Live Episode! Walker & Company: Tristan Walker

I remember the very first pitch deck, which was a powerpoint I've graduated to key now. But like we had a powerpoint of like clip art because I didn't have The thing's, I remember being so embarrassed, so I had like this 15 slide pitch deck. That just sold a hope and the dream. And we pitched Fifty, sixty VCs.

And folks are turning this down. And it wasn't until they started to push back that I realized, hmm. They just don't get it. I'm NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They don't.

Guy Raz and on the show today How a lifetime of shaving with products that irritated his skin. Inspire Tristan Walker to build a better shaving and beauty brand for men and women of color. Walker and Company. So one of the guiding principles of creativity

Is that some of the very best ideas? come out of sheer frustration. Products like Honest Tea or Cliff Bar or Albirds or Dyson. These all came about because their founders couldn't find the beverages or energy bars or shoes or vacuum cleaners that they wanted. So they invented them. But in the case of Tristan Walker, I think it's safe to say that he didn't just start from a place of mild frustration. He actually started from a place of being fed up. Even angry.

Because for most of his life. He had felt completely ignored, totally overlooked, whenever he walked into the shaving aisle of a drugstore. Virtually all the big shaving brands were making products that worked well on men with relatively straight hair. But Tristan couldn't find a high quality razor that worked on his curly facial hair. Without leaving razor bumps all over his neck and jawline. And he knew that like him?

Many African American were dealing with the exact same problem. So he decided to design Bevel, a shaving system with a simple single blade razor that was easy on his face. And he wanted everything about the product to look and feel great, not like the dusty boxes of shaving products for African American men that always seem to be on the bottom shelves of the drugstore. And his ambition. to build a black-owned and led consumer brand.

As big as Johnson and Johnson or Procter and Gamble. But of course, when he first tried to raise money from all those VC firms on Sand Hill Road and Silicon Valley, He got a lot of nose. But eventually, he was able to launch his company with a razor, some shaving cream, a bit of oil, and a brush. And over the past five years, his brand has grown to include more than 30 specialized hair and beauty products for men and women.

which are now sold in lots of big retailers across the country. A few weeks ago, Tristan sat down to tell me how he did it. in front of a live audience at the Lincoln Theater. In Washington D C Thank you. This is like Tristan Walker Central. I'll take it.

So um so let's start let's start at the beginning. Tell me about About your childhood. You you grew up in Queens. is yeah, I had a bit of the rose that grew from concrete story. Yeah, I grew up in Queens, New York, projects, welfare, bouts of homelessness, that sort of stuff, right? And I realized very early.

I had one goal in life. And how's it get as wealthy as possible as quickly as possible. Um I realized Three ways to do it. The first was to be an actor and an athlete.

That didn't work. The second was to work on Wall Street. That didn't work. Uh and the last is entrepreneurship and and thank goodness I came to that realization. Um When you were a little boy, um your dad

Died. Um and you grew up With an older brother and your mom. What did your mom do for work? So my mom worked uh three jobs. Mainly the New York City Housing Authority, uh administrative assistant. Um she spent some time working for Time Warner Cable.

Um and she did some retail all at the same time within seven days. I don't know how she did it. She did it, thank goodness for her. It was not easy. But she persevered. as a result of I think her perseverance. Yeah, I had the good fortune to be first graduate. college and my family. Um and she she really caught that through.

Um What what do you remember about like your neighborhood growing up as a kid? Was it I mean I don't know, what did you do? Did you

I didn't do much because I couldn't do much. Like my father was killed when I was three years old. I don't remember too much about him other than the fact that he was killed when I was three years old. Um, which is a little bit telling to kind of the type of environment that I did grow up in. Um so you know, I lived probably the first six, seven years of my life uh in Jamaica, Queens, New York, 40 projects. Um and by the time I turned around seven years old, we moved to Flushing Queens to another project uh kind of development, and it was much of the same, right? Uh and my mother It's like you're gonna be the one, you're not gonna go through this stuff. Um so it's very disciplined. Stay home, get your studies done, you're not going outside. When I snuck outside she caught me, I got in a lot of trouble.

But um you know that was really kind of my life, right? Um get to school. Get home. Do your work. repeat. And you know, that discipline actually kinda got me to where I am now. Um was school easy for you as a kid?

Uh Yeah. You were a good student. I was a good student. Um because of the discipline that was inspired in me, I always excelled, right? I tended to be, you know, well, at least up until high school anyway, uh at or near the top of my class.

Um you know and I kinda slow down when I say that stuff because by the time I got to high school I realized I didn't even know what a verb was, right? I went through this entire uh kind of time all the way up until my high school years doing really, really well at the top of my class, not even knowing what a verb, noun, that sort of thing was. As a teenager you ended up going to this really elite private boarding school, Hotchkiss in Connecticut. Shout out to you. Uh So the way I like to describe Hoshkiss is it was the first time I got to see how the other half lived.

I went to school literally with Rockefellers, um Fords. Right. Um And I learned a couple things. First. Name mattered.

Mm. Two Uh being wealthy wasn't the same as being rich. And the last and probably the most important was I can compete with each and every one of them. While

While while I didn't know What a verb was, I learned. Yeah. Um and you know, by the end of my four years there, you know, on a roll, like that sort of thing, um, you know, it was an absolutely just um wonderful experience for me, but transformative and a little bit different from how I grew up.

Was it I mean, was the transition for you when you got there?'Cause you were what, like Fourteen years old? Yes, I've been living away from home since I was thirteen, fourteen years old. And were the first few months that hard for you? Um academically, yes. We get to the school and I realize I don't even have a computer. Um and you know, all of my other classmates had computers, that sort of thing, and yeah, I went to I believe it was the English professor who was my advisor at the time.

