one day I just decided to quit my job with no backup plan and just build glaze everyone tells you how hard building a startup is but it is just so hard the glaze Journey has been very stressful the Turning Point really was when the market shifted fundraising completely dried up it's not obvious to the male investor I owed it to myself and the team to just keep going in retrospect is insane we got four offers as soon as the offer started trickling in you would see like Spike number one that's Spike number two then Spike number three and then Spike number four and it just kept going up and up and up the BBC posted all our Clips on social media and we went completely viral this is my first rodos who would have thought you go into entrepreneurship if be compete with the whale welcome to strategy and tragedy the show that talks about how to scale and fail in business my name is Stephanie melodia and it is my pleasure to interview some incredible entrepreneurs on this show sharing their raw and honest Journeys to help you avoid making the same mistakes they did and hopefully provide you with some entrepreneurial inspiration now just before I welcome my next guest I want to say a big thank you to you right there listening at home on your commute while you're pottering about at home or maybe at the gym for tuning in to my show I know that there are so many other podcasts out there so it really means the well to me that you're listening in right now if you haven't already it would also mean the world to me to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on on weekly episodes okay on to my next guest Gina faran is the banker turned entrepreneur and star of BBC's Dragon's Den she's the founder and CEO of glaze a tech enabled dtoc brand producing made to measure gel manicures that are chip-free long-lasting and vegan easy to apply even easy to remove Gina has made waves on the beauty scene and I cannot wait to dive into her story right here on strategy and tragedy Gina welcome to the show thank you so so much for having me so from Goldman to glaze what was the Genesis for glaze so when I was in Investment Banking I never really had time to go to the salon and I would book my appointments on platforms like 312 which are great but I never really had time to go and sometimes I would have to cancel them um at the very last minute because something would pop up at the office so I started getting really frustrated with the state of of my nails and I started looking for Alternatives um whether it was painting my nails or wearing press on from from boots and nothing really fit the bill for me my nails always looked horrible and so one day after having spent 5 years at Goldman I just decided to quit my job with no backup plan and just build glaze and so you say this was just like one day well I mean it it had been bubbling up for a while to be honest with you um it was more of an existential crisis in the sense that I started my career in Dubai that was good I kind of proved myself there and then I moved to London and I did the same again but I didn't really see myself becoming a managing director or a partner there so it just made no sense to continue working 100h hour weeks when it was not what I wanted to be in 10 years and so that combined with always thinking about idea like glaze just made me want to quit pretty much overnight so I did make the decision overnight but it had been bubbling under the surface for a yeah that makes sense and so was that an external pressure did that come from parents or anything to go into a corporate career given you obviously had a bit of an entrepreneurial itch that was bubbling away behind the scenes yeah I mean it's really hard I think when you come from a place like Lebanon um I've always been quite tunnel visioned in my Pursuits so growing up in Lebanon I had anazing family super supportive parents never lacked anything really but it always graded on me that I was born in Lebanon and not somewhere else cuz I just felt like I had fewer opportunities and so I remember always telling my parents as a teenager oh I just want to leave the country I just want to leave the country and my parents were like graduate from University and then go wherever the hell you want and that's exactly what I did so after I graduated I went to France and I did my masters there and then naturally because my passport is Lebanese I had to go down the corporate route it wasn't really an option for me to build something because of visa restrictions so that's how I ended up at Goldman initially so it was kind of Paving the way for me to figure out a way outside of the corporate world to then become a startup okay interesting and not a bad strategy at all I would say I've had a few people on the show some of whom are your gu um your friends and we've found a few people we've got in common um who have come from that corporate career they've come from a bit of a you know kushy lifestyle beforehand and you know let's be frank like practically speaking they've had that opportunity to build up a financial buffer to make that risk seem less risk of going into entrepreneurship right so kind of worked out well for you I assume up until this point right yeah definitely I mean it definitely helps to build a cushion which allows you to kind of experiment without you know a very TI rope against your around your neck in a way uh so it definitely helps kind of remove