Bridge Mentorship Selects Sofie Pavitt Face, PillowtalkDerm And Prakti For First Cohort Of 2024
Sofie Pavitt Face, PillowtalkDerm and Prakti have been selected for the first 2024 cohort of Bridge Mentorship, a program created by early-stage beauty and wellness investment firm True Beauty Ventures in partnership with Beauty Independent to ready emerging brands for fundraising.
In evaluating candidates for Bridge Mentorship, Cristina Nuñez, general partner and co-founder of TBV, which has Crown Affair, Aquis, K18, Maude, Kinship, Moon Juice, Cay Skin and Youthforia, a graduate of the Bridge Mentorship program, in its portfolio, was drawn to brands helmed by founders that have distinct authority to bolster their positioning and brand story. Sofie Pavitt Face’s namesake founder is an aesthetician, PillowtalkDerm founder Shereene Idriss is a dermatologist, and Prakti founder Pritika Swarup is a model and activist.
“Clinical- and high efficacy-focused skincare is exhibiting fast growth, and these three brands represent different approaches to that consumer demand,” says Nuñez. “Whether this end result is achieved by combining ancient rituals with a renewed clinical focus (Prakti) or using experience from years of working with acne-prone clients (Sofie Pavitt Face) or leveraging a medical degree coupled with a growing and engaging online community (PillowtalkDerm), each of these brands is striving to meet a growing market need for proven, results-driven, and experiential skincare.”
Prakti incorporates traditional ingredients from Indian remedies and Ayurvedic pharmacopeia like ashwagandha extract, neroli oil and clove bud oils to enhance the sensory experience of its skincare products. Its Warming Detox Mask has mood-enhancing hamamelis virginiana and rosemary leaf oil. Prakti’s assortment spans cleansers, exfoliators, treatment creams and serums as well as accessories. The brand is set to expand beyond skincare in the coming months, and Swarup is interested in TBV advising it on categorical expansion.
Pavitt, whose clients include Zendaya and Lorde, is well known for her curated and tailored approach to skin health. Founded in 2023, Sofie Pavitt Face currently has three products: ice toning pods, a clearing serum and a cleanser. The brand has already scooped up awards from Cosmo, Byrdie and Refinery29. Pavitt is the brand’s sole full-time employee and building its team is a priority for her. She says, “While starting a brand is exciting, it can also be lonely, and I look forward to being able to work with seasoned industry veterans who can point us in the right direction.”
Idriss started demystifying skincare and cosmetic procedures in social media videos filmed from her bed during the pandemic. She now has more than 2.3 million followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Her skincare line Pillowtalk Derm launched in 2022 with Major Fade, a collection of three products—a mask, serum and moisturizer—designed to reduce hyperpigmentation and fueled by powerful ingredients like tranexamic acid, lactic acid and hexapeptide-2. The line has extended to The Depuffer, a face roller serum clinically proven to relieve transient skin redness and minimize under-eye puffiness.
Since launching in 2022, Bridge Mentorship’s cohorts have contained 12 beauty and wellness brands such as Youthforia, Nopalera, Nette, Nature of Things, Plantkos, World of Chris Collins, Squigs Beauty, Rose Ingleton MD Skin, Lendava Skincare, DAMDAM Tokyo, Viktor Michael and Salwa Petersen. Its curriculum is designed to shore up their businesses and prepare them for institutional funding by providing action plans for professional development. The curriculum for the first cohort of 2024 goes from January to June.
Caroline Weintraub, VP of TBV, highlights a big benefit of Bridge Mentorship is its bespoke nature. She underscores that, although Bridge Mentorship delves into raising capital, including creating assets like a pitch deck and sussing out data to support a fundraise, its perspective is broader than fundraising and puts brands through a mini due diligence process that can be advantageous for a host of business purposes.
“Whether it is retail strategy, brand positioning, team build or back-end support, we dig deep into each of these brands to ensure they are set up for success in not only raising needed funds, but also in becoming retail-ready,” she says. “Most Bridge mentees also walk away feeling like they have gained an invaluable network and resources that they didn’t even know existed before the program.”
During the program, TBV tries to guide brand founders to zero in on areas of their businesses that matter most. “We realized through this program that many of these brands are trying to take on too many things way too quickly. Saying no is alright,” says Nuñez. “We help create an action plan for the brands with a clear focus on what’s needed first and what effort will drive the biggest impact.”
While the financial landscape for emerging brands has been shaky recently, TBV co-founder and managing partner Rich Gersten believes there remains plenty of opportunity for young brands to thrive. “The brands we see winning are the ones where the founders have a unique ability to create organic demand for their products, whether that is through social media, in person events or even selling in store,” he says. “The online selling environment is extremely challenging, and it is increasingly expensive to acquire customers online. The brands that can create the excitement and demand organically, are the ones who will scale capital efficiently and “win.” They are the brands that are continuously keeping consumers as their north star and are successful at meeting them where they are.”
On May 29, Bridge Mentorship mentees and TBV will be featured on a special episode of Beauty Independent’s In Conversation webinar series to review learnings from the program. Applications for the second cohort of 2024 will open in June this year.
