Today, I stumbled upon Tress, an app that helps women discover new hairstyles, complete with a breakdown of hair products used, name and location of the stylist, price range, and other information they will need before paying a visit to the salon. Women can also share their favourite hairstyles, trade hair tips and secrets, and receive compliments from a supportive community.
Why is this important?
“It’s surprisingly difficult to find accurate information about hairstyles,” Priscilla, Tress CEO says. “Many ladies routinely find themselves in the awkward position of walking up to complete strangers to compliment and inquire about their hair, or stalk social media accounts for inspiration as well as adequate information about the style.”
I am no hair expert, but this definitely sounds interesting.
What makes it more interesting to me is the kind of service rendered: HAIRSTYLE information and the evaluation of the industry: $500 billion! Who would have thought so?
I was in a similiar position in 2012 when I was working on a spam-free, city based event alert system at that time. I was just doing it because it was a fun challenge to work on, it was not until I needed to pitch it at TENT in December 2012 that I realised for the first time that I was sitting on a billion dollar idea! I saw the billion dollars inside it for the first time that day.
So also today, we have many people working on so many simple ideas and they do not even realise how powerful such ideas can become.
I was in a meeting several years ago and I remember the facilitator suggesting exactly this kind of app, an app to African discover hairstyles and how to make them…. nobody took him serious enough to build the app. Now I am reading about Tress!
I am asking today, what interests you? Can you try to build something out of it? Even the simplest of ideas can fetch you handsome money in this age of information.
There is a billion dollar industry out there that you can penetrate by using the digital technologies you have easy access to.
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- From MEST, Ghana to YC, USA: Hairstyle inspiration app, Tress, has been accepted into the Y Combinator Fellowship Program.
- It is beginning to look like the FG will continue the YouWin initiative of the previous government. I am totally pro continuity.
