Living Proof

Unilever paid a reported $250 million in 2016 for a hair care brand that had been designed inside an MIT Chemistry lab, not a cosmetic studio. Living Proof was founded in 2005 by Polaris Venture Partners and a team of MIT chemists, including Dr. Robert Langer, one of the most cited biomedical engineers in the world. Langer's lab specialized in drug delivery systems. The thesis behind Living Proof was that humidity-induced hair frizz was a chemistry problem the cosmetics industry had never had the molecular toolkit to solve. The flagship product, No Frizz, contained a patented polyfluoroester molecule that repelled water from hair strands. The patent protection was genuine, not marketing. Most consumer goods categories have chemistry that has been stable for decades, and branding is what differentiates the products.