Inspired by the origin stories of tech giants and digital-first companies in the beauty industry, Sliq co-founder, Zainab Sanusi, had her lightbulb moment in the throws of Covid-19. Discussing her own personal ups and downs with textured hair, and the community and practices that come with it, we dive into the genesis of Sliq and get some valuable lessons on the benefits of leaning on the community around you.
In the depths of covid, when Clubhouse was all the rage, I found myself in a room that was discussing big tech companies and the concept of raising money to build early stage businesses going after large addressable markets . At that point in time, I knew almost nothing about the landscape but I was fascinated by technology. Off the back of this Clubhouse room, I started reading about the Venture Capital industry - I studied Economics at university so I was already somewhat familiar. Around the same time, I was also suffering from an acute scalp reaction to a very popular textured hair care brand.
Desperate for a cure, I visited a dermatologist who was able to stop the reaction from worsening with medicated shampoos and topical ointments but nothing could have prepared me for the chronic flaking I was about to experience from my healing scalp. I tried everything: oil treatments, herbal tinctures, aloe vera, topical cortisone and oral medication. Nothing worked. As a last resort, I watched a video online and decided to order oils, ayurvedic powders, beeswax and extracts to make my own treatment - it failed horribly.
As I continued to try new things I grew more and more irritated by the lack of innovation in the space. In comparison to mainstream beauty, the natural hair space is about two decades behind in terms of product pipeline, branding, distributing, content, really I mean everything. And to compound matters so much of the information on the internet was false which I found out from a trichologist that I started seeing. She was invaluable to how I learnt the science behind hair care, because Youtube always made it seem like a kitchen chemistry class of trial and error, and ultimately a catalyst for starting the bigger conversations that led to Sliq.
Through podcasts I began learning about the founding journeys of a variety of companies from Emily Weiss of Glossier and Tiffany Masterson of Drunken Elephant, to Airbnb’s Brian Chesky and Emmett Shear of Twitch. I was completely enamoured with the concept of an individual identifying a problem in the world and deciding to build something from the ground up to fix it.
More than anything, it was the consumer space that really drew me in. I couldn’t tell if it was my obsession with things (if you know me you know my life’s mission is to shop till I literally drop), or that these industries are a reflection of the societal and cultural zeitgeist, I fell in love with the perceived humanness of the space.
One night while thinking about founders, I thought surely, I can build a company to fix this. I was somewhat dissatisfied with my job because it wasn’t my passion, rather just something that paid me after I graduated. I started writing it all down on a piece of paper and continued to get more excited by different Clubhouse rooms and listening to founders talk about what they were building. Within a week I decided to reach out to the only black woman I had ever seen raise money for a company in the beauty space - Sharmadean Reid.
I was an early adopter of BeautyStack and had been on the app throughout covid. I saw that Shar had recently posted on Instagram that she was taking a break but could be reached on her app and jokingly thought, why not just message her and see what she thinks because she’ll probably never read it. To my surprise she did and, not only did she say it seemed interesting, she invited me to come along to a call she was hosting with a group of black founders raising capital in London. The call was in less than 24 hours!? What were the odds that I messaged her when I did. (This is fate, my friends.)
Long story short, we went in turns to introduce our companies - mind you at this point I had no name and I was in a group of people who had raised millions$$. At the end of the call, a lady named Kiemu, founder of Beautonomy, now Unhidden Beauty, reached out saying she was interested in what I was doing and we should speak. This was the beginning of Kiemu and I’s relationship. We would meet monthly for about 8 months, I would talk about my progress, she would listen and help strategize my next steps. I can’t emphasise this enough, find a mentor!
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