Jul 26, 2017 · 27m · y-combinator
Emily Weiss on the Insights That Grew Glossier - With Amy Buechler at the Female Founders Conference · Y Combinator
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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 keynote conversation from the Y Combinator Female Founders Conference, Glossier founder Emily Weiss discusses how community insights, direct-to-consumer strategy, and consumer empowerment transformed a popular beauty blog into a high-growth cosmetics brand.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The partners as informed peer 2.1 Guest teaching 1.6 Guest disagreement 0.1 The partners pushing back 0.3
speaking balance: gold is the partners, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 6:36 Playful disagreement on beauty necessities
Weiss playfully rejects the premise of binary right/wrong decisions in beauty, referencing a backstage debate with Amy regarding whether mascara is truly necessary.
Hardest push from the partners ▶ 6:28 Challenging the infallibility of crowdsourcingAmy directly challenges Weiss on whether relying on customer crowdsourcing ever led the company to follow an incorrect consensus.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 12:05 Deconstructing the direct-to-consumer mythWeiss explains how she realized that being direct-to-consumer is not in itself a consumer value proposition, but rather a mechanism to build authentic customer data relationships.
The partners hold their own ▶ 0:13 Framing Glossier's symbiotic audience modelAmy establishes her deep knowledge of Glossier's operational model by articulating how Weiss leveraged audience content to launch a direct-to-consumer brand.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The partners as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The partners pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beauty as an Equalizer and the Democratization of Commerce | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Amy Buechler opens with an encouraging, well-researched overview of Into the Gloss and Glossier's growth, asking how Weiss identified the market gap. Weiss collaboratively details how beauty acts as a social equalizer and connector for women. | |
| Crowdsourcing Product Development and Maintaining Customer Transparency | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Amy presses on whether the crowd's feedback has ever led Glossier astray. Weiss clarifies that beauty is too subjective for absolute right or wrong answers, citing a practical manufacturing trade-off with pump dispensers versus jars. | |
| Evolving Beauty Culture and Overcoming Beauty Shaming | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Amy asks about sociological takeaways from years of interviewing women. Weiss discusses the phenomenon of beauty shaming and women feeling the need to pretend they are effortless. | |
| Securing Intimate Interviews and Focusing on Content Quality | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Amy asks how Weiss secured vulnerable, high-profile interviews early on. Weiss explains her shameless persistence and how maintaining high editorial quality built credibility. | |
| Scaling Intimate Community Relationships and Brand Affinity | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Amy asks how intimate relationships can realistically be scaled globally. Weiss uses an analogy to scaling religious movements and letting customers set their own depth of engagement. | |
| Capital Allocation, Organic Growth, and Strategic Discipline | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Amy asks about capital allocation after a large Series B round. Weiss shares that they maintain extreme financial discipline, keeping the cash in the bank and relying on peer-to-peer organic referral rather than paid marketing. | |
| Reimagining Experiential Retail and Empowering Consumers | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Amy prompts Weiss on her vision for physical retail spaces. Weiss explains that brick-and-mortar must be treated as experiential hospitality rather than a transaction hub. | |
| Founder Mindset, Hiring Strategy, and Organizational Culture | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Amy asks about Weiss's growth as a CEO and handling uncertainty. Weiss differentiates managing from hiring, emphasizing placing high-conviction bets on untraditional talent. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Amy Buechler: Into The Gloss attracts nearly 1.5M monthly unique visitors
“Into the Gloss now attracts nearly 1.5 million unique visitors every month”
Emily Weiss: Glossier is 77% female with a 40% female tech team
“We're, you know, 95 people in Soho, in New York, we're actually 77% women. We have over 40% female tech team.”
Emily Weiss: Glossier blends editorial judgment with crowdsourced customer feedback
“Like, we don't one for one crowdsource. We don't say, like, you know, tell us exactly what to make, and we'll shade match it, and we'll send it to you. We really kind of combine our editorial background as beauty editors with you know, hearing, you know, 30% o…”
Emily Weiss: Beauty is YouTube's second-largest category after tech unboxing
“Really, YouTube, you know, it's like the number one or two category after, like, tech unboxing, or unboxing of other things, which I didn't know.”
Emily Weiss: Glossier has hundreds of thousands of US customers purely D2C
“We are purely direct to consumer, so all sold through Glossier.com and have many hundreds of thousands of customers now in, in the United States.”
Emily Weiss: Direct-to-consumer is not a customer value proposition by itself
“She doesn't care that she's getting it like directly from us. That's not like the value proposition. Like maybe she even wants to just go get it right, you know, at Sephora like the next day. But what is, you know, really interesting about how we're reinventin…”
Emily Weiss: Next-gen CPG companies will require two-way customer relationships
“The relationship to the customer in terms of creating brands, I think, is going to be beyond just Glossier and Beauty, like, something that most of the great next generation, like, you know, CPG companies are going to be built around this notion of, like, this…”
Emily Weiss: Glossier was accidentally profitable for a few months in 2016
“We were actually, like, accidentally profitable a couple months last, last year, which was, like, cool to see.”
Emily Weiss: Glossier achieved 600% growth two years in a row
“We've had 600% growth in the last 12 months, 600% growth the year before that”
Emily Weiss: Glossier could 4x revenue in Sephora but rejects wholesale
“We could put ourselves in a Sephora, you know, tomorrow and probably, like,
Forex revenue,
Like but I, I don't know that that would really help us achieve the long-term impact we want in women's lives.”
Emily Weiss: 79% of Glossier's growth came from peer-to-peer recommendations
“79% of our growth last year was all based on peer-to-peer recommendations, so it's not through paid it's not through, like, an acquisition, you know, machine, it's just been through women telling each other how much they love our products”
Emily Weiss: Physical retail must prioritize hospitality over sales per square foot
“I think it should be more, it's much more experiential, and so I think more about hospitality than I do about, like, you know, sales per square foot.”