# S01E08 · Claire Taschereau — Founder of Winkly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vcec_vNt8M" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img class="uv-poster" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5vcec_vNt8M/maxresdefault.jpg" alt="Claire Taschereau on The Useful Podcast Episode 8" loading="lazy" /></a> Claire Taschereau found a market hiding in plain sight. Lash technicians run real businesses out of their homes — some clearing over $10,000 a month — trained in as little as two days with no prerequisites and no business education attached. They run that business on generalist booking platforms built for storefront salons, mostly from a phone, and bend their workflow to fit the software instead of the other way around. Claire saw the pattern first as cofounder of Luxuna, an online training academy for lash techs, mentoring students on the business side — health, safety, and compliance — that their two-day certification never covered. Then she hit the wall that ended it: she couldn't authentically keep building a lash-tech academy without being a lash tech herself, and she didn't want her own company to depend on someone else to run it. So she went the other direction and built the tooling instead. Claire was at Buddybuild in Vancouver when Apple acquired it, spent twelve years in tech and marketing, taught herself to code, and shipped Winkly as a solo, self-described "technical non-technical founder." In this conversation, Gokul and Claire get into why lash techs list their neighborhood instead of their home address until a deposit clears, the earlier chapter of her career cofounding Planet Impact — a PPE recycling spinout connected to mask maker Vitacore — and why she thinks community, not the product itself, is the real moat now that AI can build a product in a weekend. ## Listen <ul class="uv-linkrow"> <li><span class="uv-label">Watch</span><a class="uv-ico uv-yt" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vcec_vNt8M" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></li> <li><span class="uv-label">Show</span><a class="uv-ico uv-sp" href="https://open.spotify.com/show/033DRed1adLXd1bg8honOl" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Useful Podcast on Spotify</a> · <a class="uv-ico uv-x" href="https://x.com/theusefulpod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@theusefulpod on X</a></li> </ul> <a class="uv-btn" href="https://useful.ventures/podcast/claire-taschereau-winkly/transcript">Read the full transcript</a> ## Key facts <ul class="uv-facts"> <li><span class="uv-k">Episode</span>The Useful Podcast, Season 1, Episode 8</li> <li><span class="uv-k">Guest</span>Claire Taschereau, Founder of Winkly</li> <li><span class="uv-k">Host</span>Gokul Bala, co-founder of Useful Ventures</li> <li><span class="uv-k">Company</span><a href="https://winklyapp.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Winkly</a>, an all-in-one booking, forms, and business platform built exclusively for lash technicians</li> <li><span class="uv-k">Topics</span>Cofounding an online lash training academy, why generalist booking platforms fail home-based beauty businesses, teaching yourself to code as a solo founder, safety-first address privacy, building "the largest verified network of lash professionals"</li> <li><span class="uv-k">Length</span>About 54 minutes · Published August 2026</li> </ul> ## Guest <ul class="uv-linkrow"> <li><span class="uv-label">Winkly</span><a class="uv-ico uv-play" href="https://winklyapp.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">winklyapp.com</a></li> <li><span class="uv-label">Host</span><a class="uv-ico uv-x" href="https://x.com/GokulsVision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gokul Bala on X (@GokulsVision)</a> · <a class="uv-ico uv-ig" href="https://www.instagram.com/gokuls.vision/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram (@gokuls.vision)</a></li> </ul> ## Key insights **A generalist platform makes a home-based business bend to fit the software.** Lash technicians train in about two days, need no prerequisites, and often work entirely out of their house — yet they've been stuck using booking platforms designed for storefront salons, on a phone or iPad rather than a desktop. Winkly was built to flip that relationship: the tool adapts to how a solo, mobile-first beauty business actually runs, instead of forcing the business to adapt to the tool. **Listing a home address publicly is a safety problem, so Winkly doesn't make you.** Because most lash techs work out of their own home, Winkly lets them display their neighborhood instead of their street address. The exact address only goes out once a client books and pays a deposit, giving techs hands-free, self-serve booking without broadcasting where they live to anyone who opens the app. **She built the tool because she refused to depend on someone else to run her business.** Claire cofounded Luxuna, an online lash-training academy, mentoring students on the business side her own two-day certification never covered. When her cofounder left the lash industry, Claire realized she couldn't keep building it authentically without being a lash tech herself, and didn't want her own company to depend on hiring one. So she pivoted from training lash techs to building software for them instead. **Buddybuild lit the fire.