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Launch HN: Tress (YC W17) – Online community for black women's hairstyles
171 points by priscahazel on March 31, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 65 comments
Tress (https://www.tressapp.co) 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.

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!




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...


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


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?


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


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?


I think I get what you're trying to ask, so I'll try to answer (Disclaimer: I'm a black man).

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.


Recommend this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Hair


Interesting clip from Good Hair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCEX34-1o6M


I'm white too, but have had a long term black partner and a mixed race son, and I have a few observations:

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.


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.


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


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!


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.


Theres definitely opportunity, I can see it happening, a lot of women use youtube as an opportunity to look up styling videos and theres a definite market, don't think why their normal-look-for-good-style process can add in a more specific search process


>you're targeting a demographic that SV doesn't usually pay attention to.

Bullshit. Silicon Valley neither targets black women nor ignores black women. Silicon Valley targets everyone.


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


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


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


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).


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


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.


Yup, it's interesting! We're in the early stage of this, currently experimenting with [Keras](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.


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.


YC startups are doing Launch HNs 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.


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


Are you trying to say this type of content does not belong on HN? These founders are starting their new venture and trying to share it with a forum predominantly known for its startup culture. Is it the idea or their target market that tells you it is less useful to post here than a FB group? HN readers are known for living in our own startup/SV/tech bubble and stuff like this can only help us see the potential of ideas outside our interests! Tress looks awesome!


We are definitely launching on all those other platforms and some more. We also thought it will be great to launch on Hacker News partly because we are in YC but also because of the rich discussion and feedback we could get from the Hacker News community. We would be happy to email you and would love an intro.


Cool, pryelluw at gmail. No bs or strings (thumbsup).


I would assume they are announcing their launch in multiple places (forums, subreddit, Facebook, Instagram, etc), not just Hacker News. A decent amount of VCs check this site so it's not terrible to be here. Also, they are apart of YC which typically shares all launches on Hacker News.


A couple of hours here < a couple of hours working with influencers on social media.


Is there a rule that you can only tell people about your app on one website?

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.


People show off apps and ideas here all the time.


Did you miss the "YC W17" in the title? Of course they're announcing their launch on news.ycombinator.com. (Mind you, they probably rolled their eyes as they hit submit, knowing they'd get this kind of comment.)


Oh, so they have to launch here? Didnt know that. Makes lots of sense. :)


Not have to! Just can if they want to. Let me dig up the links for you where I posted about this...

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.


Oh ok. It does make sense now that Im past the initial shock of the post. This might produce a good initial buzz on social media.


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


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.


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


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


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


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!).


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.


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.


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


(black African-born male here) There are two December 2016's and three october 2016's. One cluster is at the top, the other cluster is at the bottom-left + a straggling october 2016 at the bottom right.

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 sure how I didn't realize those months were duplicated. I was referring to the one's on the top line next to each other.


Here is a UK chain catering to black hair. Their page of products related to chemical relaxing (straightening) of hair alone has more than hundred products (sidebar on right):

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..


That's true. Immense referral opportunities for both for major/mainstream brands and the growing ones.And many brands have a host of products targeting black women's hair.


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.


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.


This is a huge problem, especially when one relocates. We are working to solve this problem. Initially starting from specific cities.


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


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


This feels relevant, although only somewhat:

https://www.google.com/?q=Amasunzu+hairstyle

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


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.


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.


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


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


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.


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


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.


We started with this specific demographic because we understand our unique hair challenges because of the nature of our hair and the niche but large market potential. That notwithstanding, depending on the data we collect and the value we could potentially provide to other demographics we may expand. But that is not a major focus for us now.


I would imagine it's valuable because it's not heterogeneous. It's the fact that you know precisely what you're going to get on it that makes it valuable.


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.




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