And I remember you took me to like this basement where all the used textbooks are, and then there's this old compact Like Presario computer. um that we had to like haul out and take it to my room. Um so academically it was very tough because I wasn't equipped uh with the tools to compete. But over the years that kind of accelerated in one way. So you finish Hoskiss, you go to Stony Brook University in New York to study economics.

Most college students don't necessarily know what they're gonna do. But did you have a sense of what you want to pursue there and what you what you thought you would do after? Yeah, I mean I was always thinking about the after. I wanted to get wealthy. Um Yeah, I was I was pretty singular. In that hope. Um

Very singular in that hope. And you know, over time that's kinda morphed and changed and the things that are important have morphed and changed. But I knew like I was very, very, very focused on how to get there. Um and Wall Street was the next greatest option. All the Silicon Valley stuff I had no idea about. My world was New England. So you were thinking I'll do this degree and I'll go into finance. In between my first and second year of university I got an internship at Lehman Brothers in their back office. Half through, uh, I said, you know, I want to try some of this front office stuff.

So I left that um and joined uh Trading Desk at the time just Observing. So when you graduate, you you went actually went to work for Lehman and then as a trader, right? And then and eventually to JP Morgan. In in that time at that time period, um Did you still think this is what I should be doing? Like this is my sort of path to it was the worst two years of my life. Um

This was two thousand and five when I join the company. And as a trader, your job Is to make money. With other people's money. to at the end of the year make money for yourself. Like I there was just no fulfillment in it. Yeah. Now

I should also say I wasn't really Good at it. But Um even if I were. Um

I realize that there's an emptiness in it that I just couldn't Live with. Um and also uh the culture wasn't one that I wanted to be a part of. Um and the last thing I'd say in all this, and I I observe this and not only a lot of friends that I had, but also a lot of folks who've been around for twenty, thirty years in the industry. is you know, Wall Street had a good way of locking you in.

They pay you more money. They pay you more money. And they pay you more money and at some point your opportunity cost gets so high that you don't want to leave that you're unwilling to leave. Unfortunately, um And kind of unfortunately at the time. I got laid off at a time that made me not have to think about that. You were laid off by JP Morgan at the time. This is the middle of a financial crisis.

So actually it was right before. So here's the blessing. And this is a true testament to faith. I got laid off. In January of two thousand eight. I was applying to Stanford for business school. I applied there, um in the fall of that year.

And fast forward I start at Stanford September of two thousand and eight. Crash happens a month later. Wow. Yeah. So you um you get to Stanford and from what I've read, like you didn't really have a sense of what Silicon Valley was and what the tech world was or any of that at all. So y so w what did you like what was your impression when you got there? So at Stanford I got there it was two thousand and eight. I was twenty four years old, um and very quickly. I knew it was where I needed to be. Um primarily because I saw the other 24 year olds not only making millions of dollars, but fundamentally changing the world. I'm like, hmm, how come I had no idea about this place?

Seriously. I thought Silicon Valley was a place where semiconductors got made. That's it. Right, right. That's it. This was before um kind of you know Facebook became what it did. Twitter, Airbnb, Uber, all that stuff, right? Uh Foursquare. And I said, Wow, I can participate in this and I started to have that kind of Hotchkiss moment again. Right. This is something new.

But I can do it. While you or a student at Stanford um you start to reach out to Foursquare, like the this I mean, what what what's the story? Like what was Foursquare at the time? Um Foursquare Um location based app.

I had 10,000 users at the time. It was getting me to explore my city. It was getting me to do things that I didn't want to do. It was getting me to go to the gym more, right? And I was like, how is this thing actually inspiring me and changing my behavior? Um And I said, wow, like I I want to figure this out. Found uh the founders emails on the internet. This is the classic story. I s email Dennis Crowley, the CEO founder. eight times and the eighth time. Email me back.

And I'll never forget this, he said verbatim. He said, after all these ideas I shared with him, you know what Comma. I just may take you up on some of this. Period. Are you ever in New York?

Question mark. Dense. Mm. Um my wife and I were watching Lost. We were binging on Lost at the time. I remember this very vividly in the living room.

Um and I looked at her and I was like, What should I do? And five minutes later I said actually yes. I was planning on being in New York tomorrow, so I booked my flight that night. Flew out the following morning. You show up at the office and you're like I'm here. So that's literally what happened. I uh it was thirty six Cooper Square. We're on the fifth floor.

I open the door. Dennis was facing the back. He turned around. Uh and he looked at me surprised as if like I wasn't actually going to come. And there's this awkward moment, like what does he do now? And it so happened that there were like two empty desks that he's like, Yeah, go over there, go over there.

Um and throughout the day, I mean he had a meeting, he had a couple of meetings. And then when he's done with it he came over. He's like, All right, so what do you want to do? Um I was like I don't know.

Um and you know I send him some ideas over email around kind of signing up retailers, merchants, that sort of thing. Anyone who's familiar with uh Foursquare, it's very small business focus. We wanted to get merchants on the platform to start engaging with um their customers. You said all right. I'll tell you what. Sign up thirty merchants. Uh by the end of the week.

And you get a job. And he's like, What do you want your title to be? And I was like uh business development'cause it has the word business in it and I go to business school, so it makes a lot of sense. And how many people, by the way, how many people worked at Four Court? There are two and a half. There was Dennis Naveen, uh they were co founders, and then Harry, who was leading engineering, but he wasn't quite full time yet, but I guess theoretically he's So he s he gives you a challenge, sign thirty businesses up by the end of the week and we'll see what we can do.

And What happened? Signed up. Three hundred, four hundred, something like that? Wow.

So you end up Four four square after you After you graduated from Nope. Um is actually it was in between my first and second year of business school.

