Launch HN: Tress (YC W17) – Online community for black women's hairstyles
We are 3 software engineers who have built health social networks, mobile apps for farmers in Africa, and worked on marketing consumer brands like Nike. We started Tress because this is a challenge that personally affects us and because it's a big market that is still relatively untapped by technology.
Hair is a big deal for black women. We are constantly changing our hairstyles and spend 9 times more on our hair than any other demographic. We don't just get a regular cut or color our hair. We get drastic! We go from braids to weaves to cornrows and then to our own hair and then back again. Size, length, style, color, volume of hair, weaves and extensions all differ each time we change our hairstyle. And we do that often because of the nature of our hair. To give you an idea, these photos are all of the same woman - https://www.dropbox.com/s/52ew0d8hsxwx0k4/JodianHairstyles.p... - It's an image from our YC demo day slides.
The process of figuring all this out to actually getting a style done is long and broken. Many women spend a ton of time searching for their next hairstyle, then more time figuring out how to replicate the style via tutorial articles/videos or search for a stylist and so on. Tress aims to be the dedicated platform to fix all of this and connect a community of women who often socialize around their unique hair needs.
One thing that excites us as software engineers is exploring how to use computer vision to tell if a user has 4a, 4b or 4c natural hair curl pattern or if a hairstyle is a Senegalese twists or Havana mambo twists. We are equally excited to be gathering hair products data and usage patterns around our hairstyles in such an informal sector that technology has barely gotten started in yet. We dream of things like an API that has all the data about the hair products black women have used in the past 5 years.
We're looking forward to answering your questions about Tress and discussing startups, software, and of course hair!
68 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] threadYou should totally work with black beauty YouTubers like Jackie Aina and Alissa Ashley!
Bullshit. Silicon Valley neither targets black women nor ignores black women. Silicon Valley targets everyone.
As a white guy whose approach to hair basically amounts to "I want to be able to ignore it as much as possible", I'd love to understand this better. What is it about black (womens'?) hair which lends itself to a wide range of hair styles?
When it comes to the "properties" of "black" hair (and I'm talking stereotypical black hair here, hair similar to my own... if you're talking "types of hair on the heads of black people", that's much wider ranging), it's the texture. While a lot of people might think of coarse, curly hair as unrully, that's generally the opinion of people who don't know how to "manage"/do/style it. Managing it's growth tends to make you think of pretty ingenious ways of styling (cornrows, dreads, twists, afros, perms, etc.)
Now if you asking "what is it about black hair" in a "why" sense... Well opinions about black people and their hair, both positive and negative, internal and external opinion, have influenced black hairstyles throughout the ages... but that's a wikipedia article for another day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Hair
The thing that makes black hair complex is that the texture ranges from extremely tough and curly to as soft as "white" hair. I don't even need a comb when my hair is short - I can just run my fingers through it and it'll fall into place. My sons hair is much easier to comb than my partners and if we don't comb it extensively morning and night and use creams or oils to soften it, it becomes impossible to manage within a day or two.
So firstly a lot of effort goes into treating the natural hair simply to keep it manageable, ranging from "just" cutting it and applying various oils or creams, to using straighteners, to using harsh chemical relaxants (strong enough that you can severely burn your skin).
This partly depend on how thick/strong the hair is to begin with, and so different people rely on a wide range of different products (go into a store catering to black hair and you'll see more hair products than you thought possible...).
This already creates a lot of options that are complicated with white hair. E.g. just think of the stereotypical afro which would be pretty much impossible for someone with think, straight white hair like mine.
Next, where a lot of "white" hairstyles are focused on letting hair flow, this does not work well for a lot of black women without a lot of chemical relaxants etc., and so many of the hairstyles are based on keeping the hair down in various ways. There's an element of history of racism there too, in that hairstyles that emphasise the natural difference of hair texture have had a tendency to get criticised for deviating from white beauty norms.
Some of this has led to counter-reactions of hair styles that make use of the texture of black hair to make hairstyles that won't work with white hair.
Partly for this reason and partly due to the effort involved in treating black hair, there is also a lot more extensive culture for using extensions, braids, weaves etc. of synthetic or human hair because if done well it can last much longer, and if done quickly/cheaply it can be done with less preparation, and because it enables other hair styles. Use of chemical relaxants can also cause a lot of damage over time which makes the hair brittle and less likely to grow long, which can further make it more attractive to use various extensions.
Doing this can involve enormous effort if you can afford to take the time and pay the price. E.g. hours of taking out the old braids, hours of relaxing and straightening most of the hair to make it blend well, followed by hours of having someone tie in or glue in place hair extensions and optionally braid them.
Whenever my partner started doing this, I basically knew she would spend the entire day (getting up early, spending hours preparing, then going off to someone to have two people spending hours doing her braids, wrapping up late evening) sorting out her hair.
So it's an interesting area where there are a lot of opportunities both when it comes to styles, service providers and products.
And I'm sure I'm missing out on a vast number of details I've paid attention to.
Because I think that's what this really is: the launch of a new premium consumer brand. Tress is capturing consumers at _exactly_ the right time, they all have purchase intent and it seems targeted really really well.
They can make serious money recommending local stylists, products, etc. and then turn around and also sell their own branded products.
This is really far outside of what I'm familiar with, but I look at past things I scoffed at and that are now worth billions [1] and think this might have a real shot at getting huge.
