Building beauty brands into companies built to last.

Doug Jacob is Co-Founder and CEO of &vest, a New York–based beauty brand operating and investment platform he founded in 2019 with Michael Lastoria. &vest acquires, advises and operates consumer beauty brands, embedding its own leadership as portfolio operators and deploying an in-house transformation stack: &code (agentic AI and automation), AND Studio (performance creative) and &human (clinical talent intelligence).

In April 2023, &vest joined Jefferies Finance and funds managed by Cerberus Capital Management in acquiring Forma Brands, the parent company of Morphe, out of Chapter 11. Jacob has since served as an operating partner leading Morphe's repositioning from an influencer-led to a product-first brand, with expanded distribution at Ulta, Amazon and Target.

Jacob incubated Beauty Labs, the beauty AI and commerce technology company acquired by Amyris in 2021, and co-founded the special purpose acquisition companies FAST Acquisition Corp (NYSE: FST), FAST Acquisition Corp II (NYSE: FZT) and Velocity Acquisition Corp.

Earlier, he founded JWALK, a full-service creative agency formed in 2010 whose beauty clients included NARS, bareMinerals, Buxom and Shiseido. JWALK was acquired by Shiseido Americas in March 2017 and became its in-house creative group; Jacob served as Chief Creative Director of Shiseido Americas. With Lastoria he also helped launch the restaurant brand &pizza.

Jacob is a graduate of Gettysburg College and is based in New York.