How I Built This with Guy Raz - Drybar: Alli Webb

Episode Date: January 9, 2017

A decade ago, full-time mom Alli Webb noticed a gap in the beauty market: there was nowhere that just focused on blow-drying hair. Now with 70 locations, Drybar is testament to Webb's motto: Focus on one thing and be the best at it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. That first day was bananas. I mean, women were lining up women were pissed because they were coming and they were like, it said you could walk in.

And I'm like, we don't have any more chairs. And I was. I was doing blowouts at the first chair and I was running the front down. and I was, I mean, I was there around the clock probably for six months before I took a day off because I just couldn't leave it. And I didn't want to leave it. It was so fun. From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Ali Webb went from being a stay-at-home mom just six years ago to building a national chain of blow-dry salons called Dry Bar. When Ali Webb was a kid growing up in Boca Raton in Southern Florida, school wasn't really her thing.

Nope, wasn't interested in school, wasn't very good at it. I was kind of dubbed the underachiever of the family. It was like, what the hell is Ali going to do with her life? She eventually went to college, and after about a year, she dropped out. For a while, Allie just sort of drifted. She lived in New York for some time, and then she moved back to Florida and lived with their parents. But her older brother, Michael, he seemed to have to have. it all together.

He was like the overachiever of the family and he was like naturally good student, like were Jewish and he had a bommitsva. I was like, there's no way I'm going to Hebrew school. But he did it and he was great and he was like the smarty pants of the family. So while Allie was sort of floating around in her early 20s, Michael was doing pretty well for himself. He was moving up the corporate ladder. And in the mid-1990s, Allie started to have this idea of what she wanted to do with her

life. So she asked Michael for advice. He was the first person I talked about, and I said, you know, I feel like I really want to go to beauty school. That is what I really want to do. And my parents were kind of like, they didn't get it. And they had these little old lady clothing stores in Delray Beach and Boga. And next to every one of them was a hair salon. And there was these little old ladies getting their hair done.

And they were like, that's what you want to do? I'm like, no, that is not what I want to do. I want to move to New York City and I want to do fashion shows and I want to do editorial. And I had like grand dreams of what I would do in the hair industry. And my brother, we had always been very, very close. Like, if my parents were sitting here, they would tell you that he raised me. Like, we were very, very, very close. He was really one of the few people who really believed in this little dream that I had.

So I was living in Boka, and I enrolled in the local beauty school. And I loved every second of it. From the moment I enrolled, I was like, ah, these are my people. Yeah. I mean, that's how I felt. I loved it. I loved the environment. I was so happy, and I soaked it all up.

And while I was in beauty school, I was working for a guy who owned a local salon. And he was amazing. And he taught me so much. And again, I wouldn't have known it at the time. But because he owned the salon, I really saw how he managed the salon, too, which was an education I was getting that I didn't even know I was getting. But at that point, your ambition on life was to work in a salon. Well, to do hair. And I didn't know what capacity that was going to mean.

Although I had this, like, itch to get back to New York. And I was also a huge fan of John Sahag who's sadly not alive anymore, but he was like the pioneer of dry cutting, which I'm not sure. I'm assuming like instead of cutting wet hair, you cut it when it's dry? Exactly. And it just wasn't done before John. And he was like it. So like what made him hit? Like what was his deal?

He had one salon in New York on Madison Avenue. He was this rock and roll kind of cool guy. He had his two huge greyhounds that like sat next to him in the salons and I had it in my head. That was the only person I wanted to work for. So I moved to New York, and I remember it like it was yesterday. Got an interview. I, like, walked in with my leather pants on and, like, tried to, like... Because you're trying to look New York.

