Khulan Davaadorj

The Question Every Founder Dreads #

Every entrepreneur reaches the moment when they ask themselves: “Am I building something that matters, or am I delusional?”

I was crying because of sadness. But life's difficulties are levels to pass through to level up, not endings.

For Khulan Davaadorj (Хулан Даваадорж), the question arrived twelve days after opening her first office. The answer took two years — and came through knee-deep floodwater.

The Contortionist’s Education #

The first thing to know about Khulan Davaadorj is that she earned her first paycheck at age ten, performing as a contortionist in German circuses. The second is that she attended six schools across three countries before turning eighteen. The third is that none of this struck her as unusual — it was simply what a Mongolian diplomat’s daughter did to survive in Europe.

Born in Ulaanbaatar, raised primarily in Berlin from age three when her father worked at the Mongolian Embassy. Swiss boarding school at Leysin American where classmates came from diplomatic families and royal households — and where her parents couldn’t afford the fees, forcing her to stay an extra year and a half working as a teacher to pay off debts. Exchange program in France. German fluency from childhood, French from immersion, English from necessity, Russian from proximity, Mongolian from birthright. Five languages before her twenties. Six school changes spanning fourteen years.

The displacement shaped everything that followed. Too German for Mongolia — she couldn’t read Cyrillic fluently until university. Too Mongolian for Germany — the accent that never quite disappeared. Perpetual outsider status that would later become her sharpest entrepreneurial advantage: seeing gaps that insiders couldn’t perceive because they’d stopped looking.

Then Columbia happened. A 100% scholarship — $90,000 — covering dual master’s degrees: International Energy Management from Columbia SIPA and International Public Policy from Hertie School in Berlin. The credential that should have guaranteed McKinsey partnership track or policy advisory positions at the institutions she’d already interned for: the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York, the World Bank in Ulaanbaatar.

Instead, she chose Mongolia. In 2012, she accepted a position at NewCom Group helping build the country’s first wind farm — the Salkhit project and a 300-megawatt wind and solar installation in the South Gobi desert. Made the decision in three days. Moved with one suitcase. Left her family in Germany.

The rapid decision-making that would later define her entrepreneurial style: when conviction forms, act immediately before doubt fills the space.

From Wind Farms to Kitchen Experiments #

Within months of returning, Khulan developed severe eczema, psoriasis, and skin allergies for the first time in her life. Ulaanbaatar’s air pollution — the city regularly ranks among the world’s most polluted capitals in winter — combined with low water quality and temperature swings from minus forty to plus thirty Celsius had triggered what no amount of international living had produced.

The eczema wasn’t just a health problem. It was visible professional failure. Ministerial meetings with inflamed skin rashes. Client presentations where people stared at her face instead of listening to wind energy proposals. In ways she couldn’t explain to people who’d never experienced chronic skin conditions, having visible rashes compromised her entire working life.

Mongolia offered exactly two solutions: imported chemical products from Russia and China that made conditions worse, or nothing. Natural alternatives simply did not exist.

The founding insight crystallized through personal desperation, not market research. If she — Columbia graduate, UN and World Bank alumna, financially resourced — couldn’t find natural skincare in Mongolia, what were millions of other women doing?

In January 2014, she enrolled in Formula Botanica, the UK-based organic skincare formulation school. For eight months, her kitchen became a laboratory. “I was not eating in the kitchen anymore — it was just like a bombarded test place.” Creating products while still working full-time on renewable energy policy. Testing formulations on her own damaged skin.

August 2014: three products launched from her apartment. Bath bomb. Soap. Lip balm. People told her she was “just going through a phase” — because Mongolia’s entire economy revolved around mining. They hadn’t seen a lip balm before.

September 1, 2014: she opened Lhamour’s first office and hired three employees. The professional launch of Mongolia’s first organic skincare brand.

Twelve days later, everything was gone.

The Day Everything Was Stolen #

September 12, 2014. Khulan arrived at the office to find it gutted. Equipment, inventory, her Columbia scholarship laptop containing 10,000 photographs and every product formulation she’d developed — all stolen. Recipes. Business plans. Paperwork. Nothing had been backed up.

The police investigation went nowhere. So Khulan tracked down the thief herself and caught them at the airport before departure. The contortionist from the German circus, the boarding school student who’d stayed extra years to pay her own debts, the woman who’d moved countries in three days with one suitcase — she wasn’t built to wait for someone else to solve the problem.

Some items were recovered. The laptop with the formulations was not.

What followed was worse than the robbery itself. With inventory and equipment gone, there was no money for payroll. She fired all three employees — the first people who’d believed enough to join a skincare company in a mining economy. One of them sued her. A court battle commenced while she was simultaneously rebuilding from zero.

Khulan spent $10,000 of personal savings to revive the business. That same year, the office flooded — products floating in knee-deep water, more inventory destroyed. She would move offices four times due to successive disasters.

