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Giada De Laurentiis Is Releasing Her Own Line of Pasta and We Got the First Look

Handcrafted in Italy, Giadzy Pasta will launch with eight less-common shapes.

In an announcement at this week’s Fancy Food Show in NYC, De Laurentiis shared that Giadzy, her personally-curated Italian lifestyle and shopping platform, Giadzy is launching its first-ever in-house products: a line of artisan organic pastas, all made in Italy. Here’s everything we know.

The initial release includes eight unique shapes all hand-crafted in Abruzzo, in central Italy:

Nodi Marini
Bucatini
Taccole
Pappardelle
Paccheri
Bucatini Lunghi
Manfredi Lunghi
Spaghetti Chitarra

“When we started thinking about making our own products at Giadzy, pasta was a no-brainer. It’s such a soul-satisfying food, but there’s a huge disparity between the products you can find in supermarkets here and the way it’s made by artisans in Italy,” De Laurentiis said. According to the announcement, it took an extensive few months of tastings, research, and meetings with the best pasta-makers in Italy before Giada and the Giadzy team “identified the key aspects of a pasta line that could carry the Giadzy name: exceptional raw ingredients, time-honored techniques, and a diversity of shapely experiences.”

“In Italy, we’re very purposeful about choosing the right pasta to go with each dish. That culinary ingenuity has led to some really wonderful shapes that are beloved in their home but don’t get the recognition they deserve outside of Italy,” she explained to Food & Wine via email. “With Giadzy Pasta, I wanted to shine a spotlight on some of my favorite lesser-known shapes to show people how wide the world of pasta really is — and how fun it can be.”

Despite their diversity in styles, the Giadzy pasta products are composed of just two key ingredients: natural mountain spring water and organic semolina wheat. The pasta is also carefully shaped using traditional, 100-year-old bronze dies to create a classic rough texture which, the brand notes, plays a significant role in creating the perfect canvas for sauce. Finally, it’s naturally air-dried for 36 hours, a step which, unlike some industrial drying methods, preserves the pasta’s density to “achieve the coveted al dente bite when cooked.”

To get the most out of Giadzy Pasta, De Laurentiis recommends letting the true flavor of the pasta itself shine. “Because Giadzy Pasta is so flavorful on its own, I like to pair it with fairly simple sauces so you can really appreciate the pasta as a star of the dish, rather than a supporting player,” says De Laurentiis, “I love the short curls of nodi marini with Cacio e Pepe or my Calabrian Chili Pasta, long, ruffled manfredi lunghi with Amatriciana, and wide paccheri with Marsala Mushrooms & Pistachio.”

Customers will be able to get their hands on the Giadzy Pasta starting July 23. Each 1.1-pound package retails for $10.50 exclusively at giadzy.com.

Family Style

After 21 years on the Food Network, celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis reflects on the cooking empire she has built, where she’s going next, and how it all started at home.

Giada De Laurentiis is in her California home, with the sun beaming into the lemon-wallpapered room behind her. It’s early May, and the Italian-American chef, Emmy award-winning TV personality, New York Times bestselling cookbook author, restaurateur, and mother is about to leave for a two-week trip to Italy in just a few hours. Still, despite the tight schedule, De Laurentiis is warm and welcoming when I join a Zoom call with her; it feels like I’m speaking with an old friend.

Like many of us, De Laurentiis , 52, is gearing up for a busy summer of travel, work, and of course, entertaining. First, she’s off to Italy to be the Godmother of Oceania’s newest cruiseliner, the Vista, a luxury cruise ship that will transport passengers to some of Europe’s most beautiful locations. After that, she’s headed to Malta, Corsica, Naples, and Rome to conduct research and create content for Giadzy, the lifestyle and e-commerce platform she founded in 2017.

Watching De Laurentiis cook on television or whip up a cocktail for her two million Instagram followers, you would never know that there was once a time when she was terrified to be in front of the camera — and that without the help of her family, she may have taken an entirely different path.

But since then, De Laurentiis has undergone an evolution both personally and professionally. As a culinary superstar with multiple television shows, cookbooks, and restaurants, De Laurentiis has always risen to the challenge and pushed herself to pursue new endeavors and get outside of her comfort zone — including, most recently, making the move to leave the Food Network and ink a new partnership with Amazon Studios.

