Emmy-nominated actress Alison Sweeney, who counts The Biggest Loser and Days of Our Lives among her acting credits, is an inkbox investor. So, too, is Jeff Probst, another reality TV show host, who has been the face of Survivor since it first debuted in 2000. Both investors were specifically attracted to inkbox’s premise of providing people with the creative expressive capabilities of body art without the commitment; So much so, in fact, that Probst made inkbox his first ever investment in a tech startup.
The reason Probst committed, according to inkbox CEO Tyler Handley, is that he genuinely believes in the product, since it offers a way for people to try get the benefits of self-expression that come with tattoos, but without the lifeline commitment that might result in regret later on. And for Sweeney, this isn’t the first seed investment she’s participated in, but the belief in the product and the concept behind it is just as strong.
“I love the idea of expressing oneself in all ways, especially when they can change with time rather than being permanent,” Sweeney told me via email. “When I learned about inkbox and started to talk with Tyler about his vision for the company, I was excited to join the team and be part of the movement.”
The team Tyler and inkbox have assembled is key to the company’s future, and none maybe more so than the company’s first main hire, Chris Caputo, currently doing a postdoc at Harvard, and one of Canada’s most promising young chemists. That leadership hire, as well as this round, were based on inkbox’s assertion that this is just their first product. in fact, Handley tells me that they’re currently working on a version of their temporary tattoo tech that lasts 30 days, and that’s just the start.
“We consider our company first and foremost a biotech company on the back end, and we have a consumer front-end that sells a fashion accessory,” Handley explained. “And it makes it quite challenging to find the right talent, because how do you hire a software developer to work on a product like this?”
Hiring hasn’t been the young startup’s only challenge: Handley says that because of how new the tech behind the product is, they’ve had to “manufacture it from scratch,” so going from prototype and the foundational, tested science to something that could be manufactured at the scale that a consumer product required took at least six months, culminating in a general consumer launch last week.
Temporary tattoos may not initially seem like a high-tech product, but inkbox already has strong scientific talent on its side with Caputo, and this new round from angels including Sweeney, Probst, Marc Bell, Joe Roos and Chicago-based early-stage VC firm KGC Capital. With retail sales on the horizon, and more products in the pipeline, it’s an interesting company to watch in the world of natural science