☆ Glossier's viral post, $25,000 grant, group biz coaching

☁️ Happy Friday Business Besties. Here’s what you need to know today. ☁️

• Resource roundup

• Skim the headlines

• Glossier’s viral ‘mean comments’ video

• 🔒 Group business coaching: Julianna Dahbura, Deco Beauty

• On the podcast: the story behind Female Founder World

• Paid Business Besties should join our next Group Business Coaching call with Julianna Dahbura, founder of Deco Beauty. 🔗 Tell me more

• This fund is always looking for brands led by women of color to invest in. 🔗 Tell me more

• One winner will receive $25,000 cash from this pitch competition. Should be you, IMHO. 🔗 Tell me more

• Participants of this fund’s program will get a $100,000 investment with founder-friendly terms. 🔗 Tell me more

• This brand new fund is looking to support underrepresented founders (hi, it’s us!). 🔗 Tell me more

• We pulled together the contacts for hundreds of independent retailers that stock cute products like yours. 🔗 Tell me more

• Applications are open for Tower 28 Beauty’s accelerator program. 🔗 Tell me more

• Last chance to join the next Female Founder World Retail Bootcamp cohort. Registration closes this weekend! 🔗 Tell me more

FOUNDERS ON TIKTOK: Every founder who shows up publicly on social media to speak about their business needs to know this! Grace Beverley, founder of activewear brand Tala and influencer with $1M+ followers, regularly wears her brand’s clothes in TikTok and Instagram content—but now the ASA (the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority) has decided those posts break the rules.

Specifically, two reels and four TikToks published in October have been called out by the ASA. Accordingly to the ASA, Grace received 50 complaints on the posts and should have labeled content featuring her business that’s published on her personal account as a paid partnership. The ASA said social media users who didn't follow Grace and saw her videos would likely be unaware of her connection to the brand or that she’s the founder.

What do you think: Should founders be able to promote their own businesses without labeling it as an ad on social media? Are founder social media accounts extensions of the business accounts? Hit reply and lmk.

INSTAGRAM: Instagram wants to reward people making original content. Accounts sharing reposted content AKA “aggregators” will see their reach plummet, as IG starts prioritizing the original creator of content in the algorithm.

AI: Meta started an AI advisory council and only appointed white men to it. Yep, zero women of people of color. 🤦‍♀️

NEWSLETTERS: Founders have been creating their own Substack email content to better build community and to fully “own” their audience without influence from the likes of Zuck. Lindsey Carter from SET Active is using hers to tease her brand’s new swimwear brand extension.

COMPETITION’S FIERCE: A few weeks back the Federal Trade Commission decided to ban non-competes in employee contracts, allowing workers to leave their companies and go right to rival businesses. Now, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is suing to challenge the new rule. We’ll keep you posted on how this shakes out. Historically it’s been tricky for small brands to score top talent with industry experience, or for employees to take a bet on an up-and-coming startup—this might change that. 

SEARCH BAR: In competition with Google’s search engine, AI startup Perplexity has raised $63M at a $1B valuation, but some people are saying it could be worth up to $3B. The tool’s free and available to try now.

STANLEY HYPE: Stanley water bottles are everywhere. Now, Stanley is expanding into accessories that have a 50,000-person waitlist. Snaps to Female Founder World bestie Charlotte, the founder of CharChar Charms, who made Stanley accessories cool before they were cool.

INTO THE… BROOKLYN: Emily Weiss, Glossier’s founder, recently bought a baller townhouse (modest term for a renovated mansion) with her husband. The reported $22M sale price makes it the second most expensive single-family home sale in Brooklyn ever. Dunno why we love this story, but we do.

SHUTDOWN: Julie Schott and Brian Bordainick, the founders of Starface, Futurewise and Julie, recently shut down eco personal care brand Plus. Sales were apparently low in Target, and it sounds like they informed investors last year about the closure.

THREADS ISN’T DEAD: Meta’s Threads has surpassed more daily active users than X (formerly Twitter). If your brand isn’t on Threads yet, maybe consider this your sign. 

CELEBS: Bella Hadid, already the co-founder of Kin Euphorics, launched a fragrance line with three scents.

Glossier’s viral ‘mean comments’ video

Are you listening to what customers say about your brand on Reddit. Maybe… don’t. 😭

Glossier copped a lot of hate on Reddit over the past year after changing the formula of their Balm Dot Com in 2023. This month, after taking the feedback onboard, they relaunched the lip product again—this time returning to the original formula.

As part of the launch content rollout, the Glossier HQ team filmed a clip reading outrageous comments from customers on Reddit who were mad about the 2023 formula switch. The video’s been viewed 1.1 million times on Instagram and over 253,000 times on TikTok so far, outperforming most of the brand’s recent posts.

Reading mean and negative reviews isn’t ground-breaking, but it is effective when the right comments are selected. For example, if I shared with you some of the DMs we get from right-wing men who take issue with female entrepreneurship, that would actually make our community feel closer to Female Founder World and probably boost membership.

Glossier did the same thing: by showing just how angry customers were when the formula changed, they’re communicating how damn great the original formula really is—the perfect message to underscore when announcing a relaunch of the original formula.

Video: Quick tour of the office—Glossier showed staff at their desks, panned to the office dog, etc. Then, show the founder and/or team members reading negative comments/reviews. Add the blur effect for bad language.

Text overlay: Introduce the premise of the post (“HQ reads mean comments” or “Men crying about about Female Founder World” in our example). Then add text-to-voice captions.

Watch the video here and take notes:

glossier

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🔒 Group Biz Coaching with Deco Beauty founder, Julianna Dahbura

🕒 5pm ET on Monday, 10 June via Zoom

In 2016 Julianna Dahbura started selling nail polish with the dream of building a DTC beauty brand. This was peak Glossier-era, when Emily Weiss was our lord and savior, so building a brand on Instagram was the move.

And although she hit 7-figures in sales through her website, subscription boxes and Faire, Julianna realized nail polish is something most people impulse buy in-stores rather than online.

So in 2020 she made a brilliant pivot to nail stickers that tripled her sales in the first year.

Paid Business Besties ($9/month) get access to a close and candid group video call with Julianna and Female Founder World’s creator Jasmine Garnsworthy. Ask Jules your questions directly and access the recommendations, insights and people you need to get your biz to the next level.

♡🎧 LATEST Podcast Episodes

• Building a Million-Dollar Network With Female Founder World’s Jasmine Garnsworthy