For three months, she wanted to quit. “I was crying because of sadness.”

The Video Game Philosophy #

The mindset shift that kept Lhamour alive came from an unexpected framework. Khulan reframed the catastrophes as levels in a video game: obstacles to pass through to level up, not endings. “It’s not about me, and it’s about the greater vision I have.”

The conviction had a practical anchor. In January 2015, her mother quit her own career to join Lhamour as General Manager. The two of them worked day and night rebuilding infrastructure from nothing in a market that didn’t know organic cosmetics existed as a category. When your mother stakes her livelihood on your dream, quitting becomes something other than personal failure.

By June 2015, Bloomberg Television’s “Made in Mongolia” segment provided the first external validation — international press attention proving that outsiders saw value in what locals dismissed.

But everything still depended on Khulan. She was the hero, the sole driver, the irreplaceable center. The company was surviving. Whether it mattered to anyone beyond her remained unanswered.

Then May 2016 arrived.

The Answer #

Floods hit the production facility. Water rising. Products floating. Equipment at risk — again. In desperation, Khulan posted on Facebook: “We have flooding, can anybody help us?”

Within five minutes, ten people arrived. Not employees — she only had a handful. Customers she’d served. Young women she’d mentored through Mongolia Blossom, the NGO she’d founded in 2013 to advocate volunteerism and women’s empowerment. Attendees from Women’s Entrepreneurship Day events she’d organized — 300 to 450 businesswomen gathering annually in a country where business networking meant drinking vodka with mining executives.

They waded through knee-deep water in business suits, ruining clothes to rescue skincare products.

“These people truly had Lhamour in their hearts. I realized that what I had started had touched people’s lives. It’s not just about me anymore.”

The question that had haunted her since September 12, 2014 — “Am I delusional?” — was answered by strangers ruining their clothes to protect her dream. Not because anyone ordered them to. Because they’d absorbed the vision as their own.

Building What Outlasts the Founder #

The shift from “me” to “we” extended in directions Khulan hadn’t anticipated.

Her Thailand distributor quit her corporate job to focus entirely on Lhamour — not because the economics were better, but because she believed in the mission enough to stake her career on it. Her India distributor wanted to use Lhamour revenue to send girls to school. These weren’t transactional relationships. These were people who’d claimed the vision as a vehicle for their own aspirations.

The geography of that ownership extended across twelve countries. Distribution partners weren’t moving inventory — they were channeling a conviction that had originated in a Mongolian kitchen in early 2014 and survived theft, floods, lawsuits, and payment system failures to arrive at their doorstep.

“OK, I can’t stop. This is forever.”

The ultimate proof arrived in 2019. Khulan gave birth to her daughter and took extended maternity leave — the first prolonged absence since founding. The company didn’t just survive without her. It hit revenue targets, maintained quality standards, expanded distribution, and reached 70-plus product lines without her direct oversight.

The vision had outgrown her personal control — exactly as movements should.

Today, Lhamour’s 70-plus supplier partnerships support hundreds of nomadic herder families maintaining traditional livelihoods while participating in global markets — wild sea buckthorn, yak milk, sheep tail fat, rosehip harvested from one of the least polluted landscapes on earth. The all-female production team of ten women has remained together for over a decade, representing institutional knowledge no competitor can replicate. The company exports to twelve countries from a Los Angeles warehouse, holds 90% of Mongolia’s natural skincare export market, and operates four flagship stores across Ulaanbaatar — from the Shangri-La Mall to the historic State Department Store.

The supply chain isn’t extractive. It’s symbiotic. The employment didn’t exist before Lhamour created it: positions for single mothers, women from Ulaanbaatar’s Ger district, youth without formal opportunities.

The Recognition That Followed #

The recognitions arrived in the order you’d expect — after the hard work had already proved itself. Forbes Mongolia 30 Under 30 in 2017. Vital Voices GROW Fellowship in 2018. Japan’s Sustainable Cosmetics Awards in 2020. Forbes Asia 100 to Watch in 2021. EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women Asia-Pacific in 2025. Each validated what the flooding moment had already demonstrated: awards follow communities, not the reverse. Recognition arrives when the people surrounding a brand become visible enough to confirm what the founder has known for years.

The trajectory from circus contortionist to Columbia scholar to robbed entrepreneur to Mongolia’s organic beauty pioneer proves a counterintuitive truth about founder resilience: the catastrophe that nearly ended Lhamour in its first twelve days created the psychological infrastructure — the video game philosophy, the mother’s commitment, the refusal to let anyone else solve her problems — that enabled everything after.

The question for other founders isn’t whether they can survive crisis. Most entrepreneurial journeys include hard moments. The question is whether they can transform personal survival into collective ownership. Whether “Am I delusional?” can become “It’s not just about me anymore.”

Khulan’s answer arrived in five minutes, wearing business suits, through knee-deep water.

Last updated: March 15, 2026