So I worked full time at Foursquare during my second year of medical school. And Foursquare gave me a gift. You know, I because I was so early there, I felt As it was as much as my company as everybody.

You know, we had folks like Facebook trying to come after us and it that felt that was energy. I loved it and I felt like my work wasn't done. Um so you know, Dennis was kind enough to let me work on the West Coast. to allow me to get a platform for people to know who I was. Um, after I graduated, he didn't ask me to come to New York. He was like, Yeah, you can stay out west. the company was growing. Yeah. There's there's a lot that I had to learn too.

Right. Um and through that process in Not only kind of um kind of growing the business What does it look like to go from two employees to hundred and fifty, uh, to raise tens of millions of dollars to build something uniquely authentic. It was an education that I wouldn't have gotten alone. So you were there like I think three and a half, almost four years. Three years. Three years. So you decide

That's run its course and I'm gonna do the next thing. And it turns out that you either met or you knew Ben Horowitz, the one of the partners of Ben Drees and Horowitz, and he convinced you to become an entrepreneur in residence there. How did that happen? How did you meet? Yeah, so when um so Ben RT was on the board uh of Four Square, so they were f one of Four Square's largest investors. Um I had known Ben not very intimately, it was just um kind of as board member um and he knew of the work that I did. Um so when I told Dennis that I was leaving the company, Dennis reached out to the board, told them that I was leaving, and then Ben reached out to me a day or two later. He said, Tristan, I get it. Right, I understand.

Um You should not be an entrepreneur in residence. I need to give me these reasons why. And he said, but if you're gonna be an entrepreneur in residents, you should do it with us. Um and what were you going to do as entrepreneur in residents? Basically come up with ideas and and pitch ideas to them and in theory they would fund those ideas. As I think about the job, it's one of the craziest jobs in the world. You get paid to think of ideas all day.

Um he said come spend six to nine months with us to figure this out and I was like, I'm gonna spend all nine months to figure this out. Um being an entrepreneur in residence it's interesting because I've never met one who's enjoyed it. Mm. That's myself included. Um But it's spending a lot of time to think about things in an inauthentic way.

Right. Um You know, the lesson that I learned and Ben taught me a lot. He's like Tristan. Um you gotta understand

That you need to do the thing that you fundamentally believe that you are the best person in the world. Um Well, you have a unique proposition um given your story to solve that problem. So again, if you're doing it something that's like inauthentic, this is hard enough, right? You can't do that. And it took me seven months to realize that I needed to do the thing that I felt that I was uniquely positioned to do. And that was walking. You were basically trying to come up with an idea that you thought they would back. Well I w I was trying to come up with a good idea.

Yeah. Um and the lesson that I've learned and Ben I have to thank him for this, he said Tristan usually what looks like good ideas are bad ideas. Usually what looks like bad ideas are good ideas. The problem with good ideas is that everybody tries to do them. Right, and as a result of it, there's so many people working on the same things, there's no value to be created. Yeah. Like Airbnb was a bad idea. Right. Right? Like folks actually like renting out Yeah, rooms to strangers. It's a terrible idea.

But they've created tens of billions of dollars in value to do it, right? It's those ideas that actually create the value. And and were you thinking at that time Tech, tech, tech, tech, because you were in Silicon Valley. As opposed to doing the thing that I was uniquely positioned to do. I mean You come up with a bunch of different ideas. I think one was like a hair extension mail order idea. You guys should take it. Direct to consumer hair extensions. Right?

So I I so At some point you you come up with With this idea. For Sorry, it's a good idea.

Or a bad idea, but yeah. So at some point you come up with this idea for A razor to just d describe first of all, before you tell me how you pitched it. Wh how did the idea come to you? Mm-hmm. This is the first idea that came to me, actually.

And is the culmination of fifteen years of experience. I when I went to boarding school for high school He was in Lakeville, Connecticut. Right. There's no retailer nearby if you went. Um you know, if I had to shave, you know, you get the peach fuzz on your face, right? It's like oh it's the rite of passage time.

Um, and I'll never forget, I went to I believe there's like a C V S type store um uh in the area. And you pick up your multi blade razor with the shave gel,'cause yeah, I didn't have a father at home to teach me how to shave, my brother didn't shave, that sort of thing. Um took it home. To the dorm, shaved, woke up the following morning, my face completely broken out in razor ups. I was like, what is this? I'm never shaving ever. That was the last time I had shaved until I started double.

Um Uh what did I use? Um I used for fifteen years. This thing for folks who are not familiar with it called the depilatory cream.

Which is like a chemical. Uh it's gross. So folks who aren't familiar with it, um Yeah, a lot of women are familiar with it'cause it's Nair. Yeah. Um Yeah, see?

Um A lot of black men are too, because that's all we're able to use, right? So depilatory creams is cream, it's thick. Um you put it on your face, it sits for six to eight minutes and you just wipe it off and dissolves. It dissolves. Which is crazy. Right? You know, the funny one of the most interesting things is if you actually read the back of the pack

Um the caution statement says Do not use this two days in a row. Right. It's something that smells. Burns your face, it discolors your skin, but there is no other option.

Uh and in January of twenty thirteen I remember being fed up. My wife is fed up. I said I've had to do this for fifteen years. I wanna shave, because this is terrible. Um so I wanted to learn how to do it.

Look, I'm not thinking about a business idea at all. I just wanted to solve it. And you didn't want to get razor bonds. I did not want to get razor bonds. And the entire market for razors in the United States had been Two, three, four. Blades, right? Five. That's right, but not everybody needs that. You know, I realized that our kind of trying to get the closest shape possible caused the issue. Um, and I said, All right, if I can do this. um and combine it with kind of products to help ameliorate this issue.

