Grit and Hustle Over Glitz and Glamour with Kate Morris, Founder of Adore Beauty [S1.E5]

This is the quintessential heroic founding tale. In 2001, with
online retail in its infancy, Kate with just $12,000 of borrowed
money in her back pocket, set out with a mission of empowering
women to make better beauty decisions. At this point, everything
was against her. No experience, no money, no brands wanting to
join her platform. Fast forward 20 years and Adore Beauty will
this year have over $100 million in revenue, 14,000 products
across 200 of the world’s biggest beauty brands and over 160
employees. That is not to say that it was always smooth sailing.
As you’ll hear, this story is one of pure resilience, belief,
grit and hustle. Its a real founder’s story warts and all. Not
much glitz, not much glamour. Until perhaps recently, 19 years
after starting, Kate and her business partner finally realised
some kind of financial rewards, selling 60% of the business to a
private equity fund.


Kate is incredibly passionate about empowering more female
founders and makes some pertinent points in regard to how and why
the investment community needs to lift its game in supporting
them. 


Above all else, this interview reminds us all,  that in the
world of entrepreneurship, anything is possible.


Sound quality disclaimer: This episode was recorded on the road
and the sound quality is perhaps not up to the standard that we
had hoped for. The good news - there are so many nuggets of gold,
it is worth putting up with.