Nov 26, 2018 · 51m · how-i-built-this
Live Episode! Glossier: Emily Weiss
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this live recording of How I Built This, Glossier founder Emily Weiss describes her journey from teenage fashion intern and Vogue staffer to digital media creator with Into the Gloss, ultimately building Glossier into a multi-million-dollar direct-to-consumer beauty powerhouse.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 31.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.5 Guest teaching 2.1 Guest disagreement 0.8 Guy pushing back 0.8
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 44:20 Dismissing conglomerate buyout interest
Weiss firmly rejects the traditional startup exit route of selling to conglomerates like L'Oreal, stating Glossier has no use for their legacy brick-and-mortar distribution model.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 41:45 Challenging the viability of online-only cosmetic salesRaz presses Weiss on how female consumers can reasonably take the leap of faith to buy cosmetics online without in-person color testing.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 33:15 Dissecting gendered VC bias in pitch roomsWeiss calls out venture capitalists who handed her products off to their wives, pointing out that female founders evaluating fintech would never defer understanding the product to their husbands.
Guy holds their own ▶ 40:15 Raz breaks down modern crowd-sourced video discoveryRaz demonstrates deep market understanding by detailing how organic YouTube search results and decentralized video reviews replace legacy department store counters.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guy Raz Introduces Glossier and Emily Weiss | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz delivers a solo introduction contextualizing Glossier's trajectory through an analogy to Instagram's user-first monetization model. As a solo framing monologue, all interactive metrics remain at zero. | |
| Live Stage Welcome and Clarifying Brand Pronunciation | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Raz opens the live taping with lighthearted banter about brand pronunciation and Weiss's eccentric childhood interests. The dynamic is purely conversational, warm, and collaborative. | |
| Landing a Teenage Internship at Ralph Lauren | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Weiss describes landing her Ralph Lauren internship at 15 through a babysitting connection, reframing the moment as pure serendipitous luck rather than calculated grit. | |
| College Years at NYU and Vogue Editorial Career | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Raz asks Weiss about her Vogue career and whether fashion journalism was toxic like The Devil Wears Prada. Weiss explains that editorial culture depends on individual managers and outlines the overlooked commercial dominance of beauty in publishing. | |
| Launching Into the Gloss and Democratizing Beauty Influence | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Raz explores the origin of Into the Gloss. Weiss details her conceptual shift toward democratizing influence, emphasizing that peer recommendations carry more genuine weight than celebrity endorsements. | |
| First Brand Sponsorship and Leaving Vogue Full-Time | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz questions the timeline and shift from content creation to physical product manufacturing. Weiss corrects Raz's assumption that she stayed at Vogue for over two years, clarifying she left after 12 months once customer demand proved the bottoms-up brand thesis. | |
| Mid-Roll Break and Upcoming Funding Discussion Preview | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Weiss describes the frustration of pitching traditional male VCs who dismissed beauty products to ask their wives. She contrasts that dismissive pattern recognition with Kirsten Green's data-driven conviction. | |
| Formulating Products with the Los Angeles Chemist | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz inquires about the mechanics of formulating cosmetic lines from scratch. Weiss recounts hiring experienced cosmetic veterans and collaborating with an unassuming chemist in California. | |
| Direct-to-Consumer Model, Community Feedback, and Flagship Stores | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz pushes on the risk of selling makeup purely direct-to-consumer without physical sample counters. Weiss explains that formulating sheer, intuitive products like Boy Brow enables consumers to bypass complex shade matching online. | |
| Rapid Scaling, Preserving Independence, and Digital Platform Innovation | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Raz presses Weiss on acquisition interest from cosmetic giants like Estee Lauder or L'Oreal. Weiss dismisses selling out, arguing that legacy conglomerates only offer retail distribution networks Glossier deliberately does not need. | |
| Non-Zero-Sum Competition, Entrepreneurial Grit, and Final Advice | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Raz asks how Weiss tracks competitors attempting to replicate Glossier's demographic appeal. Weiss reframes beauty as a non-zero-sum category where customers naturally use multiple brands simultaneously. | |