Trying to look New York and cool. And I remember him, like, looking at me and making on contact, and I was like, I know I'm going to get this job. It was, like, an assistant job. It wasn't, like, the world's greatest... An assistant? At the salon. And I was assisting him a little bit, and I was assisting the other stylist in the shop,

which meant I was the person washing and blowing the hair. And it was a great education. I was still very, very new in the industry, even though I had my license and was on the floor in South Florida. It was a very different ballgame in New York. So, I mean, I used to do all of John's clients and his girlfriend, and it was like the best training you could ever imagine. Yeah, so, I mean, it sounds like you were having a great time, but then I'm afraid that you left. You dropped out of, like, hair and you went to become a publicist. Is that right?

Well, not even. I became like an assistant to the guy who was running the music department at Rogers and Cowan. It's like one of the big ones in New York and they represent everybody, which was a pretty awesome job. I mean, he represented Paul McCartney, Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez. So now I'm like, I don't know, 25, 26. And then I started to get antsy again, but that was to like to find my husband and get married and have kids. Wow. And I started getting that bug.

And during this time, I did meet my husband. In New York. And we met at a bar named Hell in the me packing district. In hell. You met him in hell. He always says we were a matchmate in hell. Like a dive bar. in the meatpacking district that obviously doesn't exist anymore today.

Okay, so you met this guy who was now your husband, of course. What was he doing at the time? He was in advertising. So we started dating and we got very, it was like love at first sight. I mean, really, we were together like every day since and we practically moved in with each other like right away. So we were, we got married. We got engaged a year after we met and then we got married two years after we met. And I think I was, you know, having grown up in South Florida, the winters in New York,

we're starting to kill me. I was like, I got to get out of here. And so we decided to move to L.A. And he, for him in advertising, it's like he needs to be in a big city. So you decided to move to L.A. just because you wanted to change a scene. And he thought, I'll just get a job there. Yeah.

And you figured, I'll figure something out. Yeah. Well, at that point, I was like really itching to have kids. Yeah. So within a year, we got pregnant. And my first son, Grant, was born in 2005. And I was, like, as happy as could be. And I thought I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom forever.

I loved every second of it. It was so great. And then we had our second son. And do you have kids? Yeah, two boys. Yeah. So it was like, it got a lot harder when there was two. And after being at home, I stayed home mom for five years, I got really antsy again.

Like, I can't go to the park every day. And I remember my husband used to come home from work. And I'd be like, da-da-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Because I hadn't really, I'd talk to kids all day. And I felt like, man, I need to do something for myself again. And that's what initially started. And then it was like, well, what am I going to do? Am I going to go back to working at a hair salon?

Like, I have two kids now. What do I want to do? And because blowouts and doing hair was always my thing. And so many of my girlfriends would ask me to blow out their hair all the time. They would just like say, hey, can you? Because they knew my story. They knew I was hair. I always had good hair.

And so they would always ask me. Would you charge them? No, no. I would just do it, especially if it was like for a party or an event or a wedding or something. I just did everybody's hair. And I was good at it. And so I remember like sitting in my living. with my best friend with our like babies crawling around.

And I was like, you know, maybe I should start a mobile blow dry business where I go around and blow out like my mommy friends because I was very immersed in like the mommy community, which is really strong in L.A. So I posted on this mommy group called Peachhead where it was like a Yahoo group and it was this resource for moms. It was like 5,000 moms in L.A. And they all went to this site. So I posted on there one day when I had this idea popped in my head.

I said, I'm a long-time stylist. I'm thinking about starting a mobile blow-dry business where I'd charge. I don't know, $35 or $40. Would anybody out there be interested? I got flooded with emails. Like, yes, I'm interested. I paid $35 to $40 for a blow-dry. Yes, pretty much.

So I started getting emails. So then my husband was like, I think this is such a great idea. And he said, but you need a cute website. If they think it's cute, they'll call you. But at this point, you're thinking, this is going to be like my side hustle. Totally a side hustle. I am just going to, were you thinking about it? getting a van?

