A Latina Invented Your Favorite Beauty Tool — Yes, the Beautyblender!

"Sponges are generally a foam material that is poured [in a lab] into a square shape, kind of like bread loaves. They slice that square like bread, and then into pieces of pie, and that's how you get that classic wedge shape," says Silva of conventional makeup sponges. "If you look at the Beautyblender, you can kinda see where, if you cut out all those sharp edges from the traditional wedge sponge, you would get a teardrop. I needed to work with what I had, but it was also perfect."

"[The teardrop I was cutting from the wedge sponges] was too small. It was a mini. You can probably say Micro.Mini was the first Beautyblender," she says. "When I first set out to figure out how to make the sponges for sale, I knew I wanted them to be bigger, to cover more skin quicker."

"The sponge factory had to separate each batch of sponge they sent me to test, so every new tweak would be a different color so I could recognize which was which," explains Silva. "This was the last batch that was sent to me. There was a note inside in big letters that said: 'Do not look at the color.' It was the Beautyblender pink, and it just made me smile. It was the happiest, most vibrant color. They contacted me a few times, asking 'Are you sure you want this color?'"

"Even if my male clients weren't wearing multiple steps of makeup, we were still doing corrective makeup. Some guys were saying to me: 'I love this thing, but does it have to be pink?'" Silva says. "Other makeup artists were supporting it and using it, too, so I knew I needed to make a darker color for them: classic makeup-artist black. It was a combination of those two things. [The Pro Beautyblender] progressed naturally, but it solved both problems."

"I was intrigued like anyone else by the condom video," Silva says of beauty vlogger Laila Tahri's recent viral hit. "Why would you do that? I wanted to know!" She adds: "I thought it was so cute when people were asking their boyfriends what they thought Beautyblender was. I used to do that at the beginning in little focus groups. They always go with something sexual."

"You can use it for nail art, but I also have a friend that uses it as a cat toy!" she says. "I have another friend that uses it to paint on canvas. People are creative."

"Stylists in television and film costume departments always have to find ways to remove microparticles that show up on clothes on camera — makeup, dandruff, whatever. They always have a sponge they use to wipe down the clothes before a take," Silva says. "Several times they would tell me they lost it and use a dry Beautyblender. The sponge sucks everything in, so it makes sense."

"It's awesome. People use that word a lot, but I am truly in awe. Where this journey has led me — this was by no means the divine plan," says Silva. "You have to dream, don't get me wrong; you have to say 'what if?' But it was just a goal [to launch this product]. I struggled to pay my rent, my car was repossessed, I was doing magic tricks with money trying to pay bills as a single parent, and now I think what a long, long way I've come."

"I hope that I'm an inspiration for my kids. Times have changed a lot. I'm a people person and I'm really persuasive. I don't live in a land of no, I live in a land of yes," she says. "I hope my kids know that technology is great, but there's also this personal aspect to business. You have to make relationships. You have to be a person that people want to deal with. You have to have a heart."

"Dream, be fearless, and follow through," she says. "It's a marathon, this whole process of entrepreneurship. One step at a time — there are so many clichés, but they are so true. Take one little step to your dream every day. You have to embrace, not fear, the challenges. I embrace everything — the problems, the celebrations, all."