| Episode Wrap-up, Production Credits, and Upcoming Live Taping | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Raz closes the episode with venue acknowledgments, production credits, and promotional announcements. As post-show housekeeping, interactive metrics are scored at zero. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Emily Weiss: Ralph Lauren internship was pure luck, not grit
“I really believe in kind of grit, and I mean, I didn't make that up. That's Angela Duckworth and her book, Grit. A very good book, but that actually just was luck. I mean, that, there was nothing gritty about babysitting for your neighbor's kid and he happened…”
Weiss: Work experience depends on your direct boss, not the company
“I think it's all about, it's kind of like anywhere, it all depends who your boss is. Like, it doesn't matter what company you're at, it's like, isn't there that, I just heard from someone that your personality is a result of the, like, three or five people who…”
Weiss: Beauty drives magazine ad revenue despite minimal editorial coverage
“Beauty is kind of like this, Ugly stepsister to fashion in, in magazines and in media. It's really funny because all of the ad revenue or most, a lot of it comes from beauty in these magazines. But if you think about it, like, if you're reading an issue of a f…”
Weiss: Into the Gloss launched for under $1,000
“Literally, I mean, I'm going to contradict myself, because I'm sure in another interview I've said, like, 900 or 700 or, like, eight 50, but... Under a thousand dollars. Yeah, because The website part was not expensive. Right. The money literally was just for …”
Weiss: Everyday peers drive consumer influence more than celebrities
“Some of our most popular features, like, they're not celebrities, you know. Like, we're in this celebrity culture, and we hear how much, you know, influence, influencers have, and yet, like, If we all really take a moment to think about, like, who's the last p…”
Weiss: Women face a double bind between lazy and frivolous beauty standards
“It's so hard for women to be the right level of maintenance. If you're too low maintenance, then you're lazy. You know, there's this stigma of, like, the person who, like, isn't doing enough, and yet if you're wearing a lot of makeup or you're, like, look like…”
Weiss: Into The Gloss's first brand deal with Lancôme was $5,000
“It was 5000 dollars, and, you know, this was more money than I'd ever had in my, like, ever had in my bank account.”
Weiss: Global Beauty Market Will Reach $750B in Six Years
“Beauty is a huge industry. It's a four hundred and fifty billion dollar global market. It's going to be seven hundred and fifty billion in six years.”
Weiss: 50% of Sephora Shoppers Use Their iPhones In-Store
“50% of people who go into a Sephora take out their iPhones.”
Weiss: Retail-first beauty brands design for shelf space, not consumer needs
“Beauty brands build products and clients for the needs of, you know, Macy's and, you know, Sephora and Ulta and CVS, and those are shelf space needs and seasonality needs and margin needs and all of these different needs that have nothing to do with you as the…”
Weiss: Only 4% of Venture Capital Deals Went to Female CEOs
“Four percent of venture capital deals last year went to female CEOs. So four out of a hundred deals went to women.”
Weiss: Only 6% of venture capitalists are women
“Six percent of venture capitalists are women, and hopefully that will go up.”
Weiss: Independent LA chemist developed almost all Glossier skincare products
“And that, he became our chemist, and he's actually developed, like, I don't know, almost all of our skincare products.”
Glossier hosts 1,000 top customers in a Slack channel exchanging 10k weekly messages
“We've put a thousand of our top customers in a Slack channel who exchange over 10,000 messages a week.”
Weiss: High-coverage 50-shade foundations are almost impossible to sell online
“If we had, you know, A super high coverage foundation product, then that would require us to make, you know, 50 shades, or something, or 55 shades, or something like that, which would be almost, like, impossible to sell online.”
Weiss: Beauty brands sell to conglomerates primarily for retail distribution
“And typically when you sell to a larger conglomerate, it's because you need more distribution. Because the benefit of having, you know, being a L'Oreal or an Estee Lauder company or something like that is that they have the This vast network of retailers.”
Glossier hired early Instagram engineers to build its digital platform
“So, we actually just hired the person who built DMs and camera at Instagram, and then we also made another hire of the guy who was employee nine at Instagram who's an amazing product designer, digital product designer, because we're spending a lot of time thin…”
Emily Weiss: Beauty is not zero-sum because no single brand meets all needs
“Well, it's interesting because beauty is not that competitive in my mind because how many different brands are we all using every day? Like how many different lip products do I have in my purse right now? You don't want to know from like all, all different bra…”