Beyond the Algorithm: How Expert Intuition Drives Beauty Biotech Innovation

On this page

• Why Speed Matters and Why it's Usually a Trap
• Defending Human Intuition in Formulation
• Why the First 10 Years of Research Matter
• Meet Activated™ Silk: A Case Study in Multifunctional Design
  • Activated Silk™ 33B-α: The Barrier Ingredient That Actually Works
  • The Activated Silk™ Hydrogel: A Master Class in Multifunctionality
• Why Multifunctionality Isn't Just Marketing
• What Formulators Should Take Away

▶️ This article is adapted from "Biotech by Instinct: Fast tracking Innovation with Science-Backed Confidence", a webinar by Covalo x Evolved By Nature. Watch here

If you've been paying attention to the beauty industry's path with AI and machine learning, you might think the future of ingredient innovation is all about computational power. Feed the algorithm 10,000 data points, let it generate 200 new molecules, and one of them might be a winner.

Except that's not how the best biotech companies are actually moving.

Evolve by Nature, a biotech company that's been working with silk peptides since its founding in 2013, proved something important: the path to faster innovation isn't through more computing power. It's through deeper understanding, focused expertise, and what Chris Valencius, the company's CMO, calls "expert intuition."

Why Speed Matters and Why it's Usually a Trap

Timelines in beauty product development are tighter than ever. A typical brief comes down with a 9-month to 18-month delivery window. The pressure is real. And that pressure creates a natural hesitation: if you don't know how an ingredient works, why take the risk?

Mateja summed it up clearly from the lab perspective:

"Formulators are being asked to deliver more, deliver faster, fewer iterations with not really that much support. One of the biggest hurdles to true innovation isn't the lack of ideas, but it's really the perception that novel ingredients are too complex, risky, and time consuming to use."

The paradox is brutal. True innovation takes time, but the timeline doesn't allow for it. So formulators default to what they know, what they've used before, what they're comfortable with. The result? A lot of very safe formulas that don't actually move the needle on efficacy or storytelling.

What breaks the cycle, according to Valencius, isn't better technology. It's better expertise.

Defending Human Intuition in Formulation

This is where the webinar took a direct stance against a lot of industry noise. Yes, AI can generate hundreds of molecules. But those molecules often share a fatal flaw: they're speculative.

"An AI platform may spit out 200 molecules a year, but it's very formulaic. It's based off an algorithm and not an intuition. A lot of those molecules end up being prohibitively expensive, or they can't be scaled, or they're hard to formulate with. It's not that sort of human, organic algorithm—that balance between your brain and your gut." — Chris Valencius

Expert intuition, by contrast, is what emerges when someone has worked with a material for decades. Evolve by Nature's founders, Dr. Greg Alman and Rebecca Lacur, started studying silk protein in grad school in the 1990s. They've been designing ingredients from it ever since. When they sit down to innovate, they're not guessing. They're drawing on 30+ years of accumulated knowledge about how silk peptides behave, fold, and interact with skin.

That depth means when they think, "If we modify the peptide this way and turn it into a polypeptide in this way, it's going to interact with this skin cell mechanism and produce this protein," they're not speculating. They're intuiting, based on a foundation of near-total material understanding.

The result is a dramatically shorter innovation cycle. Evolve by Nature took a decade to launch its first ingredient (Activated Silk™ 33B-α in 2023). But in the year and a half after that, it released four more. Once the foundational work was done, iteration became fast and reliable.

Why the First 10 Years of Research Matter 

On the surface, a decade between founding and first product launch sounds like a failure. However, it's not.

It's the opposite. Valencius explained the reasoning: Evolved by Nature was obsessively getting everything right. Manufacturing, sourcing, sustainability benchmarks, efficacy validation, regulatory pathway—all of it.

"We're very passionate about the science. We have people here that discover something and run through the halls with it. But at the same time, we get equally passionate about what our partners are going to do with it. It's not a zero-sum game. We really want to create an upward spiral where if our partners benefit, so do we." — Chris Valencius

This isn't just philosophy. It translates into a very practical commitment: every ingredient Evolve by Nature releases is designed with three things in mind.

• New claims. Can this ingredient help a brand tell a new story or reach a new customer conversation?

• Better efficacy. Not just "as good as" generation-one ingredients like retinol, but actually superior in a way that matters.

• Better economics. Can we help brands achieve higher margins through clever formulation and ingredient multifunctionality?

If an ingredient doesn't hit all three, it doesn't launch. That's why when Activated Silk™ 33B-α finally shipped, it came with seven-day clinical data and real-world validation. And why the hydrogel, which wasn't even conceived until the platform was already mature, went from idea to market in under nine months.

Meet Activated™ Silk: A Case Study in Multifunctional Design

Rather than list every ingredient Evolve by Nature makes, let's zoom in on two that best illustrate the "expert intuition" approach: Activated Silk™ 33B-α (their barrier ingredient) and the Activated Silk™ Hydrogel (their breakthrough functional ingredient).

