Richualist's Mint targets an overlooked textured-hair gap

Dawn Myers founded haircare startup Richualist after watching a “Shark Tank” pitch for a curly-hair product around eight years ago, which made her realize the beauty-hardware industry had built blow dryers, curling irons, and other tools that straighten hair chemistry, but nothing for textured hair. She said it used to take her around an hour and 20 minutes to wash and style her own hair. Richualist’s product, Mint, detangles, conditions, applies gel, and styles hair in a single stroke using refillable product pods and built-in warming technology that gently heats the product before application. Myers said the tool gets styling time down to about seven to 10 minutes and reduces shedding and breakage by up to 70%.

Myers developed Mint with materials-science company Dow, which provided engineering help and manufacturing guidance after an early prototype caught the company’s attention at a startup accelerator program. Dow had separately identified the textured-hair space and was starting its own textured-hair-care unit, Myers said. She became one of the first 100 Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture funding, but said getting hardware funded is extremely difficult, and especially so for a niche problem like textured-hair care. Executives she met in the beauty industry often didn’t grasp the problem — many didn’t understand the washing-and-styling routine her customers go through — and, she said, “there are no people who look like me in those R&D suites.” Her team ultimately had to conduct its own research, including how much product people with textured hair typically use, because the data didn’t already exist. To finance about five years of development, Myers sold her home and liquidated her 401(k) retirement account.

In 2022, as she prepared to expand, Myers was diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer and closed a funding round during treatment. She applied to “Shark Tank” in 2023, filmed her episode that year — which aired in 2024 — and secured a deal with investor Mark Cuban and entrepreneur Emma Grede. Grede later helped bring Mint to Ulta’s online store earlier this year. Myers said Richualist is now close to selling out of the product and is mapping out ways to expand further.

Richualist was picked as one of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200 startups this year, earning a spot at TechCrunch Disrupt, the publication’s annual startup conference, which begins this Tuesday. An introvert by nature, Myers said she’s bracing herself for the crowds at Disrupt, and is most looking forward to textured-hair technology sharing a stage with some of the industry’s most advanced hardware.

Why it matters

Richualist’s run — from a self-funded prototype to Ulta’s online shelves and a Mark Cuban-backed deal — shows that textured-hair hardware, long dismissed as too niche to fund, can draw mainstream retail and celebrity capital. Its spot at this week’s Disrupt could widen that opening for other hardware founders in overlooked beauty categories.