Too Faced

A make-up brand founded by two friends with $30,000 in credit card debt sold for $1.45 billion 17 years later. Jared Blandino and Jared Brown met at an Estee Lauder counter in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. They left to start Too Faced in 1998 with a $30,000 personal credit line launching out of a one-bedroom apartment with a single product, a lip plumper called lip injection. The brand grew through specialty retail and early adoption of beauty influencer marketing in the 2010 to 2015 window, where it's better than sex mascara and chocolate bar became cult products on YouTube and early Instagram. Competing brands in 2014 were still shooting campaigns with professional models and placing ads in print.