Veracity's Allie Egan is turning her "aha" moment into a business

In 2019 I launched Startup Standup here on LinkedIn. I had been a mentor to a lot of entrepreneurs that came to me for advice on raising money and just general startup tips. It was baffling to see that women had a really hard time raising money - especially when their business plans were on par (or even better in many cases) than male-founded companies.

In an effort to get the word out and learn from each other, the concept of Startup Standup  was born. In Season 3 we'll hear from seven tenacious founders who are navigating the funding stage - whether it's Lexi who is still completely bootstrapped or Neha who pivoted her company and is ready to secure that next round of institutional funding. Make sure to click subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!

I'd love to hear what you think and if there are any other female founders I should get to know. Oh yeah, and let's all support these phenomenal founders! :)

Enjoy,

Marc 

Meet Allie

This week I'm talking to Allie Egan. She’s a past executive and CEO for well-known skincare and fashion brands and current investor herself who's decided to build something of her own. Allie had her “aha moment" after discovering a connection between her infertility struggles and her persistent skin troubles. Now, as a mom and cleared of her frustrating skin problems, Allie was inspired to launch Veracity. Veracity helps women uncovers root causes of issues big and small, offers proactive steps forward, and puts customers on a path to better skin and better health.

Allie and I chat about gaps in the skincare industry, the relationship between what’s going on inside our bodies and how they manifest on our skin, and the ways to balance executing today and dreaming big. It’s also great to hear from someone who sits on both sides of the investor table — given that, she has an interesting perspective when it comes to putting a pitch deck together. Take a listen!

Allie: I'm Allie Egan. I'm the founder and CEO of Veracity Selfcare. We are a totally new type of skincare brand and platform that seeks to stop treating the symptoms of skin problems and really get to the root causes. This is just a really brief overview. Veracity creates a personal self-care experience based on real data about your hormones and other bio factors through our at-home Skin + Health Test.

We really believe that self-care and skincare should not be this guesswork situation that most women go through where it's like, what should I be using for my skin? Why is my skin breaking out? What's happening this time of the month? and continuing to basically not have answers and just go through this trial and guess and check methodology. We have worked with our medical advisory board that's a holistic board beyond dermatology to create this test and hope that it really helps people to understand what is right for their skin and also take better care of their overall health and thus create a better skin.

This is me. Just really quickly on my background. Before taking the steps to launch Veracity, I was the CEO of the women's apparel brand, Cynthia Rowley. My role there really took that business from what was a traditional wholesale and licensed apparel brand to a direct-to-consumer brand. We grew the business. We doubled the business in less than two years, shifted from 25% direct-to-consumer to 80%. Really have deep knowledge on the direct-to-consumer side.

Before that, I was at Estée Lauder Companies. I worked at three of the bigger brands. They're mostly in skincare: Clinique, Origins, and La Mer. As I like to say, in my previous life, I was an investor in the consumer retail world working at L Catterton investing in beauty brands, apparel across the retail landscape.

Just a little bit on the inspiration, obviously, I definitely understand the industry as a whole, but really, this idea came to me from my own personal experience. I always thought I had oily skin because, as a woman consumer, you're taught to think, okay, this is what type of skin I have, and so these are the products I should look for. I was really shocked when I was in business school and I started getting these dry patches, crazy flaking dry patches, and I couldn't figure it out. I went down the typical rabbit hole of Dr. Google and actually talking to my dermatologist, tried everything and try nothing at the same time and really was in this limbo, trial and error period for three-plus years.

It wasn't until I was having fertility-related issues and went into get some testing done that I learned I had a thyroid problem. I have Hashimoto's or hypothyroidism. Reading more into it, literally, one of the direct symptoms is dry skin patchiness. It was that aha moment of, oh my God, my skin was giving me the signs of what was going on in my overall health, but I just didn't have the tools to listen to it. I really wanted to create this brand and platform so that women don't have to go through this period like I did.

Whether it's as simple as just everyday acne or some much bigger health issues, I think that that's really what we want to help empower women to have that knowledge and resources to make progress and change in their skin and their health.

This is a brief snapshot of my team, but basically, we're very early. I founded the company early last year, but we have a really great roster of people helping us in different areas. I've touched on this a little bit, but just to really open it up. I don't know how familiar you are with the whole skincare world, but two of the big trends going on that I think are here to stay are personalization and then clean beauty.

Both as a consumer and then also having worked in the industry, there's a lot of problems. One on the personalization side, everyone is talking about it but no one is really delivering on it in a meaningful way. Most of the tools now are just online quizzes that really just force you to self-diagnose. Marc, what is your skin type? What are your concerns? If you don't know the answer to those questions, it's going to be garbage in garbage out. Then on the clean beauty side, it's like the rest of the beauty skincare and makeup world where it's just buzzword marketing driven. We have this ingredient, we don't have that ingredient, but no one's really trying to put a scientific definition behind clean and safe, which is what we're trying to do in our products.

