the first cohort of early-stage, beauty tech startups selected for their accelerator program. The startups will receive intensive support from Founders Factory’s in-house operations team, as well as deep scientific and market insights from L’Oréal. Approximately 180 applications were reviewed from around the world. The most important characteristics both firms are looking for in the startups included augmented reality, virtual reality, machine learning, artificial intelligence, personalization, new e-commerce models and new ways of interacting with consumers through new experiences, such as booking platforms and on-demand beauty platforms. Here, the five startups selected for the six-month accelerator program:
INSITU
Company premise: Personalized skin care offering customized products tailored to individual needs, available through an online store. Made-to-order formulations are designed to generate the right combination and concentration of active ingredients. Customers answer questions that help build their skin profile, including skin tone, skin type, product texture and mood boost (linked to skin care smell). InsitU then personalizes the skin care.
Founder: London-based Dr. Maria Salichou is a scientist from Greece. She has a Ph.D in chemistry and nuclear medicine, and also specializes in biotechnology and DNA sequencing.
PREEMADONNA
Company premise: Preemadonna is a technology company that builds creative products and platforms. Its first product, Nailbot, is a smartphone nail art printer. The Nailbot prints custom, instant nail art directly onto fingernails using a smartphone. After prepping nails with a light-colored nail polish, users select an image from Preemadonna’s mobile app, place a finger at the base of the robot, and then print. The image will appear within seconds on the fingernail. About 30,000 people have already signed up to try Nailbot.
Founder:
Pree Walia is American, and based in Silicon Valley.
COSMOSE
Company premise: Cosmose uses sophisticated location technology that allows retailers to target offline customers via online channels. When people leave a physical store without making a purchase, Cosmose identifies those potential shoppers, reaches out to them with relevant, online advertising, and measures offline effectiveness. Cosmose’s OMNIcookie technology reaches one billion phones in Asia (650 million daily active phones in China).
Founder: Miron Mironiuk is from Poland; Cosmose is based in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
TAILIFY
Company premise: London-based Tailify connects brands to social media influencers to create campaigns, while enabling those influencers to track, distribute and monetize their content. Tailify describes itself as “the intersection of brands and technology.”
Founders:
Fredrik Segerby is from Sweden; Didrik Svendsen is from Norway.
VELEZA
Company premise: Veleza is a community-based app that helps beauty lovers discover products that best match their needs, providing inspiration, advice and product reviews in real time. People can post selfies, tagging the beauty products they used to achieve certain looks. Users with a similar skin type can connect with them.
Founder: Martynas Nikolajevas is from Lithuania, and based in London.
