The Exchanges

Q Can I ask, from the personal security standpoint, was it a challenging transition leaving the world of traveling business cross and working in a top fund to being in operations and being in the grind?

A It was. I think it's very important to know what your risk tolerance is, so I'd been lucky to have a couple of years behind me where I'd not spent the money that I'd earned, so I had some savings. I also was in a relationship with my now wife, who worked and was making money as well, and so we had a very Deep conversation about who was going to pay the rent and so on and so forth. And then I think something that often gets forgotten is the nature of risk in entrepreneurship and what you should do as an entrepreneur around risk. It's always considered, oh, entrepreneurship is so risky. I think there are ways that it can be very risky, particularly if you do it as your first job out of university or college. I think then it can be quite risky because you don't have much to fall back on. But actually, some of the best entrepreneurs I know are all about risk Mitigation and risk management. And I think the way that I saw it is I'm going to have a go at this for a period of time. If I get a year out of this, even if the company doesn't work or I don't work within the company, I now have a story that I can use to spin into another journey, be that another startup job or back into the venture world. I should have enough to be able to talk about and enough experience building that I have some value to someone somewhere. So I'd always thought about that risk on the downside and wasn't wo…

AI assessment note: “It was. I think it's very important to know what your risk tolerance is”

Q Can I ask, do you think it's possible to balance the risk management mindset perspective with the required mindset of the burn the boats entrepreneurial instincts of giving it everything? Is there a kind of a paradox in terms there?

A I think there is. You just, you just called it up very succinctly. I think there absolutely is a paradox. And I think it's always about, for me, I remember I'm a sort of business minded entrepreneur who came to someone else's idea to help them realize that. I think there are entrepreneurs who are so maniacally focused on their outcome, and I'm increasingly becoming that actually, that you actually don't care about any downside because you believe so vividly in the upside. If you can, and you do have the ability to step back and weigh the risk, I think there's definitely a way to just be aware of what the jumping off points are. So absolutely swing the bat as hard as you can, but be aware of what happens if you don't quite connect in the way that you think you are. That's all you have to do is just be aware. So you have some kind of idea about, you don't have to have mapped out a plan B, but you have to have some kind of idea about what the not perfect outcome could look like. And actually if entrepreneurship is about being a step ahead, I think that is a very important step to being a step ahead is, is having the humility to know that you might be wrong or you might be right, but a bit Early, or things outside of your control could change your plan, maybe even for the better. Frankly, things can go better than you thought, and you need to be ready for all of those eventualities…

AI assessment note: “I think there absolutely is a paradox.”

Q And a great variance from the Dan Primack that's normally referenced, so, so well done on the first for that one. Talk to me, the biggest daily challenge for you with Glossier, what is it?

A It's people. Well, it's the best thing about, I spoke a bit about my transition from, from venture to operating, and the best thing about operating is getting to build a team and work with some really talented, passionate, wonderful people, but the success of our company is, is so contingent on those people, and so what keeps me awake at night, and the thing that I really worry about is how do I Hire, retain, incentivize, motivate, build trust with the people of Glossier because they really are what's going to make it a very successful company, and that is everything. Everything is people. Our brand is our people, and our people are our brand, and that's the one thing that I want to focus on and think about and do better every day. That is a never-ending challenge. There's always things you can do better, and I think about that all the time.

AI assessment note: “It's people.”

Q of the traditional incumbents moving into the M&A space with the emerging brands of today, your glossiers of the world. Tell me, do you think this is a market then of consolidation, where the big brands come in and purchase the hottest startups in the space, the Glossiers of the world, or do you think they will be the next incumbents of tomorrow being the Chanel's or deals of today?

A Well, just to put to bed any rumors, no one has moved on Glossier just yet, and we have no intention of being moved on. I think this, for me, is actually a cost of capital question, really. So cash is basically free right now. If you are an incumbent conglomerate in any space, you can borrow for next to nothing, and then you get tax shields on the interest anyway, and if your startups are running losses, so on and so forth, it's very cheap to buy companies these days, particularly if you have capital. On the flip side, for startups, access to capital is also pretty easy, as easy as arguably it's ever been, because interest rates are low, more and more money is going into alternative Asset classes, venture capital is a huge beneficiary of that. You see bigger and bigger funds getting raised. That money has to go somewhere. So it's really a question of who has more access to capital at the moment. I think it's pretty equal. So startups can be confident about going all the way that might change. And it will be a question of when interest rates go up, who feels it first? I think the second thing there is, is about the entrepreneurs themselves. I think it is a very specific personal decision. You get Thrown an offer that's for a lot of money. You have to do a lot of soul searching about what you want as a founder, CEO, president, whatever it is, and what you think the upside is vers…

AI assessment note: “startups can be confident about going all the way that might change.”