Again, I've touched on this, but really our solution is three-pronged. One is this authentic personalization via our at-home test where we can provide real objective data on her and help her find the right solutions. The second is this whole self approach where when someone comes in, and I'll walk you more through the consumer experience, but when someone comes in and take our test, they're not just getting an output that's like, "Here's your three products, please check out and then come back to us in three months when you're out," but also content and insights into what foods they can be eating and what diet and exercise things at a high level that will help them to take best care of their whole health and create better skin.

Then the third is on this scientifically driven version of clean beauty and safe. We've worked with a PhD in Endocrine Health to help develop our products, which are will be verified free of all endocrine disruptors in formulas and packaging and safe for all of these life moments that people go through and sometimes don't know, which I think is just so important for women.

Just to walk you through a little bit more of the journey. We have two pathways where we have this skin health test, which is like a 23andMe type experience. We mail this kit to you. It's just a simple saliva test. You spit in a tube, mail it back. We are also building a version where maybe not everyone is ready to go through the tests right away, but we also want them to have access to our products. It's a more in-depth tool that we're using and we'll hope to perfect over time. Based on that, then the customer would get her results and insights. Our report on what her biomarkers are currently and what those implications are for her skin and overall health and as well as her recommended products from our brand.

An example of that would be you would get your estrogen tested and you would find out, oh, you actually have low estrogen or on the lower end of estrogen. What does that mean for skin? Well, it means that your body is probably not producing as much collagen as it could be. You want to look to products that either we have or other brands have that have ingredients that help to stimulate collagen production, like ceramides, for example.

Then the third part is really this more community-building content, allowing her to explore and build from there. We've actually launched our brand with this community and content platform first which has articles on all different areas of health and skin. We have other engagement events with our expert advisors, et cetera. Just keep her interested in learning and exploring better skin and better health.

Just a little bit more in-depth on the products I've touched on earlier. First is like this revolutionary Skin + Health Discovery Kit. This is really the game-changer within skincare, and I believe provides so much value just in people just wanting to know their numbers, but then what insight into practically what to do with that stuff beyond there. Not just, "Oh, I know my numbers," but now I know the variables in my own life that I can take charge and affect change. The second is our skincare, which again I touched on. The third is this content and community platform that we're building that will really both help bring people into the brand as well as keep them engaged with us beyond product purchases.

Marc: Allie, are you going to go through price points, consumer price points on these products?

Allie: Yes, I do. I have that in a later slide, but we can jump in wherever you want.

Marc: There's a couple of questions.

Allie: Yes, please.

Marc: What is the big vision? 5 to 10 years, where do you hope the company is?

Allie: Where I really see us in 10 years from now is, on the product side, is having a full assortment of both amazing skincare products as well as other personal care. That's body care, hair care, supplements, et cetera, but really being able to offer that full suite. On the testing side is to have a full suite of testing. There's an intro test like we have now, but also the ability for people to learn and explore more.

Marc: Great. I think that's a very compelling vision. My recommendation would be, and I think you did a good job of explaining what Veracity is upfront. Sometimes people skip that part. I thought you did a good job. I got it right away, but then I would want to hear what the big vision is, that vision that you just explained. I think it's important to get up front so that the investors listening to the deck know that they're not just hearing a pitch deck for a single product skincare or even multiproduct skincare line, but you have a much bigger vision.

I think it sets the stage for just have ambitious you are and your plans for the company, and so having that vision, a few sentences after you say what it is, like here's our big vision. That slide you had in the back about skincare and wellness. You showed that that was phase 1 and you were going to do these other phases. I don't think you need that. I think if you pull it up front and just incorporate it as this is our big vision. We're starting with skincare for this reason, but I wouldn't be so quick to back off really where you want to go.

The other thing that's missing for me is that emotional connection, that mission statement. Why you exist, why you get up in the morning and want to do this? What is the emotional benefit? How do you hope that they would feel differently by engaging with your company than not? Maybe just a few words that summarizes that mission. Let's click through and see what else you've done.

Allie: Yes, sure.

Marc: You talk about - You have the mission, the vision, value, strategy, problem. Next slide, this a solution, right?

Allie: Yes.

Marc: Solution - Great. Next slide.

Allie: Then this is that, that future side, which we could perhaps just sort of...

Marc: I don't think you need this. The vision slide would be more along the words that you said. You can have a diagram if you want, but that's a smaller part of the slide. I think the words and the way you laid out the big vision, I think it should be right on the slide, like a few sentences on what you want this to be, then you don't need this slide, okay?

Allie: Okay. This was a little bit more on just like our target and the fact that we have have this, what I'll call a unique launch strategy purposely. For a skincare brand, really starting out as this trusted platform that's not trying to push product and then obviously moving into that full experience this summer and beyond.