For people who look like me. I know that eighty percent of people who look like me, men or women have this issue. I know thirty percent of people who don't look like me have this issue. It's the worst. And um I remember walking in Correct. I did this a couple times in different cities just to test it. I go to the salesperson.

And I'd say, you know, I've had to deal with this issue related to raising ones my entire life. What should I use? Now. Um these salespeople are totally incentivized to take me to the on brand like multi-blade razor with a nice handle, right? That costs$150 and all that stuff. In none of the stores did they do that. They've always taken me to use what they recommend, which are these off brand

Single blade, double edged safety razors that your grandfather, grandfather's grandfather used to use. Right? I was like, okay, let me try it. Took it home, used it, no razor bombs on my face. And that got me to try to understand why that was actually the case, right?

Um and yeah, I'm not gonna belabor the point too much, but it turns out that a single blade cuts the hair level with the skin, not beneath. If I have curly hair and I have blades cutting the hair beneath my skin, it grows into your skin gross. Um and it's one clean cut, so there's no pulling or tugging or anything like that. So this solution has existed for the past hundred years. Right. Just no one had the incentive to sell it. because there's no more patent protection on it.

And that's when I knew I had something. And this was around the time when a lot of the e-commerce companies started to pop up. Listening to their pitches. I understood the types of companies that got funded and the types that didn't. Um and it was just great timing to start something like this. And to go back to the kind of Ben Harts thing. Who else in the world was uniquely positioned to share that story to venture capitalists to raise the money to do this, to build a health and beauty products company for the majority of the world. I couldn't think of anybody else who's able to do that.

So when you talked about this idea to friends of yours who had similar issues, w w were they like, this is exactly what I've been waiting for. I need this. I didn't have to talk to them. I had to give them a safety razor. They shave and they didn't get razor bones the following day. This was like a a first moment of truth thing. That when folks woke up The following day And didn't have to have this issue. That's transformative.

My first internship on Wall Street. Yeah, you're told you gotta shave every day. I remember being mortified. I was on the trading floor. They open the doors, and as a gentleman. I can't curse. Take that.

Cleep off your face. Mm. Yeah. And I was like okay. I can't because I don't know what to use.

That story scales. So when you when you have this idea, you go to Ben and and what? You say, Hey This is the idea. It's it's to create

a a health and beauty products company for people who look like me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. W what was his response? Well in fact, um Ben really wanted me to do the hair extensions idea. And at that point, At that point I knew he was in because he had he he understood an insight. That Folks were unwilling to Down the rest of Sand Hill Road.

So by the time I came to him with the shaving idea, then he was really into it because he was like, That's you. Right, like you've got it. And you have a uniqueness here that can help you accelerate. Let us help you in that vision. Alright, so you've got sort of sign off from Ben and you've got to start to look for money to pursue this idea. And and just just to get a sense of where you were, w was the initial idea to just start with A razor or was it to start with A whole kind of ecosystem of products.

My ninth month was April, so I knew I had. Your ninth month as entrepreneurial residents. Um and that's when I was thinking about starting to go out and raise money. So my thought was all right, I had this razor, I also had kind of set of other products, there was kind of the blades, uh Priming oil, shave cream, and did you did you create a prototype at that point, or it's a great question. Two things here.

There's the razor and the design for the razor. Then there's the products that go into the bottle. And then there's like the design for the bottle, each of which had to kinda coalesce before I actually started ditching. You needed some seed money for that. Correct. So you know it's a car before the horse kind of thing, right? In order to kinda start what we did, you need like two million dollars to do it, right? But I knew that there are things that I can do to get that two million dollars to do it. The first was on the razor design. I actually um found some folks who are ex IDO, wonderful, brilliant, brilliant folks. My pitch to them and their pitch to me was as follows Tristan?

Um for this razor we can do it. We will design six Types of razors that you can select from. If you decide to choose one, um, you just need to pay us ten thousand dollars to do it. But if you don't, then we just get to keep these designs. So it's like okay.

Let me have these. designs so I could put it in my pitch deck, right? And if I raise the money you'll get you ten thousand dollars. Um then for the kind of oils and creams that go into the bottle. There was um uh a website that actually had a list of all the private label manufacturers in the country. I click on the link.

I point my finger out to the screen. And I find Cosmetic Specialty Labs in Lawton, Oklahoma. Mm-hmm. I call'em up. And I say, I'm thinking about starting this concept. I think it's gonna be great. I could potentially have the backing of all these kind of uh VCs. This is a company that made like lotions and shaving creams and things like that. Okay. They did it for small companies and some big as well. Right. Um and she said great.

Like I can get you these samples for free. Like let me make you some samples for free. I didn't have to pay for any samples. Now that never happens, right? Like never happens. Um so by the time the end of April comes, I have Designs for Razor? Like a hard good? I have formulations for the soft goods that I need.

And then one of my best buddies, he's one of the best package design nerds on the planet. Um he helped me with some initial designs for what Bevel could be. Um correct. Kind of. The pitch deck actually I remember the very first pitch deck, which was a PowerPoint of graduated to keynote. But like we had a PowerPoint of like clip art because I didn't have the things here. I remember being so embarrassed. So I had like this um you know fifteen slide pitch deck. That just sold the hope and the dream.

P I mean you at this point, this is like twenty thirteen, I guess. W was this a thing, the first thing since I don't know, you graduated college that really Got you excited that you thought this thing could have legs. It was the first time. I realized That I saw something that people like other people didn't. They didn't see. Um I had some of that for like four square, but

It was a First time that something came to me that I actually had a comparative advantage. Based on my just Being Right, um like fifteen years of experience of trying those terrible products, right?