Q You mentioned your decision-making process there, and you mentioned the importance of brands. I'm really interested to hear your thoughts. We hear branded e-commerce flying around the ecosystem like nothing today. What does the term branded e-commerce really mean to you, Henry?

A Branded e-commerce basically means companies that sell direct to consumers, largely through digital channels. I think there's been change in both the branded and the e-commerce side of that term over time, and they're constantly evolving. But companies that have created their own products and take them directly to customers through the digital channel, primarily through e-commerce selling direct. The original pioneers of this model, I think Wolby Parker is probably the most famous and arguably successful so far, worked out that they could Disrupt the supply chain of the industry that they were in to create benefits for customers, typically cost savings and efficiency savings as well. And using those to engage customers, they worked out how to make the whole experience better for those people. And they essentially reinvented what it means to get glasses and then, and then be able to buy glasses given the price point and the access that they've created. On the branded side, where we get excited at Glossier and something I believe in very much That's changing is because you can now reach directly to your customer that changes the way you build brand. So by engaging directly with them at all stages of the cycle of the company, isn't just about cost saving or efficiency benefits. It's about giving them a differentiated experience and what you can do by reaching people at scale is ve…

AI assessment note: “Branded e-commerce basically means companies that sell direct to consumers, largely through digital channels.”

Q Can I ask, from the personal security standpoint, was it a challenging transition leaving the world of traveling business cross and working in a top fund to being in operations and being in the grind?

A It was. I think it's very important to know what your risk tolerance is, so I'd been lucky to have a couple of years behind me where I'd not spent the money that I'd earned, so I had some savings. I also was in a relationship with my now wife, who worked and was making money as well, and so we had a very Deep conversation about who was going to pay the rent and so on and so forth. And then I think something that often gets forgotten is the nature of risk in entrepreneurship and what you should do as an entrepreneur around risk. It's always considered, oh, entrepreneurship is so risky. I think there are ways that it can be very risky, particularly if you do it as your first job out of university or college. I think then it can be quite risky because you don't have much to fall back on. But actually, some of the best entrepreneurs I know are all about risk Mitigation and risk management. And I think the way that I saw it is I'm going to have a go at this for a period of time. If I get a year out of this, even if the company doesn't work or I don't work within the company, I now have a story that I can use to spin into another journey, be that another startup job or back into the venture world. I should have enough to be able to talk about and enough experience building that I have some value to someone somewhere. So I'd always thought about that risk on the downside and wasn't wo…

AI assessment note: “It was. I think it's very important to know what your risk tolerance is”

Q Can I ask, do you think it's possible to balance the risk management mindset perspective with the required mindset of the burn the boats entrepreneurial instincts of giving it everything? Is there a kind of a paradox in terms there?

A I think there is. You just, you just called it up very succinctly. I think there absolutely is a paradox. And I think it's always about, for me, I remember I'm a sort of business minded entrepreneur who came to someone else's idea to help them realize that. I think there are entrepreneurs who are so maniacally focused on their outcome, and I'm increasingly becoming that actually, that you actually don't care about any downside because you believe so vividly in the upside. If you can, and you do have the ability to step back and weigh the risk, I think there's definitely a way to just be aware of what the jumping off points are. So absolutely swing the bat as hard as you can, but be aware of what happens if you don't quite connect in the way that you think you are. That's all you have to do is just be aware. So you have some kind of idea about, you don't have to have mapped out a plan B, but you have to have some kind of idea about what the not perfect outcome could look like. And actually if entrepreneurship is about being a step ahead, I think that is a very important step to being a step ahead is, is having the humility to know that you might be wrong or you might be right, but a bit Early, or things outside of your control could change your plan, maybe even for the better. Frankly, things can go better than you thought, and you need to be ready for all of those eventualities…

AI assessment note: “I think there absolutely is a paradox. And I think it's always about”

Q of the traditional incumbents moving into the M&A space with the emerging brands of today, your glossiers of the world. Tell me, do you think this is a market then of consolidation, where the big brands come in and purchase the hottest startups in the space, the Glossiers of the world, or do you think they will be the next incumbents of tomorrow being the Chanel's or deals of today?

A Well, just to put to bed any rumors, no one has moved on Glossier just yet, and we have no intention of being moved on. I think this, for me, is actually a cost of capital question, really. So cash is basically free right now. If you are an incumbent conglomerate in any space, you can borrow for next to nothing, and then you get tax shields on the interest anyway, and if your startups are running losses, so on and so forth, it's very cheap to buy companies these days, particularly if you have capital. On the flip side, for startups, access to capital is also pretty easy, as easy as arguably it's ever been, because interest rates are low, more and more money is going into alternative Asset classes, venture capital is a huge beneficiary of that. You see bigger and bigger funds getting raised. That money has to go somewhere. So it's really a question of who has more access to capital at the moment. I think it's pretty equal. So startups can be confident about going all the way that might change. And it will be a question of when interest rates go up, who feels it first? I think the second thing there is, is about the entrepreneurs themselves. I think it is a very specific personal decision. You get Thrown an offer that's for a lot of money. You have to do a lot of soul searching about what you want as a founder, CEO, president, whatever it is, and what you think the upside is vers…

AI assessment note: “So startups can be confident about going all the way that might change.”

