The Decision to Bootstrap

Kaylee Astle is the Founder and CEO of Blanka.

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Blanka helps anyone start a makeup or skincare line in under 5 minutes. Choose from hundreds of high-quality cruelty-free beauty and skincare products to personalize and dropship online. With zero minimum order quantity, they also offer dropshipping services so you can focus on marketing and sales. In their app, you can choose products, order samples, and use their logo visualizer to see your brand come to life in one click.

Takeaways

Her background and learnings at Deloitte, SAP, MobSquad and Spocket.

Nuances to building for the Shopify App Store.

Platform businesses have the potential to empower and enable others to start their own businesses.

Why they wanted to be more vertically integrated with Blanka.

The beauty industry is evolving, with emerging brands and influencer-led brands gaining traction.

Going from bootstrapped to raising capital, why the shift in strategy.

Building a strong network of founder friends can provide support, guidance, and opportunities for collaboration.

Chapters

00:00 Background and Career Arc

03:10 Starting an E-commerce Brand During COVID

04:38 Identifying a Problem and Starting Blanka

06:02 Building on the Shopify App Store

07:13 Building a Platform Business

08:51 Choosing the Beauty Industry and Vertical Integration

09:22 Customer Experience and Target Audience

10:25 The Future of Creator and Influencer Brands

11:27 Marketing and Branding Strategy

18:48 Bootstrapping and Raising Capital

21:43 The Fundraising Process

24:48 Finding Co-founders

27:57 The Role of Operations

29:53 Building a Founder Network

32:01 Deploying Capital After Fundraising

34:11 The Blanka User Experience

35:59 Favorite Book and Excitement for the New Year

37:33 Dealing with Hard Times

38:19 Closing Remarks

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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fasken's Emerging Tech and Venture Capital⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ practice is comprised of 80+ dedicated legal professionals across the Canadian market. We're deeply involved in the startup ecosystem and have worked closely with founders from startup to scale-up to exit. Our team is a leading Canadian law firm for VC financings and tech M&A and act for many of the best-in-class startup and scale-up innovation-based companies and entrepreneurs in Canada.

Given this experience we understand market trends and can assist in guiding your company forward as you scale – we take a holistic and strategic approach to helping our clients achieve their goals and provide the full suite of services including corporate, corporate finance, M&A, commercial, IP, data and compliance, employment, tax and beyond. We are excited to help the next generation of unicorns!