No, no. I thought about putting all the tools I had in a duffel bag and heading out of the door. In your car? In my car. And so you would blow dry at their homes? Yes. I was like, while your baby's sleeping, because like we were all like when our baby is napping was the only time we could do anything, I'll come to your house and bledry

your hair. You know, I mean, that was, I mean, this was not a very, like, thought out plan. That was, it was so basic. And honestly, we came up with $40 because it was, like, cheap and easy. It's like $220s, done. And, like, you put this out there on this mommy website, and all of a sudden, mommies were like, yep, I totally want this. And you sort of, like, put things in your calendar.

Yeah, and I started doing these boats. And, of course, like, I still had to pick up my kids from preschool at, like, 2 o'clock or whatever was. And then drive in L.A. traffic, right? Yes, I was in traffic. And between gas and whatever, I don't think I actually made any money. Right. But it really wasn't about the money. It was much more about getting out there and, like, talking to adults and just, like, doing something for myself

and being able to kind of, you know, satisfy that desire in me to, to do something for myself again. So you start doing this. You start driving around the west side of L.A. And I got really busy, really fast. And it was very word of mouth. Like I'd go and do one mom and then she would tell like six of her friends. And then all of a sudden they would call me.

And it was such a thrill. And I got to the point where I was saying no more than I was saying yes. And so that's when I was like, huh, you know, this is interesting. And I think that's, then I started asking my clients. I said, what do you do when I can't come to your house? And they're like, well, I either like begrudgingly go to my cut in color salon. where they overcharge me and want to cut my hair and there's all this pressure.

Okay. Or I go to the like discount chain down the street, which kind of sucks and the experience is bad and bad lighting. And I was like, God, there really is two bad choices out there. And that's it. And so that's when I think the idea started percolating for me. And I was like, huh, you know, there's no place like in the middle. And that's when I went to my brother.

And he was working for Yahoo at the time. Also when Yahoo was in like, was like the thing. Yeah. And it was really successful. And he was watching my life. little business from the sidelines, and he thought it was an interesting idea, but nothing beyond that. So I told him that I thought I should turn my little mobile blowdry business into an actual brick and mortar. So instead of me going to my clients, they could start coming to me.

And I asked him to have basically helped me and help me finance it. Did at any point, anyone, particularly, I'm thinking men, say to you, wait, you want to start a store where you just blow dry hair and what? Like who's going to go there? Like, why would anybody pay for that? Well, and also my brother, ironically, and my husband both bald. And they are like, they have no, they're like, what? Although my husband always had this interesting insight because he knows what my hair looks like naturally. And he always would say, you get your nails done, but I never notice it.

When you get your hair done, I notice it. And so he was like, I think this is the next nail salon. I think this is going to kill it. Let's do this. Coming up, how Ali started to imagine a salon with a service most women didn't yet know they wanted. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So Allie Webb had this idea for a business where you just blow dry people's hair.

No cutting, no coloring, just blow drying. And her brother Michael and her husband Cameron, they were on board. So to start the company, they cashed out Cameron's retirement accounts, and Michael put in a chunk of money he had made during the dot-com boom at Yahoo. And the three of them, they started to get to work, trying to figure out the details of what Dry Bar would be, while at the same time still holding their day jobs. That's when it was like the moonlighting phase,

when I was still running my mobile business and taking care of my kids. My brother had a real estate marketing company at the time, and Cameron was a creative director in an advertising agency, which is like he already was working at creative. hours. So what would happen is every night, once the kids were asleep, my brother was at his house, Cameron was home, we'd all be like on our laptops in bed and we'd be working on drybar. And so Cameron at night started developing the dry bar website and building out the website. And he was really new to that. He never built a website, but he was a designer so he could do all of that.

So in the wee hours of the night for weeks, we started developing the website and Michael and I started looking at real estate and trying to figure out where the shop was going to go and talking to landlords and all this, like, crazy stuff. And I was on the phone with the cosmetology board, like, around the clock, trying to figure out what I needed to open this shop. And then, you know, that's kind of how it all started. Were you nervous? I mean, did you feel like, like, this would be okay or was, like, a part of you?

