Liz Whitman, Exponent Beauty

Founder and CEO, Exponent Beauty

Despite efficacy claims, today’s skincare contains pre-mixed ingredients that degrade within weeks when exposed to light and air. Inspired by estheticians who optimize skincare by mixing it immediately before treatment, serial entrepreneur Liz Whitman founded and patented Exponent Beauty: the first skincare system that protects active ingredients for fresh doses of skincare at peak potency.

As we celebrate Wellness Month this August at CANOPY—and Exponent Beauty ramps up to launch at Nordstrom in September—Liz explains how powdering vitamin C avoids “hot dog water” odors and how to play nice with powerhouse brands while debunking their promises.

What is Exponent Beauty’s key innovation? 

Antioxidants are fabulous anti-aging ingredients because they fight free radicals, but they’re fragile and degrade once exposed to air and light. My solution: to offer antioxidants in a powder format. 

Exponent Beauty’s first product line, our consumer line of power serums, is patented to seamlessly dose clinical-grade antioxidant powders—like Vitamin C, Retinol, and CoQ10—with Hyaluronic Acid. They’re clinically tested to visibly reduce fine lines, wrinkles, and discoloration in one to two weeks, and are quick and easy to use: stamp, pump, mix in the palm of your hand, and apply. 

We’re doing R&D on a host of other fabulous ingredients, including peptides, that are stable and don’t need to be powderized but have a large molecular weight and sit on the surface of the skin. We have the exclusive license from a pharma company for transdermal delivery—a technology to push these large weights into the skin for better efficacy.

You’re a beauty industry insider, a former corporate executive, and a serial entrepreneur. What motivated you to found a maverick skincare brand?

My “aha” moment was during my last role as President of The Red Door by Elizabeth Arden, the largest national beauty salon-inspired retailer. I spent a lot of time with really talented estheticians who told me how active ingredients degrade quickly, which stuck with me. Fast forward a couple of years: I moved to San Francisco in 2019 after my husband took a job out here, and I had some time to figure out what I wanted to do next. 

I wasn’t trying to start a skincare brand. As far as I was concerned, the world didn’t need another skincare brand. But I couldn’t get the problem of how ingredients lose their potency so quickly out of my head. 

How did you learn more about the scope of the problem?

The headline is: products lose almost half their potency in six weeks. I bought the top-selling clinical skin care products on the market—products you’ve absolutely heard of and likely used. I sent them to a lab to test the concentration of the active ingredients on days 1 through 60.

Vitamin C serums get darker over time or start to develop an odor as they oxidize—it’s affectionately called hot-dog-water smell. The industry knows this is a problem. Brands talk about airless pumps and amber jars, and stabilizing pure L-ascorbic acid by compounding it with vitamin E or ferulic acid. All of those tricks and tactics will slow that rate of degradation, but not eradicate it—which I proved through this third-party research.

Was this the tipping point for you to found Exponent Beauty? 

Not exactly… It was a four-step process. This is my third time as a founder. Starting a company is up and down and all around stressful. After submitting those products to the lab, I maintained that I didn’t want to start a new business. I was looking at CEO roles at existing brands—and then the results came back. The findings were a much larger order of magnitude than I expected, which suggested a larger opportunity. I decided to dip my toe in and see how this could be approached without committing to starting again. That was step one.

Each time I looked at the lab reports, I hoped we’d find either a non-issue or problems with no solution. Instead, we figured out that powderizing compounds keeps them totally inert. From there, you could squint and start to see how to make this an acceptable consumer experience. That was step two.

The third step was realizing: maybe I could do this, but would anyone like it? I took our formula prototypes to consumer focus groups. It turns out that once you tell people why we’re doing it, they think the idea and the product are great. 

Step four was validating the packaging. I didn’t want the solution to be a mortar and pestle in your bathroom, powder going everywhere—nobody’s going to go for that. We worked with industrial designers and engineers to develop a prototype that felt broadly acceptable towards the end of 2020, and that was my “OK, I guess we’re doing this…” moment.

Tell us about Exponent Beauty’s product lines and where they’re offered.

All of our products are available on our website. We landed on a consumer line of power serums, rather than a moisturizer, as this is the first layer of products applied on clean skin and penetrates the deepest, where you want your most active ingredients.  

