Jon Flint, a former lawyer-turn venture capitalist has his sights on a new industry: hair care. His company, Living Proof, tackles the frizz with science.
His Boston-based venture-capital firm, Polaris Partners, typically invested in biotech and Internet companies. So Mr. Flint bought dozens of skin- and hair-care products to learn more about them.
He and his partners then showed the ingredients to Robert Langer, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. Dr. Langer runs one of the largest biomedical-engineering labs in the world, and a Polaris partner had worked there as a Ph.D. student.
The group discovered that many hair-care products used the same ingredients and made unsupported scientific claims. For instance, Mr. Flint says, most anti-frizz products over the past 30 years contained silicone, which is ineffective at blocking out humidity.