Vicky Tsai is one of the most celebrated female founders in the beauty industry. In 2009, she sold her engagement ring to start Tatcha, a skin care brand inspired by holistic Japanese practices, from her San Francisco garage and then launched it on the same day she gave birth to her daughter. Soon after, the brand became a top seller at Sephora and a favorite of celebrities like Meghan Markle and Selena Gomez; Tsai’s charitable partnership with Room to Read has funded 15 million days of school for girls around the world. But now Tsai is ready to explain the flip side of that success story—the emotional and physical toll it took to climb the industry’s tallest mountains.
When she sold her company in 2019 for half a billion dollars, many people thought she had “made it,” but the years that followed were some of her most difficult. She was encouraged by private equity partners to step down as CEO and was then brought back two years later to institute a full turnaround when sales faltered and company morale plummeted. The comeback was a success but came with big personal costs that she’s still grappling with today. “That old adage about it being lonely on the top is true, because when you are a CEO or leader, you have to be very choiceful about the energy that you bring,” she says. “If you sneeze, the company catches the cold.”
The process of rebuilding her life—and focusing on her own wellness—inspired the brand’s new Longevity Serum, which harnesses ingredients from Okinawa, Japan, a known Blue Zone renowned for having some of the world’s healthiest and longest-living residents. Below, Tsai talked to ELLE about having impostor syndrome despite running a successful brand, the realities of being a female founder, and the truths she’s discovered along the way.
In 2019, you sold Tatcha to Unilever for $500 million. What is the real experience of selling a company like? It’s largely talked about as a dream.
It depends on why you built the company. There are some people who are mercenaries. They have a business plan, want to put millions in their bank account, and don’t want to work on it for more than a certain number of years. For those people, they’re thrilled. It’s payday. It’s the American Dream.
For others, that was never the goal. Although I didn’t understand it at the time, I created Tatcha so that I would have a place in the world where I felt like I could exist and be with people who I admired, not worry about anybody touching me or telling me that I’m a “dumb fuck,” which is what I was called on Wall Street [in a previous job]. It was the place in the world that I needed to exist, and then it became my second home and family.
In many ways you have to [sell], because it takes a lot of capital to keep up with a growing company, and investors need their money back. Then it’s like losing your community, identity, and your place in the world where you felt happiest. I grieved. A lot of us do, even though everybody is saying, “Congratulations! You’re so lucky and rich!” You’re almost not allowed to say, “I’m so sad.”
Tsai teaching a master class at SEPHORiA: House of Beauty in 2019 in Los Angeles.
Let’s go back to the beginning of your career. Early on in corporate America, you were given feedback that you had no leadership potential. They were obviously wrong. How did hearing that change your attitude toward leadership and entrepreneurship?
I did not know that this was systemic, so I assumed that they were right. I internalized it and had impostor syndrome. I felt that I really didn’t deserve to be in the places where I was and that it was only a matter of time before people found out that I was not capable. The more success that I had, and the better my resume got, the more I was worried that it was only a matter of time before everybody found out that I was a fraud.
I did not know about the bamboo ceiling. I did not know that Asian Americans are the least likely demographic to be promoted into leadership in America. Not to mention the Women’s Wear Daily update on how women are doing in the beauty industry. The answer: Not so great, not so many leaders.
How did you cure yourself of that impostor syndrome?
Watching other people lead my company, do exactly the same job under the same conditions [but worse], is what finally disabused me of the notion. I led my company from launching in 2010 until early 2019. During that time, it was an incredible experience of self-actualization. It was just me, myself, and I with an amazing team, trying to create something out of nothing. On one hand, the results spoke for themselves, and I felt like, Okay, I do have some sort of skill.
But on the flip side, that newfound confidence was fragile. I brought in private equity. One of the operating partners said, “We feel that you need to bring in real leadership, a real CEO.” I asked him if there was any evidence to understand why that would be the case. All of the numbers were going through the roof. In that year alone, we had grown 85 percent, and every year before that our minimum growth rate was 50 percent. We were No. 3 at Sephora. Then he said, “If your ego is so big that you need to hold on to the title, then that’s a conversation that we can have.” He was their lawyer, and so that also felt like a threat.
