Ada Ventures Investment in Yuty

Earlier in 2021, Ada Ventures led a pre-seed round into Yuty, a personalised beauty-matching tool powered by proprietary AI. We’re thrilled to have been joined by our friends at Venrex in the round.

Yuty is the brain-child of the amazing Simi Lindgren, who approached my Partner Check in December 2020, picking Ada Ventures out as the perfect investor for Yuty. Simi is a self-taught technical founder, who personally built a massive database of self-labelled images that Yuty’s ML stack feeds on. Simi is a leader and a disrupter who is on a mission to make beauty more inclusive and in so-doing build a huge business.

Why does Yuty fit the Ada thesis, and what got us excited?

1. Huge global market. Beauty is massive category — the beauty and personal care market in the UK is worth $15bn. In the US it is worth $82bn. The opportunity here is that only 20% of purchases occur online at the moment.
2. Ready for positive disruption. There is no one-size-fits-all in this sector, despite how many of the brands present their products. 70% of black and asian women feel that the high street does not cater to their beauty needs. Beauty products for skin and hair are not truly personalised, in particular for customers with skin and hair that differs from what the majority of beauty brands see as standard. There is an opportunity to 10X the current customer experience, which is exactly what gets us at Ada excited.
3. Market demand. Along with more personalisation, the Yuty’s customers want to buy from a branded marketplace who’s values and products they are aligned with. Yuty is inclusive and conscious with the largely independent brands that get approved on the marketplace. Yuty itself is developing as an aspirational and equitable brand, which ultimately drives superior marketplace economics and customer love.
4. Founder timing. One of the hardest things to get right in VC is “when”. We meet huge numbers of the most impressive people who are founding world-changing businesses, which is what most VCs love most about the job. The hard thing is figuring out when the right time is for an idea and a founder. In Simi’s case, the timing seems bang on to us — the consumer wants more personalisation and intelligence in beauty purchases and Simi is completely obsessed with how to deliver this.

Going Forward

Yuty launched their branded AI-marketplace in August, so its early days, but customer metrics are exciting and only getting better. These are early signs that Simi’s truly onto something here. Yuty will raise again soon, so watch this space…