
Launch HN: Tress (YC W17) – Online community for black women's hairstyles - priscahazel
Tress (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tressapp.co" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tressapp.co</a>) is an online community for black women to discover and share hairstyle inspiration, information and tips.
Women upload photos of their hairstyles and share information about their style. Users can discuss how to replicate the look, which products were used and where to get similar hairstyles.<p>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&#x27;s a big market that is still relatively untapped by technology.<p>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&#x27;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 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;52ew0d8hsxwx0k4&#x2F;JodianHairstyles.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;52ew0d8hsxwx0k4&#x2F;JodianHairstyles.p...</a> - It&#x27;s an image from  our YC demo day slides.<p>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&#x2F;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.<p>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.<p>We&#x27;re looking forward to answering your questions about Tress and discussing startups, software, and of course hair!
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michaelbuckbee
This seems like a tremendously clever idea. To me the most relevant phrase
from the text posted above is: "...and worked on marketing consumer brands
like Nike"

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...](http://investor.lululemon.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=962616)

~~~
priscahazel
Thanks for the feedback. You have captured the essence of Tress and what we
are working towards.

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rockmeamedee
Cool!

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?

~~~
mseolatunde
Hi, I'm the Engineering Lead at Tress and we're a lean team of 3. Right now,
we're looking to hire 1 Front End Engineer as we want to launch our web
version for SEO (we realised that Google App Indexing is not enough and we're
missing a lot of SEO opportunities on the web), 1 iOS engineer and 1 UI/UX
designer.

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

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cperciva
_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._

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?

~~~
whatok
Recommend this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Hair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Hair)

~~~
phoboslab
Interesting clip from Good Hair:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCEX34-1o6M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCEX34-1o6M)

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notlisted
Great idea. You mention how much time is spent on looking at/for styles (incl.
members of my family) but I'm not sure everyone here is aware of the average
spend on hair and hair-related products: Mintel estimates the 2016 spend on
black haircare products is about $2.5BB.

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.

~~~
priscahazel
Thanks, apart from the amount of time we spend on our hair, we spend a lot of
money as well just to get our desired hairstyle. Hair is definitely huge part
of the monthly family /individual budget. We'll love to hear their feedback on
Tress. Our email is info@tressapp.co

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exolymph
I'm a little skeptical in terms of whether this will be a scaleable business,
but I love that you're targeting a demographic that SV doesn't usually pay
attention to.

You should totally work with black beauty YouTubers like Jackie Aina and
Alissa Ashley!

~~~
priscahazel
Thanks for the feedback. We didn't go into detail about our business model.
For us, we see the social community as the first step to driving social
commerce. We intend to leverage on the community to drive product sales for
brands/products that target black women's hair. It's definitely scalable.
Jackie Aina and Alissa Ashley are great suggestions, definitely intend to work
with them.

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40acres
Excellent job, this has the potential to be huge. I told my girlfriend about
you guys last week and she seemed impressed. The first self made female
millionaire in the US was in the hair buisness [1], I think it's a market that
is underserved by traditional companies because it requires such a specialized
touch. Good luck.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madam_C._J._Walker](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madam_C._J._Walker)

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gcav
This is brilliant - your target market is passionate and spends serious money
on a pain point you are solving. And while I'm sure you are well connected in
Accra, I can't help but mention Ashesi University. Super talented engineers
coming out of that school

~~~
priscahazel
Thanks for the feedback. Yes we do know of Ashesi University and yes they do
have talented engineers coming out of there.

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purple-dragon
Congrats and good luck!

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).

~~~
mseolatunde
Good catch! Thanks for the feedback. Will be fixed shortly.

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claytonjy
The computerized detection of hair type and style sounds really interesting.
How far down this path are you now, are you planning on a deep-neural-net
(e.g. CNN's) or something simpler?

