He Built, Then Nearly Broke, a Successful Beauty Start-Up. Can It Go on Without Him?
Nicola Kilner, the chief executive of the skin-care company Deciem, has a joke about last year. If you didn’t get fired in 2018, she says, “then you didn’t really live 2018 at Deciem.” Ms. Kilner was fired twice, by Brandon Truaxe, the company’s founder and one of her closest friends. Last year, even as Deciem…