Solace

The Skincare Infrastructure ofThe Next Generation of Men

Scan, Understand, and Build a Routine That Actually Fits — Without the Guesswork.

Built On :

React Native Supabase Anthropic RevenueCat

Status :

Live on the App Store iOS · United States

02

Problem Statement

Young men are running their skin on marketing, not on their own data

TikTok

YouTube

Reddit

Instagram

Friends

Store shelf

Skincare advice arrives from dozens of disconnected sources

Creators, ads, forums, retail staff, and whatever a friend swears by

→

"Use salicylic acid" "No — benzoyl peroxide" "12 steps, every night"

Each source produces different advice with different logic

—
None of it is based on the face actually in front of the camera

→

18mo

OF TRIAL & ERROR

So the default becomes guessing

Months of buying whatever is hyped, hundreds of dollars spent, and no reliable way to know what is actually working.

03

Market Needs

Young men need a personal skin infrastructure layer — one that captures, reads, routines, and measures. The way athletes track training.

01

Capture

A 10-second selfie scan, taken on the phone already in his pocket — no clinic, no appointment.

→

02

Analysis

An honest cosmetic read of visible skin traits — oiliness, texture, tone, congestion — with zero incentive to flatter.

→

03

Routine Engine

A specific AM / PM routine built from that read — product-agnostic, because we don't sell the bottles.

→

04

Progress Loop

Re-scan over weeks and watch it change. The training log is what converts a purchase into a habit.

04

Market Needs

No existing product delivers this to the young male consumer directly

	Brand-Owned Scan ToolsHaut.AI · Revieve · Perfect Corp	Rx Skincare SubscriptionsCurology · MDacne · Hims	Face-Rating / "Looksmaxx" AppsUmax · Rate-My-Face clones	General AI ChatChatGPT · Gemini	SolaceiOS · Live
Direct Consumer AccessA young guy can download it and use it himself, today, for free	✗Embedded inside a brand's own checkout	✓Own app	✓Own app	✓Own app	✓Free scan, App Store
Product NeutralityNo commercial reason to recommend one bottle over another	✗Recommends the parent brand's shelf	✗Sells its own formula	✱Scores, recommends nothing	✓Neutral but ungrounded	✓We don't sell the bottles
Actionable AM / PM RoutineAn ordered routine, not a product list or a score	✱Product list, not a routine	✓Behind a paid Rx flow	✗No output beyond a number	✱Generic, not from your face	✓Ordered AM/PM, from the scan
Progress Tracking Over TimeRe-scan, compare, and see whether the routine is working	✗One-off, at point of sale	✱Manual check-ins, gated	✗No longitudinal data	✗No memory of your skin	✓Scan history as a training log
Built for Men 15–25Language, design, and routine length made for the ICP	✗Built for female beauty buyers	✗Skews 25–40, medical framing	✱Right audience, harmful framing	✗No audience at all	✓The entire product thesis

05

Market Opportunities

219 million young men with acne sit inside a $17.6B market that was never designed for them

Available Market

US$17.6Bn

Global male skincare spend in 2025, projected to reach US$30.9Bn by 2034 at a 6.5% CAGR.

Serviceable Market

US$660M

The ~22M young men with acne in high-ARPU English-speaking and EU markets, at Solace's US$29.99 annual price point.

650M

People worldwide affected by acne — the 8th most prevalent disease on earth

219M

Of those are young men — the segment every scan tool was built to ignore

15–19

The age band with the highest acne prevalence of any group globally

6.5%

Annual growth in male skincare spend, outpacing the category overall

06

Our Solution

Solace turns a 10-second selfie into a routine built for one face — yours.

A user scans, gets an honest read on his skin, and receives a specific AM and PM routine within a minute of opening the app. Because Solace sells no products, the routine is the only thing we have to be right about. Every re-scan is stored, so the app gets more useful the longer he stays.

Cosmetic personalization only. Solace does not diagnose or treat any condition.

07

A specific AM and PM routine — not a product list and not a score

Ordered steps he can tick off morning and night, each one tied to a finding from his scan. Product suggestions link out to Sephora, Amazon and Ulta because Solace has no shelf to protect — the only incentive is getting it right.

08

Our Solution

The retention engine: a training log for your face

Every scan is stored, dated and comparable — so progress becomes visible

A score you check once is a novelty. A log you build over twelve weeks is a habit. Each entry keeps the date and the concerns detected at that moment, so a user can watch "Excess Oil · Moderate" become "Excess Oil · Mild" instead of guessing whether anything changed.

