Colin C. Campbell spoke with Eric Malka, co-founder of The Art of Shaving and author of On the Razor’s Edge, to unpack what it really takes to win at the startup game. Malka didn’t begin with money, status, or credentials. He arrived in New York as a 17-year-old immigrant with no formal education, working in a warehouse in Manhattan. Less than twelve years after stepping off a Greyhound bus at Port Authority, he and his wife had launched The Art of Shaving, built it into the leading premium men’s grooming brand in the U.S., and sold it to Procter & Gamble. Behind that story are eight principles every founder can apple to win at the startup game.
“Every brand is a company, but not every company is a brand.”
Eric Malka, Co-Founder of The Art of Shaving
The first principle is mindset. Eric reminds founders that startups are a marathon, not a sprint—90% will fail, and the universe will test how badly you want it. You need grit, resilience, and prudence: taking real risks, but minimizing unforced errors, like a championship tennis player who wins by making fewer mistakes, not just more brilliant shots. Second is execution. Ideas are cheap; it’s the way you bring them to life that creates value. The Art of Shaving didn’t invent shaving, or even shaving shops. What Malka and his wife did was execute obsessively well—elevating ingredients, store design, service, and hiring—until a simple idea became a category-defining brand.
Eric stresses the power of focus in branding. Every brand is a company, he says, but not every company is a brand. From day one, they chose to be the best in the world at one thing: luxury shaving. Not “grooming,” not “men’s skincare”—shaving. That clarity helped them own a mental mountain competitors couldn’t reach. Fourth, they built that brand directly from the customer. For years, Eric and his wife worked in their first two stores, treating them like laboratories. Thousands of men walked in and told them the same problems—sensitive skin, razor burn, bad fragrance. The products, messaging, and positioning were all crafted from those conversations, not from a conference room.
The next set of principles are about people, purpose, and culture. A great brand, Eric says, is an extension of who you are. The Art of Shaving reflected his Moroccan roots, his wife’s French sensibility, their love of natural ingredients, beautiful aesthetics, and true service. Internally, culture was built on an “inverted pyramid”: frontline staff and customers at the top, leadership at the bottom, serving them. Employees weren’t just selling $18 shaving cream; they were promoting men’s health and daily self-care. That sense of purpose made them brand ambassadors, not just retail clerks.
Colin and Eric also talked scalability and strategic flexibility. True scalability is having a proven, profitable system for acquiring and retaining customers, then the systems and people to replicate it. It took The Art of Shaving nine years to reach $10 million in revenue—but once the foundations were solid, they went from $10 million to $100 million in roughly the same amount of time. Along the way, he wasn’t afraid to pivot: first away from stores toward wholesale distribution, then back into building a national retail footprint when the data changed. His framework today is simple: crawl, then walk, then run, then fly. If you can avoid the early pitfalls, stay close to your customer, protect your brand, and build patiently for scale, you give yourself the chance to join the 10% who truly win the startup game.
For an even deeper dive, check out Eric’s Full Blog Post, How To Succeed as a Startup Founder – 8 Principles from The Art of Shaving Founder.