#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Roydon Jeffrey, Co-Founder & CEO, ListedB
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
A Social Marketplace for Beauty Services
After overcoming childhood shyness in the warmth of his local Caribbean-owned barbershop, Royon Jeffrey knows the power of the beauty industry firsthand. He set out to create ListedB, an online marketplace for beauty industry professionals. We spoke to him about the financial opportunity within the industry, navigating capital access and investors, and his desire to empower small businesses owners.
Tell us about your background. What led you to create ListedB?
I’m originally from the Caribbean. When I came to the U.S. at the age of 12, I was a very shy and introverted kid, and it was hard for me to make new friends and adapt to a new environment. I remember going to my local Caribbean-owned barbershop to get my hair cut for the first time. They had all the different Caribbean flags on display, were playing reggae music, and almost everyone spoke in their native accent. That was the first time I felt a sense of comfort and belonging in the U.S. I started going there all the time, volunteering and eventually becoming a part-time assistant; that’s how I got my knowledge of the salon and beauty industry. After I graduated college in 2014, I wanted to use my new tech skills to improve the beauty industry, and that’s when I created ListedB.
What does ListedB do?
The platform is a social marketplace that connects beauty professionals with local clients to help them run their businesses more efficiently and make themselves more marketable. We’re offered primarily in New York with the goal of eventually going nationwide.
What kind of content moderation processes or tools do you have in place to make sure that people are using the platform as you intend?
Right now, we don’t have the resources of bigger tech companies, so we're manually tagging each piece of content that's posted on the platform. If someone tries to upload something that’s non-beauty-related, we flag it that way. It’s time-intensive and not ideal, but it’s all we’re able to do at the moment. In the future, we intend to use AI to assist in moderating content and enhance users’ safety on the platform by reducing the threat of phishing or scamming.
During our recent roundtable for founders of color, you spoke about navigating talent issues. What are the resources that have helped or would have helped you?
It all ties back to a lack of funding. Since we don't have the capital to recruit someone with a decent amount of experience, we tend to rely a lot on interns. They’re helpful and we’re appreciative of their time, but this also requires a lot of extra guidance that slows us down a bit, and forces us to divide our time away from other things that we need to do. If we had more funding, we’d be able to hire strategically and move a bit faster.
As a founder originally from the Caribbean, what’s been your unique experience building your company?
I have definitely felt the struggle of being a person of color trying to navigate entrepreneurship and the tech ecosystem. Participating in TechStars was really important to help us get started with the business, but our issue has been with investors not understanding the financial opportunity in the beauty industry. We’ve gotten feedback asking if the beauty industry is a big enough market to invest in—and it’s crazy to me that many investors don’t realize how much money is in the industry. Black people alone spend a significant amount of money each year on beauty products and services.
There's a lack of understanding on a cultural level, so education about the industry itself has become a big part of what we do. It is definitely a burden because we have to do this in addition to pitching my company in a compelling way to get investors interested. It feels like I have to do twice as much work to try to fundraise compared to those that operate in different spaces.
What are your goals for ListedB moving forward?
We want to see a curriculum around the beauty industry taught in schools so that kids see it as a viable career path. We’re planning to integrate an educational aspect into the platform as well to help people upskill, and share new ways to provide services. We also want to help with how to incorporate businesses and tax reporting. I used to be a tax preparer, and a lot of my clients were barbers, hair stylists, and people in the beauty industry. I had to constantly give them tips and feedback on how they should handle money throughout the year and keep track of everything so that come tax season, everything's in place. Most people providing services in the beauty industry have the skills to do hair, nails, etc.—they are not necessarily operators, though, so we want to empower them to be business owners, too.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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