And I knew that I can compete here with kind of some of the best venture capital firms on the planet. What was your sort of value proposition? Because there were products on the market for razor bumps and you could get shaving cream that was designed to ameliorate that. Issue Um but what was the problem with those products in your view? Here's my pitch.

I would walk people Through this story. I always have to go to a retail store. At their retail store, you have aisle 15. Aisle fifteen if you look up.

It says Ethnic Beauty Isle. The ethnic beauty aisle's always next to aisle fourteen, which is Beauty out. Which never made any sense to me. I have to walk down that aisle in the ethnic beauty aisle, which is never really an aisle'cause it's a shelf.

Um And then there are products and packages that are dirty. Um with kind of old Folks in it from the seventies with like Jerry curls on it. Um

And the and and this packaging has not changed. We la So so here's what's what's really, really interesting. This is exactly what I tell people. I walk them through this whole story and the VCs laugh. And the first slide that I show them are photos of the packaging. They all shut up. Right? Because it hasn't changed. I don't Photoshop those things now.

What's the pitch? Folks of color spend more money in every single health and beauty category than anyone else. Um, folks of color or especially when you consider black folks, yeah one of them, uh the most culturally influential demographic group on the planet. When we think about folks of color, not only will be the majority of this country in twenty, thirty years, we are the majority of the world. Right. Um

If you're a V C Right? Why wouldn't you invest in that? And it wasn't until they started to push back that I realized, hmm. They just don't get it. That

We're after thoughts, right? And that's just a testament to complacency. And I can compete when there's complacency. Just to understand, I mean, essentially what you were saying was look There is a an opportunity here. to

create really great, beautiful products. for a market that just is totally underserved. Like was that what you wanted to do I had the graph it was up and to the right. I had the kind of beautiful inspiration and all that stuff. Like I look V C say they want Founders that they've worked with in the past.

That have pedigree and experience with a blue ocean opportunity is like check, check, check, check, check. And folks were turning this down. But I mean this is what I'm curious about. You're going there, you're showing them the numbers. You're saying This is a you know, there's a trillion dollars or whatever uh however much money there is when it comes to consumers of color in the United States. Um This is a market where

Um African American men particularly um are spomen are spending more money than any other group in the country. Um and VCs were saying what? To you. Um

Razor bumps not a problem. Go figure. Literally one B C was like Oh yeah, is this like that that Chris Rock movie with good hair? You would sit with VCs. And presumably most of them were men, most of them were white men. That's right. And people were saying this is not uh something I've ever heard of as a problem. Yeah, they just didn't want it to be a problem. I mean it and it wasn't only kind of the white men, it was like folks of color too.

And we pitched Uh. Fifty, sixty V Cs? Um It you know, like s Silicon Valley, particularly venture capitalists who are investors who've never operated before almost have this really interesting um

kind of world view that you know they're always right. But you also have to realize It's their job to be wrong ninety percent of the time. And I had to realize that very, very quickly. Maybe It was the case.

that they just haven't caught up to the concept yet, but they will You know, we spoke to sixty of'em. There were another sixty behind that. Like we're gonna figure it out. Did you would you get irritated during pitch meetings or Oh, all the time. I mean like those Chris Rock comments used to piss me off. But I knew like every time they were saying no, I knew that bad idea was good as hell. Like I just why why would you what was it? It was just intuition? No, I just knew if they were turning them down, they're not gonna fund anybody else that was trying to do this.

Like if if anybody else Like If anybody else was qualified to do this It was me. We didn't have any competition and still don't.

You know, it gets to some point where Even if folks wanted to go and pitch this idea. They'd say, Well let's see if Tristan's works first. By then it's too late. I I'm curious, like for people who have straight hair, right, most of them, most men who have straight hair don't think about shaving. They shave and then they go to work and whatever. Were you sort of tr trying to explain to to investors like

This is a really big issue. This is like something that black men, men of color don't talk about but is Sort of painful. I mean I I think that it's even bigger. It's it's me my trying to explain to people that people are different. You know? And that wasn't even registering.

You know, if if you can't even level set there. Yeah, you're gonna have uh Pretty steep uphill battle. When we come back in just a moment, how Tristan Walker finally launched his shaving subscription box and eventually got his products into retail stores, and how that led to maybe the most transcendent moment. Ever experienced by anyone?

in a target. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. From NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This, I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2013, and after eight months of trying to raise money, Tristan finally gets a handful of investors to invest in his idea for Bevel. A new subscription razor company, primarily for African American men.

He's got about two and a half million dollars, a preliminary design for a razor, and some ideas for the shaving products to go with it. So you have the seed money. Where do you go next? Where do you get them manufactured? Who do you call? So I had to pay'em ten thousand dollars. The the design firm ten thousand dollars, okay. Now I own the razor. Um and then as as far as the soft goods manufacturer, we started manufacturing or actually. Yeah, we went through for each of the products four or five different kinds of prototypes until we got to something that we were excited about. Tristan, how did you know about I mean You know, how did you know what ingredients to use, shea butter or cocoa butter, I don't know. Like how did you So um a couple of things. Number one, you relied on experts, right? So that's actual scientists. That's right. Um and then my own experience.

Like I'm a black man who needs to deal with these issues who knows that there are certain ingredients to help ameliorate these issues for us. Um so include those things. The shea butters, the tea tree oils, the salicylic acid, the witch ate, like all that stuff. Things right to soften skin. And the the wonderful thing about like What we have built is that we've just developed things that solve problems. And it's not rocket science. We just package it together in a way that's delightful and works. We haven't kind of traveled around the world to find that ingredient that's like in the earth, right? That we like put into the bottle. No, these things exist. We've packaged it in a way that is proprietary to the needs of the audience that we serve, and we've continued to do that for the past six years. And so for people who are familiar with the blade, um just describe what what it what it looks like.