“I was born in Rome, and I have a large Italian family,” De Laurentiis says. We moved to the States when I was 7 years old, and I think for my family, in particular, it was really about holding on to our traditions.”

Those Italian family traditions that were held onto so tightly by De Laurentiis’ family would go on to build the foundation of Giada’s passion for food and entertaining. “Sundays were our time together and my grandfather, who was the patriarch of the family, would get us kids in the kitchen, and we would all cook together,” she recalls. “My earliest memories are of making pizza. My grandfather would make the dough and then give us little balls of dough, and we’d roll it out and he’d have a bunch of toppings. We’d each make our own pizzas and I think, for me, that was the beginning of my love for food.”

Growing up, De Laurentiis’ family had many ties to the entertainment and movie industry. Her grandfather, Dino De Laurentiis, was a movie producer in Los Angeles. “His family had a pasta factory in Naples before World War II” Giada explains, “and although he was a movie producer, his true passion was food.” In addition to producing movies, Dino’s passion for food and his entrepreneurial spirit led him to open multiple successful gourmet Italian shops and eateries in New York and L.A. As a young teen, Giada would visit her grandfather’s shops after school and watch how he successfully married two of his biggest passions — entertainment and food. “My grandfather also used his shops as a venue for his movie premieres,” she says. “He did a lot of what I do today, which is sort of blend, synergistically, all the businesses together, which was very unique in those days. I think it was a big inspiration for what I ended up doing with my life.”

After high school, De Laurentiis studied social anthropology at UCLA. “With anthropology, you study a lot about cultures and how their food affects the culture and how it really defines who they are,” she points out. “And it was through that, that I realized, oh, you know, where I come from, my food and my culture, that defines who I am. That makes me different from other people. I realized I was putting all the pieces together and after that, I decided that I really wanted to go to culinary school.”

The decision wasn’t an easy one. “I wasn’t confident about [it],” De Laurentiis admits. When her family moved to California from Italy, she was held back a year to learn English, making her older than the rest of her classmates. “I was worried that if I changed my mind, I wouldn’t have the ability to go back [to UCLA] because I was already a little bit older.”

But with support and encouragement from her family, she did it; she left California, moved to Paris, and trained at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school.

Life in Paris wasn’t without its own unique challenges — especially as a woman working in a largely male-dominated industry. “It’s great that I went there because it really prepped me for what was to come, but it wasn’t easy,” she says. “We all know that the restaurant business and the food business is a boys club, and they don’t want the women in the boys club. So, I think that I just, you know, I built my confidence, I worked hard, and I asked a lot of questions. I don’t know that you ever win them over, but you definitely can work around it. I think for women, we need to build our confidence. We need to look in that mirror and be confident about what we’re asking for. And I think you do that through hard work and through asking lots of questions.”

The confidence De Laurentiis learned in Paris is something she tries to pass on to the women she works with today. “[Giada] has taught me everything along the way, from, how to lead a team to negotiate, and even forge ahead as a woman in this industry,” Giadzy Chief Marketing Officer, Lindsey Galey tells SheKnows. “I mean, the food industry, and even the business world that we’re entering into now is so predominantly male-led, but Giadzy is female-founded, it’s female-led, our team is primarily females. I think it’s kind of Giada’s way of trying to empower women to be in this space and have a seat at the table.,” Galey explains.

After culinary school and working in esteemed dining establishments like the Ritz-Carlton Fine Dining Room and Wolfgang Puck’s Spago restaurant in L.A., De Laurentiis was approached by a Food Network executive who offered her an opportunity that would change her life: Her own cooking show.

“The executive producers came to me and said, you need to have 150 recipes ready to go,” De Laurentiis recalls. “I remember telling my aunt Raffy, ‘I don’t think I can do this. I think I should just say no because I don’t have it and I don’t know how I’m even going to come up with it.’ ” Aunt Raffy replied, “We’ll do it together,” and that defining moment became the catalyst for Giada’s incredible culinary career.

