Co-founders of Brightly on their mission to build a billion-dollar conscious consumer platform, reeled in $1 million to fuel its momentum.
Both the founders were able to turn a simple podcast about sustainable living into a full-blown platform for content, community, and online shopping. Laura co-founded Brightly after leading social impact search initiatives for Google, scaling Amazon.com’s Fashion business, igniting Sephora’s Beauty Insider Community, creating products for Adobe, and more, Laura was driven to create Brightly to catalyze change. She is a technical and design-focused leader with experience managing teams of all sizes and disciplines, from engineers to marketers. Along with Liza, Laura co-hosts the Good Together Podcast, an arm of the Brightly. eco platform.
This Seattle based start-up launched their Good Together podcast in 2019, partly as a way to see if their branding and voice around eco-conscious product recommendations and general life tips would resonate with “conscious customers” — and it did, quickly rising up the podcast charts. Not to mention but the podcast also caught the attention of Snapchat, which accepted Wittig and Moiseeva into its Yellow Accelerator program this past February.
Brightly after gaining some shape by building off the podcast, created more content geared toward sustainable living. The company figured out a way to earn revenue by joining hands into partnerships with brands and featuring their products. Brightly also participated in the Seattle-based Female Founders Alliance accelerator, which opened up conversations with investors.
Nevertheless, the community grew rapidly last year, with millions of new followers across TikTok and Instagram channels. The company now reaches more than 250,000 women daily and has an ambassador program of more than 10,000 members who share ideas and recommendations on Brightly’s apps.
Wittig highlighted the fact that the pandemic has made people think more deeply about what they buy and who they buy from, whether it’s the local restaurant down the street or an eco-friendly product manufacturer.
“It’s a combination of community and content to drive commerce,” Wittig said. “This is the future of how companies are going to be built. Rather than chasing customers to come in your door, you can establish relationships before you even ask them to pull out their wallet.”
“It’s truly allowing people to see the story behind products and forming an emotional relationship with the product,” she added.
Investors in the round include Tacoma Venture Fund; Keeler Investments; and the Female Founders Alliance. Odile Roujol, the former Lancôme CEO, also invested through her firm FAB Ventures.
“I founded FAB Ventures to back purpose-driven entrepreneurs,” Roujol said in a statement. “I’m excited to put this capital to work backing Brightly’s female founders, building a vibrant community of GenZ and Millennials, and scaling conscious consumerism. We can all make a difference.”
Brightly distinguishes itself from other marketplaces or e-commerce giants such as Amazon with its curation and vetting process.
