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

Dawn Myers, founder of Richualist, is developing a hair-care device aimed at shortening and simplifying the demanding routines often associated with textured and curly hair. The company’s Mint tool combines several wash-day tasks in one handheld product: it is designed to detangle hair while dispensing conditioning, styling, or gel products. Its selection for TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200 places the company before a large technology-industry audience at the publication’s Disrupt conference.

The idea grew out of Myers’s own experience. She commonly wears an afro and described washing, separating, treating, and arranging textured hair as a lengthy process. In her case, she said the routine could take roughly 80 minutes. A television pitch for a curly-hair product, watched about eight years ago, prompted her to consider a market full of tools built to straighten or otherwise alter curls rather than assist people who want to maintain their natural texture.

That distinction shaped Richualist’s starting point. Myers saw a technical and commercial blind spot in beauty hardware: devices for drying, curling, or changing hair were widely visible, while equipment addressing the mechanics of textured-hair care received far less attention. She has linked that absence to a longer history in which Black hair was treated as something to conceal or straighten, through practices and products ranging from head coverings to hot combs, chemical relaxers, and flat irons.

After the television program, Myers sketched an initial concept on a legal pad. She then assembled an early rough prototype from supplies bought at Ace Hardware and CVS. That experiment evolved into Mint, which uses replaceable pods and applies product through the same motion used to work through hair. The device also warms the product before application. Richualist says the combination is meant to reduce the number of separate steps consumers must manage during a wash-and-style session.

Myers said Mint can bring styling time down to between seven and 10 minutes for users, though actual results will depend on hair, routine, and product choice. The company also says avoiding repeated pulling may reduce shedding and breakage by as much as 70%. That figure is a company claim; the account does not point to independent testing of the result. Mint is offered in a travel-size version as well, extending the company’s effort to make the routine more portable rather than tied solely to home care.

Turning the concept into a manufactured product required outside technical support. Dow, the materials-science company, encountered the prototype through a startup accelerator and later worked with Richualist. Myers said Dow had begun exploring textured-hair care and contributed engineering expertise and manufacturing guidance. The partnership illustrates the challenge of translating a consumer insight into hardware: a promising idea must be designed not only for use on hair, but also for product delivery, heat, refill systems, durability, and production.

Financing presented another obstacle. Myers became one of the first 100 Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture capital, but she said early investors viewed hardware and a narrowly defined consumer problem as difficult propositions. She sold her home and cashed out her 401(k) to fund early development. Richualist later raised about $1.4 million to commercialize and validate the product, after a development period that lasted about five years and included research into customer use patterns that Myers said was not already available.

The business was approaching expansion in 2022 when Myers received a diagnosis of stage-three colorectal cancer. She continued fundraising during treatment, including work from chemotherapy appointments. An application to Shark Tank followed in 2023; she appeared on the program later, in an episode broadcast in 2024. A deal with Mark Cuban and Emma Grede helped formally launch Mint, and Grede later supported its arrival on Ulta’s website. Myers says the company is now considering further expansion while presenting the product at Disrupt, where textured-hair technology will share the stage with other selected startups.

Source: TechCrunch