True Beauty, Redefined with Lisa Stroud

Rewriting the Rules of the Lash Industry

Irvine, CA — There’s a version of the beauty industry story that starts with an influencer, a ring light, and a viral moment. Lisa Stroud’s story starts somewhere else entirely: twenty years in a corner office, solving customer problems for a living, and a growing conviction that beauty brands could be built on something sturdier than trends.

Stroud is the founder of True Beauty Lashes, an AI-powered lash matching company based in Irvine, California, that just launched LashLOVR — the first lash brand to use facial feature recognition in an end-to-end recommendation system, matching customers to false lashes based on their unique eye shape.

Not Your Typical Beauty Founder

Stroud is candid about the fact that she doesn’t fit the mold. She spent two decades as a Customer Experience Strategist, work that taught her to spot friction in a purchase journey and eliminate it — a skill set she brought directly into the lash business.

“I have 20 years of experience as a Customer Experience Strategist, which puts me in a unique position to create a company that solves customer pain points and reduces frictions in the purchase journey, rather than building a brand based on trends or hype,”
she says.

Her experience with customer strategy shows up in True Beauty Lashes’ Aloe-Infused Lash Adhesive, built specifically for people who react to traditional lash glue — a gap Stroud noticed as a customer pain point.

True Beauty Lashes is Stroud’s third company. She calls herself a serial entrepreneur, “obsessed with building businesses that have purpose and make an impact.” For this venture, the purpose is: a counter-culture message about beauty and inclusivity, one that says beauty starts with who you are, not what you look like.

The company’s “Beauty Beyond Beauty” ethos is rooted in 1 Peter 3:3-4, a verse about inner beauty mattering more than outward adornment — and in a very specific memory of growing up in Southern California, where, as she puts it, looks were “99% of your worth.” That environment took a toll on her mental health, and it’s part of why she’s built her business around the opposite message.

Her hope for LashLOVR’s technology goes beyond matching a product to a face. “My vision is for people to learn how to understand and appreciate their physical features — starting with their unique eye shape profile in our LashLOVR technology — and use beauty products as a way to express themselves, not to ‘fix’ themselves,” she explains.

Stroud runs True Beauty Lashes as a solo founder for now, though she’s bringing on a CTO and co-founder to lead the company’s technology vision, alongside an advisory board and a network of freelance specialists.

Getting to this point required unlearning a habit she picked up early. Despite a reputation for being highly collaborative in her agency career, Stroud found herself trying to do everything alone as an entrepreneur — not out of ego, she says, but for speed.

“What I didn’t realize is that multiple minds are ALWAYS better than one. Even if it’s slower,” she says. Her fix wasn’t a system or a piece of software — it was getting rigorous about who she brings into the fold. “My ending strategy was to get really good at interviewing potential partners before I started working with them. This saves a ton of time and energy later if things don’t end up working out.”

The advice she extends to other women considering the leap into entrepreneurship: find advisors, stay coachable, and surround yourself with people smarter and more accomplished than you. And then take the first step anyway. “It takes calculated risks to get to where you want to be.”

Behind the product launches and milestones, Stroud describes a rhythm most customers never see: prayer, direction, and a belief that the doors opening for her business aren’t entirely her
own doing.

“We are constantly praying about direction and opportunity and believe that it’s God who’s opening the doors — our job is to walk through them, giving the credit back to Him,” she says. It’s a posture that, she explains, keeps her grounded in both the wins and the harder stretches — humble in the good times, hopeful in the difficult ones.

She’s equally honest about how bumpy the ride has been. “Starting a company is a constant roller coaster of highs and lows. One day you hit an absolute wall and the next day a door is opened that you didn’t even know was there,” she says. Her survival strategy: stay nimble, stay tenacious, and resist getting too attached to one specific outcome.

Unlearning the Corporate Dream

Stroud spent years believing the corporate ladder was the goal and that reaching the highest rank possible was “the dream.” She got there, rising to SVP at her agency, and found the view different than expected: politics, difficult people, and a growing distance from the work she actually cared about.

“Corporate America works for some and provides a certain level of stability that I’m grateful to have had as a financial foundation for many years, but it can easily stifle motivation and problem solving skills if the organization struggles to make space for those in their teams,” she reflects. Founding her own company, she says, finally gave her the creative freedom and decision-making authority to use every strength she had.

What’s Next

True Beauty Lashes recently opened its first pre-seed fundraising round, a milestone Stroud describes with a mix of pride and humility — accomplished, she notes, as a small brand that doesn’t yet have a cap table full of investors.

Her inspirations range from her mother’s faith and generosity, her husband’s leadership and other inspiring entrepreneurs, citing founders like Jamie Kern Lima of IT Cosmetics and Sara Blakely of Spanx as proof of what’s possible.

If there’s a single thread running through Stroud’s journey, it’s this: beauty products can be a form of self-expression instead of self-correction, and building a company around that idea is worth every one of the hard days it takes to get there.