** Claire joined developer-tools startup Buddybuild in Vancouver as a fully hired employee and watched it get acquired by Apple about three years in — a process founder Dennis kept the team genuinely informed about and free to opt out of. She calls it one of the most memorable experiences of her career, and the moment that fully turned her toward entrepreneurship. **A twelve-year marketer taught herself to code.** Claire has no formal engineering background, but spent over a decade around developers — first at an agency, then at Buddybuild — and describes herself as a "technical non-technical founder": more fluent than most non-engineers, nowhere near an actual engineer's level, but enough, with AI tools, to ship Winkly solo. She originally thought she could build it in three weeks; it took over a year to reach an MVP with beta users. **The goal isn't an app, it's a trust layer.** Claire's stated mission is to make Winkly "the largest verified network of lash professionals." She wants a Winkly rating to carry more trust than Google stars, in an industry where most lash techs currently have no website and clients rely on Instagram as a de facto search engine. Community and founder story, she argues, are the real moat now that AI can spin up a competing product in a weekend. ## About Winkly [Winkly](https://winklyapp.com) is an all-in-one business platform built exclusively for lash technicians — online booking, digital intake and consent forms, client management with before-and-after photo history, payments, and finances, all in one place designed for a phone-first, home-based beauty business. It grew out of Luxuna, an online lash-training academy Claire Taschereau cofounded with a childhood friend in 2021, where Claire mentored students on the business, health, safety, and compliance side of running a lash practice. After her Luxuna cofounder left the industry, Claire — a self-taught, non-technical founder with twelve years in tech and marketing — built Winkly solo, going through League of Innovators, a Vancouver-based startup accelerator, along the way. A signature feature lets lash techs list their neighborhood instead of their home address, releasing the exact location only once a client's deposit clears. Winkly is currently free to use with full feature access while Claire builds out its early user base. ## FAQ <div class="uv-faq"> ### Who is Claire Taschereau? Claire Taschereau is the founder of Winkly, a business platform built for lash technicians. She started as a junior designer at a Vancouver agency while still in school, then joined developer-tools startup Buddybuild, which Apple acquired roughly three years in. She later cofounded Planet Impact, a PPE recycling spinout connected to mask maker Vitacore, and Luxuna, an online training academy for lash technicians, before building Winkly solo as a self-taught, non-technical founder. She is based in Vancouver. ### What is Winkly? Winkly is an all-in-one platform built exclusively for lash technicians, combining online booking, digital consent and intake forms, client management with appointment and photo history, payments, and finances. It's designed for lash techs who run home-based, phone-first businesses and were previously stuck adapting their workflow to generalist salon booking software. ### Why did Claire Taschereau build a tool specifically for lash technicians? Claire cofounded Luxuna, an online lash-training academy, and mentored hundreds of students on the business side of lash work — something their two-day technical certification never covered. When her Luxuna cofounder left the industry, Claire realized she couldn't keep authentically building a lash-training company without being a lash tech herself, and didn't want to depend on someone else to run her business. She pivoted from training lash techs to building the software they actually needed. ### How does Winkly protect lash technicians' home addresses? Because most lash technicians work out of their own homes, publicly listing a business address is a safety risk. Winkly lets them display their neighborhood instead, and only reveals the exact address to a client after that client books an appointment and pays a deposit, preserving self-serve, hands-free booking without exposing where the tech actually lives. ### How did Claire Taschereau learn to build Winkly without a technical background? Claire spent twelve years in tech and marketing, including at developer-tools startup Buddybuild (acquired by Apple), which kept her close to engineers without being one herself. She describes herself as a "technical non-technical founder" and taught herself to build with AI coding tools, shipping Winkly as a solo founder — a process that took over a year to reach an MVP with beta users, far longer than the three weeks she originally expected. ### What is The Useful Podcast? The Useful Podcast is a series of founder-to-founder conversations from Useful Ventures, hosted by Gokul Bala. Each episode digs past the highlight reel into the actual work of building a company. This is Season 1, Episode 8. </div> ## Related * [[podcast]] is the full Useful Podcast index. * [[manifesto]] is how we see the world and how we work. * [[notes]] is where we write about the world we see coming. * [Winkly](https://winklyapp.com) · [The Useful Podcast on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/033DRed1adLXd1bg8honOl) · [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@TheUsefulPodcast) · [@theusefulpod on X](https://x.com/theusefulpod) Back to [[podcast]].