Obi Omile Jr. and Kush Patel started theCut in 2016 for the simplest of reasons: both had suffered terrible haircuts and wanted a better way to find a good barber. The app they built lets customers discover and book barbers directly, and gives barbers scheduling, a calendar and payments. Eighteen months after its iOS launch, the busiest barber on the platform was seeing almost 500 clients a month.
Obi found Startup Runway on F6S while searching for pitch events built for underrepresented founders, and the two flew down from Washington, D.C. for the third showcase in November 2017. They were no strangers to competitions. What they had never had was a board. At Startup Runway’s mock board meeting they sat with investors from Connetic Ventures, Bull City Ventures and other advisors and put one problem on the table: how to bring digital payment processing into an industry that has run on cash for generations. ‘Our mock board walked us through the nuances of that landscape,’ Obi said afterward. Then they pitched live, took investor questions, and went home without the check, with something they said was worth more.
“Whereas most competitions are just ‘come up, give your pitch, go home,’ the mock board meeting was something else we could take from the event even though we didn’t win.”
Obi Omile Jr., to Startup Runway, November 2017
Payments became the product. By 2021 theCut was processing 1.5 million bookings a month, adding more than 100,000 users every month, and had put more than $500 million into barbers’ pockets. Forbes named Obi and Kush to its 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology. In September 2021 the company raised a $4.5 million round led by Nextgen Venture Partners with Elevate Ventures, Singh Capital and Leadout Capital, taking total funding to $5.35 million, and Leadout’s Ali Rosenthal joined the board, a real one this time.
theCut has since passed $2 billion in haircuts booked. It began with two founders who flew to Atlanta to practice being questioned.
