YouSaid · the spoken record

Katia Beauchamp

lines on the record: 99
first: 2020-03-16
most recent: 2020-03-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Right. I mean, that is exactly what we said. They were all basically in a similar place as a lot of consumers had said, which is no one's going to pay for samples, but you seem like we could trust you with our brand. And if we're wrong, we'd like to be there for that.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so because of benefit, it was a lot easier to close other brands. We were able to work with Kiels, who you might have heard of and NARS. But it's kind of like raising money. You need the first person to say yes to get someone to come with you. So for the most part, most brands thought this wouldn't work.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we emailed people that we knew and we basically said we can't have you sign up because you know us and you'll skew the data. But will you forward this along to people? And it was just a short description and a link to a PayPal that would allow you to pay for two months, $20. And it just described what people would get.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it was for the test for 200 samples, but you know, it wasn't lost on us that they were going to let us put their logo on our really janky website. And they were already a pretty big and important brand.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the first call was with benefit cosmetics, who's owned by LVMH. And I remember that call so vividly. I was like pacing around and it was so exhilarating and so exciting. And at the end of about what ended up being a 30 minute call, he was like, okay, I'm in.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it cost like $700. I can remember feeling shaky that I was putting $700 there. And when Haley landed, I was just like, I bought birchbox.com. I hope you used to love it. You know, and she's like, oh, it's the best name for sure”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have to make a list of names, and we made a list of horrible other names. And then basically we got a response back from one of the brands we were trying to meet with. And they said, this is interesting. What's the name of your company? And Haley was out of town and unreachable in Nepal. And I looked to try to see if I could buy birchbox.com. Obviously course already then somebody had purchased it so I'm negotiating the purchase of it, hoping Haley will still love the name and I was able to buy it and it was very stressful because I had so little money that spending money on it was scary.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we basically had a criteria that it was gender neutral name that had beautiful imagery and sounded high end. We ended up saying, okay, well, let's look at trees because trees have no gender. They could have some beautiful imagery associated with them. And we found birch really quickly and we loved it visually. It's really striking and beautiful. And then when we learned more about it, you might have seen it sheds its skin, kind of exfoliates itself. It likes to grow with other birch trees. Right. So it grows better together. We really loved it right away and we landed on birch box as the first name and then we said, well, we can't choose the first name.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost everybody got back quickly. It was over the holidays, and I remember being shocked because I was getting emails back on like the 26th of December. And then I was asking my sister-in-law, well, now sister-in-law at the time my fianc ⁇'s sister to design logos and we were pasting samples. One of Haley's sister-in-law was a sample hoarder. So she had all these samples that we could use in our presentations. We tried to make a really short pitch jack and we were in meeting rooms in January.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He said, I'm going to change the beauty industry forever, and do you have 10 minutes to hear the idea and to give me advice?”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I reached out to brands and I said, Dear so and so. I'm a student, HBS, and I'm starting a company that's going to change the beauty industry forever.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we needed to price the product, and that was one of the first things that we tried to figure out was the willingness to pay, since this was something that had never existed. So we described the product and we basically asked, you know, would you pay one, two, three, four, I think to $30. And we really wanted to price it at about $10. So when we saw that the drop-off was there, that kind of validated that price point.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We got some from the library just from having access to industry reports. And then we did a few surveys too. We're just asking people about their behavior.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where were you finding out your information? Where were you doing your research? Because it sounds like you guys really dove into this, right? You were finding out statistics and numbers and data. Where were you going to get that info”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because they didn't think consumers would pay for samples because it was such a dramatic change in behavior. Consumers were used to samples being free. This idea that people would pay for them, that they would give your credit card for rebilling. I mean, a lot of the professors we spoke to were men, and they didn't obviously relate to how women were buying beauty products. So we try to explain how much waste there was in purchasing beauty that all of us had what we called like a product graveyard and that most of us felt like that was a really inefficient use of our time and our money and that we felt we would pay if we could bypass the waste and actually start investing in things that were Worth it.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I was so naive, I think, because Haley was raised around entrepreneurship. Which helped me kind of slow down a little bit in the early days to see, did we actually have product market fit? But I was still sure.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a nonstop conversation between us, we were super excited. I think I was a little bit more ready, like immediately, you know, naive and ready.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sell it to them versus give it to them for free, and we were economics majors and nerds, and we realized that if people paid for it, the actual chance of them using it would go up. Because one of the things we revealed when we started talking to brands in the early days was that they estimated most samples were never even being opened.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So if you go into Bloomingdale's or Macy's or a Sephora and then you buy something like Lancombe or Clinique or something, you buy it and you spend a hundred bucks and they pop a couple of smaller tubes in your bag. And that is the sample, but it's like a gift that you get. So you knew that that existed, that was out there, and you thought, what if instead of it being like this special gift, we gather all these samples, we curate a box, we send it to people, and then they're exposed to the samples, and then that will be the way to get them into the product, to be a consumer of that product.