This is the mechanic that turns a first-week subscriber into a twelve-month one — and it is the thing a brand-owned scan tool structurally cannot build, because it only ever sees one scan at the point of sale.

Dated

Every scan timestamped and kept

Compared

Severity tracked scan over scan

Owned

A dataset that compounds with use

09

Metrics Snapshot

In its first 7 days live, with zero ad spend and one person building it, Solace converted its first paying subscribers.

● DAY 7 SINCE LAUNCH — ALL FIGURES BELOW ARE ONE WEEK OLD

Paying Subscribers

8

In 7 days, from a standing start

Revenue (US$)

152

First dollar to $152 in one week

ARPU (US$)

19

Even 4 annual / 4 monthly split

Paid Acquisition Spend

$0

No ads. No launch push.

Blended CAC

$0

100% organic to date

Headcount

1

Solo founder, full stack

The number is small. The slope isn't.

Eight subscribers in seven days with $0 spend is a conversion signal, not a revenue result. We are presenting it as the former.

Every install is organic

Short-form video, LinkedIn, and App Store search — no paid channel has been switched on yet, which means CAC is still unknown, not proven.

What we're optimising next

Week-4 retention and re-scan rate. Those two numbers decide whether this is a product or a novelty.

10

Why Now

Three curves crossed in the last twenty-four months — and they only cross once

01

Young men started buying skincare out loud

Male skincare is growing at 6.5% a year, faster than the category overall, and the 19–35 band already dominates spend. The cultural permission problem that blocked this market for thirty years is gone.

02

Vision models got good enough to run on a phone photo

Reading visible skin traits from a single uncontrolled selfie was a lab problem in 2020 and is an API call in 2026. The moat moved from the model to the routine logic and the retention loop on top of it.

03

Distribution is free again — briefly

Short-form video still hands unpaid reach to a founder who posts daily. Solace's first eight subscribers cost $0 to acquire. That window closes as this category gets crowded.

11

Roadmap

From eight subscribers to a defensible dataset of young male skin

NOW · Q3 2026

Prove the loop

Wire onboarding answers into the paywall, ship re-scan reminders, and drive week-4 retention above 30%. Organic content only.

Q4 2026

Turn on paid

Attribution via MMP, then Apple Search Ads first. Hold a CAC-to-LTV ratio under 1:3 before scaling spend past $25/day. Target: 300 paying subscribers.

H1 2027

Android + progress social

Cross-platform release and shareable 12-week progress cards — the loop that makes the training log its own acquisition channel. Target: 950 paying subscribers.

END OF 2027

The data asset

Longitudinal scan data on young male skin paired with routine adherence — a dataset no brand-owned tool can assemble. Target: 1,900 subscribers — US$10,000 MRR.

12

The Founder

Mathieu Marchis

Founder — product, engineering, brand, growth

React NativeExpoSupabaseRevenueCatAnthropic API

01

He is the customer. A tri-sport athlete who spent his teenage years sweaty every day, breaking out every day, and buying whatever was hyped. Solace is the product he needed and could not find.

02

Built and shipped solo. The app, the AI pipeline, the subscription infrastructure, the brand system, the landing site, and the App Store submission — one person, no agency, no contractors.

03

Distribution is in-house. Every install to date came from content he wrote, filmed, and edited himself. Growth is not a hire we're waiting to make; it's the thing already running.

04

Speed as the only real advantage. Concept to live on the App Store with paying subscribers, as a solo founder, in a single build cycle.

13

The Ask

What the next twelve months buy

Eight guys today.
US$10,000 MRR by 2027.

Solace is live, converting, and growing on zero spend. What it needs now is the runway to turn a working loop into a retained one — week-4 retention, re-scan rate, and a proven CAC — before the category gets crowded and organic reach stops being free.

We're building health through hygiene, and confidence through skincare, for the one demographic every skincare company has spent thirty years talking past.

Live subscribers today

8

Target — end of Q4 2026

300

Target — end of H1 2027

950

Target — end of 2027

1,900

1,900 subscribers at today's 50/50 plan mix (US$5.24 blended/mo) ≈ US$10,000 MRR

14

The Skincare Infrastructure ofThe Next Generation of Men

Scan, Understand, and Build a Routine
That Actually Fits — Without the Guesswork.

Solace — live on the App Store · solacesupportco@gmail.com