Q the traditional incumbents, but I'd love to discuss the cult following, and a real question that arose for me in terms of how do you think about expansion within that? Is that a geographic expansion of expanding the, the pure kind of millennial cult following? Is it a demographic expansion of how do you think about that, and, and when the right time is to think about expanding the mindset?

A We at Glossier built our following based on our ability and willingness and desire ultimately to engage with our customer. And I explained earlier how I came to join Glossier because Emily's realization that readers were telling her what they wanted and she could make that and then work with those very readers to create a company and a brand out of it. And so our whole following is based on our desire to engage with our customers and to listen to them and to understand what they want and where they're at. That is the basis for how you make decisions or how we make decisions for expansion, be that into new product categories, be that into new geographies, be that into new anything. We just want to understand what people want Glossier to do, what they don't have in their life that we feel we can do, and then set about doing that. So I'm actually speaking to you from London, uh, my hometown where I don't live anymore. I live in New York nowadays, but I'm in London because we just launched here this week and we launched in the UK this week. And The reason we did that is we had overwhelming inbound demand from our community. Communities are no longer local. Instagram doesn't stop on the eastern seaboard of the United States. It's global. And we want to listen to people who are asking us where some, some cases telling us where we need to be. That is true in product as well. So as we …

AI assessment note: “That is the basis for how you make decisions or how we make decisions for expansion”

Q What does that mean? What does that mean fair? What does fair look like to you?

A So very specifically, it means know what you're hiring for. So, so much of the hiring process of engineers or finance and venture capital is about specific skills. You know, have you done venture investing before? Have you done this specific Kind of engineering before or worked on this specific kind of tech stack before, but actually that's not fair because that's just reinforcing whatever biases came before. And so what that leads to is what's known as the pipeline problem. And I think this is something that again, venture capital has sort of fallen into this trap. And I don't want to tell all of venture capital with the same brush. There are some fantastic firms doing some great things, but in general, it's once you don't have a pipeline of diverse people, it's very hard to get diverse people into your leadership because If you're hiring on the basis of specific skills, right? As in experience, because you're just reinforcing your own workforce and the makeup that you currently have. But if you hire for talent and capability, that's when you can be more creative. And that's when you can be more expansive and get really, really smart, capable people solving problems, whatever their backgrounds and whatever their gender or race, you get the smartest people solving the problems, not the people who have Already gone through a system that is maybe set up in a certain way to acquir…

AI assessment note: “we focus very, very much on talent and capability over specific skills and experience.”

Q You mentioned your decision-making process there, and you mentioned the importance of brands. I'm really interested to hear your thoughts. We hear branded e-commerce flying around the ecosystem like nothing today. What does the term branded e-commerce really mean to you, Henry?

A Branded e-commerce basically means companies that sell direct to consumers, largely through digital channels. I think there's been change in both the branded and the e-commerce side of that term over time, and they're constantly evolving. But companies that have created their own products and take them directly to customers through the digital channel, primarily through e-commerce selling direct. The original pioneers of this model, I think Wolby Parker is probably the most famous and arguably successful so far, worked out that they could Disrupt the supply chain of the industry that they were in to create benefits for customers, typically cost savings and efficiency savings as well. And using those to engage customers, they worked out how to make the whole experience better for those people. And they essentially reinvented what it means to get glasses and then, and then be able to buy glasses given the price point and the access that they've created. On the branded side, where we get excited at Glossier and something I believe in very much That's changing is because you can now reach directly to your customer that changes the way you build brand. So by engaging directly with them at all stages of the cycle of the company, isn't just about cost saving or efficiency benefits. It's about giving them a differentiated experience and what you can do by reaching people at scale is ve…

AI assessment note: “Branded e-commerce basically means companies that sell direct to consumers, largely through digital channels.”

Q And a great variance from the Dan Primack that's normally referenced, so, so well done on the first for that one. Talk to me, the biggest daily challenge for you with Glossier, what is it?