Marc: Next slide. I think you can combine this slide and the slide before. I always like to try and keep the deck as tight as possible. The deck was a little bit long. I think a couple of these slides could be combined. I think basically the-- What do you call the left side again? This is called the progress.

Allie: The go-to-market.

Marc: Yes, go-to-market progress, basically. I would combine those two. It just cuts down once-- I don't think you get enough value out of a second slide there. Business model. This came way late for me. When you first went through the slide, I was like, this sounds like a problem, and I would have expected it to be much earlier. It's just something to consider. Let's go to the next slide.

Allie: Then the last two slides are just kind of an overview on the category and the competition.

Marc: On the category-- A lot of people do this. A lot of people put the market size and the vision and that kind of stuff towards the back. I've learned through experience that setting the stage early, that you're thinking big, especially with venture investors. With angel, you can get away with it, no problem, but venture investors, they want 20X return and they're coming in at a $20 million valuation of something. They want to see this could be a billion-dollar company to get that really good return or at least a half a billion. Yes,, just getting them engaged early when they know it's big and you're thinking big. It's an easy way for them to weed out. If somebody is thinking small, they will tune out early.

Allie: I have a follow-up question on that, if you don't mind. Obviously, I believe in the vision and believe that this can be a big company, but the other questions I've got, and honestly things I think about, are just how do you take this big vision and then put it into something you can actually execute because people-- Sometimes then people get scared of why you have this big vision but you're not focused in the right way. Do you have any thoughts on that...

Marc: Yes, I've strong thoughts on that. I think it is you have to do it right. How you think about it and how you talk about it is really important. I think you need to separate the big ambitious vision of where you want to go in 10 years and be really clear that that's where I want to go, I have ambitious goals. However, today I am laser-focused on skincare. This is where we're starting and this is why we're starting there. That will work really well.

It accomplishes both. You get to let people know how focused you are, you explain people why you're starting where you're starting, what you hope to achieve in skincare before you even think about the next thing, that you're not going to run and jump right into the next thing, that you're going to make sure that you've proven this to a point where it naturally makes sense to go into the next thing. It could be years before you even do anything outside of skincare and that's perfectly fine, but it is important to frame it up as a piece of a much larger puzzle. I think that's it.

Allie: No, that's helpful. Okay. Then the last slide is just this overview on competition. We also have one of those typical slides that shows the sort of white space graph, but I really find that this one is more relevant to talk to just because skincare is so crowded. I think what we point out here is both from a product perspective as well as even a positioning and branding perspective that we are doing something different.

Marc: This comes a little late for me too. Just like you told me on the slides, some of the things you already told me before and it seemed like a throwing at the end. The idea that there's this traditional skincare, personalized skincare and neither one is doing it right and you have a completely different strategy to win in this sector.

That's why I almost think if you did do the big vision and then you wanted to say, okay, this is a really big vision and this is our strategy. It's unique. We've got your traditional skincare here, personalized skin here. We're taking a completely different approach using science and all this stuff, I think getting to that early and hitting it harder after the vision I think would be really compelling because the first thing I'm thinking after you tell me about this big vision is, great, but what's your strategy? How are you going to do that? Just to say you want to be really big and you want to do all these things, like how? Our strategy is, unlike the competition, which are doing this and this, we're doing this. This is our high level strategy and how we're going to attack this vision.

One other small thing...when you talk upfront about the company and you say this is what it is, which is great. I love that, this is what it is. I would also tell the investor where you are upfront and really a couple of bullets high level like we did raise 2 million pre-seed or whatever a million bucks pre-seed. We've got five employees, and we're a year old and we're getting ready to launch. Just a few bullets like that.

Again, it just sets the stage for, this is what it is, this is where we are. Now let me tell you a story of how this happened and stuff. Then I jump into this is the big vision. This is our mission and values. We're missionary-oriented or maybe mission values first, were missionaries. This is why we get out of bed in the morning. This is the big vision we have. This is our unique strategy or approach to how we're going to achieve that vision. It's differentiated from the market.

Go into a little more detail on the problem, a little more the solution, what the product is, the business model, the financials, and then the team and then the financing. Try to keep it really tight like that. Maybe I think we missed the slide actually like where you are today, which you had a good slide on that. Something along those lines I think would make it nice and tight.

Allie: Now that's super helpful. It's always an iterative process getting...

Marc: I thought he did a really good job. You did have everything in the deck. You're much further along than a lot of other startup founders that have been on the startup standup, so congrats on getting this far pre-launch. I think you're in a really good spot.

Allie: Oh, thank you.

Marc: I love the idea. I think it's differentiated. I think it's got a lot of potential, and I think you're going to do really well, taking it really well.

Allie: Thank you. I hope so.