Today we’d like to introduce you to Lily Tse.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My name is Lily. I am the Founder and CEO of Think Dirty.
Think Dirty is an app that helps ingredient-conscious beauty lovers to shop better for their health and the environment.
Think Dirty was an app that started as a personal project to learn about cosmetic ingredient safety due to my mom’s cancer diagnosis when I was 11.
Our mission is to bring health to beauty. I believe every woman should feel good while looking beautiful, without sacrificing her long-term health.
Think Dirty was started after being named the grand prize winner at a pitch competition in 2012, with $5K.
We were named App of the Day on the App Store multiple times, mentioned by major publications, such as Bloomberg, The New York Times, Fast Company and recommended by health experts, including Dr. Amen from The Amen Clinic.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It hasn’t been a smooth road. I’ve built Think Dirty as a solo, non-technical founder for over 13 years, largely bootstrapped, and that’s meant navigating funding gaps, an evolving industry, and some very personal challenges along the way.
The toughest stretch came in 2020. Much of our early revenue came from B2B partnerships with beauty brands, and almost overnight those deals disappeared as marketing budgets across the industry dried up. At the same time, I was also caring for my mother, whose health took a turn, so I was trying to save the business while also showing up for her.
Rather than wait it out, I made the call to pivot the company away from B2B and into a direct-to-consumer subscription model, putting our tools directly into the hands of the millions of people who already trusted Think Dirty to help them shop more safely. That pivot didn’t just keep us alive, it made us stronger, giving the company a more durable foundation to grow from – we’re now used across 33+ countries with millions of users.
It taught me that the hardest decisions, the ones made when you have the least to give, can end up being the ones that define what you build next.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Think Dirty is a consumer advocacy app that helps shoppers understand the ingredients in their beauty and personal care products. Since 2012, millions of users have used Think Dirty to access toxicity ratings on hundreds of thousands of products, making it easier to choose products that are safer for their health and the environment.
We’re best known for the Dirty Meter, our ingredient-rating methodology protected by four U.S. patents, and for Think Dirty Verified, a certification program that lets brands demonstrate genuine ingredient transparency to a discerning audience. Our primary customers are health-conscious consumers across every generation, including mothers and expecting mothers, and women navigating perimenopause and menopause, who want real information rather than marketing claims.
After 14 years, Think Dirty is available in 33+ countries with 8M+ users, 100M+ product scans, and 85,000+ ingredients rated for safety. What I’m most proud of is that it’s still independently owned and majority-led by me, a woman founder and CEO, and that it has never taken outside capital that could soften its standards – what we tell people about their products has always been the truth, even when that’s inconvenient for big brands.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
My alma mater was the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. I had a wonderful first year. And my mentor was Rhea Arnott. Start-up incubators such as DMZ, MaRS, ICTC, and Futurepreneur have played a real role in my journey. Early on, they believed in a non-technical, first-time woman founder building a beauty-ingredient app, and their financing helped me build the product and keep going at a point when I had almost nothing else to fall back on. Just as valuable was the mentorship in those early years – having experienced people to turn to, and a program that took me seriously as a solo founder with no co-founder and no network in tech, gave me both practical guidance and the confidence to keep building.
I’d also credit the millions of Think Dirty users who have submitted product scans and ingredient data over the years. Their trust and contributions are what allowed the app to grow from a personal project into a platform that’s helped people make safer choices for over a decade.
Pricing:
- VOYAGE10 promo code to get 10% off web premium and beauty box
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thinkdirtyapp.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/thinkdirty
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thinkdirtyshopclean/
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lilytse
- Link to get web premium: https://buy.stripe.com/9AQ6pY52VbHu8yk14d?prefilled_promo_code=VOYAGE10
