At OpenView

OpenView Leads $13M Series A in Mangomint, Next-Gen Salon and Spa Software

December 21, 2022

The OpenView team is thrilled to announce our Series A investment in Mangomint, a cloud-based software solution that helps salon and spa businesses delight clients, manage their operations, and ensure all stakeholders receive a five-star experience.

Supporting the resurgence of beauty and wellness services

The pandemic was catastrophic for the beauty and wellness services industry. While some were able to stay afloat, shutdowns literally forced many in-person businesses to close their doors. Three years later, the market for beauty and wellness services has made a resurgence with an estimated ~$450 billion in spend in 2022.

While the industry itself is thriving, many business owners are still struggling with technology and how software can help them run better businesses. Owners are still asking themselves “How do I provide the absolute best experience to my clients? How do I attract and retain the best staff? How can I run my business without having to be on-site 24/7?” Especially in this new economic environment, many business owners are searching for solutions to cut costs, save time, and become more profitable and resilient. Unfortunately, many salon and spa owners are still struggling to find technology that simplifies rather than complicates their lives and solves these business challenges. While there are many software vendors out there, many salons and spas are still drowning in a sea of sticky notes, scratch pads and a patchwork of software solutions cobbled together that kind of get the job done, but don’t totally nail the experience for anyone.

This presents a huge opportunity for SaaS companies focused on the beauty and wellness industry to take user experience to the next level for all – users including clients, staff and stylists, owners and more. For a profession that is focused on aesthetics and experience, it’s been a shame that beauty and wellness has lacked software that meets the industry’s high standards for beauty and function.

Enter Mangomint—the first software for the beauty and wellness industry whose mission is to make itself ‘invisible’.

Built for the end user.

One of the many things that impressed us about Mangomint was their focus on the end user. We were shocked to learn that the average Mangomint user spends ~270 minutes per day using the software and despite this barely notices using Mangomint since it’s an enabling part of their day-to-day activities. Much like the payment experience with Uber, the best experiences are the ones that happen so naturally you barely even notice them.

Mangomint has added a number of features that remove friction from the beauty and wellness experience including:

  • Seamless online booking: No usernames, no passwords. And no more phone calls. Just simple and easy online booking that delights clients.
  • Smart automations: Notifications, reminders and even communications with a stylist including two-way texting all ensure the client has the best possible experience.
  • Streamlined checkout: Just like Uber, clients can get up and go after service.
  • Retail sales & memberships: For business owners that want to diversify their revenue, Mangomint enables salons and spas to enable retail sales through Shopify, add membership or gift card sales and much more.
  • Financial services: Integrated payments and more so that Mangomint is a salon or spa owner’s one-stop shop for technology and financial services.

Born with PLG in their DNA

The second thing that really stood out to us was that Mangomint was a product-led business from the beginning. They have a unique advantage, especially in a market saturated with companies following a more traditional business model.

The salon and spa market is extremely fragmented with hair and nail salons, tattoo parlors, massage and medical spas and much more on street corners all across the US and internationally. For many owners, technology isn’t their strong suit and they are unfamiliar with software needed to manage their operations. From a B2B SaaS perspective, it’s also expensive and inefficient for sales reps to call every salon and spa in the U.S. to get them up and running on their platform. Even if they could, these customers aren’t likely to be successful if the product is too hard to use.

For people to realize the value of a software solution on their own, the product needs to be extremely straightforward and user-friendly. Mangomint wants users to realize value quickly and on their own, which is a central tenet of PLG philosophy.

It takes a lot of discipline to build a great PLG business. We have seen this with other enduring PLG businesses in our portfolio like Calendly, Datadog, Expensify and more. And we’ve seen similar grit, discipline and creativity with the team at Mangomint.

Moving forward with the Mangomint team

The Mangomint founders Daniel Lang, CEO, Dan Poineau, CTO, and Sandra Huber wowed us with their dedication to looking ahead to the long-term. Daniel and the entire founding team are deeply empathetic to their customers’ needs, and truly understand what problems require solving in this industry.

We’re excited to welcome Daniel, Dan, Sandra along with the entire Mangomint team, to the OV portfolio.

Mangomint will be using funds from this Series A investment to scale up engineering and product development, in addition to building a GTM motion and community building.

Learn more about Mangomint here.

Note: Mangomint, Expensify, and Calendly are OpenView portfolio companies. Datadog is a former portfolio company. For a full list of OV portfolio companies, please visit our Portfolio page.

Partner

Sanjiv focuses on venture and growth investments in B2B software, and is particularly interested in large legacy industries that have not or are undergoing digital transformation. Sanjiv joined OpenView as a Partner in November 2020.