The Future of Science is Female. Zara Stone
only 12 percent of women complete STEM degrees, and only 25 percent of those work in STEM ten years later. Changing this involves changing the way girls think about STEM, and the culture around it.
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In 2011, Pree was vaguely aware that these companies had started. They seemed really cool, she thought; why weren’t they around when she was a kid? In 2012, the same year that GoldieBlox launched, Pree graduated from business school. With no commitments, she bought a one-way ticket to London. Then she flew to France. Then Spain. “It was a coming of age [adventure],” she said. She didn’t know what she was searching for. Maybe a fairytale romance with a European? A job at Google? “I wanted to know how I could make a contribution to the world,” she said.
In Spain, one of her classmates was getting married. She had her dress and her shoes, but her nails looked raggedy, all chipped and dull from flying. Time for a manicure, she thought. But she couldn’t find a salon—every place wanted you to book well in advance, and they were really expensive. The nail bars so common in New York and LA and Houston were nowhere to be seen. “That was my aha moment,” she said. “It shouldn’t be so hard to get a simple manicure.”
She flew back to the states at the end of summer and took a full-time role at the LED startup in California. But her nail idea, still unformed, bugged her. She kept coming back to it, over and over again. What we need is some kind of portable nail salon, she thought. She’d never worked in fashion or beauty. All she knew was politics and connected hardware. Maybe that’s a good thing, a weird advantage, she thought; she knew how to work with people in Silicon Valley, how to raise money, and how to get people interested in what you were saying.
She kept refining her idea. The travel nail salon idea was quickly trashed, but she kept returning to the idea of a printer. She wanted her startup to be more than just nails. Would people want pretty nails enough to learn how to build a printer? But why? She drilled down to the idea of a nail art printer.
But she needed help. Looking through LinkedIn, she kept returning to Casey Schulz’s profile; Casey was a systems engineer with a background in inspiring girls with cool, creative technology. Pree messaged her, and they met up at the coworking space where Casey taught kids how to use Arduino. They clicked. “I want the Nailbot to be the first in a long line of products,” Pree told her. “The point is pretty nails plus learning design software, coding, and more.” Casey was in.
Now Pree needed to decide on a company name. She thought hard about that. What did she want her company to be called? How would it represent her and her mission?
She didn’t want to go childish or stereotypical, no using words like princess nails or fairy prints. The word printing gave her pause. Saying it slowly, out loud, it sounded like her name—Pree-nting. Prima donna. Preema donna! She liked it. “We’re taking it back!” she said. Sure, the term prima donna has connotations of being difficult, but that was entrenched sexism. She’s reclaiming it for herself. “The original prima donnas were these very talented women, the stars of the show,” she said. “People want to consider them difficult, but… Look, if you’re a CEO, that’s ‘visionary’ of course, you’re going to be difficult. I think the best leaders are difficult because they’re always pushing you. You’re going to stand for something.”
Next, the duo turned their attention to money. Casey was working her day job, so it was up to Pree.
But to reach people, they needed some cash. That shouldn’t be too hard, she thought. The Valley invested huge amounts in silly startups every day, such as $118 million for a juicer that wouldn’t juice, and $20 million on a startup that made your emails smell. For real. Plus, the nail market was booming; in 2013, 92 percent of tweens and teens used nail polish. 14 percent used it daily. This would be a breeze.
She approached venture capitalists for funding. She applied at a lot of technology accelerators. But nobody was biting. Most VC firms and tech accelerators were run by (mostly) white men, who didn’t get the point of her company. She’d go to meetings and demonstrate the Nailbot, and they all refused to get their nails done by it. It was demoralizing. Every day, she woke up, moved from her bed to the couch, and waved her roommates—two friends from business school—goodbye as the headed out to their well-paid banking jobs. They were supportive of her, but Pree was losing hope. “My dad was like, is the finger painting over?” she said. Her bills were mounting up. Living in San Francisco was expensive, especially when you had no cash coming in.
She messaged her freshman roommate, Diane Donald, to talk about how tough everything was. “Don’t give up,” Diane said. “I know you can do this.” As a mother of three, Diane really liked Pree’s idea. She was Pree’s first investor. “I’m probably going to lose all my money, but I believe in you,” Diane told her.
Hmm, thought Pree. Silicon Valley didn’t want to fund her, but maybe she was looking in the wrong places. She messaged her old sorority, Tri-Delta. “This is what I’m working on,” she told them. “What do you think?” They loved the idea and sent a check. Little by little, funding trickled in, enough to get her to a working prototype.
She felt exceedingly grateful. “This company exists because of the people who believed in me—my sorority sisters, my friends, my mentors,” she said. Helen Greiner, the creator of the Roomba vacuum, also invested. The difference, Pree realized, was that she’d been trying to get money from old white men. But the women she approached saw the value. Today Preemadonna has an all-female millennial board.
To see how tweens and teens and early twentysomethings felt about the Nailbot, Pree hosted stealth parties. The first few were filled with her friends’ kids and their friends. They went really well—everyone was excited about the Nailbot and curious as to the tech behind it. “Can I intern for you?” asked one. “Can I be an ambassador?” said another. Sure, she said.
She developed those parties into a mini-TED talk about building and developing a product, which she presented in high schools. The kids were sharp, she said; in the Q and A, they asked her what language she’d coded the app in and how hard it was to get investors. She ended her session with free manicures for everyone! She gave the same talk in many venues, including Kode with Klossy camps, Maker Girl events, and the Girl Scout convention. “It’s not where a traditional beauty company would go,” she laughed, “but it resonated with me as a founder.” Her ambassador network grew.
In 2015, her hard work paid off and she was accepted into the Hax hardware accelerator, which provides companies with $100,000 and easy access to experts and mentors. They’re famous for launching the world’s first connected tampon and the Dispatch delivery robot (which was bought by Amazon). At Hax, Pree and Casey learned how to use the iPhone’s front-facing camera on the inkjet. Then they teased their product at TechCrunch Disrupt, a San Francisco startup showcase that launched Everlywell’s home lab testing kit and fertility startup, Future Family.
Excited by all the positive feedback, Pree ran an Indiegogo campaign in 2016. She did everything wrong. She priced the Nailbot at $199, but the product wasn’t ready to ship, and she had no ETA for buyers. She didn’t set up a waitlist. “By all measures, that Indiegogo campaign was a failure,” she said—with one upside. Her campaign went viral and was featured on most news sites in America. “We got our word out, and we paid no money for marketing!”
She kept iterating, based on feedback from her ambassadors. Now, when you print on your nails, your phone automatically captures a picture of them and lets you share them straight to social media. She designed a bunch of skins for the printer itself; girls told her that they wanted to personalize the machine’s color.
The process is super quick. First you paint your nails with their primer, followed by any white nail varnish (she supplies these with the kit), then select a picture from the app, and use the front camera on your phone to visualize the design over your digit. Press a button, and whoosh—five seconds later your nail is printed, and dry. “The only limitation is the canvas of your nails,” Pree said.
There are thousands of emoji-style images in the Nailbot library, with more added every day. She’s collaborated with nail influencers and artists to create unique designs for the app, and users can