For Eadem co-founders Alice Lin Glover and Marie Kouadio Amouzame, the path to getting their inclusive, clean skin-care brand off the ground started with their own pocket books. The duo, who met while working in marketing at Google, had discovered a blank space in the market for clean skin care formulated with melanin-rich skin in mind. It was a gap in the industry they knew intimately as women of color (Amouzame is West African and French, and Glover is Taiwanese-American) and years of searching for products that never quite suited their unique needs. Soon after, the idea for Eadem was born. Then came the daunting task of securing cash flow.
The pair decided early on that venture capitalists were off the table. “I’m not sure the venture community was ready for us and interested in our vision,” says Glover, who together with Amouzame, launched Eadem in 2021 with a dark-spot serum designed with its proprietary “Smart Melanin Beauty” formulas made by women of color, for women of color. “We didn’t want to compromise what we were trying to build.”
Venture Capital, otherwise known as VC funding, is a private equity investor that provides capital for startups or small businesses in exchange for an equity stake in the company. The biggest benefit is undoubtedly having the financial anchor to boost your business, but it doesn’t come without compromise. In other words, there’s another cook in the kitchen when making business decisions that impact revenue. The reality is that less than one percent of startups raise venture capital, reports financial resource platform Fundera.
Most entrepreneurs end up financing through good old-fashioned bootstrapping. Nearly 70 percent of small businesses rely on personal savings to finance their business, according to a recent survey by the MetLife and U.S. Chamber Small Business Index.
“I know VC funding is so sexy and everyone wants that headline and it’s so important to them, but how much of your company, or yourself, are you selling in exchange for that?” asks Glover. Self-funding grants you the opportunity to have more flexibility, control, focus on long-term growth, and more authenticity in your decisions. Since launch, Eadem has skyrocketed to success and is now on the shelves of Sephora.
However, bootstrapping does come with its own unique challenges (including not always seeing a paycheck right away). “It’s both a curse and a blessing,” admits Azouame. “You see all these other brands that launch the same day, if not the same week as you, and they have $2–$3 million, and can do all these things like get employees and run ads, and everything looks so beautiful. Then on our end, it’s just the two of us doing everything.”
While it can be stressful, Azouame attests that self-funding forces you to be creative with your money, who you’re going to work with, how to convince people to take a chance on you, and in so many other ways.
“I think that [bootstrapping] is one of the best ways to learn, even after having worked in tech,” she says. “We learned so much in the first two years by being self-funded.”
The pair acknowledges that self-funding may not be for everyone, but attest that sometimes it’s just about taking that blind leap of faith.
Tune into the latest episode of WorkParty to uncover how the founders launched their business to success, what the beauty industry can do to be more inclusive, and why brand storytelling is so important.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2nyZrvLa1PyNYRkVEgfis6?si=6Q9cMOHATH6TB6Xvine1yw
RESOURCES
To connect with Alice Lin Glover click here
To connect with Marie Kouadio Amouzame click here
To connect with Jaclyn Johnson click here
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