Launch HN: Tress (YC W17) – Online community for black women's hairstyles

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!

Because I think that's what this really is: the launch of a new premium consumer brand. Tress is capturing consumers at _exactly_ the right time, they all have purchase intent and it seems targeted really really well.

They can make serious money recommending local stylists, products, etc. and then turn around and also sell their own branded products.

This is really far outside of what I'm familiar with, but I look at past things I scoffed at and that are now worth billions [1] and think this might have a real shot at getting huge.

It all comes down to execution and work, but a really interesting idea even now.

1 - http://investor.lululemon.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=96...

When it comes to the "properties" of "black" hair (and I'm talking stereotypical black hair here, hair similar to my own... if you're talking "types of hair on the heads of black people", that's much wider ranging), it's the texture. While a lot of people might think of coarse, curly hair as unrully, that's generally the opinion of people who don't know how to "manage"/do/style it. Managing it's growth tends to make you think of pretty ingenious ways of styling (cornrows, dreads, twists, afros, perms, etc.)

Now if you asking "what is it about black hair" in a "why" sense... Well opinions about black people and their hair, both positive and negative, internal and external opinion, have influenced black hairstyles throughout the ages... but that's a wikipedia article for another day.