Jess frustrated the hell out of the other startups in her Tacklebox cohort.
Not because she wasn’t nice — she’d win “Friendliest Founder” if we had a Tacklebox Yearbook (and we should) — but because she made everything look so… easy.
Founders struggling through positioning or customer acquisition would talk about how they wished their startup was as “straightforward” as Jess’s. She moved in hyper-speed from day one and hasn’t slowed down, despite a demanding day job.
It’s easy to underestimate Jess. I sure did. When I interviewed her for Tacklebox I saw a smart person who’d identified a problem. I meet lots of those. I completely whiffed on everything that made her this “frustratingly effective.”
And that might be the best part about Jess’s story. She’s not a 5-time founder. She’s not a developer. She doesn’t have a stacked team. She’s not even working on her idea full-time (yet). She’s probably just like you. Which means you have a chance to make your startup look easy, just like her.
The Tribe
I underestimated Jess because, as I said, I thought she’d found a problem.
She has super short hair. To keep it looking “fresh” (her words, I know I’m not cool enough to say that), she needs to get it cut a couple times a month. She’d cut it weekly if she could afford it. Salons charge the same for a quick, short cut as they do for women with longer hair who come far less frequently, and barber shops don’t do this cut well (and often aren’t inviting). So, either Jess pays a ton or gets a bad cut while feeling uncomfortable.
To solve this problem, she pitched me Cropped; membership-based salon services for women in NYC with short hair. Unlimited cuts by people who know what they’re doing in a welcoming atmosphere.
Bing, bang, boom. Clean problem, simple solution.
I planned to focus the interview with Jess on validation and logistics — sourcing stylists, pricing, customer acquisition, brick and mortar — to see if it made sense.
But all Jess wanted to talk about was her customer. She loved her customer.
“Short hair is a lifestyle. An attitude. A way of life.”
She explained that Cropped would be a lifestyle brand. The decision to cut your hair short was about so much more than how it looked. Cutting your hair that way was not a singular action, it was the result of a whole set of beliefs.
She told me she both stopped and was stopped daily on the street by women with short hair. The Jeep Wave on steroids.
After our interview she emailed me an article in Refinery 29:
“Short-haired women — we’re like a squad. It’s hard to explain, but we immediately compliment each others’ hair and ask where we got it done.”
I began to understand that Jess hadn’t found a problem. She’d found something way more powerful. She’d found a tribe. A family that was wholly underrepresented but already very much in existence. A tight-knit, cohesive group that was bound by all sorts of things but happened to recognize and find each other through their hair.
A question I get asked a lot is “how do I quickly build a community?” The answer I give is that you don’t. You find an existing community and help them with a problem they care about.
Harley Davidson doesn’t sell motorcycles, Nike doesn’t sell shoes, and Jess won’t sell salon services.
She’ll sell connection with the tribe.
Barriers to the Family
Seth wrote a post in 2011 that every founder should read.
He discusses the race to becoming slightly famous — to having 500 or 1,500 or 3,000 of the right people know who you are. To becoming “famous to the family” — the people that matter for whatever you’re building.
I’ll take it a step further.
Founders should understand that barriers to entry have been replaced by Barriers to the Family.
Let’s say I want to launch a travel startup for parents with young kids. My barrier to building this product isn’t tech. That’s a commodity. It’s that I’ve got to become famous to parents with young kids booking trips. That means I need to be “famous” to every touchpoint in their decision process. The family travel bloggers they read, their influential friends who recommend trips, the Instagram travel accounts they follow.
That barrier is insurmountable for me. It’d take years or a key hire to become famous to that family.
Your idea hourglass starts when you break ground on your idea, and the longer it takes to become famous to your family the less chance you’ll be successful.
Jess is becoming famous to her family fast.
Her family is accessible. It’s abnormally cohesive. The specific problem she’s solving is urgent and top of mind. And best of all? It’s easy to find them. Jess can literally spot them from a mile (a few blocks) away.
Startups don’t take a village. They take a family. And when the family gets behind you, you can move fast.
Inspired vs. uninspired action
Most founders make two critical mistakes. They overestimate how much action uninspired people will take, and they underestimate how much action inspired people will take.
Cropped will be logistically difficult to pull off. But Jess’s tribe will help her build. They’ll deal with a wonky MVP that’s not as convenient as their usual cuts — in Cropped’s case a Breather where she has a stylist cutting hair on Sundays.
Early products are about engineering emotion, not flawless solutions. Your early product won’t be great, but if you connect on an emotional level, customers will stick with you as you build.
So whether Jess’s haircuts are great or mediocre initially really won’t matter. Because her customers will give her a chance to get better. They’ll treat her like family. They know Jess knows what great looks like for them, and they’ll trust her to get Cropped there.
This is the blueprint for your best chance at building a successful startup. Connecting with customers so deeply that they let you build slow, helping along the way.
To be like Jess, you’ve got to ask yourself — who’s your family? And how quickly can you become famous to them?
