Your Beauty App
The problem
There's no central place for clients to find artists, so artists pay thousands just to be seen.
Clients
Nowhere central to look
When someone needs a stylist, lash tech or nail artist, they fall back on word of mouth and scattered social posts. There's no trusted place to search and book.
Artists
Paying just to be seen
To get found, artists pour thousands of dollars and countless hours into advertising, social media and consultants, just to reach clients who already need them.
You didn't become an artist to chase clients, or pay a fortune just to be discovered.
The solution
We're not inventing a category. We're building the platform that finally connects artists and clients.
Salons
List open chairs, suites and rooms for rent.
Artists
Rent a space, serve clients, and build a clientele.
Clients
Discover and book the right artist.
One app connecting all three. Here's what it gives them.
The market · Why now
Booth & suite rental is the fastest-rising salon model
Salon Renter · market trends
Independent artists are replacing salon employment
No incumbent owns this category yet
And that's before insurance, LLC formation & supplies
The product
Search that speaks beauty, powered by Muse — our AI concierge that turns plain language into the right result. “Find a lash tech near me, open Saturday.”
For salon owners
Place Pages
A branded landing page for your salon and every artist on your roster.
Space Listings
List open chairs, suites and rooms by the hour, day, week or month.
Rent Collection
Rent collected on autopilot, with automatic increase notices.
Revenue Insights
See what your salon makes and which spaces perform.
Messaging
Talk to artists and clients in real time, in one place.
For artists
Booth Rentals
Find and rent your next chair, suite or room with Muse.
Profile Pages
Your booking site: portfolio, services, prices and live calendar.
Booking
Clients book on your terms: your hours, prices and services.
Payments
Card on file, captured when the service is done. You always get paid.
Messaging & Reviews
Client chats, SMS confirmations and verified reviews in one place.
Business model
Future revenue · a marketplace of marketplaces
Insurance partnerships · Simply Business
LLC formation for new artists · Taylor Brands
Boosted profiles & results
Supplies & services marketplace · cleaning, blade sharpening, access control, maintenance
Competition
| Gildra | Vagaro | Fresha | Square | Meevo | Boulevard | Booksy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Booth & space-rental marketplace | |||||||
| Automated rent collection | |||||||
| Three-sided (owners · artists · clients) | |||||||
| Client booking marketplace | |||||||
| Booking & payments |
Square, Meevo and Boulevard are tools you pay to run your own book. Vagaro, Fresha and Booksy bring clients, but only Gildra also rents the chair.
Strategy
Others built for salons. We're building for independent artists.
What's been tried
Built for the taxi companies
Built for salon-employed artists: commission, part and full time
You have to win the artist and their boss
A two-sided sign-up, twice the friction
Gildra's strategy
Building Uber, for artists
We target independent artists who rent their own space.
Win the salon, or the artist. Not both.
Either side gets us in, no gatekeeper
Already independent, already paying rent
Uber didn't sell software to taxi companies. It empowered the drivers. We give independent artists the same, then widen from there.
Go-to-market
Phase 1 · Supply
Acquire spaces
Sell automated rent collection to independently owned booth-rent salons. Their open spaces get listed and seen by artists for free.
Phase 2 · Demand
Convert artists
Renters from Phase 1 drop their paid booking apps for Gildra. AI assistants migrate their schedule from Square, Booksy or Vagaro and invite their clients in.
Phase 3 · Scale
Expand the map
Repeat city by city, then widen to more artist types and the value-added services around them.
Each phase feeds the next: paying salons bring artists, switching artists bring clients, and no subscription is the hook that converts them.
Traction
spaces listed
Across 6 independently owned salons.
artists onboarded
Renting and building their books on Gildra.
total users
Salons, artists and clients on the platform.
MVP live and in active use, iOS app in beta testing, first launch market selected, with rent collection and bookings running.
The team
Megan Nutting
Product & Partnerships
Salon owner and licensed cosmetologist with firsthand experience in booth and suite rentals. Built Gildra to solve a problem she lived, not one she guessed, with deep relationships driving early adoption and trust.
Justin Nutting
Engineering
Software engineer leading product architecture and development. Designed and built the Gildra MVP from the ground up, and owns platform scalability, security, and feature execution.
A salon owner and an engineer who lived both sides of the problem: vacant inventory and the struggle to rent.
The ask
Raising through the Emerging Founder Residency to launch our first market and prove product-market fit.
Use of funds
What $300K gets us to
The vision
Gildra becomes Your Beauty App: the household marketplace where everyone finds and books services with the artists near them.
Gildra