Aisata Diallo, 24, calls herself a lifelong braider. “I’ve always braided my hair growing up and, at some point in my college career, started braiding other people’s hair,” she said. At Northeastern University in Boston, she found limited access to braiders and textured-hair specialists, so she decided to fill that gap by starting a small business of her own. 

“Throughout that experience, I was very close to some of the pain points in the styling process and complained about it constantly,” she said. Braiding is a manual task, and a single style can take eight hours to complete. Many professionals deal with issues like cramping and carpal tunnel syndrome after spending long days standing behind a chair weaving hair into patterns.

At first, Diallo said she didn’t know what to do about it. “I stopped braiding, and one of the reasons that I stopped braiding was due to the physical toll it has on your body.” She wanted to find a way to make braiding less painful and wondered whether new AI technology could automate some part of the process. Building hardware for braiding is expensive, difficult, and complex, which is one reason there have been few innovations in this space. The textured hair market has also long been overlooked by the mainstream.

Then, last year, she had an idea: Tressfecta, a company building products for textured hair. Its first project is a tool called Plait Pilot that helps braiders with the initial process of separating hair from packs before braiding begins. That process alone can take hours, especially when a client wants small braids. Diallo said the device is designed to work like this: A stylist places the braiding hair on top of it and sets the size they want the hair separated into, and the device separates the pieces and dispenses them back to the stylist so they can grab them while braiding. 

“It’s very challenging to build this kind of tool in this space,” she said, citing the nuance and complexity of the braiding style process. Different types of textured hair also need to be accounted for, especially when length and density are considered. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.” 

Tressfecta is still technically prelaunch, and it is working on the prototype of Plait Pilot. Diallo has been bootstrapping the company, while also drawing on funding from grant and accelerator programs. “I am preparing to fundraise,” she said, noting how hard it can be to raise money for hardware, especially beauty hardware. For now, Diallo said she’s connecting with stylists and braiders who can test the technology. She also spent this week in San Francisco as one of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200 companies. 

She doesn’t remember exactly where she first heard about TechCrunch Disrupt, possibly on LinkedIn or in a founder resource group, but when we talked ahead of the show, which wrapped up on Thursday, she was looking forward to connecting with people and showing off her product. She was especially excited to connect with people and for others to see her product. “It feels like a great opportunity,” she said.