Like, this is a lot of money that we've put into this. They were more nervous than me. My brother was probably the most nervous because he had the biggest stake in it financially. But I had a really good feeling. It was like one of those things that my kids. gut, I was like, I know there's enough women out there like me that we'll make one shop work. I'm sure one shop will work, or at least work a little bit. And at that point, we had figured out if we can do like 30 blowouts a day, 30, 40 blowouts a day, 30, 40 blowouts, like, that'd be a great business.

And so in my mind, like, I remember going to sleep at night being like, if we can do five blowouts an hour and we're open X amount. Like, I would literally like figure out how many people we're going to have to come in to make those numbers. But you were going to do the blowouts too, right? I mean, you were going to be running the shop, blow-drying hair, and you'd have to hire people. Yes. Well, so the hiring process was kind of funny. And there was a couple of stylists that still work for us who remember this. Like, I used to have stylists come to my house and blow out my hair. That was their interview.

You know, I would talk to them, make sure they were nice. And then they'd blow out my hair. And if they did a good job, I'd hire them. I mean, that was it back then. And I only hired, like, I don't know, about 15 stylists. And I wasn't sure. One of the things I wasn't sure about is if there was enough stylists out there like me that were interested in just the styling part like I was. But there were.

What was it that was going to be your like competitive advantage? Like what was there was no competition. There was no one doing this. No, there was no competition. There were hair salon. How was it that nobody thought of this? Nobody thought of it. There was nothing.

So you found a spot and where did you open the first location? So I was living in Santa Monica and the first location was on San Vicente. which was a thoroughfare. So if you came off the 405 and you were going to Santa Monica, to Palisades or Brentwood, you kind of had to take that route. And also I should tell you that my brother, having worked on other big projects and he met this guy named Josh Heitler, who was an architect. And so my brother, one of the many, many things he's brought to the label, when I had

this idea to have a salon, he went to Josh and said, do you want to build a hair salon for my sister? And Josh was like, sure. And we offered him some equity to get involved. And that was, again, I don't even know if I would have thought of an architect. I mean, that was my brother. And what was your vision? Like, what was when he came to talk to you?

What did you say, like, how did you want it to look? Well, I knew I wanted it to feel like a bar. And I remember explaining to my brother and to Josh that if something that happened in my mobile blow dry business, that when I would go to my client's homes and do their blowouts, it was usually like in their living room. It was never in their personal bathroom in their home. So I'd do it in their living room. So they couldn't see the blowout when it was happening. And when I was done with the blowout, I'd say,

okay, now I'm ready for you to look at it. And so to go from not seeing your hair to seeing this amazing, gorgeous hair was like kind of a powerful thing. And I explained that to Josh and to Michael. And so that was kind of a task for Josh. Like how do we incorporate that into the design of this shop? So we, the mirrors are behind. the stations and that's very intentional that when you're the client is done the stylist spends her

round for the big reveal and that totally came for my my blowout business so the idea was that the experience was going to be different well and I wanted again it was like taking everything that I had accumulated in in all of my years as being a stylist and saying like I'm just going to do it the way I want to do it not the way it's always been done and again of course it was like a bar and I wanted the flat screen TV because I thought that would be like a fun getaway for women and like and what do you play on the TV. All like chick flicks. Nice.

All chick flicks. And it's like movies that you probably wouldn't watch again, but when you see them and they have subtitles, you get really drawn in. I mean, I sit there sometimes and I'm like, oh, man, I love this movie. Sleepless in Seattle. It is. It's like Sleepless in Seattle, like how to be single. Like we play like breakfast at Tiffany's like all of it.

And my, Michael, my brother had the idea to put charging stations for your iPhones at I mean, it was like, it was such, we got so lucky the fact that my brother and my husband and Josh and me. It was like we were this perfect storm of all these people that came together to do this and that had the perfect skill set. So it was just this, we were this like powerhouse that nobody had to pay anybody to do.

