Antonia Schlesinger noticed one day that some expression lines that she did not recognize had appeared. She lived in the United States, so she went to Sephora to buy a cream. When they asked him what type of skin he had, he couldn’t answer. When they asked him what he wanted to discuss, neither did he. The saleswoman showed him dozens of products, with prices ranging from five to $300, and told him to choose, that any would work.
Antonia left the store without buying anything. She wanted to take care of her skin, but the number of options had left her overwhelmed. If she was going to invest time and money, she wanted to choose well, without having to become an expert to do so.
She researched blogs and videos, asked friends and ended up more confused. Then she consulted a dermatologist, who, instead of recommending a product, defined a personalized formula.
The result left her happy and, above all, connected with her way of doing things: optimizing. It had a formula designed for what her skin needed and an expert had decided for her.
Getting it, however, was exhausting: finding an appointment with the dermatologist, going to a pharmacy, discovering that an ingredient was missing, looking for another and waiting days until it was ready. When the cream ran out, you had to ask for an appointment again. Furthermore, he felt a burden of conscience: he was taking away consultation time from patients with probably more important pathologies just to renew his formula.
Solve a problem, not start a company
Antonia is an economist. Before dedicating himself to Skinology, he worked for eight years at Latam Airlines and then almost four as general manager of a law firm. She defines herself as a mother – the role she says she has lived with most intensity in the last eight years – and as a disciplined, methodical and very results-oriented person.
From his corporate stage he rescues a high sense of responsibility and the determination to always find a way to fulfill what he commits to. This way of approaching problems was also present at the origin of Skinology.
- At what moment did you understand that there was a business opportunity?
“It never started from ‘I want to have my company’, but from wanting to solve a problem. I asked my friends if they would buy personalized creams according to the needs of their skin and they all said yes. So, looking to solve my own problem, we started with a friends and family pilot, although the solution was still very difficult to scale.”
To develop the proposal, she found a dermatologist with a PhD and specialized in personalized formulations. I was also clear that to personalize at scale, I needed technology.
He then added a former colleague from Latam Airlines, specialized in data science and artificial intelligence, who was finishing a master’s degree in Information Technology Strategy. He proposed building a model based on rules and not a generative system prone to hallucinations.
Between the three of them they developed the “SkinQuiz”. They adjusted the questions on the questionnaire until the dermatologist would have all the information necessary to define the personalized formulas, without seeing the person in person changing that decision.
Learn to undertake
“Starting alone. In LATAM I had a boss who guided me and colleagues with whom I could share the small day-to-day problems.”
“At Skinology, at the beginning, that person was me. My husband has been key: until today, we talk about the company almost every night.”
Entrepreneurship also involves learning to build with your partners. Setting up a partnership, he says, is similar to getting married: you have to learn to agree, compromise and make decisions together. Everyone warns you that it is not easy, but you only understand it when you live it.
Added to these learnings was the challenge of communicating Skinology’s proposal.
- What has been the most difficult moment since you founded Skinology?
“Explaining what Skinology is. We are not a dermatology practice or a product recommender, and when something is new, people need to classify it into something they already know. Explaining it in 30 seconds, on a reel, has been very challenging. And the fact that people don’t understand it, very frustrating.”
Today he describes this year as the best of his professional life. He attributes Skinology’s growth to both the drive to do things right and offer a good product from the beginning, and the perseverance to pilot, learn and adjust until we find what works and scale it.
You are not born big
Personally, making motherhood compatible with Skinology has been the most complex. It seems unfair to compare yourself to founders without children, who have more time on their hands. From the beginning she involved her daughters so that they felt the company was their own, and her husband has made sure that they feel proud of what he has built.
But watching her daughters grow up has also given her perspective on what it means to build a company.
- If you went back to the beginning of Skinology, what would you say to the Antonia who was just starting out?
“First, focus: at the beginning I wanted to do everything, and you have to learn where your focus has to be. Second, know who to listen to: not everyone who gives an opinion knows your business. And third, something I learned watching my daughters grow: you are not born big. A baby is not born walking, and the same thing happens in entrepreneurship; there are processes that one has to live before being able to be great.”
He has also learned to look at decisions that he had grown fond of with a distance. When she left, she drew the Skinology logo herself and chose its colors. For a time he rejected different proposals to redesign the brand.
Today she recognizes the value of that work and understands that then she was not yet ready for change.
The brand that today leads in Chile, and that it is considering taking to a new country, started exactly the same as it did at Sephora: without really knowing what it needed.
Three years later, he understood that neither people nor companies are born great. They learn to walk, step by step.
