Behind Her Empire: How Tatcha Founder Vicky Tsai Quit Her Job and Built an Empire

Yasmin Nouri

Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.

Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.

Behind Her Empire: How Tatcha Founder Vicky Tsai Quit Her Job and Built an Empire
Behind Her Empire

Vicky Tsai, founder of Japanese beauty brand Tatcha, had a nontraditional path to eventually founding one of the top skincare companies today.

About 10 years ago, Tsai decided to leave her thriving career and travel the world in search of happiness and meaning in her life.


When visiting Kyoto, Japan as part of her travels, Tsai said she had a life-changing meeting with a geisha. She learned some of their natural skincare secrets which healed her skin and soul in the truest sense and she wanted to bring the same experience back with her to the U.S.

"I think a lot of us when we feel lost, we travel, it's somehow as if I can't find myself in in this moment in this life, maybe if I take myself out of this situation to you know, places very foreign, and where I have no safety net, then maybe that's when I'll find myself," she said.

Tsai's success did not come easy. She struggled for years to get her company off the ground and was over $600,000 in debt at the time. When she started it, there were few direct-to-consumer brands. Asian beauty and skincare wasn't a thing and no one was interested in clean formulas for their skin.

Today, Tatcha is available in Sephora and QVC and is the second fastest-growing, women-led company on the Inc 5000 list. Last year, Unilever acquired Tatcha for a reported $500 million.

Tsai said Tatcha has also partnered with the nonprofit Room to Read in their mission to educate girls globally. She said the company has so far sponsored over 3 million days of school.

In the rest of this episode, Tsai talks about how social entrepreneurship and business can be a vehicle for social change and how the Room to Read program changed her perspective on money, risk and success.

Want to hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast? Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.

dot.LA Audience Engagement Editor Luis Gomez contributed to this post.

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How AgTech Startup Leaf Wants To Modernize the Farming Industry

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

green leaf drawing and rolling farm lands
Evan Xie

At least 50,000 acres in the state of California are estimated to be underwater after a record-breaking year of rainfall. So far this year, California has received nearly 29 inches of rain, with the bulk being dumped on its central and southern coasts. Farmers are already warning that the price of dairy, tomatoes and other vegetables will rise as the weather prevents them from re-seeding their fields.

While no current technology can prevent weather disasters, Leaf Agriculture, a Los Angeles-based startup that launched in 2018, wants to help farmers better manage their properties by leveraging data.

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https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la

Two LA Startups Participate in Techstars' 2023 Health Care Accelerator

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Two LA Startups Participate in Techstars' 2023 Health Care Accelerator
Courtesy of Techstars

Earlier this month, Techstars announced that their 2023 accelerator program will have two simultaneous cohorts–Techstars health care and L.A. As previously reported on dot.LA, Techstars has brought on board returning partners Cedars Sinai, United Healthcare, along with new partners that include UCI Health and Point32Health for its health care cohort.

“For our healthcare program, this is the first time we've had multiple partners as sponsors,” Managing Director Matt Kozlov said. “This allows us to support and mentor a wider diversity of companies than we've been able to help historically.”

The in-person program is taking place in Los Angeles and two out of the twelve companies accepted into the health care program are based in Southern California.

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The Influencer-to-Podcaster Pipeline Is Ready to Explode

Nat Rubio-Licht
Nat Rubio-Licht is a freelance reporter with dot.LA. They previously worked at Protocol writing the Source Code newsletter and at the L.A. Business Journal covering tech and aerospace. They can be reached at nat@dot.la.
The Influencer-to-Podcaster Pipeline Is Ready to Explode
Evan Xie

It’s no secret that men dominate the podcasting industry. Even as women continue to grow their foothold, men still make up many of the highest-earning podcasts, raking in massive paychecks from ad revenue and striking deals with streaming platforms worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But a new demographic is changing that narrative: Gen-Z female influencers and content creators.

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nat@dot.la
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