Richualist’s Mint tool slashes curly-hair wash time and lands on TechCrunch Disrupt stage

Dawn Myers’ company Richualist is set to showcase its flagship product, Mint, at TechCrunch Disrupt this week, highlighting a hardware solution that compresses a typical one-hour-plus wash-and-style routine for textured hair into a seven-to-ten-minute process. The tool, which detangles, conditions, gels and styles in a single glide, addresses a long-standing gap in the beauty-hardware market for curly-hair care.

Myers, who grew up wearing a large afro, first noticed the market void while watching a “Shark Tank” episode about a curly-hair product about eight years ago. The segment prompted her to sketch a concept on a legal pad and cobble together a crude prototype from hardware store parts. She realized that existing devices, blow dryers, flat irons, chemical relaxers, were designed to alter curl chemistry rather than work with it, leaving people with textured hair to endure lengthy, labor-intensive wash days.

The early prototype caught the eye of a startup accelerator, which connected Myers with Dow, a materials-science firm that had recently launched a textured-hair care unit. Dow provided engineering expertise and manufacturing guidance, enabling Richualist to refine the device over roughly five years of development. The final product incorporates refillable pods of conditioning gel and a gentle warming element that pre-heats the formula before application.

Mint’s impact is measurable. Myers reports that users see styling time drop from an average of 80 minutes to under ten minutes, while shedding and breakage decline by as much as 70 percent because the tool eliminates the need for aggressive tugging. A travel-size version expands the product’s appeal to on-the-go consumers.

Securing capital for a niche hardware venture proved difficult. Myers eventually became one of the first hundred Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture funding, ultimately closing a $1.4 million round that financed commercial production. To fund early development she sold her home and liquidated her 401(k), a gamble she says paid off once the product reached market readiness.

In 2023 Myers appeared on “Shark Tank,” where investors Mark Cuban and Emma Grede committed to the company. Grede later helped place Mint on Ulta’s online storefront earlier this year, and Myers notes the product is currently “sold out” in several channels. The brand’s momentum earned it a spot among TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200, guaranteeing a stage at Disrupt.

Myers, who battled stage-three colorectal cancer while finalizing the funding round, described closing deals from a chemotherapy chair at Johns Hopkins. She entered Disrupt as an introvert, but sees the conference as a platform to bring textured-hair technology onto the same stage as cutting-edge software and AI startups. As Richualist looks to broaden distribution and iterate on its hardware, the company’s presence at Disrupt signals both validation from the broader tech ecosystem and a potential shift toward more inclusive beauty-tech solutions.