Tyler Faux of Supergreat on Community Pivots, Authentic Beauty Discovery, and Building Resilient Software

As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tyler Faux.

Tyler Faux is the co-founder and CEO of Supergreat, a video-first beauty community founded in 2018. He built and sold his first piece of software at 13 years old; studied computer science at Harvard; worked on the mobile team at Tumblr while still in college; and led product teams for Tictail, a Swedish e-commerce marketplace acquired by Shopify. Supergreat is based in NYC and backed by top investors including Benchmark, Thrive Capital, and angels including founders and executives of Rent the Runway, Glossier, Thrive Market, and Tumblr.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

I grew up in New York City and have been creating software since I was 13. I was lucky to land an internship at Tumblr when I was in college at Harvard, working on their app for the recently-released iPhone and iPad, and got hooked on making software that creates community and connects people over shared passions. My co-founder and I met at Tictail, a Swedish e-commerce platform that was acquired by Shopify, and we ended up starting Supergreat in 2018.

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

Supergreat is a disruptive new beauty community bringing authenticity to the industry, allowing the actual consumers of these products to promote the products they use and speak to their personal experiences with self-care. Our video platform makes it fun for beauty enthusiasts to discuss and create videos, share their beauty routines, and discover new products from people they relate to.

As the beauty industry continues to grow with more brands and products to choose from than ever before, Supergreat stands in stark contrast to existing text-and-star reviews where it’s hard to know who is behind the keyboard, and with opaque dollars sponsoring posts on social media, it’s more difficult than ever to find product information you can trust.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When we were getting started with Supergreat, we also knew that we wanted to celebrate our best creators with rewards they could redeem for making helpful and engaging videos, but we weren’t sure exactly what to offer. Our first reward was that we would order a pizza to you! But Supergreat users love discovering new beauty brands and trying products, so we ended up offering some of the community’s favorites that we would go out and buy from Sephora and Ulta and ship to them; we ended up having so many creators participate that we needed to have the whole team leave our office and go to every Sephora and Ulta in downtown Manhattan to fulfill the requests. Now we work directly with brands!

We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?

At Supergreat I am lucky to be surrounded by an incredible team and brilliant advisors and investors who have enabled us to exist and thrive. Personally, my family is in the beauty industry and I have taken great inspiration from them — my grandfather Eli was a patent-holding product engineer at Revlon during the latter part of his career, and my mom Dorothy was the beauty editor at Vogue in the late 80s.

In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?

Disruption is really just change; and like any change, it can be for better or worse. With Supergreat, we think about our three audiences — brands, creators, and shoppers — and how we can change their experiences to add value in their lives. In many cases, disruption can detract from value, but we are always seeking to create it.

Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.

Listen to your users — the inspiration for Supergreat came from our community. We had originally created a product that allowed users to tell their personal stories and seek advice, and found that the makeup and skincare conversations were the most engaged. We decided to pivot towards our community, and dive deeper into their stories around beauty and personal care.

People are everything — I’m lucky to get to work daily with people who inspire me. It’s easy to find fulfillment in your work when you are surrounded by people you love.

Never give up — if you have surrounded yourself with great people and are working on solving an important problem, keep staying the course; it may not always feel like it, but persevering when others won’t unlocks success.

Lead generation is one of the most important aspects of any business. Can you share some of the strategies you use to generate good, qualified leads?

For us, our leads have come through organic virality in the community. We are lucky to have an incredible community that love talking about Supergreat. Our creators share their videos thousands of times a week, to their close friends on text and also across social media and their personal sites.

We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?

With brick-and-mortar retail stores being closed in the past few months due to COVID-19, we’ve found a lot more people coming to Supergreat to better understand products and brands by watching videos from our mega-talented creators; minutes watched has more than tripled since March. We have a lot of ideas on how to further enrich the interactions and relationships between users, brands, and products on Supergreat, and make shopping a more social and enriching experience.

Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?

I love stories about small groups of people that create tremendous impact in short periods of time; I recently read “Skunk Works” about Lockheed Martin’s small R&D unit that created some of the most significant advancements in aircraft design and technology that demonstrates what’s capable when a team can envision and create the future.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it

The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists

Whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable

Than my own meandering experience.” — Mary Schmich

I’ve heard this from everyone I trust in beauty and my personal life — wear sunscreen!

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I am an advocate of introducing students at a young age to computer science in addition to studio arts, music, and foreign language; coding is a powerful creative outlet that lets you bring ideas into existence and bring people together in a way that feels like magic, and while it’s certainly not for everyone, I want to help expose more children and young adults to the field earlier in life.

How can our readers follow you online?

You can follow Supergreat @supergreatapp on Instagram and Twitter; and I am @tbfaux on Twitter.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!