Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Nita Ambani will become chairperson of the media company resulting from the Reliance Industries-Disney deal, Rep. Katie Porter (D–Calif.) faces a stark political future, and a founder builds a blowout chain for textured hair. Have a restful weekend.
– Salon experience. While Piersten Gaines was attending Harvard Business School, she started thinking about blowout bars like Drybar that promised a standardized level of service at any location. As a Black woman with textured hair, she hadn’t often had that experience. “I had a lot of really terrible salon experiences throughout my life,” she remembers. “When I learned about these blowout bars where people could just walk in and trust that no matter whose chair they sat in, they were in good hands—I had never had any experience like that.”
She came up with the idea for a chain of blowout bars designed for textured hair. She pitched it to Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary during a class presentation and received good feedback. After graduating, she decided to turn the idea into reality. “It just made sense to me that if we could do the same thing for people with textured hair, it would be a really great business model,” she says. Her salon chain Pressed Roots started with popups in 2018 and now has three locations in and around Dallas with two more locations outside the city on the way.
Gaines has raised $3.1 million in funding, Fortune is the first to report. Pressed Roots’ investors include tennis star Naomi Osaka, former HP CEO Meg Whitman, and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s Schultz Family Foundation. Gaines connected with several angel investors through another backer, the firm Slauson & Co.
Gaines says that investors were impressed by her pinpointing of an underserved market and the devotion of her customers to their hair. “People weren’t going to get their hair done [during COVID]. But our demographic was. Even if they don’t have anywhere to go, this demographic needs to get their hair done,” she says. “What resonated with [investors] was that this demographic shows up and they spend a lot of money.”
Pressed Roots specializes in the silk blowout, priced at $75. The salon experience is standardized, with hairstylists completing the chain’s own training program and working as employees rather than independent contractors. “We spend a lot of money, a lot of time in salons, and the level of services just do not match the money that we’re spending,” Gaines says. “Our goal is to make quality haircare accessible.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Acting fast. Alabama lawmakers voted Thursday to protect IVF after a state Supreme Court decision treating embryos as people threw Alabama’s fertility industry into chaos. The legislation grants legal immunity for “death or damage to an embryo.” Gov. Kay Ivey is expected to sign it. Washington Post
- The reel deal. Nita Ambani will soon become the chairperson of India’s largest media group when her husband’s conglomerate Reliance Industries merges its entertainment business with Disney’s in the country. Ambani stepped down from Reliance’s board last year but will assume her new role once the deal, valued at $8.5 billion, closes in late 2024 or early 2025. CNN
- Doors close on Porter. Rep. Katie Porter (D–Calif.) is facing an uphill battle to stay in national politics as she competes with colleague Rep. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.) for the Senate seat previously occupied by the late Dianne Feinstein. If Porter fails to qualify for a run-off against Schiff, the frontrunner, she’ll be out of politics—at least temporarily; she cannot seek reelection to the House while running for the Senate. The Wall Street Journal
- Cycling forward. Women are turning to the billion-dollar "fem tech" market to track their menstrual cycle and minimize its impact on their daily routines. Such ‘biohackers’ say the practice helps them recognize when negative thoughts are actually hormonal changes and plan exercise and nutrition patterns around their period. The Wall Street Journal
- Swift in Singapore. Taylor Swift's six-night, sold-out stint in Singapore starts Saturday. Regional neighbors are now accusing Singapore of brokering an exclusivity deal with Swift in which it subsidized the Eras tour in exchange for the superstar skipping nearby cities. Governments worldwide are eager to cash in on the economic bump that coincides with Swift's tour stops. Fortune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Progyny promoted Cassandra Pratt to chief human resources officer.
ON MY RADAR
My IVF years GQ
The history that explains today’s shortage of Black midwives Time
Sportscaster Monica McNutt always shows up as herself The Cut
PARTING WORDS
"If there is a young lady out there who looks like me and says, 'I'm not sure if there's ever a role for me there,' now she knows that there is."
— Toni Townes-Whitley, one of only two Black women to currently run a Fortune 500 company, who wants diversity to become normalized instead of celebrated
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