Hailey Bieber sold Rhode to e.l.f. Beauty after she and co-founder Lauren Ratner addressed their main fear in an acquisition

Hailey Bieber had heard the horror stories before she ever sat down with e.l.f.

Beauty.

“I’ve heard a lot of stories from founders that had gone through acquisitions and had regrets and were not super happy with where their brand went,” Bieber said onstage at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit on Wednesday.

“I went into it with a mindset of really wanting to know that Rhode was going to be safe where it was going.” Bieber and Rater launched Rhode in 2022 and three years later e.l.f.

Beauty agreed to buy the brand in a deal worth up to $1 billion , one of the buzziest beauty acquisitions in recent years.

Bieber has since stayed on to lead creative and product innovation alongside Lauren Ratner, Rhode’s co-founder, president and chief brand officer.

For Bieber, the deciding factor wasn’t the price.

In fact, Bieber said discussions about profit margins hate to see her coming, she told Fortune’s Ellie Austin.

And in deciding to sell the brand she launched, Bieber said she wanted to know that she would still have a major role in the company she helped build.

“That was my one fear, really—that I would sell my company and then they were gonna say, ‘OK, we’re gonna put this person in and this person in,’ and then we want to make the team bigger around product development, and that I would start feeling like I didn’t have as much say,” she said.

“It’s my baby, it’s our baby.

We’ve grown it from literally day zero, ground up.” ‘We’re not going to fix what’s not broken ‘ Bieber said she laid out every concern to e.l.f. from the beginning, including that she couldn’t imagine stepping back from the business.

Their response was a happy surprise.

“They were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we want you to be more involved if you want to,’” Bieber recalled.