Dr. Augustine K. Agyekum is a PhD toxicologist and the founder of The Agyekum Group, a toxicology consulting firm based in Santa Monica, California. With over 15 years of experience in global product safety for cosmetics and personal care brands, including a former role as head of global product safety at a major beauty company, he advises brands on ingredient safety, exposure-based risk assessment, and regulatory compliance.
But the question that kept coming wasn't only from brands. It was from friends, family, and his own daughter: "Is this product safe?" He saw the same gap from both sides. On the brand end, scientists were doing rigorous safety work, but that messaging never reached consumers. On the consumer end, people had no way to access the information they needed to make informed decisions.
When Dr. Agyekum set out to scale his expertise beyond one-on-one consulting, he turned to Emergent. The result: a growing ecosystem of consumer and enterprise products, starting with GlowCheck AI, a cosmetics safety app, and Tox Intel, an enterprise-grade toxicology assessment platform for brands and retailers.
Challenges
The feast-or-famine cycle of solo consulting
Before building on Emergent, Dr. Agyekum operated as an independent consultant. The work was rewarding but structurally limited. "It's either feast or famine when you're a consultant," he explained. When he had clients, he was doing the work. When he ran out of time, he ran out of work. Every safety assessment was performed manually, one product at a time, and his capacity was capped by the hours in his day.
Deep expertise, no way to scale it
Dr. Agyekum's core problem was not a lack of knowledge. It was the inability to put that knowledge to work at scale. He had spent years developing rigorous, evidence-based approaches to product safety, specifically risk-oriented, exposure-based assessments rather than the hazard-based methods used by many existing tools on the market.
But with no engineering background and no development team, there was no path from expertise to product. He needed a way to automate what he was doing manually and make it available to both brands and consumers.
No development skills, and a dev team quoted $30,000
Dr. Agyekum is not an engineer. He had no coding skills and no prior experience building software. Before Emergent, his digital presence consisted of a self-built GoDaddy website. When he explored hiring a development team to build his first app, the quote came back at $30,000, and that was before he even had a client base to justify the investment. He needed a platform that could take him from concept to product without requiring technical skills or a large upfront financial commitment.
Solution
Using Emergent, Dr. Agyekum built multiple interconnected products that serve both consumers and enterprise clients.
A consumer-facing cosmetics safety app that scans product ingredients and provides risk-oriented safety information using toxicology principles and exposure route calculations. The goal is not to tell consumers what to buy, but to give them the information to make informed decisions. The app is currently live on the Apple App Store.. It uses a subscription model at $4.99/month or $39.99/year, with additional paywalls for specialized assessments (pregnancy, breastfeeding, sensitive skin).
An enterprise-grade platform that enables brands to run high-throughput safety assessments on their product formulas. Originally built for internal use to automate Dr. Agyekum's own assessment workflow, Tox Intel evolved into a commercial subscription service after clients saw it in action and wanted access. Its first retail partnership is with a men's retail brand.
The Agyekum Group website
A professional firm website that serves as the hub for consulting services, regulatory guidance, and lead generation. Built on Emergent, it replaced the previous GoDaddy site and now presents the firm's services, team credentials, and product offerings in a unified, clean format.
Two additional apps are also in development: a household cleaning product safety app and the TOL (Toxicology of Life) app, which applies toxicological dose-response principles to lifestyle stressors like social media usage and relationship dynamics.
Dr. Agyekum built every product on Emergent without writing code. His in-house team consists of three people, including a board-certified toxicologist who reviews all assessments and a business development professional.
Emergent's support acts as his development arm. Rather than committing thousands upfront, he moved $20 at a time until each project was complete. "I could get there at my own pace," he said. "I did not have the skills. I still don't have the skills. It's all been Emergent"
Outcomes
5x increase in new business inquiries
After transitioning from his self-built GoDaddy website to a professionally built site on Emergent, Dr. Agyekum saw a 5x increase in new business inquiries for The Agyekum Group. Cold inbound leads began arriving through the website from people who had never heard of the firm before. "People have contacted me through the website and said, 'Hey, I saw the site. I'm interested in Tox Intel,'" he said.
$0 to $60,000 in monthly revenue since April
Six months before the interview, Dr. Agyekum had none of his current products live. Since beginning to build on Emergent, his monthly revenue grew from zero to roughly $30,000 in April, then climbed to approximately $60,000 per month by June, driven by a combination of Tox Intel enterprise subscriptions, GlowCheck AI consumer subscriptions, and consulting engagements generated through the new website.
Available in 174 countries
GlowCheck AI is now available in 174 countries, enabling Dr. Agyekum to pursue his broader mission of raising global consumer consciousness around product safety. The international reach has allowed him to address issues beyond the U.S. market, including the use of carcinogenic bleaching agents in skin-lightening products in sub-Saharan Africa and India.
Conclusion
Dr. Agyekum went from a solo consultant performing manual safety assessments to the founder of a multi-product ecosystem in under six months. He built a consumer app live on the App Store, an enterprise platform with its first retail partnership, and a lead-generating professional website, all without writing code. He has been invited to deliver a keynote at an international toxicology conference in Prague, and has two additional apps in active development.
If you are a domain expert sitting on years of specialized knowledge and wondering how to turn it into a scalable product, Dr. Agyekum's story is the proof of concept. Emergent took his toxicology expertise and turned it into software that serves consumers, brands, and regulators across 174 countries. No coding. No $30,000 dev quotes. Just domain knowledge and a platform that could keep up with it. As Dr. Agyekum put it: "If you're serious, or even if you're using this as a hobby or find something new to build, I recommend it. Get off the fence."
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