Bridge Mentorship Alumni Lion Pose, Lightsaver And Miss Rizos On The Higher Hurdles For Emerging Brands In Today's Tough Beauty Market

During a Beauty Independent In Conversation last Wednesday, beauty investors and entrepreneurs underscored that only the strongest survive and thrive in today’s cutthroat beauty market.

“We know how saturated the industry is in whatever category that you’re in,” said Cristina Nuñez, co-founder and general partner at True Beauty Ventures, during the webinar. “It’s so important to determine very clearly what your brand positioning is. It’s incredibly important to an investor. It’s very important to a retailer and, ultimately, it’s very important to a buyer of the business.”

The webinar recapped lessons from the sixth cohort of Bridge Mentorship, a six-month program established by TBV, a beauty and wellness investment firm with Crown Affair, Caliray, BeautyStat, Vacation, Dieux, The 7 Virtues and Maude in its portfolio, and Beauty Independent to ready emerging beauty and wellness brands for fundraising. To be eligible for the program, applicants must lead brands based in North America that are at least six months old and generate annual sales of $250,000 or above. Applications for the program’s first cohort of 2025 opened Dec. 4 and will close Dec. 13. Three brands selected for the cohort will be revealed in January.

The founders who participated in the second cohort of 2024—Lightsaver founder David Kim, Lion Pose co-founders Madhu Punjabi and Nisha Phatak, and Miss Rizos founder Carolina Contreras—joined Nuñez and Rich Gersten, co-founder and managing partner of TBV, for the webinar. They went through the diagnostic process at the heart of Bridge Mentorship, which is similar to the due diligence process brands typically go through when fundraising. The diagnostic process examines key business areas like brand positioning, finances, distribution and scalability. Once the process is complete, TBV creates action plans for the cohort participants to set goals and measure progress.

Bridge Mentorship alumni brands have achieved significant milestones since graduating from the program. Nopalera and Youthforia have raised capital and secured partnerships with retailers such as Credo and Ulta Beauty, respectively. Sofie Pavitt Face secured seed funding from TBV, and Prakti recently launched at Credo.

“It’s so rewarding to see some of these past mentees go on and accomplish big things so quickly,” said Gersten. “We’re just genuinely so excited about building this community as the program continues to scale.”

Below, we highlight top takeaways from the sixth cohort’s experience.

Lightsaver

Year Launched: 2023
Category: Sunscreen/Skincare
Positioning: Lightsaver is a sun care brand founded by Km, a Stanford University-trained dermatologist. On a mission to make daily sun protection easy, its clinically tested sun care products are formulated with its proprietary Light Activated Repair Complex, which is designed to help with sun damage repair, moisturizing, brightening and blue light protection.
Price Range: $45
Hero Products: Tinted Activated Mineral Sunscreen Broad Spectrum SPF 33 and Shade 0 Activated Mineral Sunscreen Broad Spectrum SPF 33
Current Distribution: DTC, Sephora.com

As a solo founder, Kim lauded the Bridge Mentorship program for directing him to the functions his time matters most for and the functions for which delegation is better. Product development is his key area of expertise and marketing is an area where the brand is seeking outside assistance. Kim plans to leverage his Instagram following of over 400,000 as much as possible to drive organic brand awareness while developing a paid media program. He’s been vetting agencies to execute paid media.

When emerging brands pursue funding, Gersten pointed out investors like to see their staffing and awareness humming, but that’s exceeding hard on a constrained budget. “To have a team to delegate the other stuff to requires money,” he said. “To have brand awareness built requires marketing dollars, which requires money. Yet, many investors would want to see the team and the brand awareness built before they invest.”

Another takeaway from the Bridget Mentorship program for Kim involved the centrality and challenge of implementing successful omnichannel sales strategies. Lghtsaver is sold on Sephora’s website and in direct-to-consumer distribution. Gersten said, “Retailers are good at taking advantage of a brand once it’s been built, but retailers aren’t the ones that are supposed to build the brand nor do they.”

Lion Pose

Year Launched: 2023
Category: Skincare
Positioning: Lion Pose is a minority-owned clinical skincare brand dedicated to inclusive clinical testing. Clinical testing in skincare often leaves out the darkest skin tones. Lion Pose’s first two products were a hyperpigmentation serum and sunscreen developed with Harvard University dermatologists. In 2024, Lion Pose won the Allure Best of Beauty award for Unspotted 4X, its hyperpigmentation serum made for all skin tones.
Price Range: $39 to $79
Hero Product: Unspotted 4X
Current Distribution: DTC, Sephora

Lion Pose landed exclusively at select Sephora stores upon launch last year after graduating from the beauty specialty retailer’s Accelerate program. It also snagged actress, producer and writer Mindy Kaling as an ambassador and investor. Along with Kaling, investors in Lion Pose’s $3 million seed funding round are Ignite XL, Precursor Ventures, LH Capital and Ben Van de Bunt, former CEO of direct marketing company Guthy-Renker.

Bridge Mentorship’s action plan for Lion Pose included education to support Lion Pose’s role at Sephora as the go-to clinical brand for hyperpigmentation and a refining of its financial forecast based on its conversations with the beauty specialty chain. “It’s really easy for us to get caught up sometimes in what others are doing,” said Phatak. “You’re constantly seeing other brands popping off at Sephora or the opposite, going under and disappearing. That thrashing back and forth can make founders not focus and be almost insecure about the tactics they’re employing or the strategies that they’re using.”

Miss Rizos

Year Launched: 2014
Category: Haircare
Positioning: Afro-Latinas and Spanish speakers are an underrepresented and underserved group in the beauty industry, especially in prestige beauty and curly hair. Miss Rizos products are made with nourishing Caribbean ingredients and are crafted for all curl types. The brand celebrates heritage, culture and curly hair. Miss Rizos began as a blog in 2011 with the mission to empower, celebrate and educate curly-haired people before founder Contreras expanded into salons in 2014.
Price Range: $15 to $55
Hero Product: Knot So Typical Detangling Leave-In Conditioner
Current Distribution: DTC, Sephora

Miss Rizos entered Bridge Mentorship on the precipice of a major rebrand. It plans to unveil its new identity and name in the near future. Contreras mentioned the program sparked moments of vulnerability and boosted her confidence as Miss Rizos moves into its next era. “While it might feel like you’re the only founder going through really tough times, other successful founders are experiencing or have experienced what you’re going through,” she said. “It’s super important to understand that your current test will be your future testimony.”

For emerging brand founders, Nuñez emphasized that, in securing investment, they should choose investors who understand their unique difficulties. She said, “You’re looking for an investor that you can go to with your problems and get that advice immediately and know that you don’t have to have all the answers right away.”