This is when the real journey begins.

When I quit my newsroom job in November 2024, I thought I’d launch in a year. In a way, I did. We Are Spiraling began publishing, and the MAYURA waitlist went live. But I often laugh at how naive I was to think I could develop and test our first formula + design the brand + sample and secure packaging + build the first template for basically every department of the business in 12 months.

TLDR: We’re launching this fall.

I’ll have a specific week soon — once I hear back on how long different ingredients and components are going to take to reach my manufacturer’s doorstep.

Tell your friends. Tell your family. And ask your hair stylist and salon if they’re interested in being a MAYURA launch partner. Seriously: who cuts your hair? Introduce me!

And if you’re a stylist who would like to carry MAYURA, dm me.

This is the biggest bet I’ve ever made on myself. Thank you for supporting MAYURA and We Are Spiraling. The emails, DMs, voice notes and comments I’ve received from listeners who identify with the show and are interested in trying MAYURA have powered me through many 16-hour days.

I’ve seen how my product has made my hair look so much better with months of consistent use and can’t wait to share it with you.

In the next very few months until launch, I’ll write about…

• PACKAGING REVEAL!

• how MAYURA’s branding came together & the mistake that cost me three months

• a form you can fill out to get early access to samples of upcoming products

• how 5 founders, including yours truly, fuel themselves. You loved our first 5 founders about how they took the leap, so I’m back with more. The closer I get to launch, the more I understand why some people once sought the simplicity of Soylent — even though I could never. To me, food is joy, and the tactile act of chopping or searing or sinking my teeth into a fresh summer peach over the sink is spiritual.

In the meantime, waitlist here.

Talk soon!

In a recent Rolling Stone interview, the film’s director gave a hollow explanation for why this choice was made. You can hear it — and why I think it falls flat — in today’s minisode.

Apple link here.

Our first minisode was also about Hollywood — I’ll Never Forgive The Princess Diaries.

We’re now also doing videos of these. So, share your feedback! Many of you have asked if we will ever have a video version of our episodes, and minisodes allow us to do that too. Our full-length episodes are much more narrative in structure, and we would have to basically create a short film every time we publish to give those a video component. This is a middle ground.

Next week’s full length episode answers a common listener health question. I’ve gotten this Q at least 4x: irl, in comments, and even in a show review. And it happens to be with one of my very favorite people on this Earth.

Stay tuned.

PS. Exciting and very big MAYURA updates coming very soon.

Apple embed codes are still not working on Substack, so here’s the link if that’s where you listen.

This viral photograph of a curly lion, taken by wildlife photographer Kambiz Pourghanad, inspired this episode.

Here are the other beauties we discuss:

Making this show and MAYURA is the best job I’ve ever given myself. I’m having so much fun. And I hope you love this episode too.

Post your favorite curly animal on social media and tag @WeAreSpiraling so we can repost it. TikTok here too.

And lastly, thank you to Dr. Danielle Lee from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for joining us on the show.

Not because I was looking for a new career path. Not because I was itching to start something of my own. I only realized the incredible gratification that comes from building something of your own once I started this journey.

So at the center of my journey has been investigating how to make a quality product. I take you along for part of that journey in today’s new episode.

Episode 12 is out now:

Apple Podcasts link here. (The embed seems broken on Substack.)

You’ll hear interviews with two cosmetic chemists, and a conversation with my own, on formulation theory.

As someone who is used to making stories about other people, it’s really difficult and painful for me to make episodes like this one.

Let me know what you think about this episode in the comments. And tell me what you want to hear about in the next behind-the-scenes look!

We will be spacing these out from one another, so the next couple episodes will be back in familiar territory, with stories that use curly hair as a lens to look at our world.

Subscribe to the show on Apple and Spotify, and follow me on Instagram and TikTok for bonus clips.

I have flown halfway across the world to meet suppliers for an upcoming MAYURA product I am so incredibly excited about.

