We are 3 software engineers who have built health social networks, mobile apps for farmers in Africa, and worked on marketing consumer brands like Nike. We started Tress because this is a challenge that personally affects us and because it's a big market that is still relatively untapped by technology.

Hair is a big deal for black women. We are constantly changing our hairstyles and spend 9 times more on our hair than any other demographic. We don't just get a regular cut or color our hair. We get drastic! We go from braids to weaves to cornrows and then to our own hair and then back again. Size, length, style, color, volume of hair, weaves and extensions all differ each time we change our hairstyle. And we do that often because of the nature of our hair. To give you an idea, these photos are all of the same woman - https://www.dropbox.com/s/52ew0d8hsxwx0k4/JodianHairstyles.p... - It's an image from our YC demo day slides.

The process of figuring all this out to actually getting a style done is long and broken. Many women spend a ton of time searching for their next hairstyle, then more time figuring out how to replicate the style via tutorial articles/videos or search for a stylist and so on. Tress aims to be the dedicated platform to fix all of this and connect a community of women who often socialize around their unique hair needs.

One thing that excites us as software engineers is exploring how to use computer vision to tell if a user has 4a, 4b or 4c natural hair curl pattern or if a hairstyle is a Senegalese twists or Havana mambo twists. We are equally excited to be gathering hair products data and usage patterns around our hairstyles in such an informal sector that technology has barely gotten started in yet. We dream of things like an API that has all the data about the hair products black women have used in the past 5 years.

We're looking forward to answering your questions about Tress and discussing startups, software, and of course hair!