Squire (company)
Squire (company)
Squire is a free mobile app that allows you to book and pay for a haircut or shave in three taps. As a backend platform for small businesses, they provide software for CRM, booking management, analytics, and point of sale systems. [2]
Squire was founded by Dave Salvant and Songe LaRon in 2015 and is based in New York, New York. [4] They met the third co-founder and CTO, Yas Tabasam, at a meetup in NYC and not long afterwards received their first round of funding from WeWork executives. Later they pulled in $8 million from a Series A round. [6]
After three application attempts the company was accepted into the Summer 2016 batch at Y Combinator, where co-founder Dave Salvant started the Y Combinator Founders of Color. [6]
NYC barber chain Fellow Barber uses Squire as well as several hundred shops around New York City and San Francisco. Customers are charged a $1 fee to use the app, though the greater portion of Squire's revenue is expected to come from signing up businesses and signing them on for additional services. They have expanded into Canada and the UK and are eyeing major metropolitan areas around the US. [7]
We opened a barbershop and ran a barbershop to learn on a deep level what they’re looking for and how to run a barbershop effectively.
Because of that, we discovered the key is building a full management system for barbershop owners to run their business and not just a booking app.
What we created was a complete system that does everything a barbershop would need to run their business and include the consumer booking feature.
Before Squire, many shops would be using two or three different software to run their business.
They would use one thing for booking, one thing for point-of-sale payment, and something else for marketing and CRM.
Technology is not their specialty, their specialty is cutting hair.
Using all these different technologies is a pain point that we identified early.