This Award-Winning Skincare Line Is the Last Skincare Routine You’ll Ever Need

PROVEN Skincare is quickly proving to skin care insiders and novices alike that a new dawn has arrived for the skin care industry. Forbes named the AI-powered skin care company the “Tesla of Skincare”, and we can see why.

PROVEN Skincare is the first company to incorporate deep technology and personalization into a seamless customer experience and great results for skin care consumers. Founded by a computational physicist from Stanford along with a leading dermatologist, PROVEN Skincare is the first to built a scientific database in beauty, building its formulations on an empirical foundation. It is also the first to build a digital dermatological skin evaluation, enabling PROVEN to provide corresponding personalized skin care products for consumers. 

PROVEN’s technology considers a wide range of factors that could affect a customer’s skin, including the climate conditions, water hardness where they live, their lifestyle, and individual genetic factors. It then formulates a simple skin care routine consisting of face wash, moisturizer with SPF and night cream with ingredients known to meet the individual’s particular needs.

Founded by Harvard Business School graduate Ming Zhao and Stanford computational physicist Amy Yuan, PROVEN is built around their proprietary Skin Genome Project. This vast database contains information on more than 20,200 skincare ingredients, over 100,000 products and over 20 million cusumer testimonials, and it also includes data on regional environmental factors such as humidity levels, UV indexes and pollution levels. PROVEN received MIT’s 2018 Artificial Intelligence Award for the most comprehensive skincare database ever created.

PROVEN customers take the Skin Genome Quiz, a confidential three-minute assessment that feels like a consultation with a dermatologist. This helps PROVEN’s AI determine which ingredients to include in the personalized product formulations.

“Over time, as our customers use their PROVEN system and naturally share their experience with us, it becomes even tailored and accurate. We end up with a virtuous circle in which PROVEN keeps getting better and better, because it becomes more and more suited to them,” Zhao said.

It’s impressive to see skincare brands take this much effort to ensure that customers get the best treatment for their skin.

In an interview with Forbes, Zhao explained what inspired her to start this venture alongside Yuan.

“I tried every expensive skincare product I could find, and many promised miracles, but none seemed to do any good for my skin. It left me so frustrated, and I felt doubly betrayed by the skincare industry,” she said.

“It wasn’t until I went to a specialist who examined my skin, including its needs, my lifestyle and environment, before creating personalized products for me — and I was surprised because I really did see a difference in my skin. I wanted to bring that level of experience and results to everyone, at an approachable price!”

Last year, PROVEN gained the attention of Shark Tank’s producers and became the first skincare company to be featured on the show in 5 years. In an interview with People, Zhao shared how she managed to get her brand on one of the most high-profile shows in the U.S.

“We were first approached by one of the show’s producers who noticed us while we were in Y-Combinator [an top early-stage startup accelerator] for having a very innovative approach to skincare. But we were in the midst of developing products with our dermatologists, so the timing wasn’t right. I had a nice conversation with the producer but didn’t move forward.

“Fast forward a year, PROVEN had successfully served thousands of customers to rave reviews. We had completed formulations of our personalized skincare products, and we conducted clinical trials that confirmed their efficacy. So we thought, ‘This is the time to be on Shark Tank!’ When I reached back out to the producer who initially approached us, he was no longer there, so I decided to go to an open casting call and earn our way in.”

Another milestone reached by the company was being named as one of the top beauty innovations by Allure Magazine.

If starting a new business was not difficult enough already, Zhao did so whilst pregnant with her daughter. There was no shortage of people warning her against trying to combine entrepreneurship and motherhood, but Zhao calls her daughter her “secret weapon” in the tough battle that is building a business. “Even though some days feel bleak, or feel hopeless, or tedious, I always have my daughter’s smiling face and laughter at the end of the day, and that makes everything ok.”

PROVEN is a DTC brand and Zhao describes its customers as beauties with brains. “They are smart women and men who have tasted the frustration of generic skincare products and want something better. They’re achievers who have sought the best in every other area of their lives and want their skin to be taken care of in the most considerate way possible as well.”

Currently, PROVEN is one of the few beauty brands incorporating AI and has been dubbed the “Tesla of Skincare.”

What started as a personal mission for Zhao and Yuan has evolved into the world’s most personalized skincare company.

“The use of artificial intelligence in the beauty industry still has a long way to go, in both educating consumers about its efficacy and improving its performance. We have exciting plans to fine-tune our technology by creatively using other methods to acquire more curated and effective research to cater to individual skincare needs,” Zhao said.

“PROVEN took a huge, unprecedented first step towards a radical change, embracing a new era where technology and beauty coincide. We have the confidence that this technology will benefit both the individual and the beauty industry as a whole.”

PROVEN Skincare provides customers simple, effective, personalized products. The beauty industry has often failed to cater to the needs of particular groups or individuals. It’s about time a brand made personalized skincare available to everyone. 

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