Dawn Myers wasn't surprised that her appearance earlier this month on ABC's "Shark Tank" attracted a larger audience interested in The Mint, her handheld device that detangles and distributed heated conditioners for a variety of hair textures.
The real shock for Myers came from the wider-than-expected demographic inquiring about the product, which she initially designed with Black and brown women in mind to address a gap in a market that often overlooks their needs. People of Southeast Asian and Arab heritage have been reaching out incessantly in the two weeks since the episode aired April 4.
"It has been so amazing having all of these women from all of these different ethnic backgrounds come into our inbox and say, ‘Hey, I have the same problem, too,'" she told me during a video interview. "It’s just been very interesting to see those cross-cultural touch points and it really gets back to my entire thesis that when you serve the needs of an underrepresented niche within a community, we ultimately serve the needs of the greater whole."
Fed up by a lack of products that could save her from hours of daily hair care treatments, Myers founded The Most, a D.C.-based startup specializing in hair care solutions, including The Mint.
Since securing the $150,000 investment for 15% equity from series regular Mark Cuban and guest investor and British entrepreneur Emma Grede, Myers has witnessed a surge in demand, with preorders quadrupling in just over a week compared to those the company has seen since The Mint went on a limited capacity sale back in 2022.
Cuban praised Myers' accomplishments thus far given not only her own challenges but also those that entrepreneurs face in general.
"It's hard to be an entrepreneur. It's harder when your product is revolutionary," Cuban told me in an email. "Dawn is doing a great job working towards getting her product to market. It's not easy. But she will get there."
Myers, who serves as the startup's CEO, is in active conversations with Procter & Gamble Co. to co-brand the curl cream and gel pods that are inserted into the Mint device. She's also raising a $1.2 million funding round, which includes the "Shark Tank" investments. Should the startup raise all of its desired capital, it'll bring The Most's total outside investment to $2.3 million.
"This has been a very long time coming," Myers said. "We started out firmly in the D.C. ecosystem with everybody telling us that this is going to fail, you are not going to be able to figure this out, regular people do not do tech-enabled hardware, and we figured it out and so there are a lot of wins there."
All of this also came following Myers' stage 3 colon cancer diagnosis and treatment that began in 2021. She recounted raising the startup's initial seed round by fielding calls from investors while in a hospital bed during intense radiation and chemotherapy treatments.
"My body was being absolutely ravaged and people will never understand what it's like to have to get on these calls and look like a well-person to investors and try to keep your team going because it's not just about your investors, you have to continue to look like you've got it together for your team because you've got to keep them motivated," she said. "You have to keep people excited."
And there's still plenty of work left to do, she added.
Supply chains need to be solidified so higher quantities of the product, made in China, are available in the U.S. She also wants to hire a yet-to-be-determined number of operational support staffers who have prior experience working in the beauty industry to oversee marketing efforts. The startup currently employs four people.
The product itself took $1 million to develop over a five-year trial-and-error period, funding Myers got partially by liquidating her 401(k) account and via the sale of her home as many investors she spoke with either didn't understand the product or see its bigger potential role in the hair care and treatment industry. Prior to launching the startup in 2022, Myers served in a programming director capacity at three different local startup support-based organisations: The Vinetta Project, Black Girl Ventures and Startups Ignite.
"In many ways, the friction that I've gotten, the bright side is that it's prepared me to be able to perform at a really great level, to be able to execute this huge vision," she said. "Maybe those people were right in the beginning, maybe I wasn't sophisticated enough, maybe I wasn't great enough. But it's because of that chip on my shoulder, it's because of that friction, it's because of that lack of support that I've become the entrepreneur that I am."
