PATRICIA SANTOS OF VOLITION
“I used to think that the most important thing is that you love what you do and you love the space. But now, being an entrepreneur and seeing it firsthand, I really think one of the most important things to have is a beginner's mindset. And I say that because I didn't have that when I started.”
-PATRICIA SANTOS
Patricia Santos has over 17 years of experience in finance and venture capital, focused on the beauty, retail, and apparel sectors. She has been behind the curtain of hundreds of beauty brands and helped numerous management teams build their companies.
Patricia’s journey to founding Volition started back in the late 2000s, where she was the only female investor at a big venture capital fund. She was able to meet and fund some amazing entrepreneurs but was faced with the sad reality that a lot of incredible female founders weren’t getting funded. She noticed part of the problem was these female entrepreneurs didn’t look like the investors they were pitching and were selling to people who didn’t fully understand their companies or brands. She became obsessed with changing that and giving those amazing female entrepreneurs an alternative way to get their groundbreaking product ideas to market. At Volition, these entrepreneurs don’t pitch to board rooms full of male investors, but the actual customers.
Patricia has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Harvard College.
How do you think your professional background in the financial services industry influenced how you now run the company? Were you creating blush and beauty?
The inspiration for Volition came out of my venture capital experience. When I was doing venture back in the early 2000s, I saw a ton of really amazing female entrepreneurs not getting funded, particularly in the consumer phase— which is the phase that I cover. They were really great women founders and brands, but they were climbing an uphill battle because a lot of the investment committees were men who didn't really understand their brand or their products. It was very frustrating to see that happen, so I set out to change that. I became obsessed with bringing some of these brands and products to the market in a different way. That's really what we do at Volition. The innovative women behind our products and product ideas bypass the process of pitching to boardrooms full of men, and the consumers themselves are direct to our community through our campaign and preorders. So that’s how Volition Beauty got started— from an inspiration that was very much driven by my finance experience.
I'm a very metrics-driven CEO. We value the dashboards and technology platforms that would allow us to really gain insight into the business because I know that a lot of early-stage companies don't have their products built yet. And that’s an important metric that comes up during talks with investors regarding the management and developmental timeline of the business. So that’s something else that I learned from my finance experience, and I brought it to the day-to-day operations of the company.
Volition Beauty’s innovative business model allows consumers to pitch ideas and vote on potential products. How did you develop this innovative model and why do you think it works so well?
The inspiration really came from my desire to give women different opportunities to get their products and ideas to the market. To be honest, I think the beauty industry was getting kind of stale with executives making decisions behind closed doors, really sidelining consumer opinion even in the early stages of product development. The result was the creation of products that all start looking the same, so there was a pressing need for a launch in the industry. I wanted to help innovators bring something new to the market, to feature new ideas instead of products that simply copy what other brands are doing because everyone was working off of the same trends report. When you have that kind of overlap in the products of existing brands, combined with the low barriers to entry to the beauty industry, you have consumer confusion. They don't know what your brand stands for anymore and they don't see the point in the products you’re putting out.
That’s why for Volition, we really prioritize telling the stories behind the products and showing why they exist. For example, I hear stories about hyperpigmentation from doctors frustrated by their patient’s issues with hormonal imbalances and acne later in life. And so the hyperpigmentation serum is a collaboration, really, with that doctor—Dr. Jackie Walters. It becomes really important to listen so that we can then tell the stories behind the product. That's what we've really been leading into and focusing on in a very crowded space, and I think that's what has made us unique. It's what made us able to launch ingredients before the beauty market knew about it. We were one of the first brands to join the market within the adaptogen trend and we launched our Snow Mushroom Water Serum, an incredible product with over 13,000 five-star reviews. We were also one of the first companies to market with Tumeric, and we're the only one in the market with the celery ingredient for pore control. That’s just the way our different approach has enabled us to be at the forefront of ingredients, but also really tell the rich content and stories behind the product.
What are the most important skills for an entrepreneur, particularly in the cosmetics and beauty industry?
I used to think that the most important thing is that you love what you do and you love the space. But now, being an entrepreneur and seeing it firsthand, I really think one of the most important things to have is a beginner's mindset. And I say that because I didn't have that when I started. I thought that my experience in investing and my completion of business school would have equipped me with more skills than a lot of folks who started companies before. But going into a challenge thinking you know the answer is never the right way to go about it. I think having that beginner's mindset—sort of stepping back and saying, “I don't know what the answer is, but I'm totally willing to learn”— helps you keep an open mind. Humility also prevents you from overshadowing the ideas of the rest of your team, to really hear their advice and suggestions so that you're not always bulldozing through with your vision. I think that's really important for an entrepreneur. Otherwise, the job isn't as interesting because as an entrepreneur, you're learning something new every day, no matter how much experience you have, how many companies you've worked with or invested in, or how many different roles you've taken as an entrepreneur with a small business. You're always taking on something that you don't know how to do. You have to find that interesting or else it's going to be frustrating and really challenging.
What do you think you gained from going to business school and particularly getting an MBA? And how do you think the knowledge you gained has contributed to being an entrepreneur and founding Volition Beauty?