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it was exactly that. It was how can we help people buy beauty better and online? So we realized that the issue was that there was so much to discover in beauty that it made most people opt out in general. So we realized we had to make the option set small and kind of doable at a time, but eventually get you in front of a fair amount of product for you to be really informed as a consumer and that led us to thinking, okay, monthly sending you four or five feels like doable. You will have time to try them all. And eventually within a year, you know, you'll have 60 products or so.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, just to get an understanding, was the business exactly what it became? Like, we will send out subscription boxes to people with samples of different cosmetics, and then they can go and buy them from us if they want a larger size.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, but the idea was that we would curate kind of the infinite world of beauty, but then we would personalize it. So it wasn't about our tastes for everybody. It was, you know, our tastes would help set the parameters of how far we'd go into different brands. But then you, the individual, would get it based on your beauty profile and your needs.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this, I think we should remind people this is early days. Like now, of course, you can go to a million websites and answer some questions, and then you get a curated box or an article of clothing or something. But then it was still, this was still pretty new. And you guys were going to be the curators. You and Haley were going to be like the curators for your subscribers.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's so much choice. It just never ending aisles in a store and actually impossible to even quantify on the internet. And also, you know, we didn't talk about this, but Haley, one of the parts of the story that was very real was I would go to her apartment all the time and she had a very limited but really lovely selection of beauty products not very many but everything she had she was using She didn't have this like counter or these shelves of unused product and as we got to know each other she explained to me when I asked her about it that her best friend was a beauty editor at Cond ⁇ Nast and she would go into the beauty closet hand choose things for Haley and then show her how to use it so when we came up with this idea or when we identified the problem we designed the experience to feel like we were your beauty editor”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We felt like in order to buy beauty better, in order to invest in something, we would have to do a lot of work. We would have to spend so much time to become smart consumers in beauty. And that wasn't where our passion was. That wasn't where our interest was. So we weren't going to allocate the time. So we were just going to be stuck consuming badly. That just seemed like a bad outcome.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's so interesting, and we've told a lot of these stories in the show, but there was a period, I think roughly like 2007 to 2010, Harvard Business School produced some incredibly successful women founders, Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleis Renth of the Runway, Katrina Lake of Stitchfix, Alexa Ontobel, who dropped out, who started LearnVest. And I think in some of those other stories, there was a similar approach. Like, where can we be disruptive? And it sounds like in your case, it wasn't like you and Haley were sitting around saying, I love makeup. Makeup's amazing. I mean, maybe you liked it or you were interested in cosmetics, but it was more like this is an opportunity.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, definitely not particularly interested in as a consumer, but I had become really interested in it from a business perspective, from that little window into it I had in my internship from Vassar at Estay Lauder, he saw that basically no beauty was sold on the internet and it was almost 2010. It's like 2%. And that was almost like a jaw-dropping moment to us. Just this idea that an industry that was so big, such a huge and important industry was not yet online. It was like a switch went off in us where we were so excited and motivated to think about why and how we could change that.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While we were very interested that it was a moment where female entrepreneurs were starting to start businesses for consumers that they could relate to, so it seemed like something was happening. People were talking about finally like women starting businesses for women or predominantly focused on a female consumer, a female buyer. And then that led us to, well, what aren't they talking about that we could relate to?”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So from there, we started talking about different ideas and we pretty quickly landed on this question about why nobody was talking about disrupting the beauty industry. That was just on our minds, like kind of this glaring industry that was massive. And everybody seemed to be tackling a lot of the other industries and no one was touching beauty. And we got excited, and we basically came up with the idea for birch box that didn't have a name within two days, like the full model.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally. We became really close friends within the first few days. And we had started doing things together. Like we had written a couple papers together for classes that were intended to be projects. And then Thanksgiving of 2009, we were recognizing we're graduating in six months. We should learn how to write a business plan. And that's really where everything started is we decided, let's write a business plan together.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think I hated failure too. It's just what you interpret failure as. You know, I think my conscious told me that I had already won this game. I had gotten into a great business school and now getting to try to do something was a win. So I thought, what's next? How do you go from being interested in entrepreneurship to learning some of the hard skills?”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, this is an important point because I think that you can train and teach yourself to kind of be comfortable with failure. But there are some people who just that fight or flight instinct, like some people just don't have it when it comes to failure. And you probably just don't have it.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People would say all the time, why aren't you afraid of starting? And I didn't even relate to the question. I couldn't relate. Like, what was so scary about starting? I mean, the worst thing that happens is that you fail, and I didn't understand why that was scary. I mean, I was like, what a scary life to not know what you're capable of. That is terrifying.