THE MOST's Dawn Myers knows a thing or two about afro tech

In 2019 I launched Startup Standup here on LinkedIn. I had been a mentor to a lot of entrepreneurs that came to me for advice on raising money and just general startup tips. It was baffling to see that women had a really hard time raising money - especially when their business plans were on par (or even better in many cases) than male-founded companies.

In an effort to get the word out and learn from each other, the concept of Startup Standup was born. In Season 3 we'll hear from seven tenacious founders who are navigating the funding stage - whether it's Lexi who is still completely bootstrapped or Neha who pivoted her company and is ready to secure that next round of institutional funding. Make sure to click subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!

I'd love to hear what you think and if there are any other female founders I should get to know. Oh yeah, and let's all support these phenomenal founders! :)

Enjoy,

Marc 

Meet Dawn

This week I'm talking to Dawn Myers. Dawn is the founder and CEO of THE MOST a marketplace and hub for natural hair enthusiasts looking for the latest and greatest in afro tech. We chatted about the importance of having a mission that you are emotionally connected to and a vision that outlines how big you’ll be if everything works out as planned. Plus — we walked through the retail landscape post COVID (How has it changed? Should that affect your strategy? What about D2C vs. retail?) and how influencers and social commerce can help you stay close to your core customer base. 

THE MOST makes tech-enabled tools that allow women with highly-textured hair style faster and easier. As a bald, white man that was not something that resonated with me right off the bat and showcased the importance of framing up the problem that Dawn’s product solves. It was eye-opening for me to hear more about the struggle women of color face when getting ready and the importance of having products like these available — showcasing the precise reason we need more diverse investors (and entrepreneurs!). Take a listen!

Dawn Myers: Hi, folks. My name is Dawn Myers, Founder and CEO at The Most, where we make tools and appliances that make styling afro-textured hair faster, easier, and more convenient. Now, folks, I'm many things. I'm a jack of many trades. One thing I am not is Beyonce. I do not wake up looking like this, like this picture. This takes hours. Every time I have a meeting, every time I have a date, every time I have a big dinner, every time I have a pitch like this.

If you notice, my hair is up in a bun right now because we just closed a deal and I did not have the extra three hours to style, gel, condition, and do all the things that get my hair and my curls nice and juicy. I'm not the only one. There are lots of women, and Black women, in particular, who spend lots of money on their hair and their products. The products on the market just don't accommodate natural textured hair.

We are cutting down the time and we have joined forces with some of the most elite engineers and beauty pros in this space to develop technology that makes it faster and easier. Here's what we're doing, folks. We are making the process of styling faster and easier by combining the steps of detangling our hair, conditioning our liquid products, and applying those liquid products. Normally, that takes an incredible amount of time, but by streamlining all of those processes, we make it easier, we make it more seamless, we make it more simple.

On the market, there are plenty of tools, as I've mentioned. Most of those tools are high heat tools that damage very fragile natural textured hair. What we're doing is we are leveraging heat in a different way. We use a very gentle, warming mechanism that very gently helps our products penetrate without damaging the cuticle.

We're really doing here what Keurig did in the beverage space. Just like Keurig leveraged partnerships with some of the biggest coffee and beverage companies in the space to make their Keurig k-cups, we are partnering with some of the biggest hair companies in the space so that we can produce pods that make the process more convenient and make it a lot easier to deliver this product to our consumer.

Our business model is based on subscriptions. Our consumers are going to be able to go to our website, pick the products and the brands of their choice. We send them out to them on a monthly basis. We're also going to be selling these products through retail and through micro-retail through high-end salons, gyms, and hotels.

Now, this is an $87 billion market just in the United States, but let's not forget that there's an entire continent, an entire diaspora of Black people, and Black women, in particular, who are thirsty for these solutions. If we just focus on the US, we're looking at $87 billion market. Black consumers over-index with 20% of the spend in that market. Why? Because hair is a foundational piece of the puzzle for Black women.

Even though we spend a tremendous amount every year on our hair, we're still not seeing the tools that cater to our hair type and to our phenotype, but we're changing that. We're changing that with a team of advisors and a core team of technologists that, not only know their stuff in and out, but also really understand this problem and identify with this problem, and understand some of the nuances that the rest of the market misses.

All the expertise that we've been able to bring on to our team shows. Over the past year, we have completed beta testing. We've gotten to MVP with our patent-pending technology. We've achieved quite a few milestones, including becoming venture-backed, winning pitch competitions, getting funded, getting major press coverage from outlets, including Teen Vogue, Refinery29, Essence, and Black Enterprise.

We've also completed quite a few accelerators. Most notably, Sephora's Luxury Beauty Accelerator accepted us this year. We've gone through their program, we've gotten a tremendous amount of support as we embark on the retail journey.

As I mentioned, we've gotten tons of great press, and we're really proud of the community that we've been able to build around this issue. This, for us, is about so much more than just beauty. It's about Black women being able to embrace their natural aesthetic faster and easier than we've been able to do in the past.

