A week ago, Jane Lauder, the former president of Clinique who spent three decades at Estée Lauder, the company founded by her grandmother, announced she’s starting TAW Ventures, a firm investing in pet health, wellness and longevity startups that’s named for her Goldendoodle Thaddeus Alistair Warsh. Lauder’s announcement follows Vasiliki Petrou, former CEO of Unilever’s prestige division, forming Veralis Group, an advisory and investment firm aiming to take significant stakes in founder-led brands.

On LinkedIn, Kristin Odegaard, former head of U.S. merchandising strategy and business development at Sephora, revealed she established Kajro Ventures, an early-stage fund focused on differentiated and innovative consumer brands, last year. Debra Perelman, former CEO of Revlon, joined InviNext Growth Partners as managing partner in March.

In 2021, Moj Mahdara, ex-CEO of Beautycon Media, founded Kinship Ventures with Gwyneth Paltrow, and Michel Brousset, former president of L’Oréal USA, opened Waldencast Ventures in 2019 to back emerging beauty and wellness companies before the broader Waldencast platform, owner of Milk Makeup and Obagi, launched in 2022.

Plenty of beauty brand founders have jumped to the other side of the pitch, too, often after brand exits. Nancy Twine, founder of Briogeo; Carisa Janes, founder of Hourglass; Nikki Eslami, co-founder of Bellami; Laura Lisowski Cox, co-founder of Oars + Alps; Ju Rhyu, co-founder of Hero Cosmetics; Huda Kattan, co-founder of Huda Beauty; Jaime Schmidt, founder of Schmidt’s; and Monique Rodriguez, co-founder of Mielle Organics, who’s planning to launch a venture fund, are among them.

While operationally talented, unlike beauty entrepreneurs, many beauty executives haven’t built brands from the ground up, at least not without substantial corporate support. And a bit like actors and influencers trying to become beauty brand founders, the skills that helped executives rise at beauty and retail corporations don’t necessarily guarantee success as investors. Still, as seasoned beauty executives look to their next chapters, transitions to the investor class will undoubtedly accelerate.

To explore the beauty C-suite-to-VC phenomenon, for the latest edition of our ongoing series posing questions relevant to the beauty industry, we asked seven beauty investors and entrepreneurs the following: What should beauty executives know about what it takes to get a fund off the ground? How do you view the role of investor as distinct from the role of executive? What are your predictions about the future of the executive- and entrepreneur-to-investor pipeline?