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It felt like it was myself. I mean, I think it always felt like it was inside. I'd say there's probably like a little bit of me wanting to prove something to my dad that didn't wasn't around and wanting to prove that I was worth it and something he missed out on, I'm sure, was a little bit of it. But I don't think I consciously was visiting that thought. It was much, it felt much more me. I've told myself the story that a lot of my ability to do this is because I wasn't ever encumbered by the expectations. You know, I never had the pressure of. You must do this, and this is what success looks like, and you will only be loved when. I kind of was so free.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that I had the opposite reaction of most people because the current chair of the department will tell you that it was the professor I had because I was talking to him about this. But he really gave a very honest account of entrepreneurship. So he'd read the cases and I guess he would add the color around the struggles that these entrepreneurs were facing, whether they were financial struggles or actual struggles in their personal lives as a result of it. And he really painted a picture of this is like heartbreak. This is the most challenging, the most roller coaster-filled career you could ever have. And I just found myself leaning in thinking I found it. This is what I've been searching for is nothing would be harder than this.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was hard. I mean, it was hard to stay on top of everything and catch up with other people who already knew about what careers existed in the world, as well as careers they wanted that I loved it immediately. I can say that.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While I loved economics, I mean, economics has a lot about human behavior, and I found that to be really interesting to think about business, but through the eyes of actual behavior of people. And it felt practical. So I knew that I wasn't leaving college and going to have a helping hand. I didn't have anyone to support me, and it seemed smart for me to focus on getting a job where I could support myself.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, it was at Vassar. So they had this training program for their executives or their top executives would go to a college for the summer and they hired college students to work it. I think they gave two positions to vasser students and frankly that was the reason I wanted it. I was, like I said, just so motivated to win things and ambitious about if something was coveted, then it must be great. And that's what drew me to it. I knew that it was going to be highly competitive, very selective. And so I decided that I wanted to do that.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I loved college. I was intimidated kind of right away because I'd gone to public schools and I felt ill-equipped at first, you know, the first year I was, I felt like I was just treading water. So I spent pretty much every waking hour at the library when I wasn't working or in class. But eventually I started to get more comfortable and confident and feel like I could keep up enough”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's extremely disorienting going from the desert where you can see everything to the woods where you can't see anything. You know, like all the trees, I remember just feeling like, how do people get around? Because in El Paso, you can almost see where you're going from any point. You can see where the mountains are. You can always see your orientation in the world almost. It felt like. And I remember just feeling just closed with all the trees and without being able to see the horizon every day. It definitely felt very different.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never considered staying to the point that I didn't even have that monologue that was like, I can't wait to get out. I was like, obviously I'm not going to live here.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I've always felt just very ambitious, just inside wanting to achieve has always felt really important to me. Because, I mean, when you're very young, I think if you're attracted to success or you think that that matters to you, I assume it just means you want control, you know? You want to be the one setting the rules, not the one just kind of living someone else's reality.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I mean, I cared so much about getting straight A's and being a great student. It was very important to me that my mom and I agreed in sixth grade that I would just start signing my own report cards because it meant so much more to me than her that I get straight away. It just she always described just never having to push me to study or to try. So I really, really wanted to get the best grades. I wanted to have perfect attendance. I wanted to be the president of the clubs. I wanted to be. Cared about all of that a lot.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did almost always more in retrospect, definitely was always anxious going because I really missed my mom and I really never wanted her to feel like alone, you know? Was so aware of her emotional state even when I was really little. But when I was there, yes, I definitely saw how magical it was to have such a different reality in front of me. And that was just very eye-opening and wonderful thing to get early on.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they put a ticket around your neck. Back in the day, I mean, I still remember they used smoked on the airplanes that were transatlantic still. It was crazy, but we flew there every summer, and then we spent most of the time in Germany, and then usually like a month with our grandparents and uncle in Greece too.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I saw my dad in the summers, pretty much every summer since I was four. I would fly. He lived in Germany. That's where they split up and he stayed there. And I would fly there with my older brother. You know, you fly alone and they... Yeah.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And their idea to put beauty samples, the ones most people throw away into a subscription box was the first of its kind, and it basically took off right away. Within four years Birchbox catapulted to a million subscribers and at its height, the company was valued at nearly half a billion dollars. And you might think that would have been a time for high fives and celebration. But actually, behind the scenes, Kacha Beacham was quietly freaking out. Despite being told how successful she was, she just didn't feel it. In fact, she felt like the company could spin out of control at any minute. And as we get into her story, we'll find out what was behind all that. But first, let's start in El Paso, Texas, where Kacha grew up. Her mom was Mexican-American, and her dad was Greek, and when Kaccia was about four years old, her parents split up. And one of her earliest memories.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the brands, I think we'd come in just so optimistic and so naive, basically saying, we got this and some people looked at us and we're basically like, you know nothing. This isn't going to work, you like silly little girls.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every day, I was just constantly met with these logistical challenges mostly, and also I think some resentment of people that we were just outsiders thinking we were so smart.”
2020-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT