Doug Jacob

Doug Jacob · &vest

The platform · Co-Founder & CEO

&vest

&vest is the beauty transformation platform co-founded in August 2019 by Doug Jacob and Michael Lastoria that acquires, advises and operates consumer beauty brands from its headquarters at 1220 Broadway in New York.

Doug Jacob is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer; Michael Lastoria is Co-Founder. The firm operates through two legal entities, IMA Creative LLC and IMA Investor LLC, referred to together as &vest. Its website is andvest.co. It is unrelated to andvest.com, a UK firm.

What &vest does

&vest takes ownership positions in beauty brands and places its own leadership inside them as operating partners. It runs one operating playbook across leadership, commerce, product, brand, technology, supply chain, finance and organization design, and offers the same playbook on an advisory basis to brands it does not own. The firm describes two tracks: partnership, in which it acts as an embedded operator to reset strategy and execution, and own-and-operate, in which it acquires beauty brands it believes can scale.

The firm's description has followed its portfolio. Restaurant trade press in 2020 called it a restaurant incubator; its 2021 releases called it an investment platform focused on SPACs and private investments; by the 2023 Forma Brands transaction it was a consumer brand investment and operational platform. Its work since then has been in beauty.

Portfolio

Morphe. Morphe's parent, Forma Brands, was acquired out of Chapter 11 in April 2023 by an investor group of Jefferies Finance, funds managed by Cerberus Capital Management and &vest. &vest assumed operational control: Doug Jacob joined as operating partner and &vest partner Cliff Moskowitz became chief executive of Forma Brands. Morphe has since moved from influencer collaborations to a product-led range sold through Ulta Beauty, Amazon, Target and its own site. The full account is at /morphe.

Kopari Beauty. &vest also operates Kopari Beauty under the same model.

Beauty Labs. &vest incubated Beauty Labs, an AI and machine-learning company building virtual try-on and skin-analysis tools for beauty and wellness, and led its Series A in July 2020. Amyris announced an agreement to acquire Beauty Labs on April 14, 2021 and closed the acquisition on August 31, 2021, at approximately $125 million enterprise value. Amyris's announcement named &vest as investor and operational partner to the company.

Agencies

&vest owns three agencies that serve its portfolio and outside clients.

  • &code (andcode.ai): agentic AI and automation. The technology arm of &vest, covering engineering, automation, AI agents and analytics; Morphe is its principal case study.
  • AND Studio (andstudio.nyc): performance creative. An AI production studio making cinematic and social-first content at scale.
  • &human: clinical talent intelligence.

Partners

  • Doug Jacob, Co-Founder and CEO.
  • Michael Lastoria, Co-Founder; co-founder of &pizza.
  • Garrett Schreiber, Partner and CFO; also CFO of FAST Acquisition Corp and Velocity Acquisition Corp.
  • Bill Hinman, Partner. Director of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance from 2017 to 2020 and previously a partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; joined &vest on May 17, 2021.
  • Sandy Beall, Partner and Advisor. Founder of Ruby Tuesday and co-founder of Blackberry Farm; CEO of FAST Acquisition Corp II.
  • Cliff Moskowitz, Partner. Former CEO of Outdoor Voices; named CEO of Forma Brands at the April 2023 transaction.

Capital markets

&vest sponsored three special purpose acquisition companies: FAST Acquisition Corp (NYSE: FST), which raised $200 million in August 2020; Velocity Acquisition Corp (Nasdaq: VELO), formed by the principals of &vest and listed in February 2021; and FAST Acquisition Corp II (NYSE: FZT), listed in March 2021, which completed its business combination with Falcon's Beyond Global in October 2023. The full record is at /fast.

&vest also holds a position in &pizza, the Washington, D.C. fast-casual chain Jacob helped launch with Lastoria, where Jacob has served on the board.

Coverage

Related

Doug Jacob Morphe FAST Acquisition Corp andvest.co andcode.ai andstudio.nyc