This Couple Created "HairBnb" for Salons. Now It's in 900 Cities. ShearShare is helping 40,000 hair professionals and businesses across the country play musical barber chairs.
By Liz Brody
This story appears in the October 2022 issue of BIZ Experiences. Subscribe »
In 2012, Tye Caldwell thought he knew everything about the hair business. He'd started cutting his seven siblings' hair with his school Fiskars scissors at age 11 and opened his own salon in Plano, Texas, in 2001. That's even where he met his wife, Courtney, when she came in for a cut. But one day, a phone call briefly stumped him.
It was a stylist asking if she could rent a chair in his salon by the day. That was crazy talk; back then, this kind of arrangement was done by signing long leases. But the truth was, Tye had empty chairs. Better to collect dollars than dust, he figured. So he said yes — a decision that inspired Tye and Courtney to launch ShearShare, a platform that now helps 40,000 hair businesses and professionals play musical chairs across more than 900 cities. Here's how they went from random insight to reshaping the industry.
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Step 1: Build the minimum viable product.
Three years after the stylist called, the Caldwells were sharing a veggie bowl at Chipotle when they had an epiphany: This rent-by-the-day thing could scale! And no one else was doing it. On a napkin, Tye sketched out an app that would match independent stylists to salons and barbershops with empty space. Courtney, who'd previously run Oracle's digital marketing, was all in.
First they needed a minimum viable product (MVP), so they drained their savings and Courtney's retirement account ("It's still painful," she admits) and hired an engineering firm to build it. That MVP helped them win pitch competitions and gain entry to programs like the Y Combinator Fellowship and the incubator 500 Global. But they struggled to fundraise. In 2016, only 0.8% of VC funding went to Black founders — and investors were extra cautious of the Caldwells as spouses. "VCs would talk about divorce or nasty fallouts," says Tye. "But then that same investor would say, 'Cofounders have to be like a married couple.' And I'm thinking, What is the difference?"
Step 2: Reframe the pitch.
The Caldwells spent years pitching ShearShare as a beauty app, and hardly got anywhere. Then they had a breakthrough in 2019. They'd heard people call their company "HairBnB," and began describing the startup as a property tech platform that managed over $95 million in salon and barbershop space assets. "That's a totally different conversation with a VC," says Courtney. "Maybe they don't care about people getting their hair cut. But when we talk about excess capacity, they hear it differently." Thanks to that pivot, they've raised $5.5 million.
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Step 3: Solve a pain point.
Many of ShearShare's clients — stylists who move around a lot or work part time — struggled to afford the liability insurance salons often require. Once the Caldwells saw the problem, they reached out to Lloyd's of London (cold, by filling out a contact form). Although it took two years of talking, in 2020, ShearShare was able to offer liability insurance by the day.
Step 4: Refine the cost.
How much should a chair cost per day to rent? Salon owners and stylists had very different answers to that. When the Caldwells got accepted into a Google accelerator program for Black founders, they used it to make everyone happier: Now ShearShare has a machine learning-driven dynamic pricing program, much like airlines use, which maximizes the earnings potential for both parties based on variables like location, amenities, and how far ahead the booking is.
Step 5: Grow smart.
Having worked out the product, it's time to scale. ShearShare will introduce subscriptions this fall, and is actively developing partnerships with national chains. The Caldwells also joined another incubator, called 43North. "We're gonna ask questions until someone tells us, 'Stop asking me,'" says Courtney. So far, no one has.
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