Stowaway Cosmetic’s Chelsa Crowley on her “right size” makeup empire

Stowaway Cosmetics is a startup taking on the $60 billion makeup industry by selling pint-sized lipsticks, blushes and foundations direct to consumers.

Chelsa Crowley and her co-founder Julie Fredrickson started the company after realizing they never used up all their makeup before it expired. Crowley had an extensive background in the cosmetics industry working for Mac and Bobbi Brown and decided to do something about her dilemma.

Both founders were no strangers to the startup world, however. Crowley’s husband Dennis founded Foursquare and she says many of her friends were already running their own startups in and around her New York City home base as well.

“So I had a better sense of what I was getting myself into and it’s also why I had to really think about it,” Crowley (who, by the way, has the most beautiful, luminous skin up close) told me on a recent visit to the San Francisco TechCrunch video studio.

Stowaway has so far raised $1.5 million in venture capital and the brand launched a subscription service in September 2015. The products have also so far received several awards in the cosmetics industry – two for packaging and two for product formulation.

As mentioned above, Crowley recently sat down with me in TechCrunch’s video studio to tell me about the future of the business and why she thinks her tiny idea has an advantage over some of the bigger cosmetics companies. Click on the video above to watch that interview.