As co-founder and managing partner of Prelude Growth Partners, Alicia Sontag draws on deep experience across some of the most influential companies in beauty and consumer goods to identify what truly makes a brand investable in today’s crowded market. Having held senior leadership roles at Johnson & Johnson and Estée Lauder, and begun her career at McKinsey & Company, she brings a sharp operator’s lens to early-stage investing. In this conversation, she breaks down the signals that separate hype from real consumer love, the importance of disciplined growth and unit economics, and why agility, grit, and founder-market alignment matter more than ever in a category being reshaped by AI, data, and the convergence of beauty and wellness.
What separates a promising beauty brand from a truly investable one?
Sontag: A promising brand has three core attributes.
- First, an authentic founder that has identified a meaningful unmet need in the market.
- Second, clearly differentiated products with a superior value proposition to meet the consumer need.
- Third, the ability to generate buzz that is disproportionate to the size of the brand.
These three attributes, over time, will lead to deep consumer love if the brand executes well.
A truly investible brand has been able to translate the early signals of this consumer love, into healthy, sustainable growth and a healthy P&L. For example, a “superior value proposition” means that the ratio of cost of goods to suggested retail price is where it should be.
The “ability to generate buzz” means that the brand is generating growth while not over-spending on marketing.
These types of financial metrics are concrete markers of an investable brand.
What are investors seeing today that founders may be missing?
Sontag: Beauty is an incredibly saturated category. In order to create a powerhouse iconic brand that will last for generations, founders need to nurture the brand in its early days. Take the time to learn from your consumers, what is working and what is not, and why. . .
What you are putting out there as a brand isn’t necessarily what’s being heard by the consumer. So, it’s important to understand, objectively, why exactly people are purchasing your product, when there are so many other similar products on the market.
Listening to your consumer can help to ensure you are creating a true wedge for your brand, a point of difference that you can own for the duration.
Which trends are overhyped, and which are underestimated?
Sontag: We believe AI, for as much hype as it’s getting, is still underestimated. Yes, consumers will still need to use beauty and wellness products, so the category will continue to grow. But the question is, which brands will win?
The industry is intensely competitive, and AI is now a force multiplier unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes. So, while the category will continue to grow, AI will change how the industry operates.
Your brand will either be at the tip of the spear, or the competition will out-execute you.
What qualities consistently show up in successful founders?
Sontag: The most important qualities we see are grit, agility and the ability to punch above your weight. Grit is critical to driving a brand in its early years. The ability to have absolute persistence over all the roadblocks that will come your way.
Agility is key because the only structural benefit that most independent brands have, relative to large global strategics, is agility. Global strategics have massively more data, much stronger supply chain management, broader and deeper retailer relationships than earlier stage brands. But early-stage brands can be far more agile than a global strategic. Learn, pivot, test, etc.
Last, founders who punch above their weight can command a room and lead a team that their brand’s size alone wouldn’t warrant. They are single-minded in their focus to consistently over-deliver, for the consumer and for the business.
What is the biggest mistake beauty entrepreneurs make when raising capital?
Sontag: The biggest mistake founders make is raising too much capital too early, spending too much money before they are ready to spend efficiently, and thereby over-diluting.
A founder is ready to spend efficiently when (a) they have a real signal from the consumer that their value proposition is resonating (i.e., repeat purchase rates that show the consumer is coming back at a rate that is the same or higher than your competition), and (b) they have enough learning to know where incremental dollars will actually drive new customer acquisition the most efficiently.
Outside of proprietary R&D, which is always a worthwhile area to spend early capital, entrepreneurs serve their brands and themselves best by being extremely scrappy. If the brand does well, there will always be many options for capital down the road.
What is a turn off when evaluating a company?
Sontag: Founders who don’t value input and partnership are a turn off. Prelude Growth is typically a minority partner, and our founders thereby control the brand and the decisions they make.
Prelude Growth doesn’t have a standard playbook—because every brand is different and unique, and also because industry moves so quickly that what worked 5 years ago to build a brand isn’t necessarily what will work today.
That said, we do have meaningful experience to bring to the table, as well as data and insights, and perspectives on what it takes to achieve an A+ outcome.
We appreciate founders who are deeply self-aware, who know what they know, and are genuinely curious about what they don’t. They see their investor as a true thought partner rather than just a check. Those are the partnerships where the magic happens.
Do you have any tips for creating a stronger investor deck?
Sontag: Early in my career I received some sage advice which was "a PowerPoint deck is not a mystery novel." People aren’t carefully reading your deck, guessing along the way what’s happening and finding out the answers in the end. Don’t build up to the conclusion, start with it—and keep it short!
What makes you perk up when you hear it in an elevator pitch?
Sontag: Genuine passion from founders about solving a consumer pain point is always one of our favorite things to hear. At Prelude Growth, we are extremely passionate about supporting our founders, and the brands we partner with. Our goal is to support founders in creating the category leading brands of the future, true iconic global powerhouse brands. So, we love hearing the same (or more!) passion from our founders.
How do you see the intersection of beauty, wellness, longevity, personalization, and technology shaping the future of the industry?
Sontag: We see the multi-decade predicted convergence of beauty and wellness finally materializing in a meaningful way, and we think we are still in the early innings of what is to come.
Two things are happening simultaneously:
- First, the consumer has arrived and is now seeking multifaceted beauty and wellness products and services.
- Second, we are finally seeing compelling brands and services that reflect this integration, whether that’s clinic-based skin health companies like SkinPharm, science-forward skincare brands like OneSkin anchored in longevity research, or women’s health brands like Perelel that approach supplementation with real clinical rigor.
What’s exciting isn’t just that these categories are converging, it’s that the consumer is increasingly willing to pay for efficacy. They are focused on evidence and outcomes, and founders who can credibly bridge that gap, who have both the brand equity to create emotional connection and the science to back their claims, are extraordinarily well positioned.
Technology is accelerating this further. AI is enabling brands to understand their consumers at a level of granularity that was previously not available, to act on those insights in near real time, and to deliver education and experiences more tailored than ever to what the consumer is seeking.
The opportunity over the next decade is significant, but so are the challenges. Navigating the intersection of beauty, wellness, science, and technology requires founders who are genuinely curious, deeply consumer-obsessed, and willing to build with more rigor than the category has historically demanded.
That's exactly the type of founder we want to back.
Nancy Trent (nancy@trentandcompany) is a writer and speaker, a lifelong wellness activist, a globe-trotting trend watcher, and the founder and president of Trent & Company, a leading wellness PR firm. Trent & Company, which launched many health and beauty brands, grew out of Nancy's personal and passionate commitment to helping people live longer and healthier lives. A former journalist for New York magazine, Nancy has written seven books on healthy lifestyles, serves on the editorial boards of several magazines and travels around the world speaking at conferences and trade shows on trends in the marketplace. She is a recognized expert in PR with more than 30 years of experience creating and managing highly successful campaigns.
