10Beauty

The next Boston anchor tech company??? I think so!  Episode 325 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Alexander Shashou, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of 10Beauty. Are we having a Jetsons moment and finally starting to see the possibilities of robotics and automation?  10Beauty has created the world’s first and only autonomous manicure machine. For me, it’s less about the tasks that this robot is performing and more about a team that is thinking bigger and ultimately delivering on something incredibly difficult. 10Beauty has raised $38M in funding from Shine Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Imaginary, Red Sea Ventures. And, they already have serious traction as they have sold out of their entire first run of machines which means they have over $13M in annual manicure subscription revenue ahead. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A deep dive into the challenges and the complexity of building a robotics startup. * Alex’s background story and how Alex met his co-founder, Justin Effron, the first day of school at the University of Pennsylvania. * The story of their first company, Alice, a task management platform for the hospitality industry that was acquired by Expedia, plus how they connected with their technical co-founder, Dmitry Koltunov. * The definition of a good partnership between co-founders and how they divvy up roles & and responsibilities. * All the details on 10Beauty… from meeting Chris Casey (one of the original Roomba engineers)... to building out the initial prototype... to raising funding... to the company’s business model... and projected launch. * And so much more. #startups #startupstories #startup #venturecapital #venturefunding #beauty #manicure #robotics #roboticautomation #founders #founderstories

I get my nails done fairly regularly, particularly if I want to look put together for a work event. But it's a laborious process booking a spot at my favorite salon (which is MiniLuxe, by the way), driving over, and then doing the manicure. So I was fascinated to hear that a startup called 10Beauty, founded by Alexander Shashou and Justin Effron, has built an incredible team of roboticists and engineers to create a machine that will replicate every single step of a professional salon manicure--from the nail polish removal to the filing to the drying. And it will do it in 17 minutes per hand. I saw the machine at work at the company's labs and was intrigued by how well it worked. I'm not the only one impressed. Imaginary Ventures and Lerer Hippeau are among the many VC firms that have invested in it. Soon, the machine will be available at Nordstrom and Ulta Beauty so you can get a manicure while shopping. They'll also be available at hotels, gyms, hair salons--and eventually, these will be sold for home use. Here are some thoughts I had while writing this story: 💅 Many projects that were once considered moonshots are actually within reach. It takes a stubborn, determined team to bring the right technologists together. 💅 The 10Beauty team have borrowed ideas from many other industries. They learned about how car companies paint vehicles. They looked at how baby brands create nail files that are very safe. 💅 Many high touch services will very soon be automated. As a society, we need to think carefully about how we're going to help workers transition to other forms of work.