IN THE NEWS: Recent Georgia Tech and UNC Grads Are Taking Their AI-Driven Hair App To Microsoft’s Global Startup Stage
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Matt Steele and Alycea Adams were summer interns at Delta Air Lines in Atlanta when they found a common interest in hair care.
Steele, a computer science major at Georgia Tech and competitive swimmer, shaved his head because chlorine had so damaged his hair. Adams, an information technology major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had grown an impressive social media following around her curly hair care journey. As technologists and entrepreneurs at heart, Steele and Adams started to explore what it would look like to have a platform that could identify different hair types and ultimately give suggestions around personalized products.
The two started working on the HairMatch app in earnest at the start of the 2024/2025 school year.
Tech For Better Hair Days
Users download the HairMatch app and fill out a quick quiz about their current hair knowledge. After that, the user takes two pictures of their hair (including one a close-up shot of their curl patterns). The startup’s AI provides an analysis on the photo, giving users information on their hair type, porosity, and texture.
“From there, [HairMatch] allows you to directly access a curated list of products that are meant for your specific hair type,” Steele told Hypepotamus. The app also provides learning modules to help those with thick curls better understand how to take care of and style their hair.
In its early days, HairMatch got initial feedback and customers from Adams’ sizable social media following (she has over 884k followers on TikTok who watch her hair tutorials).
In just a few months after launching, HairMatch was downloaded and used in over 30 countries. That number has grown dramatically as the HairMatch team comes up on a year of work.
For Steele, building HairMatch is about building something that makes an impact.
“I want to build products for people,” he added. “I want to bring technology to places where historically, technology hasn’t been utilized [to improve] someone’s life.”
Building HairMatch With Microsoft
To grow on a technical side, HairMatch has leveraged partnerships with Microsoft. The startup uses Azure AI Foundry to host its Vision Language Model, which processes image data and enhances HairMatch’s analysis.
Now, HairMatch is a finalist for Microsoft’s upcoming global student startup competition, the 23rd annual Imagine Cup. The championship, which will take place next week, will see three startups compete for a grand prize of $100,000. The winner will also get a mentorship session with Microsoft Chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella.
Steele said that the HairMatch team learned about the Imagine Cup opportunity from a Georgia Tech professor.
The Microsoft competition is not the only big news for Steele and Adams. The two graduated last week from their respective schools. Now, the two are ready to see how they can scale HairMatch to more users in more countries.
“We’ve validated that the product works and that people like it,” Steele added. “Now, we’re trying to see how we achieve [more] at a higher scale.”
