The $90M pimple patch business

Hey, it’s Guy & Farzan.

Spent Sunday on a friend's boat on Sydney Harbour. Twenty of us. No hiding from the sun so I'm a bit cooked. Such a joy parking up at little beaches, swimming and splashing around. Heavy on the aloe vera to cool off. Let's dive into this week's stories.

Reading time: 9 mins

In the mail today. 3 founder stories, 1 founder fomo story, 1 tweet

 Founder story 1 

How Starface turned pimple patches into a $90M business.

"People hide their acne. We turned it into a fashion statement."

Meet Julie Schott, who transformed pimple patches into a $90M beauty phenomenon.

Here's how Starface became Gen Z's favourite acne brand:
- Sold over 1 billion Hydro-Stars
- Available in 20+ retail partners
- Profitable since 2023
- On track for $90M revenue in 2024

But the fascinating part isn't the numbers, it's the contrarian approach:

On brand identity:
"Big Yellow came from outer space and doesn't understand why Earth people are so hard on those with acne." They created a mascot that made acne treatment fun instead of shameful.

On market positioning:
- Traditional brands: "Hide your acne"
- Starface: "Wear it as a spot of pride"
- Result: Turned a medical product into a fashion statement

On growth strategy:
- Started D2C only in 2019
- Expanded to Target during the pandemic
- Now in Walmart, CVS, and 20+ retailers

Contrarian insights:
Beauty industry myth: "Acne products should be clinical and serious" - Starface proved the opposite with playful, star-shaped patches.

Target audience:
While competitors chase all age groups, Starface focused entirely on Gen Z and Gen Alpha (60% of customers).

Distribution strategy:
"We saw people wearing Starface proudly in public - that's when we knew we had something special"

The future?
- Expanding into younger skincare demographics
- Launching clear patches for professional settings
- Potential acquisition talks (industry experts predict)
- International expansion beyond US, Canada, and UK

Why this matters:
The beauty industry is shifting from shame-based marketing to self-expression and authenticity. Starface proved you can build a $90M business by making "flaws" fun.

Founder story 2

How Chris Koerner profits $2M/year from 17 revenue streams.

Chris Koerner runs 17 revenue streams. He's targeting $3M in net income. Here's how he thinks:

Start Small, Think Big:
- Began with iPhone repair shops
- Found opportunity in broken screens
- Hit $2.1M revenue in year one

His Rule: "Constraints equal creativity"
- Never raises money
- Starts every business lean
- Gets creative with resources

Recent Win: Tree Service Company
- Owns zero chainsaws
- Uses subcontractors
- Profits on every job

Top Opportunities Now:
- Tech-enabled home services
- Google Business Profile optimization

His Playbook:
- Start local
- Build a database
- Find backdoor entries
- Look where others don't

Secret Sauce: "Get in the game first. Optimize later."

Founder story 3

See how Alex scaled Aware to 6-Figure ARR with smart LinkedIn growth tools.

Alex Boyd started Aware in 2020 with a simple concept - an alerts tool that would notify users when their ideal customer profile (ICP) engaged with specific lists of people.

However, the initial version wasn't very functional, so they rebuilt it from scratch as a workflow tool focused on LinkedIn engagement and analytics.

Background and Journey:
- Originally driven by an interest in wealth-building and freedom
- Previously founded RevenueZen (an agency focused on content marketing and B2B SEO) which he successfully sold to Onfolio
- Brings a unique combination of finance-forward mindset with sales and marketing expertise

Key Milestones with Aware:
- Achieved 6-figure ARR
- Built to 27,261 LinkedIn followers
- Reaches 1,500 monthly website visitors
- Maintains 440 newsletter subscribers
- Bootstrapped the entire business

Product Evolution:

1. Started as an alerts tool in 2020

2. Pivoted to become a functional workflow tool

3. Added key features like:
   - Custom engagement feeds
   - Premium profile analytics
   - Post scheduling
   - Top engagers feature
   - CRM integrations

Distribution Strategy:

Primary focus on LinkedIn organic growth through:
- Personal content creation
- Influencer/affiliate partnerships
- Podcast appearances

Recently expanding into SEO after acquiring Inlytics.io

Future Plans:
- Enhancing post-scheduling features
- Developing influencer discovery tools
- Creating AI-driven post repurposing capabilities
- Making LinkedIn growth more habit-forming and fun while maintaining ethical practices

The core insight behind Aware is that while LinkedIn can be extremely effective for business growth, the manual work is tedious. Alex built Aware to make the process more targeted, efficient, and enjoyable while staying focused on activities that actually drive revenue growth.

Founder fomo story

Most founders get FOMO about turning down customers.

Tim focused on just record labels when building Fanbytes.

8-figure exit at age 25.

Watching Simon Squibb and Timothy Armoo talk about building sellable businesses, their discussion on market focus hit hard.

Here's what stood out:

Most founders try to:
- Serve everyone possible
- Chase any potential client
- Expand market quickly
- Avoid saying no to money

Tim did the opposite:

Started with record labels only. Why?
- When Warner loved them, Sony had to pay attention
- The problems were identical across labels
- Everyone knew everyone else
- Success with one meant instant credibility with all

But here's the really counterintuitive part:
"Most people worry about giving away too much or charging too little at the start. We intentionally lost money on our first deals just to get the right case studies."

The strategy was simple:
1. Pick one tight market
2. Solve their problems extremely well
3. Let them talk to each other
4. Watch the snowball effect

It's got me rethinking our approach at Testimonial Donut. Instead of chasing every business that needs reviews, what if we became known as "the testimonial platform that [specific industry] loves"?

Hot take: The fastest path to $10M isn't serving 1000 different customers. It's becoming irreplaceable to 100 of the right ones.

 A tweet we loved

That’s us for the week.

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See you in 170 hours.

Guy + Farzan
Founderoo