MAYURA stands for quality and intention. I didn’t set out to start a business or envision myself as an entrepreneur until these ideas ate my brain. I quit my job reporting on tech to investigate curly hair, and with that comes my promise that there is purpose in each product. We value craft.

I flew here (I will not be saying where) for four reasons.

1. I believe in business relationships as, well, relationships. This is a longterm bet and I need to know my key partners. Start as you mean to go on.

2. To personally to review samples. It is the kind of thing that has a number of small details that you can hammer out in 90 minutes IRL but would take forever in incremental emails back and forth for a worse result.

3. To bring you reporting about why I chose this product and its beautiful history.

4. To go deep in my research to be able to become a more discerning expert. One of my friends told me her CEO at the startup she works at has a mantra: “taste good things.” After all, if you don’t, you’ll never actually know what good tastes like.

And of course, you’ll hear about all this on the podcast, with interviews and details from the scene.

Now for the rest, because there’s only so much I can say on this topic right now and I know it’s annoying to be a tease.

Major Milestones

I just reviewed version 1 of the MAYURA website. I can’t believe it’s real. Do anything – pick one thing – to turn your idea into reality. Make any call. Take any step. It will get you to the next step and then the next and then the next. We will have a lot of refining to do, but a year and a half later, we are so close I can feel it.

I’m in negotiations for a purchase order for the bulk ingredients for the hair oil elixir. This means our first production run is coming. There’s a big issue that came up in the last three days that needs resolving before I can move forward. It could delay launch by a lot more than I want. But fingers crossed we find a workable solution asap. Waitlist gets early access to the first run.

I have grown in a way I wasn’t sure I could. There is so much yet to come but I’ve surprised myself. If you scroll back on my Instagram, you’ll notice there is so little there pre-launch last November. That’s because I have always been deeply uncomfortable in front of cameras.

My mom has noted this about family photos. There’s a reason I exclusively aspired to be a print or audio reporter. Even now, I am not really that comfortable, but I am less deeply viscerally uncomfortable. I treat it like part of the job. Like reps at the gym.

And it’s true that you get better at things if you practice (and also put yourself in more beginner mindset environments through hobbies).

I’d love if you would share one way you’ve grown (where you weren’t sure you would) in the comments.

Subscribe to the pod on Apple and Spotify.

This might seem like a good thing but it’s actually a glaring red flag.

Hobbies or anything outside of building your startup appear to reduce your time spent moving toward the goal. (In SF, people are also discussing the virtues of staying single until their Series B funding rounds. The idea is by then the company is stable enough that it’s ok to spend time on your personal life. Please reconsider your judgement if you are not rolling your eyes at that.)

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Today we’re launching something new: minisodes. These are, as the name gives away, mini We Are Spiraling episodes.

Our full episodes are narrative stories on audio and they take a lot of reporting and production TLC to make well. And there’s so much I want to talk to you about that we can cover in less than half the length of a full-length feature.

Each minisode will be under 10 minutes long but much more in depth than a social media clip. To me, this is the sweet spot, and why I felt the show needed a middle ground format as well.

I’ve been hoarding material for an episode on this topic for so long I decided it’s finally time to publish. Since I started reporting We Are Spiraling stories, I’ve reached out to Anne Hathaway’s team multiple times. (I have not gotten a yes, hence sharing the stories you’ll hear now, while there are rumors of a Princess Diaries 3.)

Every young girl remembers her makeover as Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries. The movie is a classic for millennial women. Mia, a normal San Francisco high schooler, discovers she is actually princess of Genovia.

The movie seeks to portray pre-princess Mia as a mess. Glasses, curly hair. Then in a makeover, her eyebrows are plucked, her glasses removed and…you guessed it. Straightened hair.

This is how Hollywood handles curly hair most often. Even Moana’s curls are nowhere near as prevalent in the live action remake set to release this summer, compared to the actual animated version.