De Laurentiis and her aunt worked tirelessly to prepare the required 150 recipes, but the young chef faced another challenge: She was not a natural in front of the camera. The producers said to me, ‘You know, you’re a little bit standoffish on camera, so we need you to warm up a little.’ ” To help her prepare, Giada’s brother stepped in. “My brother, who a few years later passed away, worked on movies and would follow me around with a movie camera,” De Laurentiis remembers. “He followed me everywhere. To the dry cleaner, to the grocery store, in the car, all of it, and just basically shot me every step of the way until I got comfortable looking at him and talking to him. That exercise lasted a summer and the next season that I started shooting, I was a totally different person.”

Today, after 21 years as a Food Network star, more than 10 cookbooks, a children’s book series, and multiple awards in the food and entertainment industries, Giada De Laurentiis has become the ultimate entertaining guru — always with an Italian twist, of course.

Even being the megastar she is today, De Laurentiis still pulls inspiration from her family when crafting recipes and planning gatherings. “My mom taught me how to sort of, you know, really prioritize time, and how to really create fabulous dishes that were uncomplicated,” she says.

That uncomplicated philosophy is the reason so many of us turn to her when it’s time to do some summer entertaining. De Laurentiis’s number one rule? Keep it simple. “I try to do a couple of dishes that are ready to go, that I can make in advance, that you can eat at room temperature, and then leave the rest to the grilling outside, because you want to spend as much time outside as possible.” she says.

In fact, one of De Laurentiis’s favorite summer events to host is a pizza party — the same kind her grandfather hosted when she was a child. “I love to have pizza parties outside and you know, have lots of different toppings and really engage my friends, so they can make this more of an experience rather than just a meal.”

When choosing an appetizer for a summer event, she always sticks with an Italian classic. “I think the thing that I always end up having is some kind of crostini. I love crostinis. I think they make the best appetizers.”

In fact, De Laurentiis loves crostini so much that a quick search for “crostini” on Giadzy yields more than 30 recipes. (Her Burrata Prosciutto Fig Crostini recipe will always be my personal favorite). But if you want to add a little heat, try one of Giada’s favorite ingredients: Calabrian chilis. “I love to do some seasoned ricotta and then I add some of the amazing jam we have on Giadzy from Piedmont and I add a little Calabrian chili to make it sweet but spicy and it’s fabulous.”

De Laurentiis’s go-to summer entertaining philosophy may be to keep things as simple as possible, but like so many of us, she also loves to play with food trends — especially the fun ones on TikTok. For example, tinned fish has seen a resurgence in popularity lately, with creators coming up with all kinds of recipes using canned anchovies, mussels, scallops, and more. Giada is here for it. “I love, in particular, the anchovy trend, because I love anchovies,” she shares. “We sell some fabulous anchovies on Giadzy and we’ve created some awesome recipes.” (And yes, Giada has even created a delicious anchovy crostini recipe that can be found on Giadzy.)

If you’re planning a summer soiree, you’re probably looking for some delicious cocktail options to serve. Giada shared her current favorite cocktail: a Honey Lavender Gin Spritz. “I use this lavender honey, again, from Piedmont that we sell on Giadzy as well, and it’s kind of thick, so you sort of, you gotta stir really well. But it’s gin, lavender, honey, club soda, and lemon juice and it is fabulous. I love it with my girlfriends, but my boyfriend enjoys it too.”

Back in February, it was announced that De Laurentiis would be leaving the Food Network after an incredible 21-year run as a host, chef personality, and judge. “Giada De Laurentiis is culinary royalty, someone who has taught audiences how to properly pronounce every cut of pasta imaginable for nearly two decades,” a spokesperson for Food Network told People. “Food Network will always be proud of the beautiful content we have created together, and our table will always have an open seat for Giada.”

On the new deal with Amazon Studios, Lauren Anderson, head of AVOD Original content and programming at the company told Deadline (a sister site of SheKnows), “With her charismatic passion for food, and commitment to making extraordinary culinary experiences accessible to the home chef, Giada De Laurentiis has remained at the forefront of her industry for nearly two decades. We look forward to developing an exciting slate of projects with Giada, as she expands into new areas and we broaden our portfolio of cooking and lifestyle content.”

In addition, De Laurentiis has big plans for her lifestyle and e-commerce site, Giadzy. “I have a very exciting project I’m launching this summer on Giadzy — and it’s one I’ve been working on for years,” she says. She isn’t quite ready to share details yet, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated when she can share more. In the meantime, we recommend making yourself a delicious anchovy crostini and sipping Giada’s favorite Honey Lavender Gin Spritz while you plan your summer gatherings.

