About PERBETE
He left Harvard. To answer one question.
What is PERBETE?
PERBETE is a free website that checks skincare ingredients and matches a skincare routine to your skin.
- Founder
- Jay Lee. He worked in a cancer research lab before starting PERBETE.
- Started
- 2018, in Boston, Massachusetts
- Then and now
- It began by making custom-formulated skincare for each customer, one at a time, and ran a Kickstarter campaign. Every backer got their reward. In 2026 it became a free AI ingredient checker and routine matcher.
- The name
- PERsonalized BEauty TEchnology: PER + BE + TE.
- How it makes money
- Some store links earn us a fee. A fee never changes a rating. Ingredient colors and words are always free.
- Contact
- info@perbete.com
Not medical advice. If your skin worries you, see a dermatologist.
Why would anyone leave Harvard?
Jay was studying biotechnology at Harvard, then left before finishing. The reason starts in a cancer lab.
Read more
Jay Lee (Jaemin Lee) was doing graduate studies in biotechnology at Harvard. He was also taking AI classes, about five years before ChatGPT existed. Then he left before finishing. Why? The answer goes back many years, to a cancer lab, a few friends, and one question he could never put down.
- 2008
The lab
At 19, Jay moved from Korea to the US and worked in a cancer research lab. When friends got cancer, he started asking: what are we putting on our skin?
Read more
Jay was born in Jinhae, South Korea. In about March 2008, at nineteen, he moved to the United States.
There he worked as a researcher in a cancer research lab. Cancer was his work, every day. Then some of his friends got cancer, and a few of them got skin cancer. Now cancer had faces he knew.
So a question was born: what are we actually putting on our skin? It sounds simple, and it is very hard to answer.
The first try
His first idea was lab-made kopi luwak coffee. He could not make the enzyme cheaply, so it failed.
Read more
His first business idea had nothing to do with skin. It was coffee. Some people pay about $100 for a cup of kopi luwak. Its beans pass through a civet, a small wild animal, and enzymes in its gut (tiny helpers that break things down) work on the proteins in the beans. Jay wondered if a lab could do that job instead of a civet. He tried to make the enzyme, or find one that worked the same way, but he could not make it cheaply. That idea failed.
KLARME
His US skincare company KLARME took out every ingredient on four public cancer lists, and it sold well. The lesson: drop the bad ingredients, and know that every person needs different ones.
Read more
Then he built KLARME, a skincare company in the US. He checked cosmetic ingredients against four public cancer lists and made products with every ingredient on those lists taken out. It was high-concentration skincare with nothing bad inside, and it sold well.
KLARME taught him three things he still builds on. Bad ingredients have to come out. Every person needs different ingredients. And hard chemical names let marketing fool people, because almost nobody can read the label, so they trust the ad.
Too many lives at once
He ran KLARME, co-founded solvme, made a clear toothpaste and studied biotechnology at Harvard. He also took AI classes about five years before ChatGPT.
Read more
For a while Jay lived several lives at once. He ran KLARME. He co-founded solvme, a skincare company with partners in the US, China and Korea, and they put a lot of money into selling in China. He developed a transparent toothpaste. He began graduate studies in biotechnology at Harvard (biotechnology means using the science of living things to make useful things). And about five years before ChatGPT existed, he signed up for AI classes, because he wanted to connect AI with healthcare.
- 2018
Paris
PERBETE's Kickstarter campaign succeeded, and in 2018 Jay pitched it at L'Oréal in Paris. As the business grew, he left Harvard to put everything into it.
Paris, 2018. Jay's three-minute PERBETE business plan talk at L'Oréal. Read more
Then he founded PERBETE and took it to Kickstarter, a website where people put their own money behind ideas they believe in. The campaign succeeded. Invitations followed: to L'Oréal's headquarters in Paris, to Johnson & Johnson's headquarters in New York, and to others.
In 2018, at L'Oréal in Paris, Jay stood up and gave a three-minute talk on the PERBETE business plan. The name he spoke in that room is the name on this page. Those invitations made him sure: personalized skincare built with AI was where he had to go.
The business kept growing, and there were not enough hours for everything. So Jay left Harvard before finishing, and put everything into the work. That is the answer to the first question. The question from the cancer lab had become bigger than any classroom.
The storm
A trade war closed solvme, then COVID hit every company. Jay paused them all and spent years building one personalized system.
Read more
Then the world got in the way. The first US-China trade war broke out. New taxes on goods crossing borders (tariffs) and other problems hit his companies one after another, and solvme closed. Then COVID arrived and hit them all again. Before, Jay had chosen what to leave behind. This time it was taken out of his hands.
A coffee idea that failed, a trade war, a pandemic: plenty of people would have walked away for good. After COVID, Jay paused every company he had. For years he worked on one thing only, the research and development of a personalized system.
In 2026, one of those companies opened its doors again: PERBETE.
Why PERBETE
Jay brought the cancer lab, KLARME, biotechnology and AI together into PERBETE AI. Its one job: your best skin, with the ingredients you actually need.
Read more
People keep living longer, yet nobody manages each person's skin and beauty care in a real system. Jay brought everything together: the cancer lab, the KLARME lessons, the biotechnology and the AI. Out of that he built PERBETE AI.
PERBETE is built to end the hard-names game. Its job is to bring out each person's best skin and keep it there, using safe ingredients that person actually needs.
- 2026
Today
PERBETE checks every ingredient against four public cancer lists, free, and says if a listing is about skin, breathing in or swallowing. It matches skincare to your phenotype DNA from your answers and a photo.
Read more
Today PERBETE checks every ingredient against four public cancer lists (IARC, EU CLP, US NTP and California Prop 65), free. It also tells you whether a listing is about skin, breathing it in, or swallowing it. That is why a sunscreen lotion gets no titanium dioxide cancer warning from us: that listing is about breathing in the powder.
It matches skincare to your phenotype DNA, meaning the traits your genes show on the outside, like your skin tone. PERBETE reads them from your answers and a photo, with no lab test.
The road ahead
Next come cosmetics made for you, then diet and supplements, then genotype DNA. These are plans, and the work is still ahead.
Read more
Phenotype is the first step: the outside. Next come personalized cosmetics made for you, then personalized diet and nutrient supplements. After that, genotype DNA, reading the genes themselves. At the end of the road is deeper healthcare that everyone can use, free. These are plans, and the work is still ahead.
So why would anyone leave Harvard? For a question that began with his friends and still is not finished. The road leads toward healthcare, and the reason still leads back to them. Now anyone can ask the question with him: what is in this bottle, and is it right for me?
“What is in this bottle, and is it right for me?”
What PERBETE does
- We read the ingredient lists of 29,077 products and check them against 23,406 ingredients in our dictionary.
- Every ingredient gets a word and a color: low, moderate or high concern, or not rated yet. Each color has its own shape too, so color is never the only clue.
- A free quiz matches a routine to your skin type, concerns, sun response and age. You only need to answer 5 questions.
- Ingredient colors and scores are always free. They never lock.
What PERBETE is not
We are not doctors. Our pages are research notes, not medical advice. If your skin worries you, see a dermatologist.
We are not a store. We link to stores, and some of those links earn us a fee. The fee never changes an ingredient's rating or color. Routine picks only include products we can link to a store, so a product with no store link is not picked. You can still look it up.