READ: How Disney Is Complicit In Suppressing Curly Hair

“It’s technically looked at as more disheveled,” celebrity stylist Matthew Collins, who works on film and TV sets, explained to me in episode 2.

Anne Hathaway recently told People that she regrets the fact that some people interpreted the makeover as a criticism of curly hair. I don’t blame her for the choices someone else made about how to portray her character, but I also don’t buy the explanation at all.

You can hear why in today’s minisode, where you’ll also hear from two millennial women on how the movie shaped their self-image.

This is why so many millennial women are secretly curly.

Subscribe to the pod on Apple and Spotify.

Leave a comment if there’s a question you’d like me to answer or topic you want explored in our next minisode.

When I first dropped the trailer for We Are Spiraling and announced the MAYURA waitlist, I had less than 350 Instagram followers. The WAS IG was brand new, along with its TikTok. My TikTok existed but didn’t have a rhythm or much going on.

I didn’t know we’d get here. While I often tell my consulting clients is that it takes time and consistency for people to know you for anything, it still feels futile sometimes when you’re in the waiting period — testing and trying different messaging before you can tell what is clicking.

But because I’ve sat in all three seats — founder, reporter and communications strategy adviser — I try to push myself to keep blinders on, treat myself like a client and take my own advice.

I spent more than a decade telling stories — and paying attention to how I framed and reported them to make sure they hit. That exercise is similar to trying to parse through which hooks might land on social media, week after week.

I finally crossed 1,000 followers on my own Instagram account in April. I know regularly writes about how follower metrics don’t mean much anymore, but it still felt like a milestone.

My biggest takeaway is that you really should just be yourself. In a sea of AI slop, the only way to stand out is by being something nobody else is doing. And that is whatever makes you uniquely you. For me, that thing is telling stories.

These are early signs of resonance. I don’t know what’s yet to come. All I know is that I’m producing work I love and it seems like other people enjoy it too.

I cannot tell you how many flop videos I’ve posted. Sometimes it seems like people want to know more about what it’s like to quit your job in a newsroom to start a haircare line, and then I’ll post a video about the process, and it’ll tank. But you have to increase shots on goal to make any.

It’s also a reminder that you need things to have enough time and space to start to compound.

I’ll write soon about why every founder needs tactile hobbies. One of my dance teachers told me a few months back, when I started learning bachata, that while I can keep training as hard as I want, I can’t shortcut the fact that the body needs time to absorb new techniques. Training y tiempo.

I think about this a lot. You can only meet the moment if you’ve prepared to do so up until that point. And you need enough time to become ready.

Almost ready to hit go on MAYURA’s first production batch. Get on the waitlist to save your spot!

We’re almost here. This week MAYURA became more tangible than ever before. I got my first full round of pre-production samples: three boxes with different design formats and layouts, along with labels for the bottles, which are finally in the right color.

I took them to Sephora to see how they’d look on retail shelves. Two shoppers thought I was doing a brand giveaway. Is there any better validation than watching people assume MAYURA is already sold there?

A store associate asked if I needed a basket. Maybe she just saw me holding boxes and didn’t notice the design didn’t match anything on their shelves. But maybe the packaging just looks like it belongs.

While bopping around to different displays to see how MAYURA looked on shelving at different levels, in various types of lighting, I decided to get some feedback. Each time a shopper passed me, I asked: “Do you have a minute? I’m wondering which of these boxes appeals to you most. Or if you don’t really like them that much, you can be honest! It won’t hurt my feelings.”

I did this kind of field trip to Credo Beauty when my bottle samples arrived in my top two color choices. Every detail makes a difference.

Each time pre-production packaging samples arrive, I photograph them in my home. Near my window on the dining table, where there’s natural light. In the bathroom, where there’s none. And in Sephora or Credo.

It’s not for my ego. It’s to make sure the logo is always readable in different types of lighting, that the finishes work and that the colors translate, whether the product is on an eye-level shelf, above or below.

