When Alli Webb started driving to people’s homes for hair appointments in 2009, she didn’t realize she was planting the seeds of a multimillion-dollar salon empire and beauty phenomenon. But fast forward 10 years and DRYBAR had sold for $255 million.
The revolutionary salon focuses on one type of hair treatment: top-notch blowouts. The chain earned scores of customers, including celebrities like Jennifer Garner, Julia Roberts, and Zooey Deschanel. By the 2019 sale, Webb and her company had opened more than 100 locations across the United States and made Webb an entrepreneurial superstar. Today, she’s an investor, a Shark Tank regular, a co-founder of Squeeze and Becket + Quill, and the author of her new book The Messy Truth: How I Sold My Business for Millions but Almost Lost Myself, which Webb described as “memoir meets business book.”
On January 11, the LLOYD GREIF CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL STUDIES hosted Webb for an open discussion in front of a captivated audience. Moderated by Marshall MBA student Ilayda Sekercioglu at the Ronald Tutor Campus Center, the talk centered on the founding of Drybar, entrepreneurial obstacles, and her new book.
Much of the conversation focused on Webb’s own journey as a new entrepreneur and company founder, which she described as an invigorating, albeit challenging, learning process. In hindsight though, she’s glad she launched Drybar when she did.
“When you’re younger and when you’re hungry, that’s when you start a business,” Webb said. “It didn’t feel like work. It was so fun and intoxicating, starting and running this company and the response to it and the press and people wanting us to open everywhere. It was so life changing from every conceivable angle that I loved it.”
In a room full of Greif students (as well as some Drybar fans), Webb also imparted some unexpected lessons on the entrepreneur students.
“There’s bigger, sexier stories about some of our challenges, but I would say the biggest challenge is the monotony of starting a business and how many millions of little decisions have to be made and have to be made pretty well. And inevitably, you’re going to get lots of them wrong.”