# S01E08 · Transcript — Claire Taschereau Full transcript of [The Useful Podcast](https://useful.ventures/podcast) Episode 8, a founder-to-founder conversation between host Gokul Bala and Claire Taschereau, founder of Winkly, a booking and business platform for lash technicians. Back to the [episode page](https://useful.ventures/podcast/claire-taschereau-winkly). This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Filler words and false starts have been removed and the meaning has been preserved. Any errors are mine, not Claire's. ## Creative since childhood, and "falling into" design **Gokul** Even before design, it seems like you were always drawn to some kind of creative expression. As a kid, before you knew you'd end up in design, what were you actually chasing? **Claire** Entrepreneurship and creativity have been in my blood as long as I can remember. When I was five, my parents asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said I wanted to be "a boss." They asked what kind of company, and I had no idea — I just knew I wanted to build something big. My mom let us explore that side of things a lot growing up. **Gokul** Where did the artsy side come from specifically — did you grow up painting, sketching? **Claire** A lot of fine arts, very hands-on, lots of sketching and painting, and I found it genuinely therapeutic. I think ADHD has a lot to do with it too, honestly — wanting to try everything, experiment, and play across mediums. All of my siblings are creative; I think it's just a family trait we got lucky with. **Gokul** So did you always know you'd end up a designer? **Claire** Funny enough, no. My dad, who worked in tech, told me I'd be a great graphic designer, and I actually resisted it at first. I liked the cool Photoshop tricks — turning an orange peel into a frog, that kind of thing — but as an actual career path I didn't choose it so much as fall into it. I think my parents just knew their kid better than I did. ## Fortune 500 work as a junior designer, straight out of school **Gokul** You started as a junior designer at an agency working with Fortune 500 clients. Anything stick with you about how a product actually gets made, or how a bad one does? **Claire** That first job came in my very first semester of school, so I was brand new to digital design. They believed in me and trusted me with large projects right away, and I learned a lot from genuinely seasoned senior designers around me. That's really what shaped how I think about products and design today. ## Buddybuild, and getting acquired by Apple **Gokul** From there you went from agency to startup — Buddybuild, which Apple actually acquired. What was it like being inside a company going through that? **Claire** That's still one of the most memorable experiences of my career. I was still in school full-time during the agency work, so once I focused on finishing school and graduated, I looked at agency roles again but found most of them split time across marketing, product, and video work in a way that didn't interest me. Tech felt like the natural next step, and I already knew long-term I wanted to be there over the print and packaging world. Right after school I took a brief job at a startup called Video Messenger, which went under, and then I applied at Buddybuild and ended up there. I was fully hired, not an intern, and it was such a unique experience. My boss Dennis ran the company in a way where everyone genuinely respected each other, and I still admire how he handled it. **Gokul** Did you know going in that they were even thinking about being acquired? **Claire** Not at all — I was fully hired to build, full stop. Funny enough, I actually just saw Dennis last week. He gave a talk at North House, a Vancouver coworking space founded by Ryan Holmes of Hootsuite, and shared more of the behind-the-scenes. I hadn't realized Apple had first approached him about a year before I even joined the team, so there was a lot happening that we simply weren't aware of yet. Dennis did a good job keeping us informed about what mattered without distracting us from the actual work until there was a clearer path forward. **Gokul** Do you think that experience is what lit the entrepreneurship fire, or just made it burn brighter? **Claire** Absolutely lit it. I loved being in tech, and watching a company grow that fast and get acquired that fast — three years in, which is very fast, and there had been offers from other acquirers before Apple too — really opened my eyes to what was possible. Buddybuild was a developer tool, and it showed me a side of the industry, building for developers, that I hadn't been close to before. ## A concussion, Vitacore, and Planet Impact **Gokul** After the Apple acquisition, you went into some very different territory: mask design work during COVID. How did that come about? **Claire** In early 2018, after the acquisition, I was in a car accident and hit my head, so I took a leave to recover from a concussion and post-concussion syndrome. Coming out of that, I wanted to branch out and start working for myself full-time, taking on client work, and that's how Vitacore came into my life, very early in the pandemic. They brought me on for print design and brand collateral, which wasn't as fulfilling to me as tech work, but I'm passionate about innovation and helping others, so it was a natural yes. I should say clearly, I didn't design the mask itself; that was their director of R&D. My work was getting their brand to market. **Gokul** And Planet Impact came out of that? **Claire** Yes. Planet Impact was a spin-off of the work I was doing with Vitacore. They'd built a PPE recycling program so masks weren't all going to landfill, with their own processing equipment built in-house in Vancouver. As the pandemic slowed and PPE use shifted mostly to hospitals and clinics, we wanted to explore what else that recycling equipment could handle, and I was tasked with figuring out how to bring it to market — that's how Planet Impact was born. I cofounded it with Vitacore's founder, and our first program was a reusable bag recycling program. We launched across every Patison Food Group location immediately, with no trial period. Honestly, one of the biggest accomplishments of my contracting career, bringing something to that scale that fast. ## Prio and Luxuna, three months apart **Gokul** Right after that, in 2021, you started two things almost in parallel: Prio and Luxuna. How did that work? **Claire** Prio was really about going deeper into science and innovation consulting in Canada — that's how Vitacore and Planet Impact came into my world in the first place. Luxuna is a very different story. When people find out I'm in the lash industry but not a lash tech myself, they're usually confused about how I ended up there. It started with