Barbara A Paldus, Ph.D., is a scientist, entrepreneur and investor. Prior to Codex Beauty, she spent two decades leading innovation in spectroscopy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. By 34, she founded two Silicon Valley companies that, among many breakthroughs, paved the way for carbon cycle/natural gas pipeline monitoring, and accessible vaccine/cancer therapeutic manufacturing. Barb, who studied electrical engineering at Stanford, has been awarded 40 U.S. patents and numerous prizes in science.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Codex Beauty Labs all about?
Founded in 2018 by Silicon Valley, Codex Beauty Labs is a biotech company, grounded in science, dedicated to supporting the microbiome, and pioneering products having clinically proven, meaningful skincare benefits. Our vision is to blend the sciences of ethnobotany and plant biology with biotechnology, to create a new standard: plant-based biotech beauty.
Our core mission is to demonstrate that not only is quantitative data about all aspects of the products important for making progress in the beauty industry, but it is essential for customers to make fact-based decisions in purchasing functional products at the best possible price. We are leading the way in adopting a scientific and data-driven approach to ingredient sourcing, product safety, product efficacy, and overall sustainability, in order to maximize customer satisfaction and trust.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I have a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford, and I have been a serial entrepreneur for over 20 years. I have started two companies, each of which has now reached over $100M in revenue, and changed its marketplace. To me, constantly learning, innovating, and trying to make the world a little better day by day, is like breathing. Without it, I can’t survive. And I love to write patents – of which I have almost 40 now.
As baby, my son had a severe allergy to phenoxyethanol in baby products. This led me to try to ask questions of manufacturers, but I didn’t get very far as a consumer. It turns out that phenoxyethanol is perfectly safe, and a few rare people have allergies, but I started questioning every claim on my products and wondering – having spent most of my career developing measurement tools – how the beauty industry quantified anything. After I sold Finesse Solutions in 2017, I decided that the beauty industry needed greater transparency, as well as quantitative benchmarks for product performance.
As an engineer, my goal is to provide solutions that work. I’m not here to make money by selling a lifestyle or guesswork. I’m here to solve skin issues. That’s why you see one collection (Bia) that is optimized for hydration. Our next collection (Antu) launching in 2021 addresses inflammation. And we are also very focused on creating microbiome-supporting products.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
I have three guiding principles that have never failed me yet:
- Perseverance: Never give up. No matter how hard it is, no matter how many people say it’s impossible, no matter how many people laugh at you along the way, never give up your dreams. Focus on solving problems. Sometimes, you have the break the problem down to bite size chunks. If the technology doesn’t exist, go invent it. If you can’t do it by yourself, go find the right partners who are smarter than you.
- Ethical Leadership: Treat people right. We hear about so many great entrepreneurs who were hateful people, who used others, who had huge egos. Every human, irrespective of age, race, orientation, or religion deserves respect. People are smarter than you think and will surprise you. If you treat people right, they will be there for you when the going gets rough. What you put in is what you get out.
- Adaptability: Evolve or die. While growing a company, change is the only constant. Markets, economics, supply chains and consumer behavior can drastically change in a heartbeat. Be prepared to evolve and adapt to the best and worst circumstances. Learn from your mistakes.
Pursue your passion. But be honest with information and do your research. Don’t tell stories; get factual data. And figure out how you will give back to the world from your business idea.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
In two to three years, I would like to see us have a successful solution for other skin problems like inflammation (that leads to premature aging and loss of collagen), collagen-loss and wrinkle formation, as well as drive Codex into more pharmacies with innovative solutions for acne, dermatitis, SPF, and after-sun care. I would also love to develop products focused on skin problems of athletes and people with active lifestyles, as well as feminine hygiene where inflammation, infections and microbiome protection are still unresolved.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
Three things are different:
- Our backgrounds that combine biotechnology, ethnobotany, genetics and plant biology
- Our data-driven approach to efficacy testing and quantifying our product performance
- Our obsession with sustainability.
