The Next Mafia in Beauty
There are well known mafias in every industry. For technology, the most notable one is the “Paypal mafia”, for hedge funds, the “Tiger Cubs”, for entertainment the Mickey Mouse Club comes to mind. These alumni groups have seen greatness before in their industries and take those hard-earned lessons and apply those skills to new problems and opportunities. The Paypal mafia has gone on to create billions of dollars in enterprise value, the Tiger Cubs manage billions and billions of assets under management, and the Mickey Mouse Club has been responsible for some of the most legendary musicians and actors of the last generation. When we first met the team behind Bakeup we felt we had met the next breakout mafia in the beauty industry.
Bakeup is the genius brand behind the minds of industry veteran Cristina Carlino, celebrity makeup artist Jo Baker and creative visionary Grace Gaustad. The founding team has all the DNA to launch a defining, new beauty brand with the additional talents of Sarah Superon and Christine Nevin’s experience building philosophy with Cristina (bought by Coty from Carlisle for $1B). With all their powers combined, it’s much like the Captain Planet of a modern beauty brand (sorry we are not sorry that this reference dates us).
These elements of success come not only from lived experience, but from choosing the right idea at the right time. The Bakeup team saw an opportunity to build an expressive, playful, and colorful brand that was novel. A brand that would be digitally native and tie IRL products to the different digital platforms we now express ourselves across. Coming out of the pandemic, Gen Z consumers in particular are ready to experiment with new color palettes that allow them to feel good in their own skin. You can be sure that you will be seeing us sporting some fresh new looks in future board meetings.
Historically, we are not beauty investors, we traditionally stick to the categories which we know best like enterprise, fintech and the public sector. But with most things in life, there are exceptions to every rule and backing a new mafia in the beauty industry was something we couldn’t pass up. We were introduced to the visionary team of Cristina, Sarah, Jo, Grace, and Christine by our good friends at Fifth Down. Now, they’ve launched the first of their IRL products — micro palm palettes and on-the-go facial gems —you can check them out here : https://bakeupbeauty.com/
