Strong Finish

02 Nov 2022

Strong Finish

A timely, strategic partnership pays off

Re: Alicia Sontag (MBA 2001); Heela Tsuzuki (MBA 2001)

Topics: Entrepreneurship-Corporate Entrepreneurship Finance-Investment Relationships-Networks

Heela Yang and Alicia Sontag

Four years after its launch in 2015, the Brazilian-inspired beauty brand Sol de Janeiro was already profitable; its skin-tightening Bum Bum Cream had been Sephora’s top-selling skin care product for three years running. But when founder and CEO Heela Yang (MBA 2001) heard that classmate and former beauty industry executive Alicia Sontag (MBA 2001) was starting a growth equity fund focused on brands like hers, with an all-female leadership team, she was intrigued. “They knew the industry so well,” Yang told Inc magazine. In the two years after accepting an investment from Sontag’s firm, Prelude Growth Partners, Sol de Janeiro’s sales more than doubled. Yang credits Sontag’s investment—and well-timed advice to invest in talent acquisition and inventory, not office space—for that success, which culminated in her company’s sale to L’Occitane in December 2021.

Sontag, for her part, downplayed the divide between investor and entrepreneur. “We jumped off a cliff and launched our own firm,” she said. “At the end of the day, we are founders ourselves.”