Sharmadean Reid

FOUNDER OF WAH Nails AND BOOKING APP Beautystack

“I want to change the world”

‘What I’m good at,

and what makes me happy, is empowering women to make their own money,’ says Sharmadean Reid. The woman who changed the beauty salon model with WAH Nails is now disrupting the tech industry with Beautystack, an app that allows beauty professionals to post their work and users to like it, comment or make a booking.

Although WAH began in Dalston and became a global super-brand, Reid had other plans. ‘WAH blew up in a way I didn’t expect. I didn’t want a chain of salons,’ she explains. ‘I’ve always loved technology, and when I heard a statistic on the increase in UK immigrant men’s employment opportunities thanks to Deliveroo and Uber, I realised there was no equivalent for women. That’s how I thought of Beautystack.’

‘I couldn’t get developers to take it seriously. They were guys who didn’t want to work in beauty,’ she says. ‘They were like, “We want to solve big problems,” and I was like, “This is huge, it’s global!” No matter their circumstances, people will consume beauty. We talk about helping women start businesses – this app means a girl can start working straight away.’

Reid is passionate about women in tech. ‘We need to see that capability in girls early and steer them into those subjects. One of my goals is to increase gender equality in business. I want to change the world for the better.’