As I mentioned, we're actually closing a pre-seed round of $545,000 by the end of this month. As I mentioned, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There're so many pieces of this puzzle that are really compelling, including the community that we've been able to build organically throughout our social media channels. We are all ready. Even though we're a hardware company, it's very difficult to produce revenue on the front end of funding. We're already revenue-generating and producing solutions that our customers need.

Most importantly, we are not just a one-trick pony. In addition to our refillable tech-enabled products, we are also developing in the background, a collection of tech-enabled products that solve some of the problems that the market misses.

Marc Lore: Great, Dawn. Thank you so much. I like it. It was nice and tight the entire presentation. You did in a very concise amount of time, which is always good. I'd love you to just do that first slide again, then I have a few questions.

Dawn: I probably said something along the lines of my name is Dawn Myers, Founder and CEO at The Most where we make tech-enabled tools that allow women with highly textured hair to style faster, easier, and with more convenience.

Marc: Okay, yes, I think that's a really good concise opening of what it is. Maybe just say your pre-seed, you raised $100,000, you've done X, Y, and Z with it. You're the only employee or you have two employees. Just set the stage, usually, with the number of employees, the money, and where you are. Just because again, if you're cold going into an investor, it just helps them understand when you're going through the deck, you might judge it differently if you are pre-seed with 100 grand versus being a venture-backed company that's already raised its seed and is looking for an A. It's always good to just let people know up front.

Dawn: That's good. That's really good intel. Got it.

Marc: Also noticed that you didn't have anything regarding financials.

Dawn: Yes. I wasn't sure how long I had for this pitch. I took the financial section out, but we do have an appendix.

Marc: Okay, that's good. Yes, it was a time thing, but I would definitely have, not so much detail like this, but just very high level. The other thing, up front, there was no mention of mission or vision. I think the way you started was great. This is what it is, this is who I am, and you told a little bit of a story, that's good. I would want to know, how big are you shooting here? Tell me up front what your vision is.

If this thing works exactly the way you plan, what does it look like in 10 years? How big is it? How many people are using it? What do people think about the brand? How do you want them to feel? Paint a picture with maybe a few sentences of a vision statement of what you ultimately want this to be.

I think the benefit is, it really lets the investor know that this is not a small business, that you have really ambitious goals for what you want it to be. It doesn't matter that you're starting in the place you're starting, that's okay, but where do you hope to go? That's, I think, really, really important.

You could, basically, later on, say, "I told you what my vision was, we're starting here. This is phase one of a multi-phased rollout of this bigger vision." I think that's important. Then, as far as mission statement, you talked a little bit about it being a real problem. I didn't really hear a crisp mission statement as to why you exist, why you, your employees get up in the morning and get charged to want to make this business happen. Something beyond just, "We want to create a business and make money," but like, what's the mission? What do you stand for?

I would say there, it has to have some sort of emotional tie-in. Disney is in the business of entertaining people, but their mission is to make people happy. That's the ultimate. Whatever mission statement you come up with, just ask yourself why. When you can answer the question why, you know you've got the mission statement.

The other thing is framing up the problem. I think I'd probably spend some more time on that as well so that people like bald white guys like me, or, unfortunately, a lot of the investors you'll be talking to, that you really want to explain the problem in a way that resonates. You did. You did explain it, but to be honest, I didn't really appreciate what the problem is.

Dawn: Yes, that's definitely something that I struggle with, I have a difficult time finding that sweet spot where I give you just enough rather than just really spending a full eight minutes on just the problem piece. I've got to tighten that up a little bit more.

Marc: I think there's a way to tighten it up, but it's a good point. I think I liked your presentation because it was tight. You did get through it with speed. That was great because a lot of people just go on and on and on, but, there are, always, in a short, tight presentation like yours, a couple of areas where you want to lean in a little bit and make sure people understand.

Certainly, it would be, in your case, the problem and the product, would be two areas that I'd want to spend more time on because they're sort of things that you just have to get out of this presentation. I could come back and ask questions about the numbers and things like that, but if I get through this and I don't understand how serious the problem is and then how good of a product you've created to solve it, you're not going to get there.

I'm even thinking about the existing way in which people use the existing products, almost like a side by side photos or whatever, where you can really point out. You see, today, given these products that are available, this is exactly how somebody does it, like yourself or whatever. It works like this. Then what happens is this, it takes longer, it hurts your hair. It does this. So, we had to solve-- Because there's micro problems. It's one big problem, but then there's also, sounds like, some very specific problems. I think you'll identify those specific things and say, these are the three things that really are wrong with this product, and then we created this, and it solves these three problems this way.

Then you talk about how you got there, how hard it was, you need multiple engineers, this wasn't an easy-- Even if it was easy, I would still want to make it sound hard, the actual building of the product in terms of your story and pitch. I think making it sound like it was quite a feat to build the product would get me more excited. Go.

