Many of us have dealt with skin issues like keratosis pilaris, body acne, ingrown hairs, and dark marks. So when a product successfully resolves these problems, it usually goes viral. Case in point: the Soft Services Buffing Bar, a microcrystal bar that gently exfoliates those KP bumps that appear on the back of your arms. (It helps get rid of ingrown hairs, too.) This bar is the brainchild of Soft Services CEO Rebecca Zhou and was born out of her struggle with body acne. Zhou didn’t set out to be a founder, but she saw a gap in the market for bodycare products that solve these less-talked-about but super-common skincare issues and knew she had to do something about it.

“My upbringing as a first-generation Chinese immigrant has made the experience of being an entrepreneur feel at times foreign and at times comfortable,” Zhou explains. “The unfamiliar aspect mostly stems from the expectation for a traditional career. On the other hand, you get really used to operating in a world that is unknown. I felt like I had to figure it out for myself and learn the rules as they were unfolding, which I think was great preparation for being a founder.”

“We’re solely focused on creating skincare solutions for our body skin—and that makes us pretty different from most other beauty brands,” Zhou says of Soft Services. “We know that customers struggle with body skin concerns, but they don’t have the tools and information to get the results they want, and that’s what Soft Services is here to do.”