the pressure but at the same time I would say that you don't want to be too comfortable cuz I remember in the early days I was like oh it's okay you know I'm I've got it covered for the next couple of years I didn't really feel that pressure and only when I started feeling the financial pressure was I like okay now I really need need to get my together I totally you you raised a really interesting point on that can I just check quickly if you don't mind me asking was there a number of months that you had saved up for in terms of your own Runway while you went and launched glaze yeah I mean it was years actually so because I started in Dubai I paid zero tax wow so I was good for like four years essentially pretty much but I had to make changes to my lifestyle of course but I didn't worry about paying the rent or you know the mortgage or anything like that for a very long time so on that balance between yes there are certain you know privileges things that you use to like work to your advantage right like having the corporate career building up that Financial buffer but then you need that hunger you need some of that pressure you know diamonds made under pressure or whatever this you know what was there a moment for you in in glazes short life so far that you were like okay I need to kind of light a fire under this for sure I mean I feel like the glaze Journey has been very stressful um and I think the Turning Point really was when the market shifted so glaze was founded when the market as was at the very top it was EAS it was around 2021 basically is when we started building we didn't launch until um we did our paid beta in 2022 and then we properly launched in um early last year so 2023 but but I would say that when we first um got things off the ground it was quite easy to fund raise I know fundraising is never easy but when the market shifted I would say like early last year in 2023 and the fundraising completely dried up for especially d2c Brands and consumer uh startups that's when I was like okay I really need to figure things out because I might not be able to raise more money unless I prove certain things um and that's when I really felt the fire burning under my but so on the fundraising and you mentioned the fire burning as well I think this is a nice segue into Dragon Den that I mentioned that I mentioned in your introduction there so did you succeed in getting the funding to share with the listeners what did what was the outcome of the show yeah so we got four offers um on the show which was amazing congratulations thank you so uh Sarah Peter uh Deborah and tuker wanted to invest in the business and um we ended up going with Sarah and Deborah 50/50 so it was a very very good outcome for us amazing so what was that experience like was that something that was that always a goal of yours to go on Dragon's Den let's go back to kind of the start with that was it something that an opportunity that presented itself to you what was the kind of the ration now initially for going on Dragon's Den so I'd never considered they reached out to us on the help email address for glaze and I thought that it was like a scam cuz it's usually through like the researcher at the BBC and so I ignored the first email that's crazy and then I ignored the second email but then the researcher was very persistent so I'm like let me just look into this maybe this is real and so I did I responded to her and then she just kind of strung me along and started asking me all sorts of questions and then I was like you know what I'll just submit an application they might not take me I'll just see where it goes and that's that's how it started I wasn't actually considering it seriously which in retrospect is insane because it's like one of the best opportunities that you can get as a consumer founder with a pretty Mass Market product as well I don't know what I was thinking definitely I would do it again like in a heartbeat well it's funny you say that because I was wondering how uh how that affected your I guess fulfillment like on the op side of things with the business because I do know other Founders who have been on the show I know some of your friends as well and um it has produced this massive spike in in orders in web traffic as you would expect from a national TV show however given the fact that it is a physical products dtoc I know some people have struggled to obviously then fulfill that huge Spike orders and I think this is where there's a bit of that argument also for the organic growth and for organically scaling so that it's just kind of easing off that pressure on that fulfillment upside of things so how was that for glaze given again it's a physical product I mean we had very similar struggles I think I don't think there's ever been a company in the history of dragons then that sells physical products that hasn't had delays and for us it was even worse because we manufacture our product in our very own Factory so we can't just double the orders overnight we had to prepare for it now the good thing is that when you're going through the Dragons Den process you film like almost a year before the show air so we filmed in May 2023 when we literally just launched and the show only aired in um March of 2024 so that was good in the sense that we knew that it was coming however they don't always guarantee that your episode will Air even if the outcome is positive and so