James Mishreki started out as a professional poker player before turning to health technology.
James Mishreki suffered from acne as a teenager growing up in Northumberland. A debilitating period that sapped his confidence, he was nicknamed ‘pizza face’ for a year as he underwent NHS treatments. Then it returned in his 20s and led to another round of medications.
When it came to the entrepreneur who co-founded the dermatology service Skin + Me in 2018, Mishreki “knew how much people wanted to get rid of acne”. In four years, the British firm, which provides skin treatment on prescription-grade subscriptions, has accumulated revenues of around £40m since launching in 2020.
“I’ve been fascinated by the skin care industry, this £140 billion industry with 55% customer dissatisfaction,” he says. “I knew what it was like to go through the acne journey and not that you can talk to your dermatologist on a regular basis.”
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We first talk through Mishreki’s early career, which included two years of playing poker professionally after completing his marketing management studies at Northumbria University in 2008.
After dabbling with a few web-based startups, the co-founder of retail intelligence outfit Competitive Monitor led him to quit poker full-time to join the booming e-commerce sector.
An idea has been forged on scraping websites that can index and package customers including John Lewis, which uses its information software to keep tabs on rivals’ prices.
The co-founder of Skin + Me has a unique philosophy on ‘rejection training’.
For a long period, Mishreki paid himself £500 a month, but as an early mover the company did not double down on being the first enterprise or raising private capital. “We ended up competing with bed operators in Russia and they lowered the price,” he admits.
After a successful launch in 2018, Mishreki worked with co-founder Philip Wilkinson in setting up a personalized skincare recommendation service called Mr & Mrs Oliver, primarily to test what consumers valued and wanted.
Mishreki ventured to Space NK and Debenhams where he would talk to skin care consultants and ask if they wanted to earn extra money working on his startup.
Consumers were sent a treatment box for their skin goals and the founders learned that people placed a high value on having credible specialists review consultations and make recommendations.
Mishreki admits that the business model was “flawed”. Shipping third-party leather products, consumers then find cheaper brands elsewhere. However, the goal of the founders to build a personalized regime was born, which proved a complex operation to set up.
The company only uses real members of the Skin + Me community in its marketing.
Skin + Me had to build a pharmacy approved by regulation, set up personalization technology for prescriptions and create a brand “people loved and trusted”. Meanwhile, the founders began looking for skilled consultants by sending over 200 handwritten letters to a third of UK dermatologists.
Mishreki also has a unique take on what he refers to as ‘rejection training’ as he sought to acquire investment.
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“Rejection is a good thing when it comes to being an entrepreneur,” he says. “The more rejections you have quickly under your belt the sooner you stop caring and ironically the more you have, the less it happens.”
After an exhaustive pursuit knocking on the doors of investors, the founders changed tack after originally seeking an investment of £50,000. They now sought to raise significant capital to build to scale from scratch and quickly secured an £8m seed investment.
“Everything goes wrong all the time. If I expect no, it’s an opportunity to learn and improve. It was a bonus if I got “yes”.
“The market doesn’t care about your feelings. Building the company was very stressful but I’m very proud. The UK population is much better off having access to this service.”
James Mishreki took Skin +Me to £37m revenue in just over five years.
London-based Skin + Me went to market with 20 employees. There are now over 150 employees, with an office in Paddington and an operations team in a spacious factory in Acton. The business was reported to be valued at £160m.
“I feel like we’ve materially raised expectations when it comes to personalization,” stresses Mishreki.
“Up front, at best this means a quiz on a website and a product recommendation. In our treatment we are literally making the ingredient and bringing the piece of green paper [traditional prescription] and make a custom made bottle and use a laser to cut the prescription bottle each time. We have always challenged ourselves on how to make it a dramatically better customer experience.”
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Hailed as one of the UK’s fastest growing consumer health brands, Mishreki has moved from CEO to chairman and continues as the main shareholder of Skin + Me. He has since turned his attention to another startup, Life Supplies, a refillable oral care brand a few years ago that quickly turned multi-million pound revenue.
“Either keep in entrepreneurship and expect that things will go wrong for many more years or you can hang up your boots. I chose the first,” he says.
Management
Everything goes down to the bar you set on day zero. It’s so important to get those key early hires right and to delay your business launch to get those people right.
We have now set the bar for expectations and personalization when it comes to comparing what you get in a pharmacy and the lack of interaction you get through the NHS, as they simply don’t have the capability.
Startup mentality
You have to work seven days a week building a startup and that’s what you did. There is much to be done. If you are working 9-5 five days a week, you will probably run out of money or let a competitor beat you.
What keeps you up at night?
Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, wrote Only the Paranoid Survive which is all about a company that didn’t think it would ever lose the first place. But he was under threat at one point and then turned the whole business around. The message is always be paranoid and I always think what we can do to be even better to improve the customer experience.
The threat of AI
What people really appreciate is talking to a human being. We use AI to make business more efficient but the thought of it replacing what people really value feels like a stretch too far.
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