Prisma Ventures partners with early-stage startups that are primarily Series Seed and Series A technology companies.

Prisma Ventures

The Brain Trust Accelerator Fund focuses on early stage investments that address the diagnosis and treatment of brain related diseases.

Brain Trust Accelerator Fund

Amazon operates a vast online marketplace where customers can purchase a wide variety of products, including electronics, books, apparel, household goods, and more. The company has a robust logistics and delivery network, allowing efficient shipping and on-time delivery to customers.

Amazon

Seed capital for entrepreneurs with ideas who want to start a company Expansion capital for existing businesses that want to expand, preferably out of the country Rescue capital to companies in difficulties but whose project can be recovered much more than money.

BrainTrust

New Age Capital is a thesis-driven seed stage venture capital firm that invests in tech and tech-enabled startups founded and led by the most promising Black and Latino entrepreneurs. Its mission is to create and support a world where people of all races, ethnicities, cultures, lifestyles, and environments are exposed to novel ideas, democratized information, and boundless opportunities through the use of technology.

New Age Capital

NEO Global Capital is the strategic investment vehicle NEO foundation and one of the largest institutional owners of cryptocurrencies. It was founded 2017 and is based in Singapore.

NGC Ventures

H/L Ventures helps mission-driven founders build inspiring, valuable companies from inception to exit. It believes that high returns and high impact are directly linked and its diverse group of founders share that ethos. Its venture studio model supports our companies with daily active engagement, expertise, access, and capital throughout their entrepreneurial journey.

Hatzimemos / Libby

Reform Ventures is an through tech & start up investments ranging from early to late stage products & platforms.

Reform Ventures

Refashiond invests in early-stage companies refashioning global supply chains.  It was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in New York, United States.

REFASHIOND Ventures

Resilient dedicated to disrupting systemic economic injustice by expanding access to capital, networks, and opportunity to companies.

Resilient Ventures

Duo Partners operates as an investment & consulting firm.

Duo Partners

MyAvana

MyAvana, formerly known as Madame You, provides hair care recommendation system, combining artificial intelligence and hair care experts to support and guide women with their hair care. It offers a hair analysis service to recommend the best hair products and styling techniques for your unique hair type and texture.

Myavana specializes in AI-powered hair analysis technology for textured hair. The company’s product portfolio includes “Myavana HairAI,” an AI-powered product recommendation tool that analyzes hair textures of customers using photos and haircare-related data input by the customers. This is a B2C solution available to customers as either a one-time purchase for a single consultation or as a subscription-based solution.

The intersection of beauty and technology to deliver hyper-personalized products.

Beauty Tech

MYAVANA Announces $5.9M Seed Investment in Hair AI and Inaugural Hair Intelligence Summit

Myavana specializes in AI-powered hair analysis technology for textured hair. The company’s product portfolio includes “Myavana HairAI,” an AI-powered product recommendation tool that analyzes hair textures of customers using photos and haircare-related data input by the customers. This is a B2C solution available to customers as either a one-time purchase for a single consultation or as a subscription-based solution.The company also offers a B2C hair strand analysis kit named “HairSI,” which enables customers to send their hair samples to Myavana’s labs for analysis to receive a customized hair care plan based on the strand analysis. The company also offers personalized online hair consultation services with hair care consultants.Myavana’s product recommendation tool uses a database of over 3,000 products. As of September 2023, the company has analyzed over two billion hair strands and reportedly maintained the world’s largest database of textured hair data.Myavana reportedly expected its revenue to exceed USD 10 million in 2024.Key Customers and partnershipsIn February 2024, Myavana announced a partnership with Ulta Beauty to integrate its HairAI technology into Ulta's ecommerce platform, allowing customers to receive personalized product recommendations based on photos of their hair. The company also has a global partnership with Unilever, licensing its personalized hair care technology for use on SheaMoisture.com, which receives over 6 million visits per year.Myavana also has partnerships with celebrity brand ambassadors, including Letoya Luckett, Keri Hilson, and Indigo Bridges.