Dawn: You asked about our distribution channels. We're focused on D to C. We're building up our social media channels, and that's where we really want to focus. I think you probably agree that being able to maintain that data and that relationship with your customers, at least when you're early stage, and you're still making product refinements, super important.

However, we can't ignore the power of, say, an Amazon or a Walmart or a Sephora in helping us get the word out and helping reach more consumers. I'd like to talk a little bit about, if you can rewind like 30 years and put yourself in my shoes, starting from the very bottom, how would you think about e-commerce in this atmosphere? The two things that we're concerned about: we want to get that reach and we want to get out there with e-commerce, but we're also very cognizant of some of the risks that come with patent infringers and copycats abroad. How would you think about that?

Marc: Yes, I would probably start the way you're starting, D to C. I think this product that you've created is very specialized for a very specific group of people that would be interested. I would probably, given the price point too, think about finding influencers that could be users of the product that have a large Instagram following and try and strike a deal.

Have them, through a company like a NOW//With, which is a startup I just met which allows your influencers to build e-comm functionality right into their page. The idea of doing a rev share with, obviously, multiple influencers, that are really talking to this target demo. I think that's going to probably be your biggest bang for your buck in terms of marketing.

I wouldn't think the traditional forms of marketing would be as effective in this case. I also think that you probably want to wait on going to MES until you've got that awareness because the last thing you want to do is spin your wheels, get it on shelves or some sort of test, and the test doesn't work well because nobody knows about the product.

I honestly think you can do without even being in retail. I think you could probably do it straight D to C through your site and then D to C through, hopefully, find hundreds, if not thousands, of influencers where you can buy direct from their page on a registered basis. That's how I would approach it if I were doing it out of the gate.

Dawn: Got it. Fill brand organically through influencers. We talked about some of the more traditional channels. I'm also considering high-end gyms, salons. Obviously, with COVID, those are wrenching things, but assuming we get back to normal over the next year or two years, I think of those outlets as micro-retail, but more than anything, I think of them as more professional influencers, for people to go into spaces that they respect and see the products. We'd like to make a significant investment in getting these products on those shelves, but I'd like to check that logic and see how you think about it.

Marc: I do. It was in my head, that would definitely be phase two for me. Once you get some buzz, you get some more press, I know you already got some press. Get more press, more influencers, you're selling more of a thing, I think it'll be easier to sell going into these salons. I do think that's a critical part of the strategy, you definitely want to do it.

I would just want to have a little tailwind before I did that so that you weren't fighting to get it in and having to introduce and sell and explain the product. It'd be nice if there were some of the biggest celebrity influencers out there that were talking about the product, that's an easy sell at that point.

Dawn: Okay. Now, again, in the interest of time, in the beginning of this pitch, I usually go into a lot of detail about the strain that this process puts on the lives of Black women. It makes it a lot more difficult for us to work out because every time you sweat, you got to wash your scalp, you got to restyle. That's another three hours that I don't have.

We talk about the pressure that's on Black women to conform to a certain beauty standard. I'm always questioning whether or not that messaging is really going to resonate. From where you sit, how do I make this product, at the end of the day, we all want to feel beautiful? We all want to feel coiffed and we all want to look our best. I'm trying to think through, how to make that messaging...

Marc: I think objective data is always best. I think doing a survey that's broad and wide and deep to ask some of these questions, to compare what Black women are facing versus non-Black women with hair and look at the survey differences. Look, 80% of Black women care about this, 10% of non-Black care about it. With actual data, all the things you're saying chime in, in numbers. Then it's more objective and you can get it at that point. There were really no surveys or data or numbers in your deck. I think you can definitely use that.

Dawn: Rather than focusing on an emotional tie between myself and someone who might not be as familiar with the space, focus on those numbers that an investor is really going to be focused on?

Marc: Yes, the emotional is a great overlay. The numbers support the emotion. You start with the emotion and then I'm thinking, or an investor is thinking, "It's an issue, but how big of an issue?" Until you frame it up with numbers, you don't really get it.

Dawn: How do you think about COVID right now? We're seeing a lot of really crazy shifts in e-commerce and you would have the bird's eye view there. What's the biggest takeaway for the next year, year and a half for small business owners like myself?

Marc: I really wouldn't do anything different based on what we're talking about. It's only going to get better for you as people start going out more, I would imagine. We're months away from most people being vaccinated in the US. I would just keep on doing what you're doing. You have the little tailwind coming, hopefully.

COVID pulled probably e-comm sales two to three years forward, but it was going there anyway and we just didn’t know. We're really sitting in 2023/24 right now in terms of e-commerce concern. Other than that, I don't think it really changes anything.

Dawn: Well, look, this has been really helpful. Thank you so much for your time, Marc.

Marc: Absolutely, Dawn. Good luck.

Dawn: Thank you.

Marc: Bye.