Waeve
A DTC wig brand for Black women I co-founded in 2018. $2M seed in 2020, launched June 2021, scaled to nine people, wound down in 2024.
The company
Waeve was a direct-to-consumer wig brand for Black women, built on the premise that wigs were a growth product and the experience around buying them had much opportunity for improvement — "an expensive product that is growing in demand," in our framing during press. The initial drop in June 2021 was Days of the Week: six wigs named Monday through Saturday (Sunday omitted as a nod to the natural hair movement), three human hair and three synthetic, priced $72 to $398. Wigs were manufactured in China and processed through a Boston HQ.
The story
Three co-founders and I started Waeve at Williams College in 2018 by winning the Williams Business Plan Challenge. After graduation we all relocated to Boston, became roommates, and built the business nights and weekends through 2020.
In 2020 we raised a $2M seed led by Pillar VC, with participation from Maveron and a roster of ex-Glossier operators (Henry Davis, Bryan Mahoney, Ali Weiss) plus the PillPack (my former employer) co-founders (TJ Parker, Elliot Cohen).
We launched in June 2021. At peak we had nine full-time employees, 10K followers on Instagram, and a 300-member Instagram community we called WaeveBaes who tested products and shaped the line. We wound the company down in 2024.
What I personally built
My role at Waeve was mainly narrative — brand, copy, story.
On the engineering side I built a virtual try-on prototype with another engineer; it was never finished, and I don't own the repo. I also worked with the former Glossier CTO on a custom e-commerce stack that we ultimately couldn't get to where we needed it. We reverted to Shopify and shipped. The revert wasn't a failure — it was the engineering call.
What I learned
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Custom is expensive; default to platforms that work. Months on a bespoke e-commerce stack with a senior engineer; it didn't get there. Reverting to Shopify wasn't a retreat — it was the right call, made in time to actually launch.
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Brand and engineering aren't separate disciplines. Copy, packaging, the unboxing experience, the website — they compound. You can't bolt brand on at the end.
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Knowing when to wind down is a leadership skill. Closing Waeve in 2024 was harder than building it. The discipline to make that call, on time, is the lesson I carry forward.