Why Beauty and Personal Care Brands Win (and Fail): Lessons from True Beauty Ventures’ Rich Gersten
Consumer VC #355: Rich Gersten, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at True Beauty Ventures
Listen on Spotify, Apple, YouTube
Brought to you by Glimpse
Glimpse and PRESENCE Marketing announced an official partnership to bring AI deductions management to their brand partners.“We’re constantly looking for innovative partners that drive real results for our clients,” said Andi Hendricks, VP of Professional Services at PRESENCE. “Glimpse’s AI technology directly addresses one of the biggest challenges our brands face, deductions, empowering them to recover revenue faster and focus on growth.”To help brands experience the platform firsthand, Glimpse offers a risk-free trial, including a 12-month audit look-back and dedicated recovery team to ensure success.
Hey friends,
On today’s episode, I chat with Rich Gersten, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at True Beauty Ventures, a fund dedicated to investing in emerging beauty and wellness brands.
Before launching True Beauty Ventures, Rich spent more than two decades in private equity, backing consumer businesses across health, wellness, and personal care. Today, he brings that experience to early-stage investing—helping founders navigate growth, distribution, and brand-building in one of the most competitive and fast-moving categories in consumer.
We discuss how Rich first stumbled into beauty investing, what makes the category so uniquely resilient, and why he believes the beauty “bubble” is finally normalizing. Rich shares his perspective on how Sephora and Ulta transformed the retail landscape, why celebrity brands are losing their shine, and what founders often get wrong about scaling.
If you’re building or investing in beauty, wellness, or consumer brands, this episode is packed with lessons on what it really takes to create value, sustain growth, and stand out in an industry that never stops evolving.
Here what you’ll learn:
✅ Why beauty and personal care outperform other consumer categories
✅ How Sephora and Ulta transformed the entire retail landscape
✅ The biggest mistakes founders make when scaling beauty brands
✅ How True Beauty Ventures approaches early-stage investing
✅ Why most celebrity brands fail (and what makes Rhode different)
✅ What’s really happening in beauty M&A and why exits have slowed
✅ How Rich thinks about valuation discipline and pro-rata investing
✅ Why execution—not product—is the #1 differentiator
👉 If you’re a founder, operator, or investor in beauty or consumer, this episode offers a rare inside look at what it really takes to build and back the next breakout brand.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:20 How Rich Got Into Beauty Investing
04:00 What Makes Beauty Unique vs. Other Consumer Categories
07:00 Sephora, Ulta, and the Rise of Specialty Retail
08:30 Why Rich Started True Beauty Ventures
11:00 How They Add Value Beyond Capital
13:00 The Difference Between Private Equity and Early Stage
15:00 Lessons from Fund I & II: Check Sizes, Risk, and Returns
19:00 The “Back Up the Truck” Investment Strategy
22:00 How True Thinks About Pro-Rata and Founder Relationships
25:00 Sephora & Ulta: Still Essential or Optional?
28:00 The $5M Revenue Trap (and Why Early Might Be Better)
31:00 How True Evaluates a Brand’s Potential
34:00 Outbound vs. Inbound Deal Flow
37:00 The Real Economics of Beauty
40:00 Why Luxury Skincare Is Failing
42:00 Amazon’s Surprising Role in Beauty
44:00 The Problem With Celebrity Brands
47:00 Why Rhode Worked—and Others Didn’t
50:00 Returns, Risk, and How Beauty VC Actually Works
55:00 The M&A Slowdown: Too Many Sellers, Not Enough Buyers
01:00:00 The Future of Beauty Exits and Strategic Buyers
01:03:00 Makeup’s M&A Problem Explained
01:05:00 Valuations, Prefs, and Founder Pitfalls
01:06:30 Book Picks: Outlive by Peter Attia & Founder Stories in Beauty
Thanks for Listening!