A It's people. Well, it's the best thing about, I spoke a bit about my transition from, from venture to operating, and the best thing about operating is getting to build a team and work with some really talented, passionate, wonderful people, but the success of our company is, is so contingent on those people, and so what keeps me awake at night, and the thing that I really worry about is how do I Hire, retain, incentivize, motivate, build trust with the people of Glossier because they really are what's going to make it a very successful company, and that is everything. Everything is people. Our brand is our people, and our people are our brand, and that's the one thing that I want to focus on and think about and do better every day. That is a never-ending challenge. There's always things you can do better, and I think about that all the time.

AI assessment note: “It's people. Well, it's the best thing about”

Q the traditional incumbents, but I'd love to discuss the cult following, and a real question that arose for me in terms of how do you think about expansion within that? Is that a geographic expansion of expanding the, the pure kind of millennial cult following? Is it a demographic expansion of how do you think about that, and, and when the right time is to think about expanding the mindset?

A We at Glossier built our following based on our ability and willingness and desire ultimately to engage with our customer. And I explained earlier how I came to join Glossier because Emily's realization that readers were telling her what they wanted and she could make that and then work with those very readers to create a company and a brand out of it. And so our whole following is based on our desire to engage with our customers and to listen to them and to understand what they want and where they're at. That is the basis for how you make decisions or how we make decisions for expansion, be that into new product categories, be that into new geographies, be that into new anything. We just want to understand what people want Glossier to do, what they don't have in their life that we feel we can do, and then set about doing that. So I'm actually speaking to you from London, uh, my hometown where I don't live anymore. I live in New York nowadays, but I'm in London because we just launched here this week and we launched in the UK this week. And The reason we did that is we had overwhelming inbound demand from our community. Communities are no longer local. Instagram doesn't stop on the eastern seaboard of the United States. It's global. And we want to listen to people who are asking us where some, some cases telling us where we need to be. That is true in product as well. So as we …

AI assessment note: “That is the basis for how you make decisions or how we make decisions for expansion”

Q What does that mean? What does that mean fair? What does fair look like to you?

A So very specifically, it means know what you're hiring for. So, so much of the hiring process of engineers or finance and venture capital is about specific skills. You know, have you done venture investing before? Have you done this specific Kind of engineering before or worked on this specific kind of tech stack before, but actually that's not fair because that's just reinforcing whatever biases came before. And so what that leads to is what's known as the pipeline problem. And I think this is something that again, venture capital has sort of fallen into this trap. And I don't want to tell all of venture capital with the same brush. There are some fantastic firms doing some great things, but in general, it's once you don't have a pipeline of diverse people, it's very hard to get diverse people into your leadership because If you're hiring on the basis of specific skills, right? As in experience, because you're just reinforcing your own workforce and the makeup that you currently have. But if you hire for talent and capability, that's when you can be more creative. And that's when you can be more expansive and get really, really smart, capable people solving problems, whatever their backgrounds and whatever their gender or race, you get the smartest people solving the problems, not the people who have Already gone through a system that is maybe set up in a certain way to acquir…

AI assessment note: “So very specifically, it means know what you're hiring for.”

Q kind of expanding that core infrastructure there, we've spoken before about the element of hiring, and particularly an element I'd love to discuss being the diversified workforce that you've built with Glossier. I often hear, it's just so hard to find female engineers. That's the common saying that I hear. So I'm interested, how would you respond to this commonly cited problem, and how do you look to combat this?

A It's a problem that is endemic in the startup industry, particularly on the more technological side of it. I think venture capitalists, you mentioned engineers, but I think we should talk about venture capitalists. I know that's what this is about. And I think venture capital is, is as bad as any industry for diversity and should be called out as such. It's something that we think about a lot at Glossier. We always got more work to do and we're far from perfect, but we really want to try. I think there are three things that you should do in general and When thinking about having a diverse workforce, number one is make sure your hiring processes and your assessments are fair. Sounds super simple, but it's something that gets overlooked so often.

AI assessment note: “you mentioned engineers, but I think we should talk about venture capitalists.”

Q kind of expanding that core infrastructure there, we've spoken before about the element of hiring, and particularly an element I'd love to discuss being the diversified workforce that you've built with Glossier. I often hear, it's just so hard to find female engineers. That's the common saying that I hear. So I'm interested, how would you respond to this commonly cited problem, and how do you look to combat this?

A It's a problem that is endemic in the startup industry, particularly on the more technological side of it. I think venture capitalists, you mentioned engineers, but I think we should talk about venture capitalists. I know that's what this is about. And I think venture capital is, is as bad as any industry for diversity and should be called out as such. It's something that we think about a lot at Glossier. We always got more work to do and we're far from perfect, but we really want to try. I think there are three things that you should do in general and When thinking about having a diverse workforce, number one is make sure your hiring processes and your assessments are fair. Sounds super simple, but it's something that gets overlooked so often.

AI assessment note: “you mentioned engineers, but I think we should talk about venture capitalists.”