there was always this risk that we might overinvestment and it might just not go anywhere um so it was a fine balance for us to try and kind of scale up without wasting whatever money was left in our bank accounts cuz we we were also in the process of fundraising so we didn't have infinite amounts of capital so it was it was very stressful to kind of manage that period and get to Dragon's Den uh with the right amount of inventory and we have had a lot of delays but I think what we've done well is to try and kind of manage expectations so we had the delay messages all over the website some people don't read so that's you know you know that's still an issue and you still get angry emails but um it definitely helped manage expectations and because the show is so well known and so huge people expect there to be delays so people are very forgiving but you have the I would say the 1% of customers that make all the noise that really kind of shake up the the customer service uh inbox basically but everyone's been pretty understanding we have had really long delays so instead of shipping the products within a week we've had to ship products within 3 to four weeks but we tried to communicate with customers by telling them okay if you've ordered on this date then you're going to get your product on X date that's good so that helps and I mean 1% isn't bad and it's almost like success on social media when I got my first trolls I was like yes I've made it yes you'll always you'll always get one you'll always get these people who have got their own problems just remember entrepreneurs who are building you're stressed out building your company shitty clients shitty customers are a guarantee they've got a problem absolutely not yours pick your battles pick your battles so I'm curious as well here just on the Dragon's Den story talking about managing your inventory managing you know the the how much to scale up how did you go about really practically speaking like how did you go about that calculation was it a case of this is the viewership of Dragon's Den finger to the wind this is the percentage of people who are going to tune in this is a smaller percentage of people who are going to be interested was there a bit of that basic sort of funnel calculation you did to try and work it out we went straight to the source and we asked companies that had gone through the experience very like bluntly how many orders did you get from Dragons Den and we started building like a table so this brand got 10,000 customers and this brand got 20,000 customers of course it varies by product by Price Point by whether it's only for men or only for women Etc but we kind of had an idea of what that number was going to be I wonder s just jump in here for a sec but I wonder also if the outcome the investment decisions I wonder how much bearing that also has on customers confidence oh 100% we could see it actually on the night so we were uh screen recording the traffic analytics that's so interesting and actually for the first say like 9 Minutes of the pitch it was you know a couple of curious thousands of people here and there and then as soon as the offer started trickling in you would see like Spike number one then Spike number two then Spike number three and then Spike number four and it just kept going up and up and up so people definitely respond to um the dragon's reaction and I think how well you do as a business depends on how well you do inside of the den it's that validation that we need isn't it like human psychology you know for intelligent beings we can be really stupid sometimes yeah but also not really because I feel like people are very Discerning these days like influencer marketing and you know hasht ad and whatever with the dragons they don't owe you anything they can destroy you on national television and it's just not going to matter to them so I think people take their words a lot more seriously H and whatever they think carries more weight as a result and that's what we saw cuz we can't pay them we can't you know like they're not celebrity endorsers of the brand and so I think yeah there's that's a very rare opportunity for businesses to capitalize on if it goes well it carries a lot of credibility for sure interesting okay interesting and so how did the results compare against your estimate well it was more than you expected because of all the delays right well no we always knew that we were going to have delays with the number that we had in mind so I would say it was pretty spoton the thing we didn't get right is that we thought it was going to be like a spike on the night and then it starts kind of tail a couple of days after what happened with us was we did well on the night but then it was like the Easter um long weekend so not everyone was tuning in on the Thursday night um so we kept seeing a buildup on the Friday and the Saturday and the Sunday and then the Monday and then it just kept going and going and going and as soon as things started to tap her off the BBC posted all our Clips on social media and we went completely viral on Tik Tok and so the clip on Tik Tok had 2.7 million views so that started the whole cycle again so we did hit the number but we hit the number over like 6 weeks instead of hitting it over 3 days which from a fulfillment standpoint was a little bit lucky the delays could have been a lot worse had we sold all that volume like on the yeah