Brian Oh co-founded VENN Skincare in 2017 with Kevin Mun, a nuclear physicist turned skincare innovator. Kevin’s decades of research on drug delivery systems form the scientific foundation of every formula at VENN, a brand known for its proprietary delivery technologies and ingredients like PDRN and ginsenoside Compound K.

A former corporate lawyer and lifelong skincare enthusiast, Brian oversees VENN's R&D partnerships and product development from Korea, where the brand's manufacturing facilities and research center are located.

At Ayla, we don't carry a brand until we truly understand it, which often means going straight to the source. Read on for Dara's conversation with Brian about what makes VENN's approach to Korean skincare science so different, and why it's one of the most exciting brands to land on our shelves.

VENN Skincare and K-beauty

Dara: VENN has been around since 2017, but I've been seeing it everywhere in the press lately! What's been happening over the past couple of years?

BRIAN: It's been a really exciting period for us. We've seen significant growth in terms of the number of professional accounts we work with, like luxury spas and medical clinics. And we've also launched some truly innovative products, like our PDRN ampoule. A lot of the press picked that up, which definitely contributed to the momentum. It's been an exciting year.

Dara: I can’t wait to talk to you about PDRN. But first, I'd love to understand how you think about K-beauty as a category and where VENN fits within it.

BRIAN: That's a really interesting question, because K-beauty has so many different definitions and perceptions at this point.

If K-beauty is defined by Korean innovation and technology, then yes: VENN is absolutely K-beauty. We have our own manufacturing facility here in Korea, our own R&D center, and our mission has always been to bring the most advanced Korean skincare innovations to our formulations.

But historically, K-beauty has been defined by something quite different. When I first started VENN, K-beauty was in its first big moment, which was largely associated with sheet masks, fun products, banana creams, that kind of thing. A lot of Korean brands, both then and now, were focused on mass channels, which means the priority is affordability. When people heard "K-beauty," they knew the concept, but they couldn't necessarily identify a specific brand within it.

I think what's happening now is that K-beauty is having a second moment, one that's trying to redefine the category. VENN carries a strong Korean heritage, but the reason I started VENN wasn't because of K-beauty as a trend. It was because when I looked at Korea, I saw so many remarkable technologies and innovations that weren't being applied to skincare, largely for cost reasons. Many brands were using actives in a very conceptual way, not at the concentrations needed to deliver clinically visible results. I wanted to build a company that did the opposite.

The VENN Origin Story

Dara: Can you tell me a bit about your background? How did you go from law to skincare?

Brian: I was a banking and finance lawyer in New York, and then moved to Silicon Valley around 2014 or 2015; a lot of law firms were recruiting from New York at the time, and I was drawn to the startup and VC world there.

As a Korean, skincare was part of my life from a very young age. My mother gave me my first skincare set in elementary school: a cleanser, serum, moisturizer, and sunscreen, actually from Shiseido, which was very popular in Korea at the time. And that interest only grew from there. When I moved from New York to Silicon Valley, I had 90 different skincare products on my counter. (I know that number because my friends helped me pack, and they literally counted every single one.) I didn't use all of them, of course; I just loved exploring products.

In Silicon Valley, I started working with biotech companies and businesses in the life sciences space. That's how I met my co-founder, Kevin Mun, a nuclear physicist who had transitioned into skincare.

Dara: A nuclear physicist—that's not a background you often hear about in this industry.

BRIAN: It really isn't, and what made meeting him so mind-blowing was that his approach to skincare science went well beyond ingredients. When most brands talk about science, they're talking about actives: a well-known ingredient at a meaningful concentration, or a stabilized form of something notoriously difficult to work with, like vitamin C or retinol. And of course, ingredients matter enormously.

But Kevin Mun's focus was on the technologies that sit beneath the ingredients: drug delivery systems, solubilization technologies, the mechanisms by which actives are processed and delivered to the skin. His question wasn't just, "What's in the formula?" It was, "How do we make the formula actually work?"

If you think about two formulations using the exact same set of ingredients, the one with better ingredient optimization technologies and more effective delivery systems will always outperform. That's the engine driving VENN.

When he explained this to me, I decided to leave my legal career and start the company with him. That was about ten years ago now.

The Science Behind VENN: Delivery Technology

Dara: So from the very beginning, the foundation of VENN was delivery technology.

