Bold move in beauty: Technology is the foundation of Boise startup’s viral makeup maker

When Rachel Wilson moved from Southern California to Boise, Idaho, she was coming off running and scaling her own company, navigating large, international distribution channels as a young entrepreneur. Her goal was to step back, get a 9-to-5 job and be “normal” for a while.

“I stayed normal about a year and a half,” Wilson said, before she began the journey of launching another startup.

More than five years later, and alongside co-founder and CTO Karin Layton, Wilson is the CEO of BoldHue, a technology company with a beauty concept that is upending traditional cosmetics practices, going viral on social media, and selling out in just two months.

BoldHue makes a tech-enabled kit featuring a device that can skin your skin and then mix a custom shade of foundation based on the readings in just one minute. The goal is to take the guesswork out of selecting such makeup in stores or online and create a more inclusive foundation-buying environment for the many varied types of customers and skin tones.

The startup has raised almost $7 million, led by Lucas Venture Group and other investors, including Tacoma Venture Fund, Mark Cuban, Kevin Huvane, and others.

BoldHue’s product is the result of years of listening to makeup wearers, consulting with experts from giant cosmetics companies, creating a custom algorithm, and going through multiple prototypes to come up with the “Keurig for makeup,” as it was called by Forbes earlier this year.

“You can’t just make something and sell it,” Wilson told GeekWire. “You’ve got to be sure, especially when you build a robot, that there is market fit, that there’s a big enough pain point.”

In story after story, Wilson discovered that the problem of inequity in the beauty industry was bigger than she imagined and one that she wanted to solve.

Layton is the former aerospace engineer behind the creation of the main device, the code that powers it and the app that customers use to interact with it all. Wilson calls Layton a phenomenal painter and color theorist who was perfect for the job of figuring out foundation shade matches from just a few base colors.

After a “magic wand” is held against a user’s face in three different locations to get an aggregate of skin tone, it’s returned to the main BoldHue device where the software goes to work. A custom foundation mix is created from six onboard color cartridges and dispensed into a glass pod, with enough to last for about a week.

The app is used to track a user’s foundation history and make it easy create a repeat of a previous mixture, or order backup cartridges.

The entire kit, with the device, full cartridge system, and beauty accessories such as sponges, costs $295. Cartridges run about $15 to $35.

Madin Akpo-Esambe, a general partner at Tacoma Venture Fund, said his firm backs exceptional founders regardless of the industry.

“When we first saw BoldHue we were blown away on the innovative take on an everyday need, and the early demand for the product serving an often unseen customer,” Akpo-Esambe said. “BoldHue sees them and is serving them. Since launch, they’ve been able to show the world and their customers that they matter and their solution matters and we’ve been thrilled by the early response.”

Building in Boise has been a fun part of the process for BoldHue — even if Wilson says the airport location makes it tough to get to New York City. Wilson said she’s grateful for the venture ecosystem that has grown over time in the city.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong about having a company out here,” Wilson said. “It does make us a little bit different, but it does really show that you can still be connected no matter where you’re at.”

The startup’s social presence on TikTok and Instagram is a testament to that connection, where its videos have attracted millions of views.

BoldHue, which currently employs seven people, plans to lean more heavily into its technology rather than compete to become a leading foundation maker. The goal would be to license its tech so that cosmetics brands and retail partners could be more successful in helping more customers find what they’re looking for — perhaps from a foundation that’s already on the market.

“It’s really just giving consumers full control over personalization and customization whenever they need it,” Wilson said.