u/Accomplished-Menu247

One thing I’m struggling with as a beauty founder is realizing how much people trust ingredients they can’t pronounce over natural ingredients they’ve simply never heard of before.

I’m from Central Asia, and there are certain beauty ingredients and rituals that are extremely normal where I grew up. Women have used them forever. But in the US, the second people see an unfamiliar ingredient name, they immediately assume it’s fake, a scam, or just “TikTok marketing.”

Meanwhile people are completely comfortable buying products with ingredient lists that look like a chemistry final exam lol.

And honestly I kind of understand both sides.

I think consumers are exhausted from beauty marketing and everyone claims everything is a miracle now. But it’s also been interesting realizing that “unfamiliar” sometimes creates more distrust than actual harsh chemicals do.

Curious how other people decide whether they trust a beauty ingredient or not, especially if it comes from another culture and isn’t mainstream in the US yet.

Yesterday I saw a beauty brand celebrating their “2 year anniversary” while also celebrating getting into Sephora and huge growth. And honestly as a newer founder it made me feel kind of bad about where I’m at.

Then I got curious and looked deeper, and it turns out the company was actually registered like 6 years ago.

And I’ve noticed this kind of thing a lot lately. Sometimes I’ll listen to founder podcasts or see social media posts and think, wait how did this happen so fast? Then I dig a little and realize there were years in between that just never became part of the story.

I’ll admit it actually makes me feel a little better when I realize they struggled before too, just like I am right now lol.

Which I get. Nobody really wants to market the part where they had no idea what they were doing.

But I do think it messes with newer founders mentally sometimes, especially when people are sharing their “success story,” because you end up comparing your current stage to someone else’s polished version of their story.

Not even saying anyone is wrong for doing this. I think I’m just slowly realizing that a lot of “overnight success” stories weren’t actually overnight at all. Just wondering if other founders feel this too.