It all comes down to execution and work, but a really interesting idea even now.
1 - http://investor.lululemon.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=96...
Would certainly make for a unique image-classification problem, with its own interesting challenges; a collection of images of black women with different hairstyles will be a lot more visually similar than a collection of dogs/cars/mountains.
Which of the pictures of the girl (linked to the dropbox share) is closest to her natural hair? The styles are so varied it's impossible to tell! On the aesthetic front (obviously IMHO) it's a toss up between Oct 2016 and Dec 2016 for best (though all look very nice!).
With regards to your second question, the closest to her natural hair is the 1st pic (Nov 2016). Hers will be much shorter and will have to be straightened to look like this. It's surprising that none of the styles show her own hair.
I would suggest charging stylist to attached their searchable location and phone numbers to picture of hair styles. In other words charge them for advertising.
http://www.pakcosmetics.com/hair-care/relaxer-n-texturizer/h...
And that's just one category of types of hair products that are rarely used on white hair.
That should give a slight idea of the referral opportunities..
Her natural hair is probably closer to the set at the top. My guess would be the January 2017 and October 2016 (at the top, not the bottom-left). The December/October2016 set at the bottom-left is probably furthest from her natural hair. Everything else on the page took some type of unnatural styling, including the wavy hair.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if her unnatural hair is what you find aesthetically appealing (due to American beauty standards, this is usually the case -- I've lived in both continents and the difference is significant), then that alone is a testament to why this app will be successful through the advertisement of hair products and referrals to stylists. Beauty is important to women and the use of chemical products and knowledgable stylists are (IMHO sadly) what it takes for black women to reach "mainstream" beauty standards here, which is a major market force.
Not being a hater but launching here seems silly from the POV of marketing. This seems like something that would get traction rather quickly if pushed in the right context.
Trust me. Put ads on facebook with your target demographics and search IG for women of color with a good amount of followers. That stuff works like magic.
Edit:
If you email me I can introduce you to one such group that has a lot of active users and is led by a black lady. You can pivot from there.
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Just realized my comment makes me sound like a huge dick. Not my intention. Im excited about the product and wish you the best of luck. I do feel strongly about marketing it (even if not my own project) and that made te words come out too strong.
Edit: here's the rundown so far: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=.... Those comments trace the history of how the idea is evolving. I like explaining it to the community this way because the minute we announce something formal, people forget that it's all experimental and subject to change. But once it stabilizes we'll add it to the FAQ or something.
You're right that HN isn't the best place to launch consumer products for customer acquisition, but there are other reasons to launch on HN, such as discussing ideas, product feedback, and getting on users' radar for future hiring. No reason not to do all the launches!
p.s. As a local professional in the 'omg that's bad' department I can assure you that it's always the good users who worry about sounding like a dick :) Your comment shows how an excess of enthusiasm can sometimes come out the wrong way temporarily, but explaining it as nicely as you did makes it all ok.
IMO the whole concept of the "launch" is a myth. You don't post a blog post and call it a day anyways. You've gotta keep talking about your business, and that usually means talking about your business in multiple arenas. Launch here, launch there, launch everywhere.
Sounds like you have many interesting problems, on top of the usual fun challenges of running a social network+cross platform app. Computer vision, recommenders for hairstyles, products, stylists, and probably many more. Then you have usage information about all of those you could use in a bunch of ways.
And you can monetise with simple, relevant, products ads, or get a commission off booking a stylist, or collaborate with a booking platform like TresseNoire (although that's NYC only for now I guess). So that's a lot more options than many YC backed startups.
A few questions. Feel free to ignore them if there are too many.
It says you're hiring engineers and designers on your website. Care to go to into more specifics about what kind of positions you're hiring for?
Semi-OT in the "only care about users" YC world, but just curious, what's your stack?
It says on your website that you're based in Ghana. Do you plan on going back there after YC, or staying in SV to make it easier to find tech workers+VC money, or have a foot in both places?
Our top level stack is Ruby on Rails, Postgresql, Redis, AWS, Heroku, Java, Objective C & Swift.
We initially tested our product in Ghana. But our user base has grown since and our users are from all over the world with a significant majority from Africa and the US. We are and will be based in Silicon Valley going forward. It's a global app and our goal is to have our foot placed globally
Why not just go big and do a social network for hairstyling in general?
I think the social commerce angle could be great for revenue, esp now Instagram are starting to launch it.
Not included in this number (and typically underreported because many services are rendered in non-official salons) hairstyling services. When family members go to the 'salon' it often involves many hours and hundred(s) of dollars for a single visit. Haircare expenditures are a significant budget item - no matter how wealthy.
I'll pass the app on to my family. Let's see what they say.
One minor issue I noticed with your website: most users will expect that clicking on the page indicator in your carousel (where you feature testimonials) will trigger the appropriate content change. Nothing happens when I click on these indicators and there's no obvious way for me to flip through the testimonials other than to wait with my mouse hovering over an adjacent section (since it seems the carousel is paused when the mouse hovers in that section).
https://www.google.com/?q=Amasunzu+hairstyle
"Amasunzu is an elaborate hairstyle traditionally worn by Rwandan worn by men and unmarried women."
Their address by the way:
Banana Street, Off American House, East Legon, Accra, Ghana
april fools is tomorrow.
you're all idiots.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madam_C._J._Walker