yeah that is impressive and that's how I found you actually it was through the the virality on social media it's only now in hindsight we now know all of these connections that we have in common but uh was it the most watched Tik Tok on the BBC account at one point I think so I mean there's like a big whale video that has maybe like 16 million views so other than the whale I think we're pretty yeah we're pretty up there bloody whales second who would have thought you going into entrepreneurship and be second place to a whale compete with the whale exactly exactly they are majestic creatures all right amazing and anything else on the Dragon's Den story like I've got into kind of the numbers this you know this has been really eye opening in terms of the behind the scenes the analytics how it did for you is there anything else sort of post Dragon's Den has that sort of continued with that success or what's what's kind of life been like for glaz since the show Ed yeah I would say the Baseline of the business at the moment with zero marketing is a lot higher than it was before dragons then so it's not just a one-off effect and even if you do go viral on on Tik Tok it kind of continues I think it'd be Sur surprised how many people just like take ages to make a purchasing decision and you see that when you're growing an email database sometimes people join the email database like in December 2023 and they make their first purchase like in May 2024 it sometimes it just takes this long so we are still seeing momentum of course it slowed down a little bit but we're now clearing the backlog and are in a position to essentially start marketing again um so I'm really excited to see that because what I've heard from other Founders who've gone through the Journey is that the impact of Dragons Den is not just from the viewership that you get for free but when you run ads on social media they tend to do much better as well because they have that seal of approval so really excited to test those and see where we where we land this is exactly what I was just thinking I'm on the same wavelength the startups I know been on the show obviously then leverage that with as seen on Dragon's dead and putting the logo on the website and all the social ads so I'm sure that will that will give it a boost what was what was the pitch that sold it to the to the investors I know we've got some of the products here today I am very I've got naked Nails I'm very keen to test out some if you want to give me a bit of a a demo and explain kind of the pitch where you tght me through it yeah sure so um this is what you typically get on your first order which is our started kit and what's included is apart from the instructions you get the um gels um which in your case are standard size because we didn't get your your hand photos and then you also get everything you need to apply the uh the gel so you've got a cuticle stick you've got the uh pad to clean your nails with the um uh prep juice solution and then a nail file to remove any of the excess and really the pitches is quite simple it's hard to nail uh your nails at home um because it can be quite messy to paint them you need for you need to wait for the nails to dry um and at the same time salons are quite expensive and uh gels are not necessarily great for your nails so glaze is a solution that kind of ticks all of these boxes so it gives you the look and feel of a salon manicure but at the same time it doesn't damage your nails like Salon gels do um and yeah it's super easy to apply and super super super easy to to remove so something that I'm also aware of is that we all know that it's hard for female Founders right like we don't need to keep banging on about the Doom and Gloom we get it we know we're trying to solve it um I just I just don't want to bring down like other female Founders and just share all these like depressing statistics but it's like we're aware of that we're also aware of the fact that the um difficulties in fundraising extend not only extend beyond female Founders to female oriented products as well so what I'm curious about is was there a moment during the pitch on Dragon's Den or even indeed with any other investors that you've that you've pitched to where you saw maybe the penny drop or a flicker of their eye or something where you're like okay they get it because I imagine pitching to I don't know Tuka Solomon for example tell them about nails and trying to describe that pain point you know makes sense that you've got Deborah and Sarah on board like they obviously get it they've got more of that personal empathy they can experience it but perhaps maybe more for the guys who have got typically more cash to invest what have you come come up against there I mean this is one of the biggest grapples I would say when we're trying to fund raise because you first need to start with the education piece because it's not obvious to the male investor what what we're solving for so when we were filming dragons then actually the penny dropped when they could see Sarah's reaction to the product so she absolutely loved it and that just convinced Peter and um and tuer to come in and actually Peter even said I have no idea why I'm making an offer I think it's purely based on fomo because he could see Sarah's reaction and often times it's a very similar experience with male investors they have no connection to the product and what