All right. So you opened the first location in Brentwood in 2010. 2010. And what happens to people show up? So I don't know if you remember Daily Candy. Yeah, it was like that daily email list of thing about fashion, right? Yeah.

Well, back in its like original state, Daily Candy was this, like, website or that you would get emails from them and they would be these, like, places you've never heard of and they would break, like, businesses and stories. You'd get these, like, nuggets of information that nobody knew. And we got Daily Candy to write a story about Dry Bar coming. That must have ran, like, three or four days before we opened. I remember sitting at lunch with my brother on our Blackberries, because it was four iPhones. And we used to get appointment notifications.

And all of a sudden, we're sitting at lunch, and our phones started going crazy. and all these appointments started booking. And we thought like the system was broken. We were like, what is going on? And then someone sent us the Daily Candy piece. And we were like, oh, my God, it's because Daily Candy ran today. And so everybody started booking appointments before we even open. And so that very first day, we opened to a very, very full shop.

And so that first day was bananas. I mean, women were lining up women were pissed because they were coming. And they were like, it said you could walk in. And I'm like, we don't have any more chairs. And I was. I was doing blowouts at the first chair and I was running the front desk. And I was, I was there around the clock probably for six months before I took a day off because I just couldn't leave it. And I didn't want to leave it.

It was so fun. So you guys were incredibly busy right from the beginning. So were you making a profit in that first year? Well, even within that first year, we turned everything back into the business. So not really. You know, I mean, we were barely taking any money for ourselves. And within six months, we opened our second store. and it just kept going and going.

How did you scale it up? I mean, obviously you had like a big hit on your hands. Right. So how did you begin the process of scaling it up when you didn't have a whole lot of cash to work with? Well, that was the challenge. And that's where it was like, thank God for my goal. Because Cam and I were like the creatives and we're like,

what now. You know, we really didn't know what to do. Neither of you guys were sort of business people. Not at all. But we all knew we had something on our hands. And we used to, I used to get women coming in being like, can you get these Beverly Hills women in their own shop? It was like, we were the cool club.

couldn't get into, but that's not very cool for long, you know. So. And did your husband at this point leave his job? No, he couldn't leave yet. Because I wasn't taking a salary. I was like, we still needed his salary. So he was, but he was still doing a lot of work. I mean, gosh, my poor husband, he was basically working two full-time jobs. And you had two kids. And we had two kids. So it was crazy. It was such like a life flip. And it was, you know, we just didn't, we couldn't believe how much our lives had changed. And yeah. And then Cameron stayed, I think it was about a year and a half before he actually left his job to be able to come to drive our full time. So as you started to scale up, did you have to go find outside investors?

So again, I knew nothing about raising money. And Michael started to say, hey, I think we should franchise this because we were getting mobbed with franchise requests. I remember, like, we had our first meeting with like a franchise consultant group at Cameron's office, like his big advertising office because that's the only place that we had in office. Like we could sit at a conference table. That's so funny that was so long ago. But so we started getting like our documentation together so we could franchise. And so I was a little like not like super excited about franchise because I didn't, I didn't want to like give it away is how I kind of felt about it.

Yeah. I mean, I would imagine that you would be freaked out that, you know, some franchise couldn't maintain the quality that you wanted to maintain. Oh yeah. It kept me up at night. And we were very, very particular and about who we franchised. franchise with and made sure that they understood the importance of all of that stuff. And like I said, there was that fear and there still is that fear today. But it was great. And it really did help spread our name and, you know, much quicker than we could have if we didn't do franchising. And

then we're raising money at the same time. You guys opened your first store in 2010, which is crazy. By the way, how many locations do you have today? 67. Well, 68 as of tomorrow. It's pretty insane that you go from being a stay-at-home mom to running a or being an executive at a multi-million dollar company in like two years. How did you mentally make that transition? It's still so mind-blowing to all of us that it took off and happened the way it has. It's been such a shift, and it was hard, and it's still hard to this day, balancing it all with the kids. But I think we all kind of grew into it pretty naturally.

