The Divaneer's Blueprint: How Shawna Stepp-Jones Turned a Wash Day Wait Into a Beauty Tech Company
Season 2, Episode 7 of Unlock The Science of Beauty, powered by Fly Girl Approved Hair Perfume
On our latest episode of Unlock TSOB, Sakeya Donaldson sat down with ShawnaStepp- Jones, also known as The Divaneer, and the episode’s contents offered some of the most valuable industry insights, career advice, and business guidance. As a hardware engineer, former U.S. Patent Examiner, and Founder of Divaneering Lab Inc. and Creator of Spundle, Shawna didn't come to our stage to pitch a product. She came to tell the truth about what it costs to protect an idea, and what she was willing to give up to make sure hers survived -- whch is far more than any industry insights or a business masterclass could offer.
Here’s what this blog post will cover:
Why protecting your idea is the first investment every founder should consider, as they build their businesses
How a Four Seasons spa laundry machine led to a patented beauty tech invention
The sacrifice Shawna made to fund her prototype, and what it reveals about who gets access to capital, and who doesn't
Every Entrepreneurial Idea Starts with a Problem
Shawna Stepp-Jones didn't set out to disrupt an industry. In 2016, she was living in Atlanta, wearing virgin Cambodian bundles, and driving 40 minutes each way to drop them off with her stylist for coloring, then waiting a full day for them to air dry before her installation. As a hardware engineer by training, she noticed something the rest of us had just learned to live with: stylists jerry-rigging dryers, hanging wigs from ceiling fans, propping hair under towel-covered dryers. Resourceful, but exhausting.
The idea clicked somewhere unexpected: a hotel spa. Shawna came across a centrifuge spin dryer, the kind you load wet clothes into and that spins them nearly dry in seconds. "What if I put my bundles in here? What if I put a wig in here?" she remembers thinking. She bought a $60 version off Amazon, ran her first test, and it worked. That one Amazon dryer became the first version of what we now know as Spundle.
"I think engineering thinking brings systematic thinking, and you think in phases," she told us. "I knew this wasn't going to be a get-rich-quick type of thing. I knew it was going to take some time."
Why Cultural Clarity Is the Gap No One Talks About
That same phase-by-phase mindset is what Shawna needed most when it came time to fund her idea, because the hardest part was never the engineering. It was getting anyone outside her own community to see what she saw.
Investors told her she was "pre-product," which in venture capital spaces means a startup doesn't have a finished, working product yet, just an idea that's still in development. It's often the reason investors pass on a venture: they can't see a tangible reason to bet on it. So Shawna and her CFO coined a term for what kept getting lost in translation: "cultural clarity", which is the real-world context investors lacked to see how big and legitimate the hair care market actually is, or why a dryer built specifically for detachable hair pieces could be profitable. Investors weren't close to the problem the way Shawna and other women who wear weaves or wigs were. There was a key understanding missing: what it actually feels like to live with a problem every single wash day, and why solving it was worth building a company around.
Here's something worth sitting with: Black women founders make up under 2% of businesses that receive venture capital funding, even as our community drives demand across nearly every category of beauty and hair care. That gap isn't about the strength of the idea. It's about who's in the room making the decision, and whether they understand the experience the idea is actually solving for.
That's exactly why representation matters, not just in who's in our industries, but in who gets funded to build what people who look like us actually need. And it's exactly why Shawna's first lesson for every founder is so important: consider protecting what you build before you ever ask someone else to believe in it.
Why Protect Your Idea
Shawna spent a decade as a U.S. Patent Examiner before she filed a patent of her own, and she opened the conversation with a warning for every entrepreneur:
"Building value and owning value is two different things." She explained that intellectual property, patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, is often the piece Black entrepreneurs skip. "We think about being a hustler, being an entrepreneur, selling a product... and then we never own the brand, the IP, or any of it," she said.
Her advice: consider protecting your idea, even a slogan or a name, before you spend a dollar building the business around it.
The STEM Behind the Spundle
Most people will never think about this when they drop their bundles off for a wash, but someone had to engineer that process from nothing. Shawna broke down the arc of her invention:
"I think being an engineer honestly helped me trust the process," Shawna said.
Lab leaders, this is what we mean when we say STEM is already inside the products and services you use every day. Someone who looks like you engineered the dryer your stylist might use next.
