The Makeup Artist in Your Pocket: Honey to Cocoa
Before launching an AI-powered beauty tech startup in Atlanta, Riean Knight built a career shaped by science, leadership, and an eye for design and scale. She combines a background in behavioral science with hands-on experience scaling teams and building products. After studying psychology at Washington University and working in neuroscience labs, she moved into corporate roles at Macy’s and then Square, where she honed her skills in leadership and scaling early-stage teams. At the same time, she was building a parallel career as a self-taught makeup artist. That dual lens of data-driven operations and deep familiarity with the beauty industry’s gaps inspired Honey to Cocoa, her Atlanta-based startup using AI and biometric data to help people find the right makeup products, especially those with deeper skin tones.
Seeing the Shades of a Systemic Problem
Knight’s dual life in tech and beauty exposed her to a systemic issue: major cosmetics brands had long failed to serve customers with darker complexions. As a makeup artist, she routinely encountered and heard clients' stories, frustrated by the lack of suitable foundation shades and the trial-and-error nature of finding a match. “Almost every single time I would do makeup for a client, they would say, ‘Hey, can you go to the store with me and help me figure out which shade?’” she recalled of her clients’ pleas after yet another misfire with an in-store recommendation. Even as the beauty industry began offering more shade options, the experience often still fell short – foundation that looked right under fluorescent store lights might appear off at home, leading to wasted money and product returns.
The watershed moment came in 2017 with the launch of Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty line, which debuted 40 foundation shades and proved that inclusivity could be profitable. “They had such a successful launch that you started to see all these other brands follow,” Knight noted. “The problem shifted from not having enough shades to having so many”. In theory, the market’s newfound abundance should have solved the issue. Still, it created a new challenge in practice: consumers of color suddenly had options, sometimes hundreds of them, yet little guidance on which product was the right fit. The result is a costly guessing game. Some studies find that 40% of customers have returned an online beauty item because it was the wrong shade. Knight saw firsthand that the core issue wasn’t just the availability of products, but the lack of personalized, reliable shade-matching tools for people of all skin tones.
From Passion Project to Prototype
Determined to bridge that gap, Knight initially took a grassroots approach. In 2017, she launched Honey to Cocoa as a personal blog, posting side-by-side makeup swatches and tutorials to demonstrate “what products look like on different skin tones”. The blog attracted a following and validated the demand for more inclusive beauty content. “Women weren’t feeling like they could find their perfect match, so I started a blog to try to solve that problem,” Knight explained. But as traffic grew, she realized a blog alone couldn’t fully solve the shade-matching puzzle. “I realized that I could probably make this more scalable and then pivoted over to the app,” she said, describing her decision to evolve Honey to Cocoa from a passion project into a technology startup.
Before bringing in AI, Knight built Honey to Cocoa the grassroots way — organizing model casting calls to create an inclusive skin tone database from scratch.
By 2022, Knight had built a mobile app prototype for matching makeup. Early versions of Honey to Cocoa were tested with a simple concept: users would input their skin information and be guided to foundations that might suit them. This initial phase operated without artificial intelligence – essentially a proof of concept from Knight’s expertise and extensive research into cosmetic formulations. The ambition, however, was always to harness cutting-edge tech. Years before AI-driven beauty tools became commonplace, Knight had imagined a smartphone-based system that could “hold your phone up to your face and the camera can extract the pixels from your skin and… tell you what products to use”. At the time, the technology (in particular, reliable computer vision for skin tone analysis) wasn’t quite ready, which is one reason her venture began as a blog. “I had that idea before AI really took off and computer vision being a thing,” she said, “so I was conceptualizing this well before the technology was truly available”. Knight steadily refined her concept in the intervening years as AI and augmented reality tools improved. She spent about a year mapping out the app’s technical architecture and partnered with engineers to build the minimum viable product, or MVP. By 2024, Honey to Cocoa had moved from concept to beta: a functioning app that could analyze a user’s skin tone via their phone camera and suggest matching products.
An AI “Makeup Artist in Your Pocket”
Knight’s blend of industry insight and persistence caught the attention of startup backers. In 2024, Honey to Cocoa was selected for Techstars Atlanta’s 2024 Cohort, a prestigious accelerator program powered by Cox Enterprises that invests in and mentors early-stage companies. Techstars – often cited as the world’s most active pre-seed startup investor, with over 4,000 companies in its portfolio – runs a 13-week boot camp for founders, culminating in a demo day for Atlanta’s tech community and investors. Knight’s acceptance came “on the heels of a lot of rejections” from other programs, she has admitted, calling it “the power of one big yes” in a LinkedIn post. With Techstars’ funding and support, she accelerated development, partnering with a computer vision company to enhance Honey to Cocoa’s core technology. The result is an AI-powered mobile app that uses biometric data – essentially analyzing the user’s skin pixels and undertones – to take the guesswork out of shade selection.
Unlike some beauty tech ventures, Honey to Cocoa has no plans to manufacture its own makeup line. Instead, Knight emphasizes that the platform is brand-agnostic and supports indie cosmetics brands. Her team has built a comprehensive database of products and forged “strategic partnerships with independent beauty brands” to widen the range of available matches. Users might scan their faces and receive a personalized roster of beauty recommendations from various companies, including smaller brands catering to nuanced skin tones. By steering customers to the right product on the first try, the app could save shoppers and retailers the cost of endless returns, not to mention giving consumers the frustration of trial-and-error on their faces.
Honey to Cocoa’s endgame is to make finding the perfect foundation as easy as taking a selfie. “We’re building a beauty app that will leverage AI to help people of color match their skin tones,” Knight said, “beyond that, we want to change the way people shop for cosmetics digitally and… eliminate the need to go into the store”. In practice, that means the app won’t stop at foundation matching. Knight envisions users virtually trying on everything from lipsticks to eyeshadows using augmented reality and getting intelligent product recommendations fine-tuned to their complexion and preferences. It is essentially “that beauty advisor in your pocket,” she always wished her clients could have had it available on-demand through an app. In early beta tests, users have reacted with amazement, reporting that the foundation Honey to Cocoa picked for them truly matched once they applied the real product at home. Such feedback has been “incredibly affirming,” Knight said, motivating her to continue refining the experience.
Looking Ahead to a More Inclusive Future
Knight is preparing Honey to Cocoa for a broader public launch in late 2025. The startup is fine-tuning its AI algorithms in anticipation of entering the market. In many ways, Knight’s journey from psychology student and part-time makeup artist to tech founder mirrors a broader shift in the beauty industry – one that merges personal passion with innovation to solve problems that were long dismissed as unsolvable. Her goal is not just to sell an app, but to prove a point: that technology can help make the $100+ billion cosmetics market work better for consumers who have traditionally been underserved. “This is different and in need,” she said of her mission, noting that beauty tech often raises eyebrows in tech circles simply because it’s breaking new ground. With Honey to Cocoa’s full launch on the horizon, Knight is confident in the path ahead. “I know I have a long road ahead of me, and this is just the beginning,” she wrote to supporters after Techstars. If her vision comes to fruition, by the end of 2025, makeup lovers may find themselves with an AI ally ready to ensure no one ever buys the wrong shade again.
Click here to join Honey to Cocoa’s beta waitlist.