Ipsy provides a subscription-based personalized bundle of beauty products. It uses an online quiz to obtain customer attributes such as skin tone, hair color, and preferred brands and uses its proprietary machine learning technology named “IPSY MATCH” to match products from selected brands with customers.Ipsy provides three customized subscription-based product bundle options: 1) Glam Bag (five deluxe-sized samples for USD 14 per month); 2) BoxyCharm (five full-sized products for USD 30 per month); and 3)Icon Box (eight full-sized products for USD 60 per quarter). Ipsy also enables customers to pick three products out of 12 recommendations, allowing the company to gain insights on customer preferences which are in turn used to improve its recommendation engine.Ipsy ships to the US, Canada, and Mexico with over 3 million active members as of November 2020. As of October 2023, Ipsy had over 3.6 million followers on TikTok and was claimed to be the most followed beauty brand on the platform.In November 2020, Ipsy acquired the subscription-based beauty product provider BoxyCharm in a USD 500 million deal, and, in March 2023, merged the two brands under Ipsy’s brand portfolio.Key customers and partnershipsIpsy’s platform features various makeup brands from over 330 retailers (November 2023).Ipsy creates curated makeup boxes in partnership with celebrities and popular makeup artists such as the founder of the cosmetic brand Anastasia Beverly Hills, Anastasia Soare (March 2023), the American actress and singer, Vanessa Hudgens (July 2023), the british makeup artist, Pat McGrath (October 2023), and the American singer and songwriter, Gwen Stefani (February 2024).Key Competitors : None comparable (Ipsy is the only company in the hub that offers customized subscription boxes for an assortment of various types of beauty products.)

Ipsy

Proven Skincare develops personalized products based on a custom formula that incorporates 45 factors about the user including environment, lifestyle, and skin concerns. Based on the identified skin genome profile, three multifunctional products are developed, i.e. a multifunctional cleanser/toner, a moisturizer, and a night cream/serum. Proven Skincare products can be purchased as a one-off or on a subscription.Proven claims that its proprietary “Skin Genomic Database” consists of over 20 million customer testimonials, 8 million online reviews, and data from over 4,000 scientific papers analyzed with machine learning and natural-language processing to identify the most suitable clean ingredients for each customer.The company also introduced a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10097?industryIds=39">personalized eye cream </a>duo for day and night use in May 2022. Proven's skincare personalization process received a US <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11478?industryIds=39">patent </a>in July 2022. It introduced a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24527">personalized Serum </a>in November 2023 which leverages AI to determine the optimal skincare ingredients for each user.Proven Skincare <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11716?industryIds=39">expanded </a>into the European Union (EU) and the UK in July 2022.Key customers and partnershipsThe company announced a partnership with Sephora in January 2023 to bring its personalized skincare solutions to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16034">Sephora’s </a>digital and brick-and-mortar stores.As of September 2021, Proven Skincare had <a href="https://www.retaildive.com/news/how-high-is-the-ceiling-for-personalized-beauty-brands/606802/">over 100,000 customer </a>s, ~70% of which were repeat shoppers.Funding and financialsFrom its launch in October 2019, the company had reportedly reached a USD 24 million average annual revenue within two years of operation in the North American market, with 80% of customers on a subscription-based sales model.In September 2023, the company raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22322">USD 12.2 million </a>in series A funding led by NewH2 Ventures to enhance its brand presence and expand its team.

Proven Skincare

Function of Beauty is a developer of custom hair care, skincare, and body care products. The company initially focused on hair care and subsequently expanded its focus to skin and body care products in July 2020. Function of Beauty formulates custom products based on an online quiz using an algorithm capable of offering 12 billion custom combinations developed by the company’s founders—a group of MIT engineers and data scientists including Zahir Dossa and Joshua Maciejewski.The company’s products are vegan, cruelty-free, sulphate-free, gluten-free, and paraben-free. Its hair care products have a patented Adaptive f3 Bonding Complex. Function of Beauty’s customized products include shampoo and conditioner (starting at USD 20 as of January 2024), body wash and body lotion (starting at USD 21 as of January 2024) and moisturizer (starting at USD 45 as of January 2024).Function of Beauty carries out product designing, development, manufacturing, and packaging in-house with occasional consultant feedback. Function of Beauty uses automated processes, including a robotic system for order dispensing. The system can use 20–50 ingredients per bottle. As of January 2024, the company shipped to over 48 countries including the US, the UK, Canada, EU countries, and several Asian countries.In August 2021, Function of Beauty acquired Atolla, a custom skincare product developer to combine its proprietary formulations with Atolla's patented skincare technology to offer advanced custom skincare products.Key customers and partnershipsIn September 2022, the company partnered with Canadian retailer <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13191?industryIds=39">Shoppers Drug Mart </a>to launch its personalized hair care products in Canada. In August 2023, Function of Beauty launched a new Function of Beauty <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21500">PRO hair care range </a>in 300 Sephora locations across North America and online. It also has a wholesale partnership with Amazon (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30313">June 2024</a>) to offer hair care products through Amazon’s e-commerce platform.

