Making a Mint

Dawn Myers ’07 could have been forgiven if she’d felt a little anxious in April as she strode onto the stage of the hit TV show Shark Tank. Her goal—in front of millions of viewers—was to convince the show’s daunting panel of venture capitalists to invest in a product she’d invented. So yes, potentially nerve-racking. But not to Myers. “I got onto that stage and it was the easiest pitch I’ve ever done,” she recalled. “I got to go out there and have fun.” In the end, the “sharks” Emma Grede and Mark Cuban pledged to invest $150,000 in Myers’s innovative hair-care product, called The Mint by Richualist, which helps people style their natural curls. “I just think you’re so spectacular,” Grede told Myers on the show. “I know that I would go home and use this product.”

The successful appearance was fitting, given that Shark Tank is what inspired Myers to design her hair tool in the first place. That was back in 2017, when she was working in business development after earning her JD from Howard University. Myers designed her product to solve a common problem for Black women like herself—the difficulty of detangling their natural hair. The traditional method of styling textured hair with a comb and hair products takes hours. The Mint by Richualist can do the job in just a few minutes.

Myers spent seven years working to get the product to market. Even a diagnosis of stage 3 colorectal cancer in 2022 barely slowed her down. Several major companies had invested in her product, and she knew
if she failed, she would not be able to raise the money again. “And the next Black woman who comes behind me, who has this amazing concept, she’s not going to be able to get funded either,” she said. “So I thought, I have to get to market.” She ultimately raised more than $1 million in venture capital funding even before appearing on Shark Tank.

The Mint by Richualist can be purchased online, and with the help of Cuban and Grede, Myers is working on getting it into retail locations. “So many of us walk into stores and know the entire section of hair products and appliances will not apply to us,” she said. “This whole thing is about serving that consumer who I believe has been historically disrespected and overlooked in the marketplace.”