hot or not?
An influencer told a million people to get Botox for their careers. Here’s what she should have said instead. Plus 4 articles and 15 new unicorns hiring.
In this issue:
🔥 Why the pretty privilege conversation stops one layer too shallow
🧰 The Competence Stack: a framework for where to actually invest in yourself
📖 4 articles that will change how you see this
💼 15 new unicorns ($1B+) actively hiring
✉️ A letter from me to you
A couple of weeks ago I watched a 20-something year old influencer with about a million followers (and not a beauty influencer) list Botox and fillers as professional development advice.
She called it “investing in yourself.”
She said pretty privilege is real, it affects your career, and the smart move is to buy your way closer to the standard.
I want to offer a different framework.
Pretty privilege is real.
In 1920, the psychologist Edward Thorndike identified the halo effect: when we perceive someone as attractive, we automatically assume they’re also smarter, more competent, more trustworthy.
Daniel Hamermesh quantified it decades later and found that attractive people earn roughly 3-4% more over their careers.
But follow-up research found something the influencers never mention. When you control for grooming, the beauty premium largely disappears. It’s not that pretty people earn more. It’s that well-groomed people earn more.
And grooming is not beauty. Grooming is money. Clear skin, good haircuts, clothes that fit, straight teeth. “Put together” is code for “looks like they have money.”
Pretty privilege, most of the time, is wealth proximity measured in skincare and blazers.
So when an influencer tells you to get Botox “for your career”, she’s telling you to buy a closer seat to a class marker. She’s not wrong that it works(in fact, I’m not against any sort of cosmetic interventions. it just pisses me off whenever an influencer (who probably gets paid or gets these procedures for free) makes comments like these under the guise of career advice).
She’s wrong that it’s the answer.
The Competence Stack
Here’s how I think about where to invest in yourself. I call it the Competence Stack because the things that actually make people perceive you as competent are layered, and most people are pouring everything into the wrong layer.
Layer 1: Appearance.
Grooming, skincare, how you dress. This is where most advice lives and where most money goes. Here’s the problem: this layer depreciates. Botox wears off in 4 months. Highlights grow out. Clothes go out of season. The tailored suit loses its shape. You have to keep paying to maintain it.
(saw this graph somewhere on tik tok, realistically we just need to focus on 3 layers)
Layer 2: Presence.
How you walk into a room. Whether you make eye contact. How you hold silence instead of filling it. Whether you take up space or shrink.
This layer is free and it compounds. The person who enters a room like they belong there is read as competent before they open their mouth. Nobody teaches this. You can learn it.
(my recommendation would be Brene Brown’s The gifts of imperfection)
Layer 3: Preparation.
The most competent person in any room is usually the most prepared. They’ve read the brief. They know the numbers. They have a question ready.
Preparation is completely free, it takes an hour, and it changes how every single person in that room perceives you. This layer compounds the fastest of all because preparation breeds confidence, and confidence is visible.
Layer 4: Voice.
How you speak. How you structure an argument.
How you ask questions that make the room go quiet. How you disagree without apologising(or antagonizing). This is the layer that compounds forever. Nobody can inject this. Nobody can take it from you.
Twenty years from now, your Botox will have worn off ten times over. Your ability to command a room will still be growing.
Here’s the test I use now before I invest time or money in myself:
does this depreciate or compound?
Botox depreciates. A public speaking course compounds. A blowout depreciates(sigh). Preparation compounds. A designer bag depreciates (yes, even that one). A stocks and shares ISA compounds.
The influencer with a million followers spent her platform telling people to invest in the one layer that depreciates.
She could have told her audience to invest in the three layers that are free and compound forever. That’s the missed opportunity. That’s what made me want to write this.
I’ve been on both sides of this. I’ve walked into rooms well-dressed and well-prepared and watched people assume competence before I said a word.
I’ve also walked in tired, underdressed, not at my best, and felt the shift. The door doesn’t open the same way. The assumption isn’t there.
That shift is real. But the answer was never “fix my face.” The answer was: become so prepared, so present, so clear in how I speak, that the halo effect becomes irrelevant. Build the layers that don’t wash off.
Pretty privilege exists. The system is rigged. But the response to a rigged system is not to spend more money playing by its rules. The response is to build something it can’t take from you.
Invest in the layers that compound.
And THEN if you want to go get that Botox, then do it.
📖 Antidoomscroll Homework
Dear reader who just realised they spend more on grooming than on growth, Beauty Pays by Daniel Hamermesh. The economist who quantified the beauty premium. The grooming distinction is in chapter 4. Read it and redirect your budget.
Dear reader who wants to build Layer 4, Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo. Not a self-help book. A breakdown of what the best speakers actually do. Specific, tactical, immediately usable.
Dear reader who is angry about the system and wants the language for why, The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. Written in 1991. Yes, it centres women. The chapter on work still applies to everyone who’s ever been judged on appearance before ability.
Dear reader who needs something unexpected today, The Ugly History of Beautiful Things in The Guardian. The poisonous, violent, colonial origins of the things we call beautiful. Fascinating and slightly horrifying.
💼 Jobs
15 new unicorns ($1B+ valuation) actively hiring.
🇪🇺 Europe
Granola (London / Bay Area) — AI meeting notepad. London HQ, just hit unicorn.
NEURA Robotics (Munich / Zurich) — cognitive robotics. European deep tech.
Fundamental (Bay Area / Barcelona / EU Remote) — foundation models. Barcelona and EU remote.
🇮🇳 India
KreditBee (Bengaluru) — consumer fintech lending. One of India’s newest unicorns.
Neysa (Mumbai / Bangalore) — AI acceleration infrastructure.
🌍 Global / Remote
Wonderful (Global) — enterprise AI agent platform. Truly global hiring.
Midi Health (Bay Area / LA / US Remote) — virtual healthcare for midlife women. Mission-driven.
Solace (Bay Area / US Remote) — patient advocacy platform.
Render (US Remote / Canada) — cloud platform. Developer-beloved, fully remote.
WorkOS (NYC / Bay Area / US Remote) — enterprise features for apps.
🇺🇸 US
Eight Sleep (NYC / Bay Area / Milan) — sleep tracking. Cult product.
Basis (NYC) — AI agents for accounting.
Whop (NYC / Palo Alto) — internet business platform.
Avoca (NYC / Santa Barbara) — AI workforce for home services.
Hermeus (Atlanta / LA / DC) — hypersonic aircraft. Apply for the dinner party story.
Forward this to someone who’s been underestimated. They’ll know what to do with it.
✉️ Dear Gentle Reader,
The Competence Stack has been rattling around my head for weeks. I kept testing it against my own life and it held up every time. The moments I was most effective were never the moments I looked best. They were the moments I was most prepared.
I am in the process of preparing to go to Cannes next month. I’ve just applied for my pass, so let’s see how that goes. It has been one of the things on my to-do list since I started creating content. I’ll share more about what it is, what it means, and how much it costs over the next few weeks.
Hope you have a great weekend and a wonderful week ahead.
See you Tuesday.
Avec amour,
Aditi x