When Tye and Courtney Caldwell, co-founders of McKinney-based startup ShearShare, pitched investors in Silicon Valley on their app that connects hairstylists with empty salon space, the first reaction they got had nothing to do with the technology.
It was about their race.
“It was not a wake-up call because we do live in the South, and we’ve been Black for many years,” Courtney Caldwell said. “This has been our experience every day. We were immediately reminded that the world is the same in [Silicon] Valley as it is in Texas, as it is in New York. … Being Black in America is pretty consistent.”
Mandy Price and Star Carter, co-founders of Dallas-based tech startup Kanarys, had similar experiences in their prior law careers. They turned that into inspiration for a platform where employees can anonymously review companies’ performance on issues like diversity, inclusion and equity in the workplace.
As the pandemic brought challenges faced by Black-owned businesses to the forefront, tech behemoth Google rolled out new initiatives to give them a boost, including a startup accelerator for Black founders. It accepted the two North Texas companies into its inaugural class for a three-month program designed to equip entrepreneurs with mentorship and technical support.
“I thought [the programming] was phenomenal, not only from the technical standpoint of being able to help us accelerate some of the machine learning and AI we’re using within our platform but also being able to touch on topics unique to Black founders and the challenges that we do have with respect to raising capital,” Price said.
The companies were among 12 startups selected nationally. In addition to the accelerator program, Google created a $5 million fund that provides up to $100,000 cash to select startups. Both Kanarys and Shearshare received funding.
Money has been hard to come by this year for Black and Latinx founders, who’ve made up only 2.6% of the total funding venture capitalists doled out as of August, according to a Crunchbase study. And in 2019, female founders received 4% of venture capital and male-female co-led startups landed another 6%.
Carter, Price, and Courtney Caldwell are three out of 50 black women to have ever raised over $1 million in venture capital. Kanarys and ShearShare have brought in $1.6 million and $2.3 million, respectively, from investors.
Next month, Kanarys will go after a $1 million grand prize from Revolution’s Rise of the Rest seed fund and Morgan Stanley’s multicultural innovation lab. It’s one of five companies selected for the pitch competition, along with Dallas-based Zirtue, a fintech startup founded by Dennis Cail and Michael Seay.
Kanarys traces roots to law firm days
Price and Carter met as undergraduates at the University of Texas at Austin, and both went on to attend Harvard Law School. They even started their law careers at the same Dallas law firm. They became confidantes, sharing stories about inequities and microaggressions they faced as women of color in the legal world.
Even when they achieved partner status, Price and Carter said they still experienced the same digressions they faced as junior associates. For instance, Price remembers a fellow partner and client referring to her as the firm’s “diverse partner” and even questioning whether she had gotten into Harvard legitimately.
“The tipping point was actually when I was working on the board of a nonprofit organization that was dedicated to civil rights,” said Price, who recently appeared on Good Morning America with Carter to discuss what prompted them to start for Kanarys.
"I brought up some issues ... and the organization did not respond well. And I think that for me was a lightbulb moment where I said, ‘If people can’t even bring up these issues to an organization that brings discrimination claims against companies, then no workplace truly has the environment where people feel free to discuss these issues.’ "
Price recruited Carter to help her solve workplace problems through Kanarys. The company’s name is inspired by the coal mining tradition of taking canaries underground because the birds detected toxic gasses long before humans.
“That’s what we’re doing. We might be identifying holes or things in your procedures and your policies that are not ideal to have an equitable and inclusive workplace,” Carter said. “We look at ourselves as a signal of things that can help with improving a specific workplace.”
The Kanarys website is set up with two parts: the public side where employees can anonymously leave reviews about their employers for free and the private side where companies pay an annual subscription based on the size of the enterprise.
“The reason why we built the platform in the way that we have is to foster that transparency and accountability from a public perspective,” Price said. “Because we know that when the public demands accountability within these issues, we see businesses respond.”
