When you have a pain in your side, would you rather take an ibuprofen and hope for the best, or make a visit to your doctor who can pinpoint the problem and provide effective treatment?
Clearly, when it comes to health, getting individualized treatments based on your specific needs, concerns, and background is best.
Yet that’s not always how we go about caring for our skin. Despite being our largest organ, the skin is often neglected, slathered in one-size-fits-all face masks or moisturizers that only lead to irritation, blemishes, and dull skin.
Don’t you want something a little more, well, proven?
Ming Zhao, co-founder of PROVEN, certainly did. By setting out to solve her own skincare concerns following a stressful job and lackluster (but spendy) skincare products, she and her friend and co-founder Dr. Amy Yuan have completely changed the skincare game.
How it all began
We’ve all been there: long, stressful days at work or a restless night with a newborn baby. One day, you look in the mirror and you find your skin looks dull. The bags under the eyes appear deeper from a fitful night of sleep. New blemishes pop up after moving to a new state.
Your skin looks glowy and full of life while pregnant, but it starts to break out or dark spots pop up after giving birth. 😭
Ming experienced many of these skin issues firsthand. After attending Emory University, she worked multiple difficult finance jobs at major companies like Boston Consulting Group and Bain Capital, then went to Harvard Business School for her MBA. She continued grueling hours working in finance afterward.
But one day, she woke up and saw herself in the mirror and was shocked by how her skin looked. The stress was clearly doing a number on her. So she did what many of us have done: bought all types of luxury skincare products in hopes of healing her skin. Yet all the time and money spent on these products led nowhere.
Finding targeted skincare solutions ✅
Finally, Ming decided to work with a specialist to find out how to bring life back into her skin. She was fascinated by how the specialist addressed factors like her environment or her daily habits to determine which products would actually work, rather than solely considering skin concerns at the surface level.
Ming wondered: what if skincare solutions like this, which considered more than just the surface issue, were more accessible?
Establishing the Skin Genome Project
Ming set out to build a massive database on skincare and beauty.
Alongside Dr. Amy Yuan, a computational physicist from Stanford University — who also had felt let down by the beauty industry in trying to find solutions for her skincare concerns — Ming used this information to determine how different skincare ingredients would react with different people, based on everything from their genes to their surroundings.
Ming and Amy established a database of over 20,238 skincare ingredients in what they called the Skin Genome Project 🧬 and then partnered with the Head of Dermatology at Stanford University to create accessible, personalized skincare products for everyone. Today, PROVEN Skincare is valued at $20 million, and gained strong following after making an appearance on Shark Tank in 2022.
Individualized, science-backed skincare
Ultimately, this research and development led to the Skin Genome Quiz, which collects 47 data points from each user. That information is then used to formulate PROVEN products with ingredients that are actually proven by science to work for your skin.
Users can answer questions they may have never thought about before when it comes to buying skincare, like how their skin feels right when they wake up or after showering, how much water they drink each day, their stress levels, or how frequently they travel.
The PROVEN algorithm transforms these questions into a personalized and targeted, 3-step routine ($129.99).
The products are adaptive, too, meaning whether you move across the country, enter parenthood, change jobs, or experience any changes, the skincare products can be reformulated to ensure optimal skin health.
It just doesn’t get more advanced or effective than that. When you’re desperate for a skin refresh, it’s time to trust the data and science behind PROVEN.