What It Actually Took to Fund This
This is the part of Shawna's story we want every founder, and every lab leader thinking about building something of their own, to really sit with.
While working as a U.S. Patent Examiner, Shawna couldn't legally file a patent of her own without first leaving the role for a full year. That meant moving fast without capital, while the clock on her own idea kept ticking. In 2019, she made a decision that still stops us in our tracks: she became a surrogate mother of twins to raise her first five figures of funding.
"It was a real sacrifice," she told us. "We don't get access to this VC capital. We don't get access to capital for these amazing, brilliant ideas."
Shawna's path reflects a reality facing many Black women: when the traditional doors stay closed, some of us find another way in, even when that way costs more than money.
That decision changed everything. It connected her with Mac Conwell, a Morgan State alum who would become her first investor. When he heard her story, he told her: "Do you know who you are? You are the modern-day Madam C.J. Walker." Shawna went and researched Madam Walker's life and found a line that stayed with her:
"I got my start by giving myself a start." - Madam C.J. Walker
She calls herself Madam S.T. Stepp-Jones to this day.
Conwell went on to raise a small venture capital micro-fund off the strength of Shawna's story, and invested $250,000 into Divaneering Lab Inc. in 2021, the same year Shawna was finally able to leave the Patent Office full-time.
From Invention to Business
Having the invention is one thing. Shawna described bringing it to market as hard as it comes in waves: capital first, then team, then manufacturing, then getting customers to trust something brand new. Building an engineering team without shared lived experience meant extra time spent on cultural context. Manufacturing at scale meant balancing cost against functionality. And putting an imperfect, oversized early prototype in front of real people meant hearing hard feedback before the product was ready to hear it.
"I know that this is going to happen because they don't know the end product," she said of comments on the device's size. "But the functionality is really what the value is."
Spundle is now crowdfunding for $25,000 to fund design for manufacturing and Spundle’s first short production run: five units built with a manufacturing partner in Columbia, South Carolina. Three will go to early adopters, and two will complete UL safety certification. Alongside the hardware, Shawna is building a workforce model, training young women as certified Spundle operators so salon owners can seamlessly offer same-day wig and weave maintenance as a brand new revenue stream into their existing operations.
You can support Spundle's next development phase to help bring the product to market by donating here.
Divaneering Impact Lab, Shawna’s Baltimore-based STEM & Innovation social impact venture. is also launching a beauty tech apprenticeship for high school girls in January 2027, which creates hands-on STEM, Innovation, and workforce development opportunities for young women.
3 Takeaways From The Divaneer's Blueprint
Be sure to consider how you protect your idea, not just how you protect your revenue. Shawna's advice to every founder is for entrepreneurs to consider intellectual property protection early. She encouraged listeners to understand its strategic value and to secure what's theirs: a name or a slogan, etc. The timing and strategy around securing Intellectual Property protections depend on business models and innovation, but should be on every growing business owner's radar.
Engineering thinking is a process, not a personality trait. Design, build, test, iterate. Shawna's decade of prototypes, from a $60 Amazon dryer to a custom airflow system, is proof that the finished product is never the starting point.
Sometimes the capital you need has to come from your own community. Shawna funded her prototype through personal sacrifice because the traditional doors wouldn't open. Now she's asking her own community to help fund Spundle's next chapter, and that's not a step backward. It's the same resourcefulness that built the company in the first place.
What Our Lab Leaders Get From a Conversation Like This
What our lab leaders take from Shawna's story isn't just a lesson about hardware or patents; it's about permission. Permission to build slow and iterate in public; permission to protect an idea before anyone tells you it's worth protecting; and permission to ask your own community for what you need when no one else will give it to you.
Shawna Stepp-Jones came to our stage as an engineer, a former patent examiner, and a founder who's spent a decade turning her own frustration into a whole new category in beauty tech. What she built didn't start with funding or a business plan. It started with a 40-minute drive she got tired of making.
Thank you to our presenting partner, Fly Girl Approved Hair Perfume, for making these conversations possible every single month.
Unlock The Science of Beauty airs the third Tuesday of every month on YouTube Live.
Giving STEM a Makeover.
Penned by Jessica Clark of Imanee'-Works for The Science of Beauty.
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