In the flurry of election news this month, it's easy to forget about the classic November tradition: Movember and No-Shave November, a month-long campaign where men grow out their mustaches to raise money and awareness for various men's health issues.
Cou Kalantary, founder of D.C.'s DarwinBeats and an American University grad who works out of the American University Entrepreneurship Incubator, decided this month was the best time to explore one question he's always had: how many beard hairs does he have anyway?
"I asked a lot of people around me, including my dermatologist, but the answers were so far from each other that it became evident there would only be one way to find out," Kalantary told DC Inno.
So instead of completely shaving at the beginning of this Movember, he decided to spend 11 hours plucking each individual beard hair. At last count, he had 15,744 hairs.
Kalantary said he had been learning more about influencer marketing, and he figured why not make his own piece of content where he could organically bring in a huge audience and then just casually and briefly mention his startup.
In all, he's seeing mostly men watching the video—about 92 percent of his over 30,000 viewers are men. As of Tuesday morning, his video had 32,769 views.
He's raised $45 so far for No-Shave November, but he's aiming to raise $1,000. And the DarwinBeats site has seen a 22 percent increase in traffic, but Kalantary notes that the day before the video dropped, he posted a new app update that could also contribute to the uptick in traffic.
"As far as pain is concerned, it really wasn’t all that bad," Kalantary said. "The most painful moments only hurt for 2-3 seconds at a time. The first pluck after taking a break was always the worst because my brain would adjust quickly and start ignoring the pain."
Take a look at his experiment for yourself:
