In the $50B US beauty industry, Drybar built a $833M empire on a single, deceptively simple premise: blowouts only, no cuts, no color. It's a brilliant business model that fundamentally misunderstands the customer experience.

"Drybar isn't selling hair styling—it's selling a 45-minute escape where you're guaranteed to leave looking better than you arrived."

The leadership team—Alli Webb (co-founder), Liz Williams (CEO), Michael Landau (exec chairman)—has executed a classic venture-scale playbook: standardize the experience, expand geographically, layer in products. But the 1.9-star rating suggests they've optimized for operational efficiency at the cost of the very thing that makes blowouts special: the personal touch. When your NPS is this low, you're not building a brand—you're building a utility.

• Capital efficiency: $833M revenue on $48.5M funding (17x revenue-to-funding ratio)
• Scale without saturation: 2,568 employees across likely 100+ locations suggests ~25 employees per location
• Product-led growth: Hair care products serve as both revenue stream and customer acquisition channel
• Tech-forward for traditional retail: Modern stack (Tailwind, Bootstrap) suggests aggressive digital transformation