For the past ten years, Gwyneth Paltrow has run a multi-million dollar business, and she’s clearly got a formula that works: find any existing product, get creative with the medical claims, then watch gullible rich ladies spend too much money on it. You’d think investors would be banging down her door to get in on the action. But according to Gywneth, she’s practically had to beg for Goop.com investments, and it’s all because she’s famous.
Deadline reports that Gwyneth appeared on The Wall Street Journal’s Tech D. Live conference last night to talk about her lifestyle brand, Goop. Goop is reportedly worth $250 million, they just opened its first international pop-up shop in London, and it’s reportedly on track to double its annual revenue this year. So obviously things are going well for Gwyneth’s business. It doesn’t sound like it was so easy in the beginning. Gwyneth says that when she was first looking for people to invest in Goop.com, the only thing they’d hand over was a camera so someone could take a selfie.
“Being an actress, it was really helpful to get meetings. Sometimes a guy would want a selfie for his wife, or to tell me how much they love The Royal Tenenbaums. It very quickly became a hindrance.”
Deadline points out that Gwyneth’s problem isn’t exactly unique to her (sorry, girl). According to investment analysis company PitchBook, male entrepreneurs received about $58.2 billion in backing last year, while women entrepreneurs got about $1.5 billion. So Gwyneth’s problems with finding Goop investors might have had to do less with being Academy Award-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow, and more to do with being a human named Gwyneth and not Gary. Or maybe – hear me out here – people didn’t want to throw their money at a modern-day snake oil business? I don’t know, I could be way off base here.
But eventually Gwyneth was able to secure funding, like the $50 million she secured in March of this year. And it was all thanks to a plan that basically just involved talking about why Goop.com was good.
“I think it’s great to defend your business. It’s great to articulate why you’re doing what you’re trying to do.”
Better yet, just explain to them what their return on investment will be. For example, Goop.com promotes something dumb, like a $690 organic silk sleep mask that helps you align your alkalinity and/or communicate with the afterlife. Then it gets a massive amount of attention for being extremely dumb. But all that attention brings in some crazy rich people who are like, “Okay, but what kind of spirits are we talking here? Poltergeist or benevolent? And do you take MasterCard?”
Pic: Wenn.com
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