In this Beauty Investor Q&A, Rachel Ten Brink, General Partner of Red Bike Capital, breaks down her approach to tech-enabled early-stage beauty, health and wellness investing—and what sets her apart.
Rachel, General Partner at Red Bike Capital had deployed 18 angel investments prior to launching the fund. She spent 20+ years building billion-dollar brands at Procter & Gamble, Estee Lauder, L’Oréal, Elizabeth Arden.
Rachel also co-founded Scentbird, top Y Combinator company by revenue, and led growth, revenue and B2B sales.
TECH-ENABLED BEAUTY, HEALTH & WELLNESS PORTFOLIO
Q1: Please tell us about Red Bike Capital, focus areas and what would the world miss if RBC isn't around?
Rachel:
Red Bike Capital (NYC, 2021) is an early stage fund investing into data-rich SaaS, fintech rails, and tech-enabled health & wellness. Red Bike invests in experienced, technical founders with deep founder-market fit, solving big problems while demonstrating capital efficiency. We combine the experience of having been a Y Combinator founder, the P&G/L’Oréal brand-building muscle and Wall St. credit underwriting to find exceptional founders.
Our mission is to help founders land their first enterprise customers. Our view is that if you don’t get from 0 to 1, you don’t get from one to ten, or ten to a hundred. We really help founders across articulating their value proposition, GTM process and most importantly, direct connections to potential first clients.
Q2. Do you have a criteria specific to health and wellness brands? Who would you encourage to reach out to you, especially in 2025?
Rachel:
We are particularly excited about the category we call “business of healthcare”. Particularly with the leverage of AI, there are some very interesting startups that are helping doctors, hospitals and medical practice operators operate more profitably while delivering better health outcomes.
We are like consumer health and digital health. We’ve been digging into longevity, gut health and the microbiome lately. We don’t invest in biotech or products that require FDA approval (I like to say i have an MBA not a PhD).
Q3. How much do you typically invest in a beauty, health and wellness brand, how do you value an investment and do you have a specific arrangement you go for?
Rachel:
Our typical check size is $250-500K but we can be flexible depending on the startup. We look for scaleability, unit economics and that “special sauce” (product, distribution, marketing flywheel, network effects, etc.) that drives competitive moats.
Q4: What makes you lose interest in a pitch faster than the speed of light?
Rachel:
Buzzword avalanche, founders who don’t know their unit economics and have not checked if the numbers they are giving us make sense (e.g. “CAC will be $0” is not a serious assumption).
Q5.How do you see AI influencing & contributing to the analysis of a deal & success of a venture? Where do you see the biggest opportunity with AI & how?
Rachel:
- Research: LLM agents create deep research for areas we’re exploring.
- Deal sourcing: anomaly-detection flags breakout Shopify stores before Crunchbase does. Category searches. We have automated our CRM so we automatically populate information after the initial call.
- Diligence: auto-built retention cohorts, margin normalisation, synthetic reference calls.
- Marketing: GPT-driven copy tests 100 landing-page variants before paid spend.
- Portfolio support (biggest upside): we automate our portfolio tracking so every time we get info from our startups (decks, meeting notes or emails) we automatically update our tracking docs.
- Reporting: Draft investment memos and LP updates (although we feel strongly that GPs need to write these themselves and go through the thinking process).
Q6:What are the 3 biggest consumer trends you are watching very closely at RBC when it comes to health and wellness, and what's your take on each of those three?
Rachel:
- Next generation Omni Retailing: 85% of sales still happen at retail- how to better cross sell, upsell, and keep the relationship with your customers across channels.
- AI Personalization: AI is creating a new shopping experience, a new search behavior and a new expectation of personalized product recommendations.
- Agentic and personalized lifestyle assistant
Q7:Hero Cosmetics and The Good Patch aren't your typical tech-backed, health & wellness startups. What am I missing?
Rachel:
Both maximized data-led merchandising and omni-channel velocity: Hero sold to Church & Dwight for $630 M while spending <$500K on paid ads; The Good Patch turned functional patches into a repeat-purchase subscription with 70 % gross margin. Tech-enabled CPG can scale faster than pure software when you own the shelf and the SKU.
Q8: What are the traits common to all the super-successful beauty founders you funded?
