Violet Mentor Spotlight: Katia Ameri, Founder of Mirra Skincare

Katia is the Founder of Mirra, empowering people to take control of their skin using real science. Their first product is a weekly educational newsletter with the mission to decode skincare. She was previously a Venture Associate at Pear VC and graduated from Stanford University in 2014.

What was your background before starting Mirra?

After graduating from Stanford in 2014, I went on to work at the early stage fund, Pear VC for a few years. My goal was always to be an entrepreneur, so when I had the chance to temporarily take over product and operations at one of our portfolio companies, I jumped at the chance. During my time as the interim CEO of that portfolio company, I realized that my thesis around actually wanting to be an operator was true, which led me to want to jump out and actually start my own company — Mirra.

Starting my career in venture was an incredible opportunity to really understand the startup ecosystem and to understand how capital works, and if I ever go back into venture, I’ll be 10x more knowledgeable because I have experience on my side.

How did you start Mirra & what problem did you initially hope to solve?

I’ve had issues with my skin my whole life. I’ve had severe eczema since I was a kid, and I’ve struggled with acne on and off for over 15 years. Finding relief was so frustrating — there’s so much misleading marketing out there that being able to discern fact from fiction has been impossible.

Dermatologists didn’t have an answer for me. Salespeople kept recommending products that would literally burn my skin. After having a three-month allergic reaction to a product marked for “sensitive skin” recommended to me by a salesperson at Sephora, I decided to take matters into my own hands and become my own expert. It was then that I decided that I was going to empower myself with education on how my body works and what it needs to be in control of the decisions I make for myself going forward.

My mission at Mirra is to create a science-driven skincare concierge: part brand, part community, part library, all at your service (and in your service) 24/7. We’re here to help you navigate the ever-evolving beauty landscape, not by forcing you to pick a lane, but by helping you to carve a path that’s entirely your own.

You built an audience before a product; would you recommend other founders do this, too?

I always knew what problem I wanted to solve, but I haven’t always known how I wanted to solve it. I initially started by building an app that connected people with beauty experts and quickly learned that getting a network effect going was increasingly difficult. So I ultimately ended up pivoting into a doesn’t require a critical mass of people in order for the product to be valuable day one — a newsletter.

What I love about starting with a newsletter is that it allows you to not only start providing value immediately, but the flexibility to keep changing your content and getting data on what’s working and what’s not right away. On top of that, a newsletter allows you to constantly engage, and get in front of your user, without requiring much work from them which allows you to start building out your brand (which is ultimately the most powerful thing).

Once we grew out our product to over 100,000 subscribers in a year and started to really listen to what our community was asking for, we realized that a) we have a clear point of view as to what we believe is good skincare, and that b) we are becoming a trusted source as every week we’d get tons of inbound requests asking for product recommendations. We decided to leverage our learnings into rolling out — and doing R&D — on our own brand of skincare products that most closely aligns with what our community is asking for.

Beauty & skincare have exploded in recent years; what do you believe is the future of your industry?

Greenwashing is the biggest trend I see in the beauty industry at the moment. There’s no clear regulation on the word “green” or “clean,” which essentially means that every brand defines it for themselves.

Even “clean” brands are still focused on misleading fear-based marketing, focusing on ideas like “chemicals are bad”. We love chemicals; just because an ingredient is made in a lab does not make that ingredient inherently good or bad for your skin. Did you know that water is technically a chemical?! Our vocabulary matters. There’s a cycle of pseudoscience and fear-based branding that’s ultimately harmful to our customers.

We believe in being transparent about what our ingredients can and can’t do, and how those ingredients impact your skin and your body, so that we can feel empowered to make decisions out of confidence rather than out of fear.

What advice would you give to yourself 5 years ago?

Lead with confidence.

My theory is that none of us know what we’re doing or where we’re going. I really believe in “fake it ‘till you make it” even though it’s a cliche. If I ever get nervous while speaking in public, I’ll change my body language and physical stance to make myself feel more powerful.

Trust yourself.

Instead of worrying about everything that could go wrong, know that things will go wrong, but that you’ll be able to figure things out and get through those hard times. Even though I have moments of self-doubt, I have an irrational belief that I can figure anything out and I know I can trust myself.

Know your why.

When things are tough, I believe you really need to know yourself and to understand your personal values & principles so that you have something strong to fall back. Understand why you’re doing what you’re doing and why you are making the decisions that you are making, and use that as your guiding light.

Mirra empowers people to take control of their skin using real science. Subscribe to their weekly educational newsletter here.

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