I decided I didn’t want to be the kind of founder whose ego gets in the way of the company, and humility is a core value for us as Asian Americans. I fired myself and stepped aside, and very happily welcomed a new leadership team. And I thought, How lucky am I? I will get to learn from people while they lead this company that I love to heights that I could never imagine.
What happened when you fired yourself as CEO?
For the next two years, I watched them lead the company like a pure A/B test. It was the same environment, retailer, and everything. These people were supposed to be some of the best in the industry to lead brands and take them global. In my opinion, I found them to be underwhelming and less than capable. Two years later, in the middle of COVID-19, I had to come back and execute a turnaround.
The two years of working with them were the hardest and worst years of my life. On the flip side, it’s what finally cured me of my impostor syndrome. I was like, If you wake up every morning with any iota of confidence [then I should have tons]. I’m great because I run laps around you with my eyes closed. I’m actually really grateful to these people for letting me see what has been called the gold standard was actually fool’s gold.
Tsai attends the Room to Read 2025 New York Gala in May.
But after firing yourself as CEO, Tatcha called you to resume your role. Why, and did you have any hesitations?
I had no choice. When things decelerate, they decelerate really quickly. The financial metrics showed that everything was going backwards. Our Sephora ranking fell back to No. 7. Our growth rate almost flattened out during a time when skin care [sales were] going up. Entire departments had quit. It was in the middle of COVID-19. There was AAPI hate happening. A lot of people in my company were Asian women.
More importantly, I loved these people. They worked in my house for seven years. I officiated their weddings, their children grew up running around in our hallways, and their dogs were in our meetings. I couldn’t let these people whom I love be put in harm’s way and lose their jobs, their joy for work, and sense of selves because of two years of a tornado hitting. I didn’t feel like I even had a choice. It was a sense of duty.
What was your turnaround process like?
During the turnaround, I left everything on the field. We rebuilt the foundation of the company, rebuilt the team, and hired the first diversity suite, including Mary Yee, who is [now] our CEO. But in leaving everything out on the field, I had nothing left for myself.
I broke what was left of me to get that done. I lost a pregnancy, and I lost my marriage. These are all things I haven’t talked about publicly. I really needed the last few years to heal from it. Nobody ever talks about the human cost of working in a business world that’s so dehumanizing. I’m saying this to you because I feel like it’s time. If people don’t start telling the truth about the cost, it will keep going.
When you were first building your business, you said you’d get up at 4:30 A.M. Now you wake up at an almost leisurely 6:30 A.M. What has happened in your life to make this transition possible?
I developed dissociation as my superpower because of the things that happened earlier in my career and growing up Asian American, especially one in business. But sometimes I dissociated so hard. I felt like a shell of a human being. I went to Japan to study meditation because I needed to figure out how to inhabit my body and this world again and feel safe. But as the company got bigger and more successful, I fell back into old habits of treating my body like a rental car. I was teaching everybody about what I was learning, but I was not giving myself the grace or the personal respect to actually do it for myself.
A lot of me sleeping later now is not because I’m able to just enjoy a really relaxing life. It’s just that my nervous system has calmed down enough that I can sleep a little longer. I needed a place to put my rage, and I picked up mixed martial arts. Five to six days a week, I go and practice tiny violence. It’s really healthy and wonderful.
Perimenopause has been really helpful in that way. There’s something about this change that’s happening right now that has burned off what was left of my desire to be pleasing, to contort myself into something smaller, or be someone else’s definition of beautiful and smart. Somehow, it’s gone. I am very free. I recommend perimenopause to everybody.
How are you rebuilding yourself?
I first had to understand where trauma resides and mentally, physically, and spiritually “do the work.” I say that with air quotes, because when people say it, it sounds so insufferable. But it is work, and I’m still doing it. I started therapy, which is not something that we do a lot in the Asian American community. I read books like The Body Keeps the Score to understand why, at the age of 40, I had to have both of my hips reconstructed. Trauma can really sit in the hips. I did psilocybin, and that was transformative.
