4 Strategies That Helped Uni’s Founder Raise Funding From Ashton Kutcher And L’Oréal

When it comes to funding, Alexandra Keating has seen more than two sides of the same coin.

The latest is as founder of Uni, which announced in July that it secured an undisclosed amount of funding from L’Oréal’s venture capital arm BOLD, Break Trail Ventures, Milk Makeup founder Mazdack Rassi and model and actress Adwoa Aboah. Previously, the three-year-old eco-conscious body care brand raised $4 million in investment from major entertainment figures Ashton Kutcher, his business partner Guy Oseary and their venture fund Sound Ventures at a $25 million valuation.

The funding is being put toward supporting Uni’s rollout at 800 Ulta Beauty stores, including hiring a field team. Beyond Ulta, Uni has established partnerships with Erewhon, SoulCycle, Space NK in the United Kingdom and Mecca in Australia. It has a collaboration with restaurant Mr. Chow on hand wash.

Keating, daughter of former Australian prime minister Paul Keating, has been thinking about fundraising for two decades. The first company she founded as a 20-year-old student in 2006 at the University of Sydney was literally called GoFundraise. It operated software for nonprofits soliciting money.

She’s tried her hand at giving out money, too, with stints at RSE Ventures and LionTree, but prefers entrepreneurial to investor pursuits. As an entrepreneur, her objective when seeking funding is to bring in experts who plug her knowledge gaps. When she wants to connect with investors she doesn’t know, she’ll find opportunities to leverage her existing relationships to reach them.

Diving more into her fundraising approach, Keating offered four tips that have helped her bank bucks.

1. Consistently Engage With Investors

A central tenet of Keating’s approach to fundraising is to engage regularly with the investor community outside of formal meetings or the office. The reason is that if you meet potential investors when you’re trying to raise capital, your time with them is very finite, and the engagements can be clouded by the technicalities of term sheets.

In the case of BOLD, Presca Ahn, investment director for the fund, initially contacted Keating via LinkedIn when Uni launched. The pair has met over meals every six to 12 months over the past two years. During the casual meetings, Keating shared Uni’s business updates, including plans and goals, without directly pitching her for investment. She advises other founders to be transparent about their brand’s plans and gauge how investors respond to the plans.

Keating says, “I can’t stress how important it is to spend time [with potential investors] because companies are always going to have ups and downs, and you want to know how that person is going to respond and if they see the company the same way [you do].”

2. Work Your Connections

Not everyone has access to angel or institutional investors. Some of Keating’s early investor connections came from leveraging the few people she knew to introduce her to others. She’s not afraid to send a cold email or direct message to those she doesn’t know.

From her previous experiences as a founder, Keating was casually acquainted with Oseary and contacted him to tell him about Uni, asking to meet. She flew to Los Angeles for the meeting. Oseary then presented the business opportunity to Kutcher, who identified with Uni’s mission of creating sea-safe products and driving consumers to adopt environmentally friendly products.

For Keating, Kutcher and Oseary’s creative mindsets (Oseary is an entertainment manager) are strong assets for Uni. She keeps them informed of product and packaging designs as well as marketing materials, and she’s gone to them for introductions to people in their larger network.

By leveraging every opportunity to meet more potential investors, Keating maintains a founder can gain a better understanding of what they’re interested in from partners and the business’s needs. Plus, she says it’s nice to have a competitive fundraising process among investors.

3. Simplify Your Pitch Deck

Keating believes pitch decks are often too dense, and the scope should be limited to what a brand is doing and where it’s headed. In the pitch deck for Uni’s latest fundraise, the brand zeroed in on two key messages: its traction at retail partners such as Mecca, Space NK and Ulta, and the brand’s focus on hero products like its 24-Hour Body Serum.

The takeaway for investors was that Uni aims to distribute its hero products across all retail partners and has already successfully demonstrated this strategy works. After those messages in the pitch deck, Uni moved on to dive into the financials.

Keating says, “A lot of people make the mistake of being too data-forward to begin with, but if you give [investors] too much information, they’ll look for what they want, which could be direct-to-consumer or [customer] retention.”

4. Do Your Own Due Diligence

Although it’s a tough fundraising environment, Keating says that doesn’t mean that founders should feel obligated to accept any and every investor check. She suggests touching base with founders and executives from companies in an investor’s portfolio.

It’s also important to consider what type of investor a brand is looking for. A makeup artist founder, for example, may want a hands-on investor who can link them to seasoned operational leaders or wholesale distribution representatives.

Separately, it’s Keating’s belief that, if founders are skilled operators, they should only raise the amount essential for their business. If founders are encouraged to raise more or less capital than the business requires, they may be subject to investors’ agendas rather than what the company requires.

“If you go out to the people that you want to come in and [get involved], chances are they also want to get involved,” says Keating. “If you go to investors at the right time [for your business] and they can see where the business is going…you should be able to close the deal.”