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.

~~~
mseolatunde
Yup, it's interesting! We're in the early stage of this, currently
experimenting with [Keras]([https://keras.io/](https://keras.io/)) and
focusing on the inception pre-trained network. Our goal is to retrain the top
layer of the network using the tags/hair types/categories we're collecting on
the app as labels.

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pryelluw
Why are you launching here and not on a facebook group dedicated to such
market? There are also instagram micro influencers (less than 10k followers)
you could also leverage...

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.

\---

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.

~~~
dang
YC startups are launching as "Launch HN" these days, which is a new mechanism
that we intend eventually to replace some of the job ads that appear on the
front page. It's all a work in progress. But we would have invited Tress to
post even apart from that, because it's so off-the-beaten-track for HN, and
that's what keeps things interesting.

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.

~~~
pryelluw
Thank you, dang. Last thing I want to do is rain on someones parade. Startups
are hard enough already.

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wehadfun
The "Address" you listed on your website is very interesting how does it work?

Their address by the way:

Banana Street, Off American House, East Legon, Accra, Ghana

~~~
frydrik
I used to live in Ghana. Addresses are landmark-based as nobody knows street
names. In this case the landmark is "American house". So it is a proper
address in Ghanaian terms.

~~~
yannyu
India is another place where this is fairly common. Addresses in the US are
ridiculously simple and easy compared to many other countries.

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ericzawo
This is an awesome idea — forwarded to a few friends.

~~~
priscahazel
Thanks, we'll love to hear their feedback. Our email is info@tressapp.co

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koolba
Interesting topic and I can see how this is a daily issue for some, but I
don't get the startup angle. What's the eventual monetization angle? Referrals
for hair stylists? Paid membership to get new lists of or customized styles?

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!).

~~~
priscahazel
We will monetize through product sales, stylists booking/referrals like you
mentioned and native ads targeted at specific hair types within the black
hair-care community.

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.

~~~
wehadfun
I would avoid trying to charge for bookings. You will be the victim of
Disintermediation because the stylist will tell give the client their number
and say to not use trees to book.

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.

~~~
priscahazel
Thanks for the feedback and suggestion. Will look into that option as well.

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wehadfun
A way for hairstylist to market their work and a way for black women to find
hairstylist is a problem. Especially when "sistas" relocate to a new area.

~~~
uncletaco
Funny story: Rachel Dolezal is apparently one of the few women in Spokane, WA
who knows how to style black hair, and she's been able to keep herself afloat
by doing black girls' hair.

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andkon
This is so cool. Also what convinced you to go Android-first? Any discoveries
that were especially surprising there?

~~~
priscahazel
We initially tested Tress in Ghana and Nigeria and android devices are more
predominant because they are more affordable and not as restrictive.

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RangerScience
This feels relevant, although only somewhat:

[https://www.google.com/?q=Amasunzu+hairstyle](https://www.google.com/?q=Amasunzu+hairstyle)

"Amasunzu is an elaborate hairstyle traditionally worn by Rwandan worn by men
and unmarried women."

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sbardle
Couldn't someone just do a hashtag search on Instagram?

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.

~~~
priscahazel
Could you download and check out the app? There are a lot of nuances and
specificity that can not be achieved via a hashtag on Instagram. On why not a
social network for hair styling in general; same reason - nuances and
specificity of our hair textures.

~~~
sbardle
Just taken a look. I see what you mean, lots of nuances. Nice product!

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kkt262
For other companies looking to get into YC, what do you think were the main
factors that helped you get into the accelerator?

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gscott
I had a black girlfriend once and she he told me to watch the movie Good Hair.
It was eye opening and I recommend the movie for everyone to watch.

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erik14th
Is there a plan to expand to a larger/more heterogeneous demographic?

~~~
ksenzee
There's way less of a market in other demographics. For example, white women:
we have less interesting hair. There simply aren't as many things we can do
with it, because the structure of the individual hairs is less complex. Plus
we have every women's magazine in the US and Europe assuming our hair is the
"default." I'd say they know exactly what they're doing aiming at their own
demographic.

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anothercomment
It sounds trivial, but it could actually be an important stepping stone
towards ending poverty and world hunger. Less time wasted on hair == more time
for earning money. Well played.