Big Tech execs like Mark Zuckerberg are swapping the boardroom for the dojo. Here’s why martial arts are taking hold of Silicon Valley.

….Bob Rosin, a partner at the venture-capital firm Defy, has trained in aikido for more than 15 years.

He said it’s been “invaluable” in helping him negotiate complex partnerships in his former business-development roles at LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Skype. He was also head of partnerships at the financial-services startup Stripe.

Rosin said the classes helped him to clear his mind and free his body: “I would always emerge re-energized and ready to take on any new challenge.” ….

This Gentle New Brightening Serum Harnesses the Power of Malassezin, a Molecule With 10x More Antioxidant Power Than Vitamin C

A few years back, Ann Marie Einziger had a light spot on her back caused by tinea versicolor, a common, easily treatable fungal infection.”Instead of seeing that patch of skin as a nuisance and something that I wanted to get rid of, I had this counterintuitive ‘aha!’ moment where I was like, ‘Wait, what if there’s good stuff that’s doing this?'” says Ann Marie, a former science teacher who never lost that sense of scientific curiosity.

Her instinct was right: Hyper and hyperpigmentation (the darkening and lightening of the skin) are both inflammatory responses that (respectively) increase or decrease your body’s melanin production as a protective measure. “Because my skin was being protected, it wasn’t burning in the sun and looked brighter,” says Ann Marie.

She wondered if she could harness the powers of what was happening in her skin into a topical solution. She and her husband,  Mike Einzinger (who, fun fact, is the founding guitarist of the band Incubus), worked to amass a team of leading scientists—including Pearl Grimes, MD, a board-certified dermatologist who is the head of the Vitiligo and Pigmentation Institute of Southern California. Together, they discovered  Malassezin, a molecular compound that comes from a yeast called Malassezia furfur (the same one that causes dandruff), lives on the skin, and regulates melanin production.

Now, you can experience all that Malassezin has to offer in the Mother Science Molecular Hero Serum ($89). It heroes the novel molecule and is complemented by soothing and brightening niacinamide and restorative Alpine rose extract.

“The three ways that we help with excess pigment is we slow the transport of melanin to the uppermost layers of the skin cell through the melanocytes,” says Ann Marie. “We also are able to slow the excess production of melanin. And then lastly, we slow the transfer from the melanocyte, which is the highway-like structure that melanin travels up through, to the keratinocyte, the top layer of your skin cells.”

Malassezin has 10 times more antioxidants than vitamin C—which has long been lauded as the gold standard for brightening—allowing it to provide amazing protection from free-radical damage that can cause premature signs of aging. It’s also far more stable than vitamin C, which is notorious for fast degradation. “We’ve tested it for years now because we’ve had this molecule sitting around in bottles, and we’re able to go back every once in a while and see that molecule’s still stable,” says Ann Marie.

Because Malassezin has a calming effect on the skin, it can do its work without causing irritation. “It activates the skin’s endogenous antioxidant mechanism, which is its natural antioxidant defense mechanism,” says Mike. The team was able to figure out that the ingredient works sans irritation through Repeat Irritation Patch Testing. “Basically, people put it on their skin over and over again,” says Ann Marie. “We got hundreds of people to do this who had self-reported sensitive skin. We then asked, ‘Did you experience any irritation?’ Of the 200 people who did this, there were zero reports of inflammation.”

Using the Mother Science Molecular Hero Serum

I’ve been using the Mother Science Molecular Hero Serum for about a week and love it so far. Of course, it’s too soon to see any results, but I can say that it goes on smoothly, dries down fast without feeling sticky, and lays nicely under sunscreen and makeup. Plus, it doesn’t sensitize your skin to the sun or interfere with other active ingredients—meaning you can use it morning or night. Use it to replace all of your other serums or add it to your rotation to enhance your routine.

“If you’re using a highly irritating retinol, you can still use Malassezin, and it’s probably gonna supercharge your retinol because it’s working in a different way,” says Ann Marie. “I like to look at this as you’re pulling different levers in addressing different issues in your skin with the products you use. We’re pulling on a new lever that never existed before, which complements all the other levers you’re pulling.”

Skin care startup raises $6.2 million to fight hyperpigmentation

Mother Science, a skincare company founded by Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger and Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger, a violinist and the guitarist’s wife, is debuting its first product aimed at skin hyperpigmentation.

