[ad_1]
Digitizing your haircut may not have been on your 2020 bucket list, but 2021 has an even more surprising line element: Tech-powered barbershops are now a business proposition valued at nearly a billion. of dollars.
Squire is a back-end hair salon management tool for independent businesses. I covered it for the first time in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The startup raised millions of dollars days before its key clientele – hair salons – was closed across the country. The company eventually went from defense to offensive in its growth strategy, finding itself as a key partner for any hair salon that needed to start offering contactless payments, digital appointment scheduling and an experience. smoother client designed for a generation used to doing everything online.
This week, Squire tripled its valuation thanks to a round led by Tiger-Global. The company is now worth $ 750 million, having been valued at around $ 75 million when we first spoke to them.
When I spoke to co-founder Dave Salvant, who started the business with Songe LaRon in 2016, he explained how the business is now able to expand into other salon-specific value propositions. , whether through acquisitions or partnerships. This week, for example, Squire announced the launch of a payment processing arm with Bond, a venture capital-backed fintech infrastructure company. The company has also partnered with Gusto to provide HR services to its customers. Salvant noted how advancements in technology, especially financial services, allow them to offer a solid product without needing to build everything in-house.
While these are partnerships at the moment, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Squire start picking up companies that can unlock value from their existing datasets on how hair salons operate and type of capital that flows in and out of these doors.
Behind the numbers:
It’s a business to watch that fits into the narrative of a shaken pandemic, and then proven startups looking to grow with new capitalization. Less common, however, is that Squire is now on its way to becoming a historic and sadly still rare black-headed unicorn. The more data points the better.
In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll discuss Robinhood’s public debut and why a CEO thinks everyone has to be him for a day. You can find me on Twitter @nmasc_.
Robinhood sells Robinhood
Image credits: TechCrunch
Robinhood’s long-awaited IPO is not long overdue. After setting prices at the lower end of its range, shares in the mainstream investing and trading app fell sharply, hovering between 8% and 10%.
Here’s what you need to know: Alex Wilhelm, IPO expert and co-host of Equity, gave us two reasons why Robinhood shares fell. After all, we’re used to popping up in the world of consumer-oriented tech companies.
Robinhood has made much of its IPO available to its own users. Or, in practice, Robinhood has reduced demand for early retail by offering its investors and traders shares at the same price and level of access as those afforded to large investors. It’s a great idea. But in doing so, Robinhood may have reduced unserved retailer interest in its stocks, possibly reshaping its initial supply / demand curve.
Or maybe the company’s warnings that its trading volumes could drop in Q2 2021 have scared some bulls.
You become CEO, you become CEO!
Image credits: Richard drury (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Now that free beer is no longer a benefit to the business, perhaps the next best benefit has emerged: Let anyone in your business become CEO for a day. Vincit CEO Ville Houttu implemented this program in his company in 2018 and said the initiative has paid off “tenfold.”
Here’s how it works, by business:
The program gives our employee the reins for 24 hours with an unlimited budget. The only requirement? The CEO must make a sustainable decision that will help improve the work experience for Vincit employees. Whatever the CEO’s decision of the day, the company sticks to it. They can buy something for the business, change a policy, update a tool that we use… Really, anything they offer can be done.
You can see the resulting policies in our history, but IMHO the end result is definitely better than free beer.
Around TC
- The TechCrunch Disrupt Agenda has just been put online. It’s a must-read program and an event not to be missed. Some strong points:
- Pot, Pottery and Beyond with Seth Rogen (houseplant), Haneen Davies (houseplant) and Michael Mohr (houseplant)
- Breaking the Bank with Brian Armstrong (Coinbase)
- Talking about SPAC with Chamath Palihapitiya (social capital)
- Dogmatic Design with Melanie Perkins (Canva)
- Shout at Amanda Silberling, a recent addition to the TechCrunch team that has absolutely crushed its mainstream tech pace. Am here on Twitter if it is not done yet !
All week long
Seen on TechCrunch
For more information on the public market, subscribe to The exchange by Alex wilhelm and Anna Heim.
Seen on Extra Crunch
Goodbye,
[ad_2]
Source link
