Launch HN: Lion Pose (YC W21) – Safe and effective skin care for people of color
Hi my name is Nisha, and Madhu and I are cofounders of Lion Pose (https://lionpose.com/). We make clinical skincare products for people of color, without toxic bleach.

When she was 10 years old, Madhu’s family took her to get her whole body bleached, because she was told it would make her skin more beautiful. She didn’t know that bleaching products contain toxic or potentially dangerous ingredients like mercury, steroids, and hydroquinone (which has possible links to cancer and kidney failure). Madhu is not alone in her experience—some reports estimate that nearly 50% of people of color have used bleaching products on their skin.

The horrors of bleach aside, skin of color has been notoriously left out of both medical training and new product development. Most skin images in medical textbooks are of white skin, dermatology residents are not trained to diagnose on darker skin tones, and skin of color is often omitted from clinical trials and studies. But skincare for people of color is a $9B market in the US, so this imbalance represents a big opportunity,

At Lion Pose, we are on a mission to end skin bleaching and create safe and effective solutions for brown skin issues. Our main product, Unspotted 4X, fights hyperpigmentation— dark spots, melasma, discoloration, or scars—which is the #2 skin issue for people of color, after acne. We scoured NIH studies to find the best active ingredients for darker skin tones. Our proprietary blend of acids (glycolic, lactic, tranexamic, and azelaic) exfoliate and resurface the skin, with antioxidants to promote healthy new growth.

We’re working with a medical board of Harvard-educated dermatologists to make sure we get this right. Most of them have black or brown skin themselves, so they understand the consumer’s point of view first-hand.

Our second product is a mineral SPF 30 sunscreen made with zinc oxide. Similar to bleach, traditional SPF ingredients like oxybenzone have been linked to cancer. Zinc-based sunscreens don’t have this problem. However, they tend to have a thick white consistency, which is particularly difficult to blend on darker skin tones—you may have noticed this if you’ve ever applied them to yourself, and then tried to rub away the highly visible traces they leave! We’ve created a smooth absorbable formula, tinted with safe iron oxides, allowing blendability on dark skin.

Clinical skincare is the fastest growing category at beauty retailers like Sephora. Our products will be available in all Sephora stores in the US and Canada upon launch (Sephora projects $3M in sales in the first year), which we hope will allow us to grow without having to rely on expensive Facebook ads. Retail sales still dominate in this market.

Many people don’t realize that there is little to no regulation of skincare products in the US. This has caused a market saturated with products that are useless and/or ineffective, or even harsh and damaging. Most consumers aren’t going to research specific ingredients to find products that really work for their skin tone. Therefore, truly clinical skincare products feel unattainable or inaccessible—most consumers believe you must be wealthy and have access to top dermatologists to have healthy "glowing" skin. We hope to contribute to changing this!

We are about to kick off our next round of consumer testing. If you or someone you know are interested in trying our products, we’d love to hear from you. Write us at founders@lionpose.com and we’ll send you physical samples.

We’ll be around in the thread and look forward to your comments!