Why it matters: The company, which the pair of world-famous musicians and serial entrepreneurs founded in 2021, has raised $6.2 million in total venture capital (most of it in a seed round last November).

The big picture: Mother Science says it’s a skin care company built on novel scientific research.

  • After Simpson-Einziger developed some light skin patches while traveling, the pair dove into some research and stumbled upon malassezin, a compound produced by Malassezia furfur and other species of that yeast that’s naturally found on human skin.
  • After a few years of research, they formed the company and hired Jessica Goldin, a beauty industry veteran and former CEO of Shani Darden Skin Care, to run the venture.

Zooming in: For now, the company’s product will be sold from its website, though Goldin says she hopes it will eventually make it into retailers.

  • The serum, which the company says can also improve skin texture beyond hyperpigmentation, is priced at $89 — certainly putting it into the high-end category of skin care products. Goldin points out that there are much more expensive products on the market.
  • “At the end of the day, I think women really value efficacy and results, and if they buy something and they don’t see any results, they’re not gonna buy it again,” says Goldin.
  • The company already has more products in its development pipeline.

Mother Science Features Novel Molecule to Power Debut Serum

Husband-and-wife duo Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger and Mike Einziger had super successful careers as musicians, but life had other plans when Anne Marie came down with a skin condition that sparked career 2.0. This month the couple launch Mother Science, a biotech beauty brand that harnesses the power of a first-to-market molecule that’s said to effectively improve the appearance of skin discoloration, provide 10 times the antioxidant power of vitamin C, and reinforce the skin barrier.

Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger and her husband Mike Eizenger have many shared passions. One is music, the other is science.

On the music front, both Ann Marie and Mike have achieved more than a moderate amount of success. Ann Marie is a renowned violinist who’s worked as a composer and performer with famed Academy Award-winning film composer Hans Zimmer on numerous film scores including Sherlock Holmes, Interstellar, 12 Years a Slave, and The Lone Ranger. Guitar-playing Mike founded the band Incubus in high school, which has reached multi-platinum success as a metal band with more than 23 million albums sold worldwide.

But it wasn’t until Ann Marie suffered from a skin disorder while on tour with Mike six years ago that the two put their shared science education to create a brand to help solve it: Ann Marie majored in biology at the University of Virginia before teaching high school physics and chemistry; Mike studied the history of physics at Harvard University.

“Don’t worry, I went to Harvard. I got this,” Mike told Ann Marie when she pointed out her skin irritation. From there, the two say they became obsessed. “We nerded out, we didn’t sleep. Mike would wake me up in the middle of the night with a scientific paper he found and ask, ‘Is this helpful?’ Although we both have scientific backgrounds, we’re not Ph.D. formulation chemists. So we put a scientific proposal together as citizen scientists,” Ann Marie explains.

This month they’re launching the fruit of their labor, Mother Science, a brand that harnesses the power of a first-to-market novel molecule the company founded called malassezin, which effectively improves the appearance of skin discoloration, provides 10 times the antioxidant power of vitamin C, and reinforces the skin barrier.

“Everyone knows who Mother Nature is, and that she is an ancient, healing entity that we all need to respect and take care of. Yet there’s a synergy between Mother Nature and ‘Mother Science’ that is rarely mentioned,” Ann Marie shares. More than mere inspiration for the brand name, the ethos of the company supports Mother Science’s moniker as well. “Our women-led team is all about pursuing a new space, changing the landscape, trying to disrupt the beauty ecosystem, and taking control of knowledge for the good of ourselves and our planet.”

Why did it take six years to bring Mother Science’s Molecular Hero Serum to market? “Because we brought real scientists into the fold,” the couple says with a laugh. “The pace of science is slow by nature, especially when you’re bringing a new molecule into development. You have to characterize it and synthesize it, and testing takes time,” she explains.

Molecular Hero Serum doesn’t feature a new derivative of an existing skin care ingredient, and it isn’t just serving up a new delivery system. This multi-tasking serum is a byproduct of a species of yeast called malassezia that’s found naturally on the surface of human skin. When this fungus goes awry, it can cause a host of undesirable skin effects — but with Molecular Hero Serum’s malassezin, “You’re going to target dark spots and hyperpigmentation while seeing smoother, brighter skin. It’s also going to minimize the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles,” Ann Marie explains.