That said, I encourage anyone doing work with long lead times to soak it in when it becomes real.

Because these are pre-production samples, they’re not yet fully finished. I hand-affixed every label option to my glass bottle samples to figure out which one we want to go with — and how much or how little text we want on the front. I tested two layouts and three different formats of text.

I’m looking at everything: the thickness of the paper, whether the box feels flimsy or secure – the product is in a glass bottle, so security is even more important – what the experience is like when you pull it out of the box.

And then there’s another very practical reason to take your packaging to a new environment. At some point, after months of looking at the same thing, you must give your brain new stimulus so your eyes can approach this fresh.

When I was a reporter fact-checking lengthy features and investigations that took months or sometimes even a year, I’d print out a near-final draft. With a pen and highlighter, I’d read out loud and go over every single word. Two rounds: The first purely for fact-checking, word by word. A second round for readability, smoothness, and any typos I may have missed.

You won’t believe how many tiny things you’ll catch if you make your brain read something it is used to in a different way, even just out loud. By that point, I’d already read the story hundreds of times and made so many edits that this new format was critical.

Your eyes start to glaze over things you’re used to. New environments and formats take your brain out of autopilot.

That said…it was pretty sick to see MAYURA come to life in my actual hands and on shelves after 1.5 years.

More on the design process and the incredibly talented team that helped make it happen when it’s time for the packaging reveal. (The waitlist will be first to see and preorder.)

I can’t wait for the next time people say “Are you doing a brand giveaway?” and I can say: “Yes! Would you like a sample?”

Follow on Instagram and TikTok to see all the ways I put MAYURA to the test — including while learning how to surf in Puerto Escondido last week. (Just be nice about my noob wipeouts.)

And share the MAYURA waitlist with a curly/wavy friend who just wants to look good while doing things.

If you missed the last few weeks on the Internet, here’s a refresh. Vogue posted a picture of Tracee Ellis Ross and called her afro a “cloud bob.” (Essence’s piece on it here.) And Coco Gauff had to explain why she wasn’t going to apologize for her hair being…her hair in a Miu Miu campaign.

Episode 11 is out now:

When Hunter and Alyssa each let me know the role their hair played in their own lives, I felt you needed to hear their stories, too. You’ll leave with a deeper understanding of why it’s never “just hair.”

In the episode, we reference research and lawsuits regarding harmful chemicals in hair relaxers marketed to Black girls and women. Here is research from Harvard on this topic, and a New York Times Magazine deep dive into the issue.

We also explore the hairstyles that have inspired us. Here is Lupita Nyong’o’s 2021 Met Gala hairstyle that we reference:

In Vogue, her hairstylist noted that her hair was inspired by the work of artist Lorna Simpson. If you haven’t seen her work with Rihanna for Essence, you must.

Subscribe to the show on Apple and Spotify, and follow me on Instagram and TikTok for bonus clips.

This is my favorite question, and it’s one I hear pretty often, five months post public launch. I’m excited to say the answer is: later this year!

I launched the brand and We Are Spiraling in November, just days after receiving the final files in Figma. It took months to get there and I’m obsessed with where we landed. (Stay tuned for more on the talented design team when we unveil our packaging in a few months.)

The reality is it takes far longer than you ever expected for a product to go from idea to a shelf in a store, or a virtual one. I underappreciated this as well before jumping into the process. I initially hoped to launch in a year — and while I did start publishing the show and announce MAYURA for the first time, preorders are not yet open. Join the waitlist for early access.

Here’s why it takes so long to release a beauty brand. I got started 579 days ago and this is my experience so far.

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You might be surprised to hear that this has been an issue for generations. My dad told us in Episode 1 that when he first moved to the U.S., a barber refused to cut his hair because it was too curly. After he told me this story, I called one of my best friends and said “isn’t that crazy?” And he said that it had happened to him too!

