Richualist Cuts Wash Day to 10 Minutes and Raises $1.4M

Richualist's Mint hair tool cuts styling time for textured hair to seven to 10 minutes — down from the roughly 80 minutes founder Dawn Myers says it takes to wash and style her own hair. Myers built the company after watching a "Shark Tank" episode about eight years ago and spotting a gap she says has always existed in beauty hardware: no tools designed for textured hair.

Mint detangles, conditions, gels, and styles in a single stroke using refillable product pods, with warming technology that gently heats the product before application. Myers says the device, which also comes in a travel size, reduces shedding and breakage by up to 70% because users no longer tug endlessly on their strands.

"We get that styling time down to about seven to 10 minutes," Myers told TechCrunch. "It's a massive game changer for the customer really stressed out by wash day."

Why did big beauty miss this market?

Myers traces the industry blind spot back centuries. "If you think back to slavery, we were mandated to cover our hair. That's where do-rags come from," she said. She argues the market long favored tools that straighten textured hair — hot combs, chemical relaxers, flat irons — and that only in the past 15 years or so have Black women broadly embraced wearing natural curls.

The problem extended into corporate R&D. "There are no people who look like me in those R&D suites," Myers said of early meetings with beauty executives. When she described wash days, "these people didn't know what a wash day was." She adds that the bonds in textured hair differ from other hair types: "We really do need bespoke technology."

How did she fund it?

Myers sold her home and liquidated her 401(k) to fund initial development. "That was a crazy bet, but it paid off," she said. The company brought in about $1.4 million to commercialize and validate the product, and development took roughly five years — including original research, because data such as how much product the average person with textured hair uses did not exist.

Fundraising remained brutal. "It's really impossible to get hardware funded," Myers said. "It's even more impossible to get it funded when we're talking about such a niche problem." She eventually became one of the first 100 Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture funding.

A turning point came through a partnership with materials science giant Dow, which noticed an early prototype during a startup accelerator program. "It just so happens that Dow had identified this white space recently as well, and they were starting a textured hair care unit," Myers said. Dow provided engineering help and manufacturing guidance.

What happened in 2022?

Just as Richualist prepared to go to market, Myers was diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer. "We ended up closing our round while I was still going through treatment," she recalled. She closed deals from the chemo chair at Johns Hopkins, laptop in hand. She applied to "Shark Tank" in 2023, appeared later that year, and the episode aired in 2024. "I was still wearing a binder around my abdomen under the dress I wore for my 'Shark Tank' experience," she said.

She secured a deal from Mark Cuban and serial entrepreneur Emma Grede, which funded the formal product launch. Grede helped Richualist expand onto Ulta's online store earlier this year. Myers says the company is "about to market ourselves as sold out" and is mapping out further expansion.

Richualist was also selected for TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield 200, earning a spot at TechCrunch Disrupt, which kicks off this Tuesday. Myers, who describes herself as an introvert, is bracing for the crowds — but has a sharper goal in mind.

"But what I am most excited for is textured hair to be sitting on the stage with some of the most sophisticated tech in the space," she said.