The most important aspect of Codex Beauty is its exceptionally effective and sustainable skincare. For this reason, we have developed our own Beauty Code, a set of core principles, guidelines and ethical codes of practice that have been orienting the beauty brand since the beginning.
All products are submitted to the kind of rigorous testing found in biotechnology and a strict adherence to good manufacturing practices. This means that we do preservative efficacy, stability, and performance (clinical) testing on every single product. And we have tried to make the pricing as affordable as possible.
Overall, however, the fact that we are so data-driven and transparent about our clinical testing sets us apart from our competitors.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
Our to top three mistakes were:
- Focusing too much on PR and photoshoots: We started spending money very early on to generate a lot of marketing materials, which included photoshoots, that we didn’t need at the time. We also spent a lot of money on an expensive PR group and design agency in New York. By trying to fit in more with the beauty industry, we deviated away from our core principles that we are a science company first. In the process, we lost our voice and had to find it again. Today – we bootstrap a lot more, and the success rate is much higher.
- Hiring sales executives too early: Like with PR and marketing, we want to get off to a meteoric start, and we hired too many sales executives too early. We should have started with account managers to start growing the business and focused more on DTC. We have since rectified that mistake and resized the company with the right skill sets at the right levels.
- Assuming COVID would abate in the fall of 2020: We expected that retailers would start seeing more normal operations for Christmas and the supply chain would ease in early 2021. However, with the more infection virus spreading quickly from the UK, much of Europe and the US are still shut down. We have had to adapt to focus on Asian markets where operation is more normal and find backup turn-key manufacturers. The lesson here is to globalize and build redundancy as soon as you can afford it.
How do you go about marketing your business, and what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
For the first two years, we did the traditional PR route with the typical beauty industry publications, as well as the typical influencer route. We also tried to “dumb down” our message in order to conform more with the beauty industry. That led us to lose our voice in the noise. Since then, we have resorted to eliminating marketing speak from our messaging and going back more and more to our technical roots. This is now working very well, as customers move away from monikers such as clean or green beauty and want to see proof. In the end, data-drive marketing, and not being afraid of setting new standards is garnering us far more traction than we should have ever expected.
We just launched our efficacy panel (similar to the nutrition panel found on food), and the industry is already buzzing. We are now focused on organic growth on social media and building a loyal following. We have also partnered with small but focused PR/social media firms globally to hone our message internationally.
What must happen for you to consider your business a success? and when do you predict it will happen?
Other than the standard business definition of generating a specific revenue milestone or achieved profitability (both of which are key to building a viable business!), we have two key goals:
We want to set a new standard in the beauty industry and see its adoption by other brands over the next five years. Specifically, we want to see companies publishing their performance data, quantified using standardized measurement instruments so that consumers can know that they are purchasing value and not storytelling.
We want to make a significant impact on sustainability in the next five to ten years. Are our volumes scale, we want to see our carbon negative tubes make an impact on reducing greenhouse gases and deploy recycling programs to demonstrate that the industry can significantly reduce its plastic waste. Finally, we want to bring the Nagoya protocol for protecting the intellectual property of indigenous peoples into the beauty industry, as biodiversity is key to survival of our planet.
What are the top 3 tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
We are using automated software platforms to grow our business internationally:
- NetSuite: this is a solid, cloud-based ERP system that allows us to closely monitor our sales and operations, provide timely monthly and quarterly closes, and benchmark our results against annual budgets.
- Shopify: this platform allows us to rapidly deploy website world-wide and link to our 3PLs
- The right strategic 3PL fulfillment partners: these companies are critical to our growth, rapid response to global DTC, and inventory management. All of our partners are then linked to NetSuite.
All three platforms are rapidly scalable and will allow us to grow quickly and seamlessly without having to add headcount.
How can we get in touch with you?
You can visit our site Codex Beauty Labs or find us on social media via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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