Normally, Dawn Myers wears her hair up in a big old afro, and anyone with an afro can attest that wash days — the routine of washing and styling textured hair — are often tedious. They take a lot of detangling, product, styling, and, well, time.

“I was watching ‘Shark Tank,’ and there was another curly girl idea,” she recalled of a day around eight years ago, when a pitch for a hair product aired. She started thinking about all the hair tools on the market, like blow dryers and curling irons, “things that straighten and change the chemistry of our naturally curly hair,” she told TechCrunch, adding that it takes around an hour and 20 minutes to wash and style her own hair.

None of those tools help with that, and for Myers, it highlighted a gap that has always existed in the beauty hardware space — a lack of tooling for textured hair. It’s a space that’s complex, expensive, and just overlooked.

“If you think back to slavery, we were mandated to cover our hair. That’s where do-rags come from. You had to cover your hair. Why? Because our hair was seen as ugly and unkempt and unacceptable,” she said. Later came hot combs, chemical relaxers, and flat irons, all of which straighten textured hair.

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