C.S. Lewis says, “I sat with my anger long enough, until she told me that her real name was grief.” I had to sit with the grief of what it’s been like to inhabit a female body in this lifetime. My entire adult human life, every one or two years, has been ruptured by someone breaking into my house, my body, and my space. I had to grieve for the 24-year-old Vicky who got touched by her [superior], the 25-year-old Vicky who got sexually assaulted by her doctor, the 28-year-old Vicky who got sexually assaulted by another doctor, the 27-year-old Vicky who got touched by another [superior], and then a stalker. When you’re young, they come after your body, and then later on in your life, they come after your character, family, and money. I had to really process that to be able to come back to a place of loving.
How do you feel now about wealth?
I have a feng shui master, and he has always likened money to energy. Everybody needs some, because if you have no energy, you can’t live. But if you have too much energy, it’s like getting struck by lightning. It has ruined dynastic families. You see what happens to people when they win the lottery. If we see money as energy, and if we’re clear on our individual life purpose, then how do you use the energy that gets channeled toward you in productive ways to affect change? So to me, owning fancy things is not a flex. Neither is being better than my neighbors in materialism. But ensuring that girls and women have it better than I did—that’s a flex.
Room to Read CEO Dr. Geetha Murali speaks onstage during the Room to Read 2025 New York Gala in May. A portion of every Tatcha purchase supports the organization.
Tatcha now offers miscarriage leave. How did that come to be?
During the turnaround, I miscarried. This was during a time when I was working 100 hours through the weekend. I knew that if I had not been working that hard to turn around the company, I probably would not have lost the pregnancy. I just didn’t have enough energy in my body to do both. My instinct at first was to keep it a secret, because people don’t talk about their miscarriages. I called my HR person and said, “I had a very complicated miscarriage, and I need two weeks of bed rest.” He said, “We don’t have miscarriage coverage.” I was like, How can that be? How can a company that was started and launched on the day that I gave birth not have miscarriage coverage when most of the people who work for me are of birthing age?
I acknowledged what happened with my employees, and I apologized to them for anybody who had ever miscarried and didn’t have the ability to take time for themselves to heal. We immediately implemented a miscarriage policy. I got so many letters from my employees over the next month telling me that they had miscarried [multiple] times while working for me and never took time off. I felt so awful that that had happened on my watch. I met with Unilever and their HR department and said, “Please consider putting miscarriage coverage in your benefits for all of your brands.” That is where I think change comes in. We have to take the volume down, walk away from identity politics, break these silos of information that we’re in from social media, read the news from multiple different sources, assume the best from your neighbors, and then try to share your personal experiences with people in a way that calls them in instead of out.
Why is the new product focused on longevity?
When we first started the company, I banned [the phrase “antiaging”]. But as we got bigger and started working with retailers, [they told us that] you have to use the word. When Mary came in, we agreed that what people really want is prevention and repair. If Japan has taught us anything, it’s about longevity. They have [some of] the longest lifespans in the world. There is also a new term I love called joyspan, because who wants to live to 90 if you’re going to be [in a hospital bed] the whole time?
We really dug into what is driving Japanese longevity and brought that wisdom, technology, and language into the brand. I hope the Longevity Serum is the tip of the iceberg for Tatcha in helping shift the conversation away from antiaging and more toward celebrating the fact that we get to keep living.
What do you see as your purpose nowadays?
It still feels like the part in Barbie when the Kens take over. Right now, things feel regressive and unhealthy. I’m not happy with the world that we are leaving for our daughters. My daughter is 15 and a half, and the idea that she would have less rights than me in any way is unimaginable to me. I think the current politics are regressive, and what is happening in the beauty and fashion industry right now is regressive.
I don’t like the fact that we are embracing thinness, unhealthiness, and that we’re hawking diet pills and powders. I don’t like that people feel like they have to have plastic surgery to look like their filters. My purpose is to do whatever I can with my platform and resources to resist this regressive movement in every way. I’m still trying to figure out the best ways to do it.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