And there's so much passion behind what we're doing. And we all love it so much that there's probably adrenaline rush that it was a lot of figuring it out as we went along. But we did. Do you work more now or do you work less now than you did when you started? It's a different kind of work. In the beginning, I was in the stores nonstop all the time. And I remember so well when it went from like three. to five to seven stores and being like, I can't be in all the stores at one time.

I used to be able. I remember we had Brentwood, West Hollywood, Palisades in Studio City. Like I could hop around. Those were pretty easy for me to get to store to store. And then as we started to grow, you know, I slowly but surely like started bringing in people who, you know, we brought in a regional manager who kind of managed the managers. And then I managed the regional manager. And it kind of kept going like that in that way.

And now we have this massive infrastructure now. How many people work for the company? Well, there's about 3,000 stylists and about, I don't know, maybe 70, 80 people in our support center. So it's pretty massive now. And so now it's like, you know, it's good and bad. I don't have to be in the weeds every day, which I, which is kind of good. But then it's like there's days that I'm like, you know, decisions get made and things get made that I'm not involved in anymore, which I used to be involved in so much. And, you know, it's like it's very hard for me to walk in stores.

They walk in stores. And I see everything that needs to be fixed and changed, you know, where I don't get to enjoy them the way most clients do. Does that not only drive you crazy, but drive the people in the store is crazy? When I come in. I think it makes everybody nervous, which is still so weird to me. I'm like, why are you nervous? But it does. And that is truly the weirdest thing.

And Courtney, our field director, she's like, why don't you understand that it makes people nervous? I'm like, I don't understand. and I don't think people should get nervous. What have you learned about, you know, I mean, you didn't have a business degree. You didn't have managerial experience. You weren't trained to do any of this. So what are some of, like, your strengths that you learned about and your weaknesses you learned about as you had to kind of take on these roles? Well, I think my strengths was the confidence that I knew this business really well.

Nobody could tell me I didn't know this business. I knew how to treat customers. I knew how to treat stylists. I knew how to make this business work. I knew how to talk to people, I think, from being in PR. You know, everything I had done, I always felt like, I mean, it's so cheesy. But I felt like everything that led me to this moment in my life. And I felt like I had what I needed to have to run these stores.

And then there were, you know, there are things that I didn't know that's where Michael and Cam came in. And Michael knew to hire, like, we needed a president of retail. I was like, I didn't even know that was a thing. Like, you know, and so there was so much of, like, the things that I didn't know were filled in. And I think that that was one of my biggest learning experiences. You need to bring on people who know what you don't. What is, I mean, a lot of people listening would say, I would never be able to work with my partner in a business.

Like, it's really hard, but it sounds like you guys have a really, you know, functional working relationship and a great marriage. Is that true? I mean, are there tension in running the business together? Yes. I mean, there is. I mean, my husband and I is certainly a struggle. And yeah, it definitely comes.

with its challenges. But the good so much more outweighs the bad. And we have, especially now, we have different teams that work under us. And so we don't have to like, we don't work nearly as closely as we did in the beginning. But there's so much trust that you have when you're working with your husband and your brother that it supersedes everything, I think. If I said to you, you know, seven years ago when you were, you know, driving around in your Nissan X-Tera to people's homes blow-drying hairs. I used to love that car. In seven years, you're going to have 70 stores all across the country and you're going to be doing $100 million in revenue a year. Would you be like...

You're out of your mind? Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, I could not see that far down. And I remember people asking us, you know, what's next for you guys? And I was like, we're going to keep opening stores. And I think it was, you know, to be at 67, I mean, it's so mind-blowing because it wasn't a premeditated, like, we didn't have a business plan. It wasn't like, this is our goal and this is our trajectory.