Fueled mainly by a seed round led by Female Founders Fund in November 2022 (to-date Mother Science has raised a total of $6.2 million), the brand has been able to conduct an extensive amount of research, including in-vitro and in-vivo testing, genomic panels, and 3D MelanoDerm models that are the gold standard for skin testing. It also allowed Mike and Ann Marie to bring on Jessica Goldin as Mother Science’s CEO to build the brand and shepherd its go-to-market strategy. Jessica is a 20-year beauty industry veteran who previously served as the founding CEO of Shani Darden Skin Care and held various leadership and executive marketing roles at Beautycounter, Murad, Clinique, and Victoria’s Secret Beauty. Mother Science’s team also includes Dr. Pearl Grimes, the brand’s Chief Dermatologist, a globally recognized expert and leading authority in hyperpigmentation. Dr. Grimes has spent the past six years leading extensive scientific studies on Malassezin.

“Consumers are becoming more and more interested in science-based skin care, ” said Jessica. “As a biotech beauty brand with a proprietary, novel ingredient, we are excited to introduce a highly efficacious serum based on a new approach to treating dark spots and sun damage.”

In addition to establishing its safety profile, research shows malassezin’s ability to prevent the development of unwanted skin pigment and decrease existing discoloration associated with mild, moderate, and severe sun damage and hormonally-induced discoloration. Results were assessed via instrumentation measures, dermatologist grading, and VISIA imaging technology — and confirmed with consumer perception assessments.

According to Ann Marie, malassezin is not a tyrosinase inhibitor, which is the mechanism behind many anti-discoloration ingredients. Instead, malassezin acts on a skin receptor that regulates skin balance. “To target hyperpigmentation, malassezin decreases the production of excess melanin and interferes with the transfer of pigment to the upper layers of the skin.” At the same time, this unique ingredient also improves barrier function by supporting the skin’s production of natural moisturizing factors while helping to minimize irritation, which is also a trigger for the formation of dark spots.

Ann Marie’s takeaway: “It’s really rare to find an actual new molecule that is clinically effective and developed with this rigor, and bring it into the cosmetic space. We had to write the playbook on how to introduce something that is clinically and scientifically tested into an ecosystem that doesn’t really support this kind of disruption.”

Molecular Hero Serum was formulated to meet the EU’s stringent ingredient standards, and easily integrates into any morning and evening skin care regimen as the serum step. Ann Marie says it can be used in place of vitamin C in the morning (thanks to 10 times the antioxidant power and enhanced stability), and that “malassezin plays well with other active ingredients you may use in the morning or evening without causing dryness, irritation or sun sensitivity.”

Ann Marie adds, “I feel like ‘clean’ and ‘sustainable’ are just table stakes now. That’s what it takes to future-proof anything you’re creating. Our ingredient-synthesis process is extremely sustainable as compared to the natural process of growing a raw material, fermenting it, and extracting the active.” The Molecular Hero Serum formula is also vegan, cruelty-free, and Leaping Bunny-certified, and housed in a glass bottle.

When a brand launches with one SKU, we’re left to wonder whether it can maintain loyalty to its initial hero ingredient, and cement its status as a disrupter. But Ann Marie is optimistic.

“Right now we’re focusing on malassezin for the short-term because this ingredient has so much potential, but our pipeline is driven by intentional innovation and may include other molecules in the future.”

To engage consumers, Mother Science is using media outreach and an aggressive seeding approach to get the product into the hands of influencers, dermatologists, and thought leaders in the world of hyperpigmentation and skin care-ingredient science. The brand’s social media strategy is driven heavily by educational content and the goal of building a community of fellow “citizen scientists” that has a shared desire to read, learn and share knowledge.

Although the brand is launching direct-to-consumer, Ann Marie and Mike hope to enter retail at some point in time.

Mother Science Hero Molecular Serum retails for $89 and is available at MotherScience.com.

Meet Mother Science, the Single-sku Skin Care Brand Founded by a Guitarist, a Violinist and a Beauty Veteran

The brand has raised $6.2 million in funding and aims to change the way hyperpigmentation is treated.