It’s such an ongoing problem that New York passed a law requiring cosmetology schools to include substantive training on how to work with wavy and curly hair. It takes effect this year.

By the way — “textured” hair is a bit absurd when 2/3 of the world’s population has wavy or curly hair. Some stats say that percentage is the same when you look at the U.S. alone. You might be surprised to hear that but that’s probably because so many people are secretly curly.

Episode 10 is out now

To hear more about why and how we ended up here, I interviewed Roxy Reaves, who owns Coastal Curl, a salon in Oakland, California that she describes as “a natural texture oasis.” I’ve been following Roxy’s work for years on social media and was delighted when she agreed to an interview.

What I didn’t realize until we began chatting was that we share so many parallels in our lives. We both started our careers in the SF startup scene — her as a recent Stanford graduate, me as a reporter for BuzzFeed News covering companies like Uber when it was rapidly growing.

You’ll hear about the role Roxy played in pushing Cinta Aveda Institute to incorporate basically any textured hair training at all into their curriculum — in 2019! I was shocked by some of the details.

In the episode, I trace some haircutting history so we can understand why cosmetology schools didn’t acknowledge curly hair until…now. (And that law I mentioned is in New York. Not everywhere.)

Because I’m a reporter through and through, here are the sources that helped me with the facts you’ll hear: the National Barber Museum, the Barber Surgeons Guild, the University of New Hampshire’s bio of Martha Mathilda Harper, this master’s thesis for the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, and this Loyola University master’s thesis.

I hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please share it on social media and tag @WeAreSpiraling. It helps other people find the show too.

And as always, let me know what you think in the comments.

Subscribe to the show on Apple and Spotify, and follow me on Instagram for bonus clips.

This is a question I have dealt with from three angles: career journalist, communications adviser and founder.

As a reporter, my stories competed with not just every other news story, but any piece of content a reader could consume. As a comms adviser, I craft pitches and narratives for clients to stand out against competitors in a crowded tech news landscape.

And as a founder, I do both: make stories you can’t get anywhere else for We Are Spiraling, and build visibility for the show and MAYURA, from scratch. (Thank you for supporting my work by subscribing to this letter!)

This past week brought two opportunities that reminded me just how connected these roles are. For a second year, I served as a crisis communications coach for Wharton’s executive MBA program. The students – executives and founders with full-time jobs, who fly in for class every other week – presented statements after being given crisis case studies. Then I grilled them as a reporter, and shared live feedback on where they could’ve sharpened their messages.

And ’s hosted a panel discussion with me, The Information’s Cory Weinberg and , who edits , about how founders can get better at storytelling.

One of our biggest messages? Be authentic. And part of that is having something to say.

But you have to figure out how to do that first. This letter is about several practices I find myself repeating each time I am speaking on this topic.

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Early in our interview, Selina shared that she embodies the indigenous philosophy that hair is an extension of your spirit. We pivoted the entire interview to explore this belief and how it influences her work.

Then we connected with John Parker, a hair and makeup artist based in Oklahoma who is Osage himself and worked on Killers of the Flower Moon. His connection to the story, which I’ll let you hear about from him in the episode itself, will make your jaw drop.

This episode is one of my favorites this season. It embodies everything I want this show to be. Stories about people, who we are, how it influences how we move through our lives and the world. Stories that are about so much more than hair while showing how that is a lens through which we can explore everything else.

Here’s where you can find Selina and John’s work. Selina’s salon, Native Studio Salon, is in Oakland, California.

If you enjoy the episode, please share it on Instagram, TikTok or whatever platform is your jam. It helps other people find our work too.

Subscribe to the pod on Apple and Spotify.

To work together, reach out to partnerships@wearespiraling.com.

When we dropped the trailer and my first Substack post, I had just 300-something Instagram followers. While I spent more than a decade covering tech, unlike a lot of my former colleagues who launched technology-focused independent media platforms, I was going from investigating Silicon Valley to investigating curly hair. So I wasn’t bringing over an audience.