Well, the pedigree helps. I think that it becomes very important, particularly for female entrepreneurs and BIPOC entrepreneurs, to have that credibility. One of the biggest benefits of business school is that it lets you kind of “check the box” for people, in particular investors, big partners like NBC Universal, and a lot of retailers. It’s really important for them to have that assurance that somebody at the helm has that kind of pedigree. So, not to make it very superficial, but that has been super helpful.
Secondly, I think this is probably a reason you go to business school, but the network has been amazing. If I have a question about distribution in the Pacific Rim, I have a connection from business school who now works in Singapore and runs a huge distribution company there. Or we're entering the China market, and I have two friends who both run beauty brands in China. That kind of international network has been super valuable for me. Just given my day-to-day experience before going to school, I wouldn't have had that international network.
And the lessons learned and the frameworks... I didn't know much about marketing, particularly, before I went into business school. I was a finance person, and just those marketing frameworks, learning to think about problems in a visual way, was super valuable. For an ex-banker, having to do marketing and strategy cases like that was really, really interesting to me, and I use those frameworks every day as an entrepreneur just to simplify problems because otherwise, things seem so big and so unmanageable.
Just going off what you were talking about, with the pedigree, there are a lot of challenges when it comes to not only being a woman founder, but also a BIPOC founder. How do you think those two identities have influenced your journey to co-founding Volition Beauty? What challenges came with being a BIPOC founder, fundraising and everything that came with that?
We set out really to create a beauty brand that at its very core embraced inclusivity and diversity. One of our core beliefs as a company is that a multiplicity of perspectives creates better products. The beauty industry is proud of itself because it has forty shades of foundation now as opposed to five. For us at Volition, the whole concept is to go way, way beyond that superficial skin color and really incorporate all of our communities, their different voices, their cultures, their rituals, as well as their skin color into what we create. As an example, one of our best-selling products is actually based off of one of our community members’ grandmother's recipe for a turmeric scrub. Her grandmother was from India and she passed down this recipe and her granddaughter gave it to us to improve on. It’s now a formula rather than her DIY. We were first on the turmeric trend.
It shows you that if you really open up your company and your brand to different voices, you can really create a brand that authentically embraces all the different perspectives and cultures. For me, I immigrated from the Philippines when I was 30. Coming to this country, I was seeing how a lot of models weren’t of color and looked all the same. That wasn't something that I wanted to see in my brand. When we were building Volition, it was really all about embracing diversity.
What do you think are the best ways for college-aged women to get involved in the beauty industry, if they're interested in it?
I think getting an internship is a great way to start in the beauty space. There are a lot of you certain brands where an internship can be a real learning opportunity because you get to touch different aspects of the company since they're pretty small. That way you can quickly learn what you like and don’t like – maybe you actually don't like digital marketing and product development or, maybe you want to try your hand at brand marketing or PR. I think that's really a great way to test different things. If you want to join a mid-level or a mid-market-sized beauty company, a great place to start would be like chief of staff to the CEO or something similar. Because honestly, I think that the way that beauty companies work is that most people are pretty operationally siloed.
I know there are business school folks like me, and there are not too many business school people within the beauty space. Unless you have a recruiter within that company that knows what is a good role for a business school person, I think you're automatically going to get funneled into finance. I don't think that this finance is the same sort of high-level strategic finance that most business school people who have say banking or consulting experience tend to have in mind; it is very much like book-keeping and maybe some financial planning, but it is not as strategic. So, I think that brands would have a hard time placing a business school graduate directly into product development or operations because they look for people who have “cut their teeth” and understand supply-chain, unless you did something like this before business school. Maybe you don't quite know yet what sort of functional role would make sense for you within beauty. I think a good role would be something either like brand marketing, which is very, very broad and touches all parts of the company or a role in the chief staff with the CEO where you could see all the different aspects of the business and eventually pick something that suits your interests.
What general advice would you give your 20-year-old self?
I would find a mentor. I found that actually a lot of my classmates from business school who have done this and have made it a priority for them have gotten a ton out of it. I mean a mentor within your organization that’s not just a random managing director who happens to be a woman but an alum from your business school that you admire and someone who may or may not be in the industry that you are in but has had a successful career and navigated the waters before you. It's such an amazing relationship to have. I find that a lot of female alums will be very much open to doing this. I should have done this way back when, but I was late to the game. But when I finally started outreach to do that, I cannot tell you how much I learned about myself, not only as a woman in business, but also as a leader and CEO. It really helps you get a perspective that you didn't have before.
Name any books, podcasts, blogs, or newsletters you’d like to recommend to CWBS readers.
I’m currently reading “The Great CEO Within: the Tactical Guide to Company Building” by Matt Mochary. Lots of good practices and tips to not only be a CEO but to manage work-life balance and stay sane/steady under pressure.
What does your skincare routine look like?
AM (quick because I’m always in a rush)
Cleanse
ACV Resurfacing Pads for gentle toning and exfoliation
Serum
Moisturizer
PM
Double Cleanse
Toner or Essence
Vitamin C Serum
Moisturizer
Oil (work in with facial roller)
What’s your go-to Volition Beauty product?
My entire routine is Volition! But my can’t-live-without is the Turmeric Brightening Polish.