Like, there was none of that. It was all this very organic and we're on to something so we're going to figure it out and keep growing it. Yeah. And it's very, very rewarding for me personally because I was like the one in the family that everyone was like, oh God, what's Allie going to do? And so it's particularly gratifying, especially for my parents who have seen my brother and I succeed together in business. And we love that we're able to be close on another level through the business. So it's pretty special. Ali Webb, founder of Drybar.

The company, by the way, is planning to expand internationally very soon into Canada and also into Europe. Ali just published a book all about blow-drying hair. It's called The Dry Bar Guide to Good Hair for All. And you might not believe it if you met her or if you saw pictures over, but Ali's hair is actually naturally curly. I guess I should clarify, you have very uncurly hair right now. Yes, yes. But this is like a very carefully styled love.

Did you get that done in the last few? few days. Well, I am a professional stylist myself and I have been for 20 years. So I actually did my own hair this morning. I know how to do that. I built a business on that. And don't turn us off just yet because after the short break, stories on the things you guys are building. Stay with us. It's how I built this from NPR. Okay, we're now at the part of the show we call How You Built That. And this week, we have a story out of Nashville, Tennessee. My name is Dr. Mike Boutera. I'm the founder and CEO of Artifon. Artifon makes musical instruments, which was a natural move for Mike,

because he plays like a few dozen instruments himself. Anyway, around six years ago, Mike was at a dinner party with a bunch of musician friends. And after dinner, we wanted to play music together, but we didn't have any instruments. We just had the phones in our pockets. So they hooked up their phones to computer speakers, launched some music-making apps, and they started to jam. But we were just staring at our screens.

And we really wanted to interact with each other or get lost in the music, close our eyes. You know, like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards. They wanted to feel the music. But Mike and his friends, they felt kind of pathetic. They were just staring at their screens and their dinky little speakers. And then Mike had an idea. I thought, what if this speaker had a guitar neck? What if this speaker had keys on it?

What if it had a little drum pad? I just wanted this speaker to become a musical instrument. So Mike called up some of his engineer friends, and he asked them to help him build one. And this is what they made, a digital instrument that looks kind of like the neck of a guitar, but sounds like, well, like almost every instrument you can imagine. It has a fingerboard and a row of buttons that can be strummed or tapped.

You can hold it like a guitar. You can hold it upright like an upright bass. But you can also set it down on the table or your lap and play it like a piano or a drum pad. And when you put it on the violin setting, you can play it like a violin. You can actually hold your iPhone out and move your iPhone around in the air.

And that will act like a bow. Mike says it took them about six years to get the instrument just the way they wanted it. Which isn't necessarily a Silicon Valley style way to do it. It was more, in our case, a Nashville way, which is go into studios with musicians and see what works and go back and refine it and really look at the craft of building this. And to get it off the ground,

Mike and his partners actually raised over a million dollars on Kickstarter. They call it the Instrument One, and it's selling for about 400, bucks. Really, I wanted this idea to be something that anybody could use, rather than just making a musical instrument for musicians. I wanted to make one for everyone else. That's Mike Butera of Nashville, founder of Artifon. We love hearing your stories, and if you want to tell us yours, please go to build.n.npr.org. That's build with a d.npr.npr.org. Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to

previous episodes. You can go to how I built this.npr.org. You can also write to us at H-I-B-T at NPR.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at How I Built This. Our show is produced this week by Casey Herman with music composed by Rumteen Arablewe. Thanks also to Neva Grant,

Sanaz Meshkampur, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. And just one last thing. One A is NPR's new daily show inspired by the First Amendment. 1A is the news show with those who make the news. Great guests and topical debates, all framed in ways to make you think and engage. Each day, 1A will champion your right to speak freely. Check out 1A with Joshua Johnson from WAMU and NPR. You can find it on the NPR One app or visit

npr.org slash podcasts.