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How Sharmadean Reid Is Building a Beauty Empire
In an industry where the average funding for Black women is $42,000, she’s accrued millions
The war room I am sitting in is pink and soft and large, and it exists because of a bad manicure.
I’m in London, in the conference room of Beautystack, a beauty-booking startup founded by entrepreneur Sharmadean Reid. The office is a hyperfeminine combination of white and pink, with iridescent acrylic partitions and beauty stations next to body-eating bean bags and aisles of desks. The kitchen, with a palatial island, is also pink. In the center is an open space with huge portraits of smiling Beautystack users in front of nail stations lined neatly with bottles and neon merch on the walls. I’m in the room named after Martha Matilda Harper, who modernized the concept of what hair salons could be. The smaller meeting room is named after Madam C.J. Walker, another beauty entrepreneur, and it’s where the founder of this empire is currently holding court.
“She went from running a zine and pop-up nail salons to becoming one of the very few women — and lone Black woman in 2018 — to secure $6.1 million dollars of venture capital funding for a business she founded herself.”
Sharmadean Reid is the centrifugal force through which all power and movement operates in this office, and she handles it with poise that shows she knows it. Everyone in the company knows where she is, where she’s going, and what they ought to present her with when they see her. And, as you would expect from the CEO of a beauty company, she notices my nails as soon as we sit to talk. This is a high compliment, coming from the woman who founded one of the best nail salons in London, WAH Nails. She went from running a zine and pop-up nail salons to becoming one of the very few women — and lone Black woman in 2018 — to secure $6.1 million dollars of venture capital funding for a business she founded herself. There was $131 billion in VC funding in 2018, and less than 4% of those companies were led by Black women. According to Project Diane, the average funding raised by Black women is $42,000 — as opposed to the…
