When I sat down with Sheena Zadeh on the Hot Smart Rich podcast, I wasn’t talking to someone chasing her first viral moment. I was talking to a founder who has quietly compounded her way to building one of the most powerful beauty brands of our time.
Kosas didn’t start as a billion-dollar unicorn pitch. It started as a calling. Four lipsticks. $70K of Sheena’s own savings. A vision for olive-skin tones that the beauty industry had ignored. And a belief that makeup could, and should, feel like skincare.
Ten years later, Kosas is a $150M+ clean beauty empire, as reported by Forbes, profitable, global, and sitting right behind brands like Rhode and Neutrogena in earned media impressions. What struck me most wasn’t the scale. It was how Sheena scaled without ever falling for the myth of the silver bullet.
The Beginning: Encoding the DNA Early
When Sheena talks about her first products, you realize how much intentionality she poured into them.
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