A double edged safety razor. is you know think about this kind of single blade um that has kind of two different sides. It's very, very sharp, right? Um so you take this single blade, house it with within a safe head. That's why they call it a safety razor. So there's two different plates, one up top, one at the bottom. Right. You squeeze it together, it blades in the middle, and you attach a handle to it. And now you can shave.

And you shave straight down. Thirty-degree angle. That's right. So that actually started the mass market shaving industry back in nineteen oh four, nineteen oh five. There's guys King Gillette. That's right. That's right. That's what razors were. That's what razors still are today if you find them and use them, um, but efficacious enough. Um so attaching a handle. Two ahead. Um in shaving with it.

Yeah, we know it now. Today is just razors. Um it's just the amount of blades that you bring along with it. interested in like the whole unboxing experience, right? Like when you get an iPhone, it's so beautiful. It's simple. You just pop off the top, you open it up, no instruction book. It's seamless, it's clean. What was that sort of your idea of what you wanted that waste?

Look, I mean I I felt if we were gonna Deliver an experience to folks who have not. Well. Uh we have to wow them with that experience. We went through

Like. Ten, twelve different prototypes. Of the amount of suction. that like comes up when people lift the top box from the bottom. It matters.

Um When folks kinda lift it up and it takes that kinda two and a half seconds to lift up and they see this beautiful razor underneath. That's something that they deserve. Mm. Ten to twelve prototypes.

Had to happen. What do you remember when you when you got the first ship and you saw this idea in your head in boxes. The first shipment actually froze on a truck because we uh uh we were uh doing the manufacturing in December. Um and you know, you fulfillment in Oklahoma, right, like that sort of thing. Um and a few of the trucks actually had things freeze on it. Um so before we kinda shipped we had to do like another batch run in order to deliver it to customers. Um yeah, that was the thing that actually got me to get the funding that I needed. Scription, subscription, subscription. And was like Harry's and Dollar Shave Club were they out in the world at that point? Harry's launched a little bit before we did. And so there was this sort of sense.

You are saying there was a sense among VCs or there was excitement around a subscription model or e-commerce. Like this was like Warby Parker days, the Nobos, right, like that sort of thing. So fortunately we had good timing because that kind of fell out of favor very quickly. But we started with subscription, and the subscription model worked for us. Um because you know we wanted to build that habit. Right. You gotta keep shaving and we had this promise we had this clinically proven solution that would work if you use our product for the first four weeks. Um so it naturally lended itself to subscription.

Boxes made and it was the razor it was gonna be a system, right? Razor, shaving cream, oil, a brush. But you had two million dollars. How do you get the word out? You've no marketing budget. Um so funny enough Yeah, when you build something that works, people talk about it. Um that first moment of truth.

When you Don't wake up with razor bumps on your face, you're gonna talk about it. Um Even today, well over half of our customers come organically. A friend is like you've gotta try this razor.

But before he didn't ask him to do it. But before he talked about the fade and the blade. How did you get I mean, okay, day one, you gotta sell the products, you got a website. How do you get people to So I've um I've been fortunate, particularly for my four square days, um, because we did so well and had a whole bunch of publicity, that sort of thing, I was building relationships with journalists from way back when. So you had a net a little bit of a network. Yeah. And like the the thing um you know, Walker Company's had a ton of press that we're very, very thankful for. Um, but I was speaking to a gentleman who's written a number of articles about us around like why is it that we've gotten so much press and he said, You know what, Tristan

Um you don't kind of treat journalists transactionally. You know, like you build relationships with them. So by the time you're actually working on things, they want to talk about it. Um so we launched uh with a whole bunch of folks that were willing to talk about it. It was a time when we were talking about um diversity and technology, right? So not only did I have this new company that had raised money, I had my not for profit that um was thriving at the time. And your non f not for profit we should mention, it was a

Code twenty forty was nonprofit to help train black and uh uh Latinx uh. Coders. to get internships in Silicon Valley, um get them full time offers, mentorship, and that sort of thing. And that's continued to thrive. So you had some attention from that. We had a ton of attention from that. So it told a cohesive story. um that folks are willing to continue to talk about. Um and that's the little push that we need and the rest just came from people using the product. And and were sales brisk right away or was it sort of a slow c a slow climb? So Brian, I mean we um between the first and second year, third year I think our our kind of growth rate is Two, three hundred percent first year.

Two hundred percent the second. And then we started to get into this world where we couldn't raise money, so it started to slow down. But but in but before that point, I mean you started to attract more. More money, right? Eventually you raised, I think, almost thirty million dollars. And the story goes, and I tell a lot of entrepreneurs this. I wish I didn't raise a cent of it. Mm.

Every single problem that I've had at the company was a result of our having raised money. Growth. They expected The thing about um raising money that a lot of people forget is you gotta return it. And they want it fast. Yeah.

I would go and kind of pitch. I wanted to build a company that was around 150 years from now. I mean that. VCs have a ten year horizon. That leads to some interesting board conversations. Right? Yeah. And

We weren't ready for the growth. Um and raising more and more money. Particularly in a world where your competitors are raising hundreds of millions of dollars. Like thirty nine million dollars is a lot of money, but not when your competitors are raising hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Um

VCs weren't going to fund it if they didn't see kind of more opportunity in more things, right? Oh, you're just a subscription company, subscription's not hot, right? Um, I need to see more innovation, more distribution, that sort of thing. So we accelerated kind of, you know. You started with the shave. System. Then we launch this electric trimmer. Uh and then we launched this hair care brand.