they tell me is oh send me some I'll get my wife or my daughter to try it out and then we have to wait and then we're kind of dependent on the reaction of of the wife or the the daughter and so that's always a little bit frustrating cuz you lose a lot of the USPS and the the pitch points that you're trying to you know it's it's another hurdle isn't it you know we we're already running twice as as fast to get half as far right and uh I just recall deali nania if that Rings any bells investor she's incredible I recall hearing her speak on a panel and she was just like I mean she's no BS like great personality and stuff anyway and she just used these examples of like you know AI is the buzz word at the moment right like everyone's going crazy about AI llms uh we've got space Tech we've got these deep Tech opportunities it's like well how clued up are you as an investor on these areas or biotech or you know you name it but as soon as we get into like nails or I don't know period pan F anything to do with with anything that's more of that kind of gender specific Suddenly It's like this light switch was that a surprise to you in the in the fundraising Journey for sure I didn't even I mean this is my first rodeo so there's a lot of things that I've learned along the way that surprised me and this is definitely one of them but in retrospect when I look back I'm like well I should have known you know of course they're not going to know if they've never gotten their nails done what were maybe top one to three other surprises that you've experienced in your first rodeo now with glaze I guess everyone tells you how hard building a startup is but it it is just so hard um and I think that that surprised me I was expecting it to be hard but just the level of hardness surprised really hard yeah I do think we've also been a little bit unlucky with like macro events whether it's the pandemic and supply chain issues or you know the fun raising drying up just as we were kind of geared towards growth um so yeah how hard the journey is um how hard fundraising is but also just to kind of maybe end on a positive note I feel like building a startup is almost like a journey of self-discovery and so you learn a lot about yourself along the way and that's been one of the most amazing things for me cuz I've discovered things about myself that I would have have never known otherwise if I hadn't been like testing myself to the Limit like that can you share an example just how resilient I can be um like the team always tells me that 99% of Founders would have given up last year cuz last year was a really difficult year for us and we were just trying to stay alive until we get to dragon's 10 we were growing but we didn't have the marketing budget to really do everything we wanted to do and it was a constant struggle we almost didn't make payroll for like 6 months in in a row and it was like every month to make payroll was a SL was a slog what kept you going in those moments because I feel like it's easy to say resilience it's it's an easy casual time we all we know it we all know the word but in those moments where you're like damn I was getting paid so much money at Goldman Sachs had my office to go to if I wanted a pair of shoes I go and buy a pair of shoes I didn't have investors breathing down neck I've got all of the stress and anxiety around paying my team I don't know if I'm going to make it I've got this silly male investor that doesn't understand the pain point I'm solving in that moment going into that dark place of like almost about to throw in the towel what is it that you're telling yourself or what is it that you do that brings you back up again and keeps going I just felt that it was such um lame time to to just give up and throw in a towel because I'd be be fine with it if nobody wanted to buy the product or if I don't know suddenly we realize that we could never make money at scale I'm fine with that those I can take full responsibility for but just not having enough money or not being able to to fund raise and that's kind of what kills the business was not something that I was going to settle for cuz I feel like I owed it to myself and the team and just our investors to just keep going because I knew that this could work if we just got over that period and I kind of feel validated now to to degree obviously we need to kind of sustain the growth but something inside of me just told me to to keep going CU it was going to get better and I know it's very cliche but it does get better if you just keep going it does it does make perfect sense especially if you have got that validation if you have got the sales coming in especially I mean also having a team around you as well right You've Got You Are part of a team you've got other people that are in the trenches there with you Founders fding entrepreneurs I need to give a quick shout out to a friend of mine who's building something epic I think that you'll want to check out Ash Phillips founder of rebellious Co runs Rebel meetups an IRL Community for the unreasonably ambitious I love that term these events are totally free to attend and a great way to meet people build your personal brand and grow your own opportunities while helping others head over to Rebel me ups.com to RSVP to an event near you that's Rebel meetups.com and maybe see you at an event soon what was the first sign of validation that you were onto something