Founder Piersten Gaines turned a white space in the market into a money-making business.
The from Boston, MA, to other cities, such as New York and Houston, TX, forking over $250 for blowouts. Meanwhile, she spent only $45 at a dry bar and avoided the inconvenience of the travel costs.
Gaines was convinced that there should be a solution out in the world to address this pain point for the textured hair community. She was determined to launch one, despite not having any prior experience in the industry, she said during a fireside chat held during an exclusive happy hour, hosted by Slauson & Co. and Black Women in Venture Capital, to kick off AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 in Houston.
Pressed Roots
It would be losing her mother to lymphoma during her second semester at HBS that reshaped her goals and inspired her to create Pressed Roots, Boston Voyager reports.
Its formation was aided by Gaines’s hairstylist from the dry bar, who did her hair monthly. Gaines suggested that the hairstylist start recording her process, which led to training videos to assist other hairstylists. In 2018, Gaines began renting out salon spaces on Sundays and Mondays, marking the launch of Pressed Roots sold-out blowout bar pop-ups. These pop-ups shops targeted college students through outreach to student sorority presidents, multicultural groups, and countless campuses across Boston.
The first pop-up shop required an upfront payment of $10, which scaled to $50 for the next one due to a long waitlist, proving the demand for Press Roots’ services was there.
“We thought a lot of college students are in a new city. A lot of them need their hair done and they don’t have solutions. I know in Boston, they didn’t have solutions,” Gaines said during the session moderated by Veronica Reaves, founder of Black Women in Venture Capital.
She later added, “Not even two days, our first pop-up sold out.”
The pop-up shops were also proof of concept that people could show up to a salon even if they didn’t know the service provider, countering feedback she had previously captured from real-time feedback. It expanded to Boston, Atlanta, and Dallas.
“I was able to show this was something that people would pay for,” Gaines said.
Pressed Roots officially opened its first storefront on May 14, 2020, but the world shut down two days later due to COVID-19. When its doors reopened in May, there was a waitlist for the next two years.
“It was a really successful business. At a time when a lot of salons were closing down, we were just growing month over month,” she expressed.
Investors
Gaines was able to attract the attention of more investors. This included Slauson & Co.’s Ajay Relan, thanks to her reaching out in a direct message sent on LinkedIn. The Los Angeles-based early-stage venture capital firm — with an accelerator writing $300,000 checks and featured on the 2025 AFROTECH™ Future 50 list — participated in Pressed Roots’ 2023 $3.1 million funding round, which included Naomi Osaka and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s Schultz Family Foundation, as AFROTECH™ previously reported.
Pressed Roots has raised $5.5 million in total funding, Reaves mentioned during the fireside chat.
“The thing that we look for most in entrepreneurs and founders is your lived experience is your competitive advantage … The way that she positioned and she talked about her frustrations and the things that she was building for and all of the learnings that she had out in the workforce, but also going to HBS to get the education that she needed, but ultimately pursuing something that she wanted to solve for herself and solve for a lot of people in this room,” Relan said to attendees.
“The thing that stood out for us immediately, which I didn’t know, was 57% of women of the population has textured hair … So as venture capitalists … we invest in large outcomes,” he continued.
“We’re very excited that she’s been very patient and applied a lot of grit and resilience towards particularly building at such a weird time in our country’s history with COVID,” he added.
Annual Revenue
Pressed Roots has four locations today, with three in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and two hairstylist training centers. The business is open seven days a week for 12 hours, besides Sunday (9 a.m to 5 p.m.), and employs up to 50 stylists per location.
The venture has scaled from $250,000 to $5 million, Gaines confirmed to AFROTECH™.