Function of Beauty

Hawthorne is a developer of custom fragrance, body care/grooming, hair care, and skincare products for men. The company launched with fragrances, introduced body care products in 2018, hair care products in 2019, and in January 2020 introduced custom skincare products. An online quiz collects information such as daily routine, lifestyle, taste, and familiarity with grooming products. That information is then analyzed using a proprietary data processing algorithm.Hawthorne claims that the algorithm can match customers with a product that suits their body chemistry, skin type, hair type, and lifestyle with a 97% accuracy. As of January 2024, the company’s personalized fragrances were priced at USD 50–60 and skin and hair care products were priced at USD 17–21. The company ships to the US, Hawaii, and Alaska.Key customers and partnershipsHawthorne’s perfumes are developed in collaboration with award-winning perfumers such as Rodrigo Flores-Roux, Olivier Gillotin, and Quentin Bisch.

Hawthorne

Prose develops custom hair care products and hair care routines based on responses to an online quiz. The quiz obtains customer information about hair type, current hair care habits, diet, stress level, physical activity and factors such as ultraviolet (UV) exposure, pollution, humidity, wind, and other <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9356?industryIds=39">micro-local factors </a>. The quiz also takes customer’s preferences such as vegan or gluten-free requirements into consideration. The information is processed through Prose’s proprietary algorithm to create individualized products. Prose uses a semi-automated approach to manufacturing where the production is carried out by a chemist with the aid of automated mixing and packaging.In April 2021, the company introduced “Root Source,” a hair supplement to treat environmental causes of hair loss. The product consists of two pills, a universal soft gel and a customized capsule, and, as of January 2024, was priced at USD 57.2. The product was developed based on insights derived from information collected through Prose’s online quiz, which revealed that around 85% of the brand’s customers experience hair loss. Root Source’s clinical trials claim around 93% of users experiencing improved hair growth after taking the supplement for 90 days. Prose also introduced a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12245?industryIds=39">personalized styling gel </a>specifically targeting curly hair in August 2022.In June 2023, Prose expanded into <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19873">skincare </a>with an AI-powered system offering customized formulas based on individual needs, targeting multiple skin concerns, and addressing factors such as skin type, diet, stress, pollution, and climate while allowing fragrance and texture customization. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28430">April 2024 </a>, the company launched an AI-based beauty tech customization platform, Singular. The company claims to have completed over one million consultations in the 11 months leading up to November 2019.

Prose

Companies that leverage technologies such as AI/ML and AR/VR  to enable cosmetic producers to offer personalized product offerings to consumers. This could include virtual-try-ons for cosmetics such as makeup and hair color in addition to solutions for skin analytics.

Companies that formulate customized solutions for skin, leveraging technologies such as AI/ML to conduct skin analysis, and provide personalized recommendations, which are directly sold to consumers.

Companies that leverage biotechnology, nanotechnology, or other technologies to develop biomaterials or novel lab-grown ingredients (e.g., bio-based cosmetic polymers) for use by the broader beauty industry.

Companies that leverage technologies like IoT to develop smart devices (e.g., smart mirrors, wearables) that offer real-time analysis of skin health, skincare routines, and product usage for consumers. This also includes companies that offer 3D-printed makeup, at-home beauty tech (e.g., at-home manicure machines), and other tech-based personal care products (e.g., tech-enabled color-changing nails).

Companies that leverage technologies such as AI/ML to match consumers with third-party beauty products by offering personalized recommendations to consumers, which are curated based on each individual customer’s preferences.

Companies that formulate customized hair and other beauty solutions such as fragrances, leveraging technologies such as AI/ML to tailor product recommendations, which are directly sold to consumers.

Beauty tech features brands that leverage IoT for smart devices

Personalized beauty tech features brands that leverage AR tools for virtual cosmetic try-ons

Some companies (like Mink and Ellure) allow customers to print their own makeup

Beauty tech features brands that leverage robotics for at-home devices

AI/ML is used for Big Data analysis, allowing companies to improve prediction capabilities for personalization

Beauty tech features brands that leverage biotechnology to create sustainable materials

Beauty tech features brands that leverage blockchain for supply chain transparency

Companies offer personalized recommendations and products based on individual attributes like skin and hair

<div>
 Myavana, a company specializing in personalized hair product recommendations for textured hair types, has raised $5.9 million in seed funding. The funding round was spearheaded by Ulta Beauty's Digital Innovation Fund, bringing Myavana's total funding to $6.2 million.
 The capital raised will be used to further develop Myavana's HairAI technology. This technology, featuring microscopic hair analysis and advanced algorithms, delivers personalized product suggestions based on an individual's hair texture, type, and overall condition.
 The company's unique technology has analyzed over two billion hair strands and has established the world's largest database of textured hair care data. Businesses in the beauty sector leverage Myavana’s solutions to aid their research and development work, create products and ingredients, provide in-salon hair and scalp analysis for personalized hair care, and offer web-based personalized hair product recommendations.
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MyAvana

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