Are you bald? There is artificial intelligence for that

For Cyriak Lefort, the idea for his new startup MyHair AI came two years ago. The French national was sitting in a New York hair salon getting a routine haircut when the hairdresser looked at him and said, “You’re starting to lose a little bit of your hair,” Lefort, 32, recalls being told.

Lefort continued: “He did not say that to my friend who was sitting next to me, but only to me.” “In my mind, I wasn’t bald, and I still don’t think I am. But when someone tells you you’re losing your hair, you buy whatever they suggest.”

So, he bought the shampoo the hairdresser suggested, and left thinking that anyone could sell a man anything by telling him he was losing his hair. “Hair loss is an emotional topic for men and women,” he said.

This interaction led him down a rabbit hole where he discovered how confusing the hair loss industry was, with so much misinformation and clinics with unverified reviews. (He later went to a hair doctor who told him he was not, in fact, bald.)

Lefort wanted to create a product that used artificial intelligence to help men diagnose hair loss.

LeFort is a serial entrepreneur, exited one company and currently runs two others with 28-year-old Tylen Babnick. The duo decided to collaborate and build a third company: MyHair AI. They coded the product in just a few weeks. It works like this: Users take photos of their heads and upload them to the MyHair app. Artificial intelligence technology analyzes these images to measure hair density and detect early signs of hair loss.

Over time, as the user uploads more photos, the AI ​​tracks the progression of hair loss, allowing people to build personalized actions to protect against hair loss. Users can also find specialists or discover clinics through the platform and read verified reviews so as not to get scammed.

“Our AI tells you what’s actually going on with your hair, matches you with products that suit your hair type, and explains the science behind them, including potential side effects,” LeFort said. “By bringing transparency and medical accuracy to this $50 billion market, we believe we can completely reorganize how people understand, treat, and shop for hair health.”

It took about a year of ideation, a few weeks of bio-programming on the indicator, a few months of scientific and clinical validation, and a few more weeks of creating a consumer app for the duo to be ready to launch MyHair.AI. The company launched this summer.

“We didn’t hire anyone for the prototype; it was all code,” he said, adding that now that the product has grown, their engineers are working with the code to make sure it’s robust and scalable. MyHair AI is one of many examples of how quickly startups can build these days with the advent of programming prototypes.

The product already has more than 1,000 paid subscribers and 200,000 user accounts, Lefort said. The app has analyzed more than 300,000 scalp images and has partnerships that give specialists and clinics access to MyHair AI so they can assess their patients faster. Dr. Tess, another renowned dermatologist, will join the company’s board of directors, the company announced Wednesday.

Among other companies in the market in particular is Homs. MyHair is different from other products because the product is one of the few that has built a custom AI model, trained on more than 300,000 hair images, to diagnose baldness — rather than using a more general MBA to do so, Lefort said.

Lefort said the company is now focusing on expansion. It wants to build a booking platform and partner with more clinics. He hopes to build artificial intelligence that works in the “real world.”

“Men worry about two things related to their health: impotence and hair loss,” LeFort said. “We are dealing with one of the biggest daily concerns.”