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. A debilitating period that damaged his confidence, he was nicknamed ‘pizza face’ for a year while undergoing NHS treatments. Then it came back in my 20s and led to another round of medication.
When it came to the entrepreneur who co-founded dermatology service Skin + Me in 2018, Mishreki “knew how badly people wanted to get rid of acne.” In four years, the British firm, which offers prescription skin treatment, has amassed revenues of almost £40m since launching in 2020.
“I became fascinated with the skincare industry, this £140bn industry with 55% customer dissatisfaction,” he says. “I knew what it was like to go through the acne journey and it’s not like you can talk to the dermatologist on a regular basis.”
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First we talk about the beginning of Mishreki’s career, which included two years of playing professional poker after completing his marketing management studies at Northumbria University in 2008.
After struggling with a few web-based startups, the co-founder of intelligence group Competitive Monitor led him to quit full-time poker to join the booming e-commerce sector.
An idea has been floated about websites that could index and package to customers, including John Lewis, which would use its intelligence 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 being an early mover, the company didn’t double down on being the first venture or raising private capital. “We ended up competing with bedroom operators in Russia and getting undercut,” he admits.
After successfully exiting in 2018, Mishreki worked with co-founder Philip Wilkinson to set up a personalized skincare recommendation service called Mr & Mrs Oliver, primarily to test what consumers valued and wanted.
Mishreki ventured to Space NK and Debenhams, where he chatted with skincare advisors and asked if they wanted to earn extra money working on his startup.
Consumers were sent a treatment box for their skin goals, and the founders learned that people placed a high value on having credible specialists review consultations and make recommendations.
Mishreki admits the business model was “flawed”. By delivering third-party skin care products, consumers would then find cheaper brands elsewhere. But the goal of the founders to build a personalized regime was born, which proved to be a complex operation to implement.
The company only uses real members of the Skin + Me community in its marketing.
Skin + Me had to build a regulatory approved pharmacy, create the personalization technology for prescriptions and create a brand “people love and trust”. Meanwhile, the founders began looking for qualified consultants, sending over 200 handwritten letters to a third of UK dermatologists.
Mishreki also has a unique approach to what he calls “rejection training” as he sought to acquire investments.
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“Rejection is a good thing when it comes to being an entrepreneur,” he says. “The sooner you get a lot of rejections under your belt, the sooner you stop caring, and ironically, the more rejections you get, the less happens.”
After a grueling pursuit knocking on investors’ doors, the founders changed tack after initially seeking a £50,000 investment. They now sought to raise significant capital to build to scale from the ground up and soon acquired £8 million in seed investment.
“Everything goes wrong all the time. If I expect a no, it’s an opportunity to learn and get better. It was a bonus if I got a yes.”
“The dog doesn’t care about your feelings. It was very stressful building the company but I’m very proud. The people of the UK are much better off having access to this service.”
James Mishreki took Skin +Me to £37m in revenue in just over five years.
Skin + Me in London launched with 20 employees. There are now over 150 employees, with an office in Paddington and an operations team at a spacious factory in Acton. The deal was reportedly valued at £160 million.
“I feel like we’ve really raised the bar when it comes to personalization,” Mishreki points out.
“Before, at best, it means a test on a website and a product recommendation. In our care, we literally make the ingredient and tear the piece of green paper. [traditional prescription] and making a custom bottle and using a laser to etch the prescription bottle every time. We’ve always challenged ourselves on how to make it a significantly better customer experience.”
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Hailed as one of the UK’s fastest growing consumer health brands, Mishreki has moved from CEO to Chairman and continues as a major shareholder in Skin + Me. He has since turned his attention to another startup, Life Supplies, a refillable oral care brand a few years ago that quickly turned over millions of pounds in revenue.
“Either you stick with entrepreneurship and expect things to go wrong for many more years, or you can hang up your boots. I chose the former,” he says.
Lead
It all comes down to the bar you set on day zero. It’s so important to get those early key hires right and delay your business launch to get those people.
We have now set the standard for expectations and personalization when it comes to comparing what you get at a pharmacy and the lack of interaction you get through the NHS because they just don’t have the ability.
Startup mentality
You have to work seven days a week building a startup, and that’s what I did. There is so much to do. If you work 9-5 five days a week, you’ll probably run out of money or let a competitor beat you to the punch.
What keeps you up at night?
Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, wrote Only the Paranoid Survive, about a company that didn’t think it would ever lose the top spot. But he was threatened at one point and then he pivoted the whole business. The message is to always be paranoid and always think about what we can do to be even better to improve the customer experience.
The AI threat
What people really appreciate is talking to a human being. We’re using AI to make business more efficient, but the thought of it replacing what people really value seems like too much.
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