Activated Silk™ 33B-α: The Barrier Ingredient That Actually Works

For years, ceramides have been the go-to barrier ingredient. They sit between skin cells like mortar between bricks. It's a decent metaphor. But it's passive.

Activated Silk™ 33B-α is different. It does two things simultaneously:

• Mechanically, it forms a film on the skin surface and physically pulls skin cells together.

• Biologically, it signals skin cells to upregulate claudin—the tight junction protein that keeps skin cells bonded.

The result is a dual mechanism: your skin cells are being mechanically pulled together while simultaneously being told to produce more of the protein that holds them together. Once they're in proximity, they stick. The barrier is restored. And because it works with skin's natural processes, the effects are stable and long-lasting.

The clinical data bears this out. In an ex-vivo study, Activated Silk™ 33B-α showed significant decreases in transepidermal water loss (TEWL), the gold standard for barrier integrity. And consumer feedback after seven days was unambiguous: skin appears healthier, more replenished, smoother, firmer.

But here's what makes Activated Silk™ 33B-α interesting from a formulation perspective: it binds to keratin. Which means it stays on the skin even when rinsed off. Evolve by Nature has formulated it into cleansers, body washes, and hand soaps—products you'd normally never put an active ingredient into because you'd be washing it down the drain.

Not anymore. With 33B, you apply a clinically proven active ingredient every time you wash. That's a completely new category of benefit for a wash format.

The Activated Silk™ Hydrogel: A Master Class in Multifunctionality

The hydrogel might be the most impressive part of the Evolve by Nature portfolio because it shouldn't be able to do what it does.

It's a proteoglycan—a peptide backbone bonded to carbohydrates. The peptide portion came from existing Evolve by Nature research. But the engineering insight that made it a hydrogel was pure intuition: what if we bind this peptide (which holds oil affinity and binds to keratin) with a carbohydrate (which holds massive amounts of water)?

The result is an ingredient that:

• Outperforms hyaluronic acid on hydration (each molecule holds water with twice the strength of HA, so you can use half the amount)
• Won't pull water from skin in dry environments (unlike HA, which will dry you out if there's no ambient humidity)
• Acts as an emulsifier (can hold 50% oil in stable form without PEG or palm-based surfactants)
• Binds to hair (repairs split ends, prevents frizz, survives shampooing)
• Modulates viscosity and sensory feel (dial up the percentage and you change the entire texture profile)
• Works in rinse-off formats (stays bound to skin and hair even after washing)

And it was all designed, formulated, and brought to market in under nine months.

Mateja's perspective from the product development bench was telling:

"From an MPD point of view, the hydrogel is incredible. It's a multifunctional ingredient that allows you to move fast within your pipeline and produce simpler formulations while still delivering high performance and sensorial elegance. It also helps support the business side—when you're slimming down your formula, you're improving margins." 

Why Multifunctionality Isn't Just Marketing

The webinar included an audience poll: what claims do you find most attractive to consumers? The results were clear: multifunctionality came in first, followed by longevity and sustainability.

This matters because multifunctionality is often treated as a marketing angle. "It does five things!" But what the Evolve by Nature case shows is that genuine multifunctionality is a formulation strategy.

When an ingredient actually does multiple things—not through ingredient stacking, but through clever molecular design—you can:

• Reduce INCI list length (brands and consumers both love shorter lists)
• Lower ingredient costs (one ingredient replaces three or four)
• Improve margins (fewer SKUs to manage, less formulation complexity)
• Move faster (simpler formulas mean fewer compatibility tests, fewer iterations)
• Deliver better efficacy (you're not compromising on any single benefit; you're optimizing across multiple pathways)

This is why Valencius was emphatic about avoiding the zero-sum thinking that often dominates ingredient partnerships: "We don't just negotiate on price and move on. We want to create an upward spiral where if our partners benefit, so do we."

What Formulators Should Take Away

If you're choosing a biotech partner, you're not just buying molecules. You're buying a philosophy. Are they obsessed with scalability and real-world usability? Do they design for your constraints? Do they have decades of deep material knowledge, or are they operating off the latest algorithmic output?

The formulators who move fastest aren't the ones taking the biggest risks on untested ingredients. They're the ones partnering with companies that have done the hard foundational work, invested in real expertise, and designed ingredients specifically to make their jobs easier.

Multifunctionality, ease of use, sustainability, efficacy, and margin improvement aren't separate goals. When you're working with true platform technology and expert intuition, they're all outcomes of the same thoughtful design.

If you're a formulator interested in trialing Evolved By Nature ingredients, click here to request your samples and quotes on Covalo.

This article is based on the Covalo x Evolved By Nature webinar featuring , Mateja Weber (Product Innovation Consultant & Scientific Advisor), Rae Cutlan (Consultant & Advisor, Founder of Cutlan LLC), and Chris Valencius (CMO, Evolved by Nature). Watch the replay here.