Rachel:
- Obsession with a single pain-killer SKU
- Fan-cult community before SKU #2
- CFO-grade unit-economics on the tip of the tongue
Q9: What are the 3 most common mistakes you see founders making in their fundraising efforts with outreach or in pitching their ventures to you?
Rachel:
- Spray-and-pray cold emails with no partner fit.
- Decks that don’t clearly explain the product and bury the ask (round size, use of funds, runway).
- Using “comps” that are price-inflated, geography-mismatched, or outdated.
Q10: In your opinion, what is the most common area of improvement in a pitch deck?
Rachel:
The go-to-market slide—channels listed but no CAC, payback, or distribution wedge. Investors buy growth mechanics, not just product. They way I look at the equation of the success of a consumer product is:
- Product is important but it’s a cost of entry ~30%
- Supply chain/ distribution/ unit economics ~30%
- Marketing flywheel, successful acquisition and repurchase ~40%
Deck needs to clearly articulate how you win in these 3 key dimensions.
Q11: Could you please briefly describe the fundraising journey (your funnel) of a typical startup you invest in? How long does it take for you to decide, what are the usual steps in the process and which ones don't make it to the end of the funnel?
Rachel:
We are a small team and can move very quickly if necessary. We like to tell founders it’s really about getting us very comfortable with the investment- however long that takes.
- Day 0: Deck submitted → 48 h yes/no on intro call.
- Week 1-2: First call -> Partner deep-dive (model, research, validate with our network).
- Week 3-4: Data room + references; AI-assisted cohort & margin analysis.
- Week 5: Term sheet or a quick pass. Roughly 1 in 40 decks clear the first hurdle; most die on unclear wedge or weak margins.
FCS (For curiosity’s sake)—Do you think ALI dropped his medal into the river?
Rachel:
I’m not sure but he was certainly a man of conviction and strong values.
We loved the Red Bike Moment Story that inspired our name:
When a twelve-year-old Cassius Clay—later the legendary Muhammad Ali—had his red Schwinn bicycle stolen in Louisville, Kentucky, he turned to a policeman for help, saying, “I want to whup this guy!” The officer, Sergeant Joe Martin, wisely replied that if Cassius intended to “whup” someone, he’d better first learn how to fight. As fate would have it, Martin was not only a policeman, but was also a coach that ran a local boxing gym.
That moment changed everything. Over the next six years, under Martin’s mentorship, Ali harnessed his raw ambition, securing six Golden Gloves championships, two national amateur titles, and an Olympic Gold Medal in 1960.
At Red Bike Capital, this story deeply resonates with our mission: guiding founders through their pivotal moments toward product-market fit, growth, and excellence. Like Ali’s first coach, we strive empower entrepreneurs to master the fight, conquer adversity, and turn transformational moments into legendary journeys.
SUMMARY
Red Bike Capital backs data-driven, capital-efficient founders in health & wellness, SaaS, and fintech—offering hands-on GTM help, a fast decision funnel, and AI-powered insights to scale smart, not loud.
- Mission & Differentiation: RBC helps founders land enterprise customers by combining startup, brand, and Wall Street expertise.
- Investment Focus: Invests in tech-enabled health & wellness (e.g. gut health, longevity) but avoids biotech and FDA-regulated products.
- Investment Size & Criteria: Typical investments of $250K–$500K into scalable, moat-building, unit-economics-strong ventures.
- Pitch Deck Turnoffs: Founders using buzzwords, ignoring CACs, or lacking a grasp on their own metrics.
- AI Edge: Uses AI across research, sourcing, diligence, marketing tests, and automated portfolio tracking.
- Top 3 Consumer Trends: Watching AI personalization, omni-channel retail, and lifestyle assistant adoption closely.
- Top Founder Traits: Hero SKU obsession, CFO-level numbers, and early community-building drive success.
- Fundraising Mistakes: Cold emails without fit, fuzzy product decks, or inflated/unmatched comps derail interest.
- Pitch Deck Gaps: Missing CAC, unclear GTM mechanics, and underweighting distribution and marketing flywheels.
Looking to fundraise?
Attract, Engage & Pitch 3,000+ Beauty & Wellness investors in North America using full canvas info.
(Book 3-5 investor meetings/day on Jumpurse fundraising platform)