Exponent Beauty was retailer Credo Beauty’s largest skincare brand launch in 2024; Exponent Beauty’s Vitamin C serum is Credo’s fourth-best-selling serum overall. We’re launching our power serums at Nordstrom next month and at Dermstore in 2026.

We’ve offered our Professional line for spas and dermatologist offices since 2022. The Pro System is designed to build a routine and has a beautiful, counter-worthy design that sits nicely on the back bar or shelf. You can use multiple power tops with the same white fluted base, and mix products with a beautiful applicator in a bowl to build that routine so it mirrors the ritualistic feel of visiting an aesthetician for a treatment. 

We have, what I would call, advanced skincare users who love the Pro System, and I often hear from them that it’s replacing three SkinCeuticals products in their routine, but the average skin enthusiast is going to gravitate towards the power serums.

Are there any products that Exponent Beauty will never pursue?

What you will never see from Exponent is a toner, because I don’t believe in toner. The functional benefit of a good toner would be balancing your pH after using more irritating products, but these days, most cleansers are fairly gentle. There’s no reason to assume you have to counteract a pH imbalance at that stage.

Exponent Beauty’s packaging understandably looks different from other beauty products. What sustainability changes did you factor in, and how did the marketplace respond?

Our products come in refillable glass jars with aluminum caps, the only infinitely recyclable materials. We’re certified as a B Corp for our efforts in sustainability, which is really important to me. Recently, we received a nomination for Best Packaging in the 2025 Beacon Awards by Beauty Independent. 

We won the Best of Sustainability Award in the 2023 Dieline Awards, a global package design competition that celebrates the most creative, innovative, sustainable, and impactful packaging designs. (Coca-Cola came third in another category, for context.). Our Pro System also won Beauty Matter’s NEXT Award for Best Sustainable Packaging Design (Brands) the same year.

Faced with myriad categories and layers of skincare products, honing an effective routine can be overwhelming and expensive. What products should consumers look for, and what should they avoid? 

At the most basic level, it’s worth investing in a good active serum. Exponent Beauty provides for that, of course, ensuring you benefit from the most effective ingredients at the most effective level. You need a basic cleanser and a good, basic moisturizer. Moisturizer is designed to lock in the moisture that is already present in the skin, so you don’t necessarily need to spend vast amounts of money on one. Everyone should wear SPF all day, even if they’re indoors—you’ll still be near windows. I happen to love EltaMD as an SPF brand, which is excellent and not too expensive. I also like La Roche Posay, which is also widely available.

What discoveries or developments in beauty are you most excited about?

In theory, if you can harness an exosome that tells collagen to repair itself, that would be fascinating. Exosomes and their potential role in skin care have become buzzy for curious consumers, although it’s too early to understand exactly how beneficial these might be. We know how exosomes work in medical products and procedures, and several impressive companies are exploring how to apply exosomes within skincare. We know exosomes communicate between the cells, but we’re not sure exactly what they’re saying to each other, so we don’t know how to tailor them to a product. 

Exponent is the skincare brand that innovates on tried and true ingredients, not the newest nut from the rainforest, which may or may not do anything for you. I’m curious about these types of questions and science unveiling itself in real time, rather than the newest overhyped thing.

Other than challenging standard product formats and educating consumers, are you noticing other obstacles or opportunities?

Beauty is famously the ugly stepchild of the FDA. Basically, if you’re producing consumer products for beauty, rather than food or drugs, it’s a buyer-beware environment in the US. Guidelines focus on ensuring proper labeling, for example, delivering certain fill weights, consistent with other product categories. 

For Exponent Beauty, what has been interesting is telling the story while playing nice with all of the other skincare brands that are out there. Most brands say that they discovered something new and additive to the industry. Contrarily, we’re saying that their serum dropper bottle is not delivering what they say it does. 

Can you share how you’ve benchmarked early success as a new brand in this vast market?

In industry terms, a good review of a product is “I like the way it smells” or “It felt great when I put it on my skin.” People who use Exponent products see visible changes in their skin in one to two weeks. We’ve had feedback from customers who say their stubborn sunspots have faded within a very short period of time, which is incredible. Getting to a place in my career where I can make a product that I know for sure works is such a pleasure and a privilege. It’s a ton of work, but I feel very, very lucky. 

Is there anything you think the beauty industry should be doing more of, or brand-driven changes you’d like to see? 