delivering solutions to this audience. Now. My biggest mistake is launching each of those things too quickly. And that got us in this, you know, now you're managing two brands, right? Thirty six different products, crazy supply chain, you gotta market it, et cetera. And how many people were working at Walker and Company was

twelve. And what was your life like? Was it just like nonstop grind grind grind? It was hard. Uh, I mean we I was wearing multiple hats, right? I'm the CEO of a company. Chairman of the board of that company. Um new father, a two year old at the time. Um

Challenging. It's a lot of work. Um You being a CEO is the worst job in the world. But the most rewarding one and I can't think about anything else I'd ever do. Aaron Powell One of the things that you that I noticed you did, which r really reminds me a lot of like Away the suitcase, the travel comp suitcase company and and Glacier the makeup company is It wasn't just the products that you were selling. You had websites, you had um find a barber, you you had barbers do videos, you had v videos

of men using the razors in testimony of how these really beautiful videos um and kind of men talking about how you know This is the thing that I have been waiting for. I mean was the idea also to kinda build A self care sort of

Lifestyle brand? Six months before we started and started shipping, we actually launched what was called at the time Bevel Code. Develco is this kind of online digital magazine talking about styling grooming for men of color. Think about this for a second. Yeah, I'm I'm thirty five years old right now. I still to this day.

Do not know where to go. With the exception of evil code. As a black man To know what moisturizer to use for my face. GQ, Esquire, all that stuff. It does not exist. Um and we're serving kind of this consumer by telling these stories not only what moisturizer to use for your space.

Um but what it's like to feel like when you wake up with razor bumps on your face and you got an interview that morning, right? Like these are stories that need to be told, need to be scaled, and people should hear it. Because it's real. You um I think by twenty fifteen to deal with target where at this point y you It was you could get the razors, you get the products at target. So it wasn't just mail order, it wasn't just direct to consumer.

Um Why? I mean was it was that a sort of a shift in the model or Yeah, it was a huge shift. Um so we started distribution in February twenty sixteen. The way we um got there Um yeah, I'm pretty involved in uh with all of our customers. I read all of our consumer success tickets. You can rate us from one to ten how likely you are to recommend the product to friends. Um and then you could write your review of like the brand in it. So I remember reading it one day.

Uh there's one guy you can see the email of the person. I'm not gonna put his name, but first name dot last name at target dot com Wrote this glowing review. He was a subscriber of ours for a long period of time. Two customers beneath that, first name dot last name at target.com. glowing review. He was a customer for even longer. So it's like hmm What do I do here? So I go to LinkedIn, I realize like, all right, the first gentleman, he actually was running personal care for Target at the time. He was a Stanford GSB graduate and a black man. Uh, so it's like I'm gonna hit you up.

Well and then So this was just like tot like just like serendipity. Serendipity. And then the the gentleman that was two beneath him. Um He ran the shave category at Target. This is the true story. So I emailed them and Gosh, about a month later we met, three months later we were in the store.

Wow. Amazing. Mm-hmm. But that was only because you were paying attention to the concept. If if I was not reading those things, we would not be in Target right now. And how important did Target become for your sales? Retail now is the majority of our business. It's a billboard for our brand. I think more important. was a statement for the movement that we were trying to create. So let me kinda give you a quick story, and this is probably the proudest moment.

Of my entire career so far. My son was two. We started distribution in target February twenty sixteen. So it's like all right I'm gonna take my son. This is gonna be like one of those momentous occasions, right? Like uh father takes uh and sees the product. Um He's in the cart.

We turn into the shave aisle. I get down about a quarter of the aisle and then all of a sudden I hear my son say Dad. Right. And I'm on one of the packages, I'm on the razor box. Your face is on the box. My face is on the box and he saw me on the box. And I realized two things at the time.

First. This was his first time ever. in a retail store. Now he's a two year old, has no idea about it. But his first experience in retail is not down this like ethnic beauty aisle, right? The fact that he's a black child, black will be black man. who is deserves this experience and is getting it.

But even more important, he realized that like Or he will realize that he can also produce. Right. So not only is he a great consumer, but can be a great producer. for an audience that needs to that has gone underserved for so long. So I I say and thank

I think targeted. Um For the movement push. Because that story needs to be scaled. And it wouldn't have happened otherwise.

And it's getting scaled as we see. takes a product from just being a direct to consumer or a product that would have been in the e quote unquote ethnic aisle. And it's in They made a bet, and they made the right bet. So All right, so you guys are steadily growing.

You've got this growing product line. You you're starting to gain momentum. Things are exciting. And you sell the company. In twenty eighteen um Proctor and Gamble.

uh the company out for an undisclosed amount of money. Now My read of this, uh I think a lot of people hear that and think, Okay, that's your exit. And you walk away and you're you're

Swimming in cache and Goodbye and but that's actually not what it was why Wha why did you sell it to Procter Gable when You were

Gaining momentum. Yeah. Um twenty eighteen was a crazy year. Um couldn't raise money. You could not raise money. Because they just didn't believe in in the multitude of things. I think um Yeah, you start to get into a weird vicious cycle when you're raising money. Um you know, if there's one investor who's unwilling to kind of give you the money, other investors aren't willing to do it. And if you're not raising the money, you can't kind of spend as much on innovation and marketing anymore.

Which makes it harder to raise money. Like you get into this like really weird cycle. As a result of that, also in twenty eighteen we had to lose some really wonderful folks, right in the layoff. Like it because we couldn't Yeah. The company needed to thrive. And this is all happening as like revenues are still kind of like growing. It's like this weird. Thing. Anyway. At the beginning of the year we started to get a ton of interest. From all the CPGs. The big companies, the Unilevers and Johnson Johnson's, whoever they were.

