‘Acne was debilitating for me so I set up a £40m business to help others’
James Mishreki started out as a professional poker player before moving into health technology.
James Mishreki suffered from acne as a teenager growing up in Northumberland. It was a debilitating episode that damaged his self-confidence, and he was nicknamed ‘pizza face’ for a year as he underwent NHS treatments. It later returned in her 20s, leading to another round of medication.
When it came to entrepreneurial co-founding dermatology service Skin + Me in 2018, Mishreki “knew how badly people wanted to get rid of acne.” The British firm, which provides skin treatments via prescription subscriptions, has generated nearly £40 million in revenue in four years since its launch in 2020.
“I’m fascinated by the skincare industry – it’s a £140bn industry with 55% customer dissatisfaction,” she says. “I knew what it was like to go through the acne journey and not be able to talk to your dermatologist on a regular basis.”
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First, we talk about Mishreki’s early career, when he played poker professionally for two years after completing marketing management studies at Northumbria University in 2008.
Co-founder of retail intelligence outfit Competitive Monitor after dabbling in several web-based startups led him to quit poker full-time and join the burgeoning e-commerce industry.
An idea has been floated to scrape websites that could be indexed and packaged to customers, including John Lewis, which will use information software to track rivals’ prices.
The Skin + Me co-founder has a unique philosophy on ‘rejection training’.
For a long time Mishreki paid himself £500 a month, but as a first mover the company did not double down on prioritizing the startup or raising private capital. “We ended up competing with bedroom operators in Russia and had a price drop,” he admits.
After successfully launching in 2018, Mishreki worked with co-founder Philip Wilkinson to launch a personalized skincare recommendation service called Mr. and Mrs. Oliver, primarily to test what consumers value and want.
Mishreki went to Space NK and Debenhams, chatted with skincare consultants and asked if they wanted to make extra money working at her startup.
A box of treatments for skin goals was sent to consumers, and the founders learned that people highly value trusted experts who review consultations and make recommendations.
Mishreki admits that the business model is “flawed.” Consumers who ship third-party skin care products will then find cheaper brands elsewhere. But the founders’ goal of establishing a personalized regime had arisen, and this proved to be a complex operation to set up.
The company only uses real Skin + Me community members in its marketing.
Skin + Me needed to build a regulatory-approved pharmacy, install personalization technology for prescriptions, and create a brand “people love and trust.” Meanwhile, the founders began searching for talented consultants, sending more than 200 handwritten letters to a third of dermatologists in the UK.
Mishreki also has a unique approach to what he calls ‘rejection training’ when trying to obtain investment.
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“Rejection is a good thing when it comes to being an entrepreneur,” he says. “The quicker you get rejected, the quicker you stop caring, and ironically, the more you get rejected, the less you care.”
After an exhausting search for investors knocking on their door, the founders changed their tune after initially seeking £50,000 in investment. They now sought to raise meaningful capital to scale from the start and quickly secured an initial investment of £8 million.
“Things always go wrong. If I expect no, it’s an opportunity to learn and get better. If I get a ‘yes’ answer, that’s a bonus.”
“The market doesn’t care about your feelings. Starting the company was an extremely stressful process but I’m extremely proud. It’s so much better for the UK population to have access to this service.”
James Mishreki has taken Skin +Me to revenues of £37m in just over five years.
London-based Skin + Me launched with 20 staff. It currently has more than 150 employees; It has an office in Paddington and an operations team based in a large factory in Acton. The business is reportedly worth £160 million.
“I feel like we have significantly leveled expectations when it comes to personalization,” Mishreki emphasizes.
“Previously, this meant at best a test and product recommendation on a website. At our own risk, we literally prepare the material and tear up the green piece of paper.” [traditional prescription] and making a custom-made bottle and laser engraving the prescription bottle each time. “We are always challenging ourselves on how we can make this a much better customer experience.”
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Recognized as one of the UK’s fastest-growing consumer health brands, Mishreki has moved from CEO to chairman and continues as a major shareholder of Skin + Me. He has since turned his attention to another venture, Life Supplies, which launched a refillable oral care brand a few years ago and quickly generated millions of pounds in revenue.
“You either continue entrepreneurship and wait for many more years for things to go wrong, or you hang up your boots. I chose the former,” he says.
Leadership
Everything depends on the bar you set on day zero. It’s crucial to get these early hires right and delay the launch of your business to hire these people correctly.
We’ve now set the bar for expectations and personalization when it comes to comparing the lack of interaction you get from the pharmacy with what you get through the NHS, because they just don’t have the capacity.
Startup mentality
To build a startup, you have to work seven days a week, and that’s what I did. There’s a lot to be done. If you work 9-5 five days a week, you’ll likely run out of money or let a competitor beat you.
What keeps you awake at night?
Former Intel CEO Andy Grove wrote Only the Paranoid Survive, about a company that thought it would never lose the top spot. But at one point he was threatened and later turned the whole business around. The message is always paranoid and I’m always thinking about what we can do to be even better to improve the customer experience.
artificial intelligence threat
What people really value is talking to a human being. We’re using AI to make work more efficient, but the idea of AI replacing the things people truly value seems far-fetched.
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