Tarte Founder Maureen Kelly Launches Sippable Self-Care Brand Finnsul With Her Sons

Maureen Kelly built Tarte Cosmetics into a billion-dollar brand from a one-bedroom New York City apartment in 1999. Now, with two sons in college and a renovated garage as headquarters, she has launched her second act: Finnsul, a "sippable self-care" nootropic electrolyte brand she co-founded with 18-year-old Finn and 19-year-old Sully McDonough.

The move takes Kelly into wellness, unlike many of her peers who stayed within beauty for their second ventures, including Bobbi Brown with Jones Road, Wende Zomnir with Caliray after Urban Decay, and Jeanine Lobell with Neen after Stila. The Finnsul name itself is an amalgam of her sons' names.

The brand is designed to help people with busy lives improve their focus, positioning its zero-sugar hydration formula as a way to "redefine high-performance focus" with more than ten vitamins and minerals. The formulation includes electrolytes, vitamin B, biotin, and Cognizin, a patented form of citicoline. Cognizin is a premium nootropic ingredient that supplies the brain with citicoline, and has been clinically tested for its capacity to sustain focus, attention, and memory in healthy adults. The appeal of including it in a powder drink mix is practical: Cognizin is vegetarian, allergen-free, and compatible with a wide range of product formats, from dietary supplements to functional beverages.

The product aims to blend electrolytes and nootropics, "because no one is doing hydration for your brain," Kelly said, adding that she and both of her sons have ADD and constantly operate as though "37 tabs are open at once." "I have always believed that wellness and beauty are much more connected than people realise," Kelly told Cosmetics Business.

The bootstrapped origins are as scrappy as Tarte's were. A brand representative described the build as "the old-school way," noting that Finn built the entire TikTok Shop and website himself and will handle customer service, while Sully grew the waitlist and helped hand-select every ingredient "between finals and factory visits." The brothers used their own savings earned through jobs and investments and continue to reinvest everything back into the business, with Maureen having supported the initial stick pack launch in what the rep called "very much a next-gen founder story powered by their own hustle." Finn is 18 and heading to college soon; Sully is 19 and a freshman at the University of Miami.

The Ulta connection gives Finnsul an unusually powerful first step into retail for a bootstrapped startup. According to Spate's Popularity Index, which measures activity across Google searches, TikTok views, and Instagram posts, electrolytes surged more than 51% year over year in the U.S. for the year ending February 2026, making the timing shrewdly calculated. In April, single Finnsul stick packs will be included in special Tarte x Finnsul product kits rolling out across Ulta's full chain, with each flavor paired alongside a different Tarte product, including the Tartelette Tubing Mascara and Maracuja Juicy Lips lip gloss. Erica Sieni, VP of brand marketing at Tarte, who is also working on Finnsul, noted that the team has been crowdsourcing decisions with its community, taking that approach to TikTok as well, covering everything from merch colors to sweatshirt designs to which flavors to launch next.

Pricing for individual stick packs has not been announced. What is clear is that Finnsul arrives as Cognizin itself is gaining serious commercial traction: according to a Mintel and Black Swan Data analysis, 65% of global product launches featuring Cognizin include a brain or nervous system benefit claim, signaling the broader market appetite Kelly is moving into. For a founder who once hand-sold concealer from a Manhattan apartment, building a nootropic brand from a garage with her college-age sons feels entirely on brand.