Post on Medial

Transforming Tradition: Songe LaRon and Dave Salvant’s Journey with Squire Songe LaRon and Dave Salvant grew up in New York City, where weekly barbershop visits were part of life. These shops were more than places for haircuts; they were community hubs. However, as technology transformed services in other areas, barbershops largely stayed the same. LaRon and Salvant noticed this gap. Even as services like Uber and DoorDash became common, barbershops were still run on cash payments, long waits, and no streamlined booking system. They asked, Why hasn’t this changed? After working in banking and law, the two friends were drawn back to the barbershop business. Their answer to these inefficiencies was Squire, a platform initially envisioned as a customer app—“the Uber of barbers.” However, early feedback showed that barbers themselves weren’t interested in this version of the app. Despite these challenges, LaRon and Salvant stayed determined. They found early support while pitching at WeWork, where an executive provided seed funding. With this, they hired a developer to build their first version and even set up a pop-up barbershop to test it. However, this first version only partially addressed their goal. Customers loved the convenience, but barbers still felt their needs weren’t met. In 2016, LaRon and Salvant made a “bet-the-company” move by buying a barbershop. They spent over half their funds on this decision, gaining firsthand experience in running a shop, from managing appointments to balancing operations. This experience revealed a crucial insight: the true market for Squire wasn’t customers—it was the barbershop owners themselves. LaRon and Salvant shifted Squire’s model from B2C to B2B, creating a SaaS platform tailored for barbershop owners. This pivot was crucial, allowing Squire to offer barbershop owners a comprehensive tool to manage bookings, payments, and day-to-day operations, making business smoother and more efficient. As Harvard Business School’s Jeffrey Bussgang noted, what seemed like a failure in the B2C approach turned into an essential lesson. Their focus on the owners, rather than individual customers, was exactly what the industry needed. Squire soon took off, expanding internationally and raising $165 million in funding. LaRon and Salvant’s story is a testament to the power of persistence, adaptation, and understanding one’s market. By addressing a traditional industry with tech solutions, they transformed not just the barbershop experience but the business itself, honoring its role in the community while moving it into the modern age.