Here’s how we built this community from scratch, drawing on my experience as a reporter, communications strategist and founder.

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Back when we first recorded with Noah nearly a year ago, we were in the earliest stages of developing We Are Spiraling — what each episode would sound like, the themes and stories we wanted to explore.

But I knew I wanted to talk about why movies and TV shows often portray eccentrics as curly and how hair shapes personality. Huge thanks to Noah for sharing his time with us even though we had nothing but ideas yet.

We paired his interview with conversations with Nemma Adeni and Molly Brenner, comics based in LA and New York, respectively, about my hot take: are curly people funnier?

Hollywood often uses curly hair as a trope to indicate someone is eccentric in some way — whether that means they’re a jokester, weirdo or psycho. But reality is always more interesting than fiction.

And I do think there’s something to what Michelle Wolf once said — that her hair reflects her personality. It’s also why I named my haircare line MAYURA. Curly hair is often a core part of who someone is. This whole show revolves around the premise that this piece of our identity is worth exploring.

Three comedians, three perspectives on how the way you look can be both a professional tool and something deeply personal.

In the episode, we reference Nemma’s viral video about how some people aren’t born into the right language for their personality, so we wanted to share it with you here:

@nemmaadeniUnlock new characters in this video game called life 😎 #language #fyp #funny

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Follow the pod on Apple, Spotify and Instagram.

If you ever want me to expand on a piece of a letter, leave a comment and I’ll try to address it. And, as always: let me know your questions about all things curly hair.

Keep Reminders Of The Long Game

There’s the adage that most overnight successes take 10 years, and it exists because it is true. Even companies that became wildly successful earlier in their lifespan took a few years of pain to get there.

Never think anyone else had it easy. You probably just don’t know what it actually took. Brian Chesky and his Airbnb cofounders sold boxes of cereal they “origami”ed together with a hot glue gun and filled by hand in the company’s early days because they needed more money before they got into Y Combinator.

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People talk about how teen boys and young men are getting perms. We investigated this shift, from K-Pop to TikTok and the fact that these days more people are swiping right on curly guys.

Episode 7 is out now:

Perms were invented by the German hairdresser Charles Nessler in the early 1900s, around the same time William Kellogg began selling cornflakes.

Here’s what the machine looked like, per a LIFE Magazine article posted about Nessler’s death:

Later, Marjorie Stewart Joyner patented a new version. Joyner worked for Madam C.J. Walker, the first Black woman to become a self-made millionaire in the U.S. One evening, Joyner was cooking a pot roast and noticed how the metal rods would heat the meat from within. So she affixed pot roast rods to a hair dryer hood and began experimenting.

Beyond the history, you’ll hear an honest reflection from a man who got a perm in his 30s about how it changed how other people see him — people literally tell him that — and also how he sees himself.

Leave a comment if you have someone with this perm or haircut in your life — and which of the nicknames for it they identify most with:

• alpaca teen gym bro

• broccoli perm

• bussin cut

• bird’s nest

• Tiktok fboy

• tell me if there’s one I missed that we should add to the list!

Subscribe to the pod on Apple and Spotify, and find us on Instagram to follow along as we test MAYURA products.

I worked in newsrooms of all sizes. Bloomberg, one of the largest in the world. The Information, a startup that delivers exclusives about the tech industry to subscribers. And BuzzFeed before its demise (rest in peace), among others. Different newsrooms but the lessons were the same.

And they are just as indispensable now.

Write like a human

I’m a former reporter who now advises startups and other founders on media strategy, while building my own haircare brand, podcast and this newsletter. So I can tell you from each of those perches: Most people struggle to articulate what they’re doing and why it matters.

This skill is invaluable no matter what you are selling: shampoo, software or your value as an investor.

B2B companies have a lot to learn from how people sell protein bars and cereal. Your message will stick with your audience if it is clear and memorable. Don’t be boring!

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