But a lot of the big companies, and you realize, you know, if you're starting to have these chats, you better be serious about it, because it's going to take a lot of time away, right? So we came to the conclusion, all right, we're in this world, we can't raise money, we have this 150-year vision, we want to serve this audience, continue to kind of do what we can, um, but in a way that's kind of uber competitive. In September, August, September of last year And we realized very quickly our values aligned. Um

Parker and Gamble reaches five billion people. Every single day. Five billion people around the world use their products every single day, the majority of whom are people of color. Right. They came to us and said, Tristan, we believe in what you're doing. The way you touch these consumers, the way you speak to them is unique. It's authentic. We still want you to be an independent company. We will not touch you. But get to leverage our access to five billion people, billions of dollars of research and development to do what you do.

Right. And you know, fast forward a few months later we Close the deal. It only makes me now think about the things that I have to do every day. I no longer have to worry about going out and raising money, being distracted by that. Um we can't.

back into the company. Correct. Um I mean Procter and Gamble's been doing this for one hundred and eighty years. Right. The thing that like is really, really important for me is that we are set up in a position to maximize our ability to serve. Uh Procter and Gamble set us up to do that. And that's really all that I care about. Well I mean I'm interested, because in the beginning of our conversation you talked about your goal in life was to become wealthy. Mm-hmm. It sounds like that was changing. Because you could have kept the company in Grown it and maybe become a billionaire, whatever.

It sounds like that. That's right. Being wealthy? Yeah, no, I mean I um that changed very quickly when I had my first son. I have two sons now. And my kind of definition of ambition changed. That moment when I took my son to Target and he said, Dad uh made me think about the world in a different way. And kind of the goal that I have now, you know I I reflected back on this. When I was twenty years old. And I think, all right, when I was thirty, like what did I want, right?

You know. The house. Right. Uh the wonderful wife, the children. I don't need anything else anymore.

Right. Um this idea of like more money won't get me anywhere. Like the thing that I care most about is being a virtuous human, a virtuous person, uh so that my sons know how to live this world virtuously, right? Um that matters to me. A good deal. When you Oh, and one one other thing I should say, just so you folks know, you talked about this idea of not really being an exit, what the movement means. Probably Gamble's been around for 180 years, and I'm the first black CEO in the company's history. The amount of impact that that means for the world and like what we can do and the investment in that.

is very, very important. When you were acquired by Procter Gamble You also told them. By the way, I'm moving this company from Silicon Valley. And I wanna run it in Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah. Which is where you are now based. So tell me the story. Why?

Yeah. Um Atlanta uh I think is the most important city in the country right now. It has one of the fastest growing economies in the country. You think about diversity, particularly upward mobility, uh black folks in the country.

Um I'm raising two black boys in this country, uh, and kinda their ability to see upperly mobile black folks matters to me. And my son we lived in Palo Alto uh for some time. He had wonderful education, right, with no diversity. And that really started to impact me.

Um Walker and Company needs to be in Atlanta. Most of our customers are there, our highest revenues are there, uh culture happens there. It is the city and they've embraced us with wonderful open arms. Um and Procter Gamble has been incredibly supportive of our moving there, which is one of the things that we've got. Black tech leaders in Atlanta and entrepreneurs um How what is your vision? How put this into context, how how big Do you want this thing to be?

How what do you want Walker and Company to be In ten years from now. Twenty years from now. We started the shot.

Hotchkiss, Rockefellers and Fords. And again, like I saw that there was purpose and name. Right, and Proctor. Gamble.

Yeah, a lot of people ask, Well, why'd you put your name on it? You're That's kinda selfish. Um And I think I did it because there's an accountability there. Right, and I want that accountability to this Walker name to mean something.

To mean something for an audience that deserves to be served as first class citizens. Um so you know, what's my goal in the next Ten to twenty years? And to be put in the position where I can Ask that question of myself again for the company. Right. Um this is a company that needs to be around a hundred and fifty years from now. I want this to outlive me. Um and I will be around for as long as that takes.

You want in one hundred and fifty years for people to say Unilever, Trotcher and Gamble. Johnson Johnson, Walker and Company. I want people to say Procter Gamble, Walker and Company. Tristan, when you reflect on

Your journey. Um How much of of all this do you attribute to Your intelligence and and your hard work and how much do you think it was just luck? Faith.

I um I've learned 2018 was a a trying year. Um I don't know if I told you this. We Yeah.

Mm. It was the first time that I realised. That's Good seasons end and bad seasons end. Hm.

Um and you know we by the time I moved to Atlanta I had my last um kind of session uh with like a therapist I was working with. I started with her in June of last year. She said Tristan, man, you've come a long way. When we started You weren't thinking about selling the company, um, you weren't moving to Atlanta, you weren't having a kid, right? You didn't do kind of like the layoffs you had to go through at the time. Like all this stuff happened all at the same time and the only thing. uh that got me through it was knowing that I had a faith that was strong enough to get me to the end of that season. And now I'm in this like wonderful season of like immense bounty, right? Like

Procner and Gamble has afforded um our ability to really revel in that, but also know that season's gonna end. Which is fine, but I know now that like my faith will get me to the next one and the next one and the next one. Do you feel lucky? I feel fortunate. and blessed. And thankful.

Hello that. Tristan Walker, founder of Walker and Company. Thank you. I spoke with Tristan Walker at the Lincoln Theater in Washington, DC. And by the way, if you have a minute, you should really check out some of the Bevel videos. They feature tutorials, tips, and men talking about their own hair care experiences. Some of them are incredibly powerful.

And they include guys like Ryan Leslie, Big Daddy Kane, and the Roots MC, Black Thought. Thanks so much for listening to this live episode of How I Built This. Our show was produced this week by JC Howard with music composed by Rampine Era Blue. Our live events team includes Jessica Goldstein, Allie Prescott, Ellen Jorgensen, and Andy Heuther. Thanks also to Julia Carney, Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkinpur, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Sequoia Carillo. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening.

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