Subscribing companies get access to a dashboard that is organized so companies can filter through Kanarys databases based on gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or disability. Price said companies can also compare themselves to competitors in specific industries to benchmark and score themselves on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“What we’re able to do is ensure that the policies and the procedures make sense and are based on researched best practices,” Price said.
Kanarys would not disclose its subscriber base, but Price said it works with Dallas-Fort Worth companies, including some on the Fortune 100. Kanarys.com tracks more than 1,000 U.S. companies.
Since January, Kanarys has seen triple-digit monthly growth in its website visitors, Carter said.
With the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd death serving as an inflection point, companies are more aware of racial justice topics, Carter said. And that’s led to a fourfold spike in demand for Kanarys' services
“Kanarys is built around [the question], how do we address the systemic and institutional inequities that exist?” Carter said.
Kanarys recently partnered with leading national advocacy organizations for minorities like National Urban League, Prospanica, Ascend, Black IDEA Coalition and INROADS. It was also recognized as a social impact company by the United Nations chapter in Dallas for increasing economic opportunity by reducing workplace inequities.
“We’re absolutely thrilled, of course, to be recognized. We stop, we enjoy the moment and then we get right back to work because there’s so much work to be done,” Carter said.
ShearShare: A marriage made in a salon
When Tye and Courtney Caldwell met each other in Salon74 by Tye, which Tye operates and owns, they weren’t thinking about getting married or revolutionizing the industry by connecting hairstylists and cosmetologists to empty spaces in salons.
Their business plan took shape when a stylist called Salon74 to see if she could rent space by the day because she was moving and had not yet found a long-term contract, Tye said.
“I was a little bit apprehensive at first,” Tye said. "I went home to tell my wife about it, and she kind of laughed and said, ‘Who does that?’ And I said, ‘Well, this right now is collecting dust rather than dollars.’ "
Salon74 broke away from the traditional model and began filling empty chairs with stylists seeking more flexibility. After three years, Tye realized this wasn’t unique to his salon and was a wider trend that could be solved by an app, now called ShearShare.
“[Stylists] want to pay for what they use, and they don’t want to be beholden to one location. They’re choosing to leverage social media to build their book of business,” Tye said. “They no longer have to depend on barber shop owners or salon owners to bring clients to them.”
ShearShare’s app lets stylists and salons join for free. The company takes a share of the revenue when a stylist books and rents space from salons. In early 2017, Courtney and Tye got advice from Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who told them he wished Airbnb could have kept the same community aspect that was lost when it got so big.
“Our goal is to make sure that whether or not you sit on the supply side of the marketplace or on the demand side of the marketplace, we want to help you maximize your earning potential in this industry,” Courtney said. “And we want to provide those B2B tools that we already know you’re going to need.”
In addition to connecting stylists to empty salon chairs, ShearShare also partnered with Track, a service that tracks taxes, and Elite Beauty Society, a company that provides liability coverage to cosmetologists.
Despite salons closing during the height of the pandemic, Courtney said the number of users on ShearShare grew 157%. Courtney would not disclose the specific number of app users, describing it only as tens of thousands. ShearShare is available in 626 cities across the United States. In the Dallas area, it has 150 salons and barbershops.
“At the end of the day, we’re helping to keep small businesses open, whether it is a brick and mortar, the salon barbershop, spa owner, the individual solopreneur or small business owner,” Courtney said.
Courtney said her family had to sacrifice to get ShearShare off the ground. In 2014, Tye recalled eating lots of “rice and beans” at Chipotle, where he drew a rough draft of the app on a napkin that the couple still has today.
They would fly from Dallas to California every Sunday and come back Thursday nights for their son’s high school football games. He’s now a second-year football player at the Air Force Academy.
Tye’s long-term goal for ShearShare is to create a legacy for his family and generations to come.
“I don’t think that people necessarily think about Texas first when we think about top tech talent,” Courtney said. “But we’re getting there, and we’re sheer proof, right? You can build a sustainable tech organization right here in the heart of Texas.”