Two things. My biggest pet peeve is clinical testing of products. There’s clinical testing with measured instrumentation, and there’s consumer perception testing, which accounts for the vast majority of claims made in the market. Brands ask consumers to use their products and fill out a questionnaire. Then the brand reports that “X percent of subjects agreed that fine lines and wrinkles look diminished,” versus using a machine to take different subdermal-level photos of their broken collagenous fibers. 

I wish people knew there’s a difference between “100% of subjects agreed that their skin looks great” and “100% of subjects had a decrease in fine lines and wrinkles.” We did a study on 500 skincare products, and less than 20% had performed any clinical testing at all, yet were claiming some sort of benefit. I would like the industry to clarify the difference between clinical testing and consumer perception—it’s confusing for most consumers, and it drives me nuts.

Two: packaging in the industry. Some brands are trying, but it’s a bit like turning the Titanic around. I won’t point out specific companies, but some have goals to reach 30% Post-Consumer Recycled (PCR) by 2035, which is nowhere near ambitious enough.

Is there anything consumers can do to encourage brands to choose more sustainable packaging?

I’m trying to spread the word about Pact Collective, a non-profit that recycles empty beauty packaging that can’t be locally recycled or composted. Consumers aren’t voting with their dollars on this, but I think that’s going to change over time—B Corp certification would become more top-of-mind if the larger companies got on board. 

In addition to building your business and product line, are you working towards any future goals?

I want to lead the conversation on clinical testing. I want to help give people the tools and education they need to make sense of the beauty industry, even if they don’t choose Exponent products—this is where Exponent started, after all. 

From the age of 35 onwards—I’m 41 now—skincare was always a focus of conversation whenever I went to dinner or spent time with friends. After working in the industry for close to 20 years, it became very apparent that the onus is on the consumer to act like an investigative journalist. There are a million different products, claims, ingredients, fads, and trends, and there’s so much misleading information out there. 

We’ve created a new standard, the Exponent Standard, which tells consumers whether a product contains an ingredient that we know for sure is beneficial, at a meaningful concentration, and offers proven, clinical results. You can find a list of recommended products that meet the Exponent standard on our website.

How does your Membership at CANOPY Jackson Square support you in doing your best work?

Exponent’s team is fully remote, so it’s important to me to have a workplace that has a community feel. Brian, the barista, makes great coffee. The staff is phenomenal, and getting to know Raden, our Senior Community Manager, has been incredible. I walk in and somebody’s excited to see me and genuinely wishes me a good day. Compared to other shared offices, CANOPY feels more homey.  CANOPY has good vibes. 

What’s the best piece of advice you can give to an aspiring entrepreneur?

Make sure that your idea is a painkiller and not a vitamin—that you’re solving a need and not a “want” or “nice to have”. 

From there, this is the most valuable piece of advice I can give: in a tough conversation, you are 30 seconds away from getting what you want. If you’re going into your boss’s office to ask for a raise, or giving bad news to an employee, it’s the first 30 seconds that you’re nervous about—anticipation is worse than actually just talking to people. If you’re good with people, and you respect them and you treat them well, you can kind of figure out everything together.

Correlated to that, I would say I’m not shy about asking for what I want, and in a kind way—it’s always an option for somebody to say no, and when people do say no, I treat the conversation as a starting point, and propose we see if there’s more to do. 

Is there an experience you believe everyone would benefit from?

I wish it were mandated that everyone has to work a retail job at some point, so people can respect how hard it is. I worked in Abercrombie and Fitch for a while, which was fun and eye-opening—you’re paid minimum wage to deal with some very interesting customers.

Is there an album or musician you would recommend to everyone?

I’m analog, so I listen to records. Recently, I went into Amoeba music store in the Haight, which had a junk bin that you could rummage through. I found an original Tracy Chapman 1988 record in there. I couldn’t believe it was $5! I’ve been listening to that a lot.

What else do you enjoy doing in your free time in the Bay Area?

As a native New Yorker who moved to San Francisco, I would say that nothing beats Marin Headlands. I’ve always been a runner, but I wasn’t a hiker until I got out here. Compared to the Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean is gobsmacking—its sheer magnitude and deep mystery never gets old.

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Follow Exponent Beauty on Instagram @exponent.beauty, on TikTok @exponent.beauty, and on LinkedIn.

Follow Liz Whitman on Linkedin and Instagram @liz_w_hitman.