Dawn Myers is making it easier to style, detangle, and care for curly hair

Normally, Dawn Myers wears her hairsbreadth up successful a large aged afro, and anyone with an afro tin attest that lavation days — the regular of washing and styling textured hairsbreadth — are often tedious. They instrumentality a batch of detangling, product, styling, and, well, time. 

“I was watching ‘Shark Tank,’ and determination was different curly miss idea,” she recalled of a time astir 8 years ago, erstwhile a transportation for a hairsbreadth merchandise aired. She started reasoning astir each the hairsbreadth tools connected the market, similar stroke dryers and curling irons, “things that straighten and alteration the chemistry of our people curly hair,” she told TechCrunch, adding that it takes astir an hr and 20 minutes to lavation and benignant her ain hair.

None of those tools assistance with that, and for Myers, it highlighted a spread that has ever existed successful the quality hardware abstraction — a deficiency of tooling for textured hair. It’s a abstraction that’s complex, expensive, and conscionable overlooked. 

“If you deliberation backmost to slavery, we were mandated to screen our hair. That’s wherever do-rags travel from. You had to screen your hair. Why? Because our hairsbreadth was seen arsenic disfigured and unkempt and unacceptable,” she said. Later came blistery combs, chemic relaxers, and level irons, each of which straighten textured hair. “It’s lone been the past 15 years oregon truthful wherever women of colour and Black women successful peculiar and, rather frankly, achromatic women arsenic good person truly felt comfy exposing their people curly hairsbreadth and truly conscionable embracing it.” 

Soon aft that occurrence aired, she whipped retired a ineligible pad and sketched retired a concern idea, past went to Ace Hardware and CVS and enactment unneurotic a “Frankenstein-looking prototype.”

Her thought yet became the institution Richualist, which is known for its merchandise Mint, a hairsbreadth instrumentality that helps detangle, condition, gel, and benignant successful a azygous changeable utilizing refillable merchandise pods. It adjacent has warming exertion to mildly vigor the merchandise earlier it’s applied. 

“We get that styling clip down to astir 7 to 10 minutes,” she said. “It’s a monolithic crippled changer for the lawsuit truly stressed retired by lavation day.” She said her product, which besides comes successful question size, helps marque hairsbreadth a spot healthier, reducing shedding and breakage by up to 70% since radical nary longer request to tug endlessly connected their strands arsenic they lavation and style.

She built it with the materials subject institution Dow, aft an aboriginal prototype caught the company’s attraction during a startup accelerator program. “It conscionable truthful happens that Dow had identified this achromatic abstraction precocious arsenic well, and they were starting a textured hairsbreadth attraction unit,” she said. “So they ended up collaborating with america and giving america a batch of engineering assistance and manufacturing guidance.” 

Image Credits:Richualist

Even though she yet became 1 of the archetypal 100 Black women to rise much than $1 cardinal successful task funding, the aboriginal days were rough. “It’s truly intolerable to get hardware funded,” she continued. “It’s adjacent much intolerable to get it funded erstwhile we’re talking astir specified a niche problem.” 

She recalled the aboriginal meetings with executives successful the quality industry. “There are nary radical who look similar maine successful those R&D suites.” In fact, she said, erstwhile she described lavation days, “these radical didn’t cognize what a lavation time was. They didn’t recognize that there’s this full process that their customers person to spell through.” She would archer them however achy and arduous the process is. “And the powers that be, up until this point, did not know,” she continued. “Even the bonds successful our hairsbreadth are wholly antithetic than different exertion types. We truly bash request bespoke technology.” 

Myers sold her location and liquidated her 401(k) status relationship to money the archetypal improvement of this product. “That was a brainsick bet, but it paid off,” she said. “We were capable to get astir $1.4 cardinal successful the doorway to commercialize the merchandise and conscionable validate it.” Overall, it took astir 5 years of improvement to get the merchandise to “a spot wherever it made consciousness to the customer,” she said, adding that her squad besides had to behaviour their ain probe successful the abstraction since what they needed — similar however overmuch merchandise the mean idiosyncratic with textured hairsbreadth uses — didn’t yet exist.

Then, successful 2022, conscionable arsenic she was astir to grow and spell to market, she was diagnosed with signifier 3 colorectal cancer. “We ended up closing our circular portion I was inactive going done treatment,” she recalled, saying the circular took “forever” to close. She remembers sitting successful the chemo seat astatine Johns Hopkins, connected her laptop, trying to adjacent deals. She applied to “Shark Tank” successful 2023 and appeared connected the amusement aboriginal that year, though the occurrence aired successful 2024. “I was inactive wearing a binder astir my abdomen [a compression wrap] nether the formal I wore for my ‘Shark Tank’ experience,” she said.

She ended up nabbing a woody from capitalist Mark Cuban and serial entrepreneur Emma Grede, which helped her formally motorboat the product. Grede past helped it grow into Ulta’s online website earlier this year. 

“We’re really astir to marketplace ourselves arsenic sold out,” she said, adding that the institution is mapping retired ways to grow further.

Her institution was picked arsenic 1 of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200 startups this year, earning a spot astatine TechCrunch Disrupt, the publication’s yearly startup conference, which kicks disconnected this Tuesday.

When asked however she archetypal heard astir Disrupt, she laughed. “I mean, who doesn’t cognize astir Disrupt?” She said she’s bracing herself, arsenic an introvert, for each the radical she volition conscionable and conversations she volition have.

“But what I americium astir excited for is textured hairsbreadth to beryllium sitting connected the signifier with immoderate of the astir blase tech successful the space.”