beyond your own lived experience this was a personal paino for you what was kind of an external Market validation when did that come and what was it I I'd say it's multiple points across the journey the first one was before we launched our beta we built a weight list and we were able to build a weight list of 4,000 people quite easily and quite cheaply actually and that was um the first point of validation in the sense that people actually want this problem to be solved and it's not just me that hates painting her nails uh so that was the first thing and then when we launched um a lot of the weight listers actually converted and we kept getting emails because it took us a really long time to launch kept getting emails from those people on the weight list saying when is this thing launching I really want this product I hate going to the salon that's aming I hate going I hate painting my nails uh I can't wait for this cuz this sounds like the solution for me the second thing I would say is and this is counterintuitive sometimes if the customer doesn't necessarily get along with the product the first thing that they always say in their email is I really wanted this to work and for me I focus on the positive because I'm like well one day you're going to come back and you're going to love this product and we just need to fix whatever isn't working for you yeah so it's just proof that they are looking for something we just haven't hit that Mark yet um and for us continuous R&D is part of our journey that's why we have our uh production facility and our formulation chemist doing almost like bi-weekly rounds of R&D wow and then the third thing was Dragons Den and just seeing the um the optick in activity and how many customers just like came to the website and purchased pretty much immediately um those are some of the things and then the most important one um is just seeing customers come back cuz you need to build um a base of loyal customers for you to have a sustainable business and this is something we're super focused on at the moment because we want to get to profitability as quickly as possible incredible that is amazing Gina I'm so like pleased for you I'm always my I can almost feel like my heart physically swell up when I hear these stories cuz I know how hard it is I know firsthand and vicariously through working with over a 100 Founders in the past you know handful of years I know how hard it is and so like it's almost like you know just getting product Market fit is like this Holy Grail it's almost like unattainable for so many people so the fact that you've achieved it you got all those offers on Jag's Den you got repeat customers obviously nothing's perfect the road to it is very bumpy and I'm sure there'll be more bumps ahead but I'm just so pleased with you that you've got it to this point so congratulations thank you so much I can't wait to try out the nails properly um which we'll do afterwards final closing traditional question on this show I know that you've already shared Lessons Learned this is your first rodeo coming from corporate career is there one tragedy in your entrepreneurial Journey that's taught you an unforgettable lesson so I'm someone who usually likes to look at Silver Linings so even if there's something horrible I try and kind of see the positive from from that situation and for us it was when the market turned actually um and we really needed to raise more money and we couldn't and it was a slog for 18 months as I alluded to earlier that really forced us to almost focus on getting to profitability as quickly as we could and so we tightened the screws we stopped spending on things that don't necessarily move the needle and that I think is going to make us a much better business as a result because the way we run the business today is very different to 24 months ago for example we think about every single dollar and I think the companies that have gone through this journey um have built a lot more kind of resilience and I think practices that will make them have better companies yeah makes total sense I think there's two stats I just want to share on that to back up your point one is again just coming back to the female founder piece research has shown that female Founders are a better bet for investors in terms of much higher Roi largely because of being so much more lean and efficient and really doubling down on what's moving the needo as you say and secondly also the the different businesses that are coming out of this recession you know which has been officially like deemed to be now it's where there's less of these kind of frothy hotair businesses that are just like gaining market share at all costs we worry about profitability later which always seemed insane to me you're building a business you've got to make money you've got to pay the team there's only so long you can keep riding that wave of other people's Capital exactly so congratulations I love that silver lining and just congratulations on all your success so far I'm sure you're going to go from strength to strength I can't wait to see glaze even bigger and better but for now thank you so much for coming on the show Gina thank you so much for having me and thank you so much for listening really hope you enjoyed this episode don't forget to hit that subscribe button episodes are weekly they drop every Wednesday at 6:00 a.m. so hopefully see you next time