Despite building one of the most comprehensive cosmetic ingredient databases and product formulation tools in the beauty industry, Iva Yovchev Teixeira, co-founder and CEO of The Good Face Project, was unsure she would be able to monetize her concept. Iva, along with fellow co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Lena Skliarova-Mordvinova, spent five years on their AI-powered cosmetic ingredients ontology company in an effort to disrupt the beauty industry. But like many entrepreneurs in tech, they feared no one would be interested unless their concept was fully fleshed out– let alone invest in them.
“Lena and I were absolutely certain we were not going to get any funding if we just went to somebody with this beautiful idea written on a napkin, so we did not go [for] funding for the first two years of working on the company. We kind of did the typical girl approach of under promise and over deliver,” Iva said.
Well, fear no more as the duo’s The Good Face Project just closed a $5.65 million raise with VMG. The company impressed Brooke Kiley, Partner, VMG Catalyst, who said the company looks to play a critical role in helping brands and manufacturers drive efficiencies in the innovation and product development process.
“We were immediately impressed by Iva Teixeira and Lena Skilarova-Mordvinova and the technology they’ve built. We’re excited to see the positive impact that The Good Face Project will have by bringing transparency and sustainability to the beauty industry,” Brooke said in a company statement.
Brooke and Hem Suri, Founding Partner at Spark Growth Ventures, will join The Good Face Project’s board as Director and board observer, respectively, as part of the raise.
Additional investors include REDO Ventures, Capsum, and influential industry executives including John Heffner (CEO, Summer Fridays and former CEO, Drybar); Romain Gaillard (Founder and CEO, The Detox Market); and Andy Ballester (Co-Founder, GoFundMe).
In March 2021, the company launched the Good Face Formulator, a Cloud-based formulation tool that draws on a vast database of over 150,000 ingredients and considers more than 40 dimensions of ingredient safety, sustainability, and efficacy to allow brands and manufacturers to easily grade their product formulations against worldwide regulatory compliance requirements.
Funding has already gone towards adding team members, including Allen Donaldson as Vice President of Sales and Liz Brenner as Director of Growth Marketing. Additionally, The Good Face Project plans to double down on its customer service proficiency and enhance the company’s predictive modeling capabilities to help brands determine which new formulas to create, some of which are currently in beta testing.