BRIAN: Yes. The first two years were spent building out our R&D center and developing our initial technologies. Two of our early patents involve stabilization technologies centered on ginsenoside Compound K, a key active extracted from Panax ginseng. Compound K is very insoluble; it doesn't dissolve in water. We developed a way to water-solubilize it and use it in high concentrations. It's a powerful antioxidant with benefits similar to vitamin C, but without the instability and sensitivity issues that come with pure vitamin C.

Another one of our most advanced systems is what we call our multi-layer vehicle delivery technology. It involves creating delivery vehicles composed of alternating layers of hydrophilic and hydrophobic actives, essentially mimicking the structure of the skin itself. That system is used in several of our hero products, including our Age-Recharge Compound K Eye Concentrate.

Dara: You mentioned partnering with Seoul National University. Can you tell me more about that work?

BRIAN: For the past three years, we've collaborated with the TMT Lab at Seoul National University's medical school. It’s one of the top nuclear medicine labs in Korea, led by Professor Hyung Joon Im, who is considered among the foremost researchers in this field. The collaboration involved applying their most advanced delivery system—a transformative liposome technology—to cosmetic formulations.

We chose vitamin C, specifically L-ascorbic acid, as the key active to work with, because it's simultaneously one of the most prominent and most difficult ingredients in skincare. There's the oxidation issue, the instability, the sensitivity for certain skin types. What makes this technology so significant is what we measured: with simple topical application, the absorption rate of vitamin C after 30 to 40 minutes is 0%. With this delivery system, that absorption rate rises to over 30%. That's a meaningful, measurable difference. The patent was recently registered in Korea, and we're now filing in the U.S. and other jurisdictions.

This is what I mean when I say VENN thinks of itself less as a skincare company and more as a biotech company, one that continues to develop innovative delivery systems that make formulations truly work.

Dara: Does having your own in-house R&D lab set you apart from other K-beauty brands?

BRIAN: Significantly. Over 90% of K-beauty brands work with large contract manufacturers: they select products from off-the-shelf formulas, and their role is essentially marketing. I have many founder friends in K-beauty who would describe their businesses exactly that way. It's a different kind of company entirely.

VENN has always been self-financed; we were never VC-backed or investor-backed. That was a deliberate choice, because it gives us control over our R&D, over where we invest, over the company's direction. For us, it's never been about creating a product and maximizing sales volume. It's always been about finding innovative technologies and building meaningful formulations that actually do something.

Dara: And your R&D center is based near Seoul?

BRIAN: Yes, it's in Pangyo, which is sometimes called the Silicon Valley of Korea. It's where a lot of the biotech and IT companies are clustered, about 40 to 50 minutes from the city center, in the Gyeonggi-do region. That's where our manufacturing facilities are as well.

Korean skincare technology: is it more advanced?

Dara: Does Korean skincare technology outpace what's happening in the West? You’re particularly well positioned to answer this question given that you live between Los Angeles and Seoul.

BRIAN: It depends on the formulation. There are certainly technologies available in Korea that could be applied more broadly, and some companies are using them. But the challenge is that K-beauty's center of gravity has always been the mass market, affordable products. And when you're selling at an accessible price point, there's a real ceiling on how much you can invest in a formulation. It limits the technologies you can build in, and the concentrations of actives you can use.

What I haven't come across, even within Korea, is another company focused on the specific aspect of skincare science that VENN is focused on, which is delivery technology and ingredient optimization at a higher level. PDRN is a good example. It's become a global phenomenon, and for good reason: it has real, validated, regenerative benefits. It's been used in medical clinics in Korea and across Asia for years. But the challenge with PDRN is that intact sodium DNA doesn't absorb through the skin on its own; the molecular size is simply too large.

So you see some brands using hydrolyzed sodium DNA, which breaks down the chain so it can absorb. But once you break it down, you've lost the regenerative properties. At best, it functions as a humectant. Other brands use intact sodium DNA at very high percentages, but without a delivery system, it isn't absorbing either.

That's where our nano-emulsion delivery system comes in. We encapsulate intact sodium DNA in nanoparticles with an average size below 200 nanometers, which is small enough to penetrate the skin. The DNA chain coils and is encapsulated within these nano vehicles. Through testing, we've been able to confirm that the PDRN does absorb, and that absorption translates into the visible, meaningful skin benefits you'd expect.

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(VENN’s PDRN is the real deal, by the way.)

Read on for part two: VENN Skincare at Ayla, where Brian covers VENN's product lineup in depth—from the quasi-semi-emulsion cleanser to the exosome mask and the brand's approach to Compound K.
And shop the VENN collection at Ayla here: every one of these products is a winner.