Musicians Mike Einziger and Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger have been working on a new kind of debut: A skin care brand. The husband-and-wife duo have teamed up with Jessica Goldin — an alum of Clinique, Murad and Beautycounter — to found Mother Science, which launches Tuesday with an $89 Molecular Hero Serum that aims to treat hyperpigmentation.

Meet Mother Science, the Single-sku Skin Care Brand Founded by a Guitarist, a Violinist and a Beauty Veteran

Musicians Mike Einziger and Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger have been working on a new kind of debut: A skin care brand.

The husband-and-wife duo have teamed up with Jessica Goldin — an alum of Clinique, Murad and Beautycounter — to found Mother Science, which launches Tuesday with an $89 Molecular Hero Serum that aims to treat hyperpigmentation.

The product’s star ingredient is a yeast-derived molecule called malassezin, which a series of clinical studies have suggested can be effective in treating myriad forms of hyperpigmentation.

“It was never our intention to start a skin care brand — we were just trying to figure out what was happening with my own skin,” said Simpson-Einziger, a violinist who in 2016 developed a series of harmless — but baffling — lightened patches of skin on her back.

After a visit to the doctor deemed the patches a “medical mystery,” Simpson-Einziger and her husband (who is also the lead guitarist of rock band Incubus) set out to identify the cause themselves — and see if its lightening effects could consequently reduce the appearance of facial hyperpigmentation.

“It was a long journey — we were in this state for maybe three years of researching and publishing papers on [The Journal of Drugs in Dermatology], without commercializing,” said Simpson-Einziger.

While there are studies of malassezin dating back to the early 2000s, more research was necessary in order to bring the molecule’s antioxidant properties to life in a consumer skin care product, which, prior to this launch, had never been done. To accomplish this, the brand tapped Dr. Pearl Grimes — who is the founder and director of the Vitiligo and Pigmentation Institute of Southern California — as its chief scientific officer.

“Malassezin works in three different ways: it’s able to slow the transport of melanin to the upper layers of skin; it’s able to slow the development of excess pigmentation, and it also slows the transfer of melanin between skin cells,” said Simpson-Einziger.

“All of our initial products are all going to be focused on malassezin; it is such a powerhouse ingredient, and we’re looking to see how we can play up its benefits in different ways and forms,” said Simpson-Einziger.

“A longer-term goal for us is we hope that one day malassezin will become the gold standard in treating dark spots and hyperpigmentation,” said Goldin, who serves as chief executive officer of Mother Science in addition to being a cofounder.

The brand has raised $6.2 million in funding to date, the majority coming from a seed round led by Female Founders Fund last November. Though the founders declined to comment on sales expectations for the launch, industry sources estimate Mother Science could do between $1 million and $5 million in first-year retail sales.

“I look at this brand the same way I look at music; it’s extremely hard to make anything in this world that people will actually care about, and I’m humbled that I’ve been lucky enough to do that. My hope is that Mother Science can connect and resonate with a community of people experiencing these issues with their skin,” said Einziger.

“We want to make a hit,” added Simpson-Einziger, grinning.

Genemod lands $4.5M for life sciences data storage and collaboration platform

Genemod, a Seattle startup developing a cloud-based platform to help life sciences companies and researchers manage their data and workflows, raised $4.5 million.

The company sells collaborative workspace software that centralizes and structures research data, allowing real-time updates and remote collaboration. Users can track progress, visualize data, and see who made changes. The idea is to become the go-to standard for research scientists, like Figma for designers or Jira for engineers.

“The data shows that research teams and companies employing digital solutions for data and operations management outperform those relying solely on pen and paper,” CEO and co-founder Jacob Lee told GeekWire via email.

Lee is a former Juno Therapeutics engineer in technology strategy and innovation. He is joined by CTO and co-founder Jin Choe, a former software engineer at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. Both founders are University of Washington graduates.

Genemod aims to tackle challenges with reproducibility, or the ability for researchers to recreate an experiment to achieve the same results. The pandemic accelerated the company’s adoption, with customers including AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers, Merck, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and others.

The fresh cash will go toward expanding its workforce and scaling its go-to-market operations. Genemod raised $1.7 million in October 2020. Total funding to date is $6.2 million. The latest round was co-led by existing investor Defy.vc and LDV Partners, with participation from Dolby Family Ventures and Cercano Ventures.