a childhood friend who became a lash tech and built a substantial business, then started training other lash techs herself. She wanted to start an online training academy and asked me to help with the website and branding. I saw she'd need more than that, more capital, more structure, so I came in as a partner and cofounder, and we built the academy together. In 2021, training lash techs entirely online was almost unheard of. It had always been in person, and only one other company was doing it that way. COVID made the online format necessary, and there was real demand: people wanted to advance their skills and build something for themselves during the shutdown. My part was mentoring students on how to actually run a business — health, safety, and compliance — drawing on my background in health tech and med tech. ## What lash techs actually make, and the gap nobody was filling **Gokul** What did that teach you, talking to that many lash techs about their businesses? **Claire** I was genuinely floored early on by how much money lash techs could make, over $10,000 a month, out of their own house, with only two days of training. Training is basically a game of telephone: one tech teaches the next, closer to a tattoo apprenticeship but much faster. Two days, no prerequisites, you don't even need to speak fluent English, and it only costs two to three thousand dollars to learn. Then you're off to the races. What we noticed was that a lot of successful lash techs were doing the right things instinctively, but nobody had taught them how to actually run a business or market themselves. They'd just figured it out as they went. That gap is what Luxuna filled. I grew up in a small town with a single mom, without much, and I've always believed I'd do something big even when a voice in the back of my head said that wasn't realistic for the life I was born into. I saw other lash techs finding that same shift, but not everyone could fully navigate it on their own, and that's what pulled me deeper into wanting to help them build real businesses. ## A mindset switch, and testing the law of attraction **Gokul** What was the actual moment that flipped that switch for you, from doing the work to wanting to help others make that same leap? **Claire** This gets a little personal, but in a good way. In 2019 I went through a bad breakup and was struggling with a lot of the gaslighting that comes with someone leaving. I ended up researching the law of attraction. I was raised in a religious household, so in my mind manifesting hopes and desires felt similar to praying, just labeled differently. I decided to actually test it, and figured wealth would be the hardest thing to manifest, so I gave the universe 24 hours. The next day, a free Tim Hortons Roll Up the Rim cup showed up on my desk from a coworker. Then an old client I hadn't spoken to in four or five years reached out with an unpaid invoice and sent an e-transfer out of nowhere. Then a friend in influencer marketing messaged me from Jamaica saying she had thirty people who wanted to work with me. Then I entered an Instagram contest for a trip to Bali, and won it. That was the moment I really saw what deciding to trust a process could do, not just about luck, but about the path you think you're stuck in versus the one you actually know, deep down, is yours. ## From training lash techs to building for them **Gokul** So how did all of that lead into Winkly? **Claire** Winkly is entirely a spin-off of Luxuna. Working closely with lash techs, I kept seeing the same problems: clients no-showing and techs losing that income, or struggling to even set up a proper booking system. At the same time, I was doing work through Prio for large, nine-figure businesses, and I realized how easy those tools felt for big companies, and how genuinely hard the equivalent was for a solo lash tech. My old Luxuna partner eventually left the industry altogether, I believe she moved to Europe, which left me running the business alone. I realized I needed to actually be a lash tech myself to keep building Luxuna in a way that still felt authentic to me, and when you realize your business depends on someone else, that's usually a sign you're in the wrong business. But I already knew tech, marketing, and business, and from mentoring lash techs and being embedded in that community, I kept seeing the same specific problems: no-shows, no good way to set up booking, tools that were either overbuilt or too basic to handle what actually mattered in a lash studio. There weren't any platforms built specifically for lash techs, because the niche was seen as too small to be anyone's core business. So techs were stuck adapting generalist platforms, mostly from a phone or iPad, not a desktop with a keyboard, and forming their business around the software instead of the other way around. I taught myself to code. I'd spent twelve years in tech and marketing, including years around developers at Buddybuild, so I already knew the language even without being an engineer, and I figured with AI it couldn't be that hard. That's how I became a solo, non-technical founder of Winkly. ## The home address problem, and how Winkly solves it **Gokul** How did your community directly shape what you built? **Claire** Mostly by listening. My best friend is a lash tech, and she'd send me screenshots of client conversations asking what to even say. A lot of people came to me for advice, and over time I started noticing patterns. Being that immersed, I feel like a lash tech by osmosis, even though I've never actually lashed anyone. One specific thing stood out: booking platforms want you to list a business address, which is completely normal for a storefront, but most lash techs work out of their own home, sometimes their mom's house, sometimes as a young woman living alone, and they don't want their home address and the exact time they'll be there posted publicly. So one of Winkly's features lets techs list their neighborhood instead. When a client books and pays their deposit, the actual address goes out in the event invite. That gives the tech hands-free, self-serve booking with zero added friction for the client, but without ever plastering their home address online. ## League of Innovators, and asking Mark Cuban a question **Gokul** How did Winkly end up in League of Innovators? **Claire** Funny enough, two ideas started around the same time. In early 2025, right as coding with AI started becoming real, I realized I could actually build the platform lash techs needed without needing a ton of capital. But I still love agency work, so I also had this parallel dream of building a lean software agency to make tech more accessible. I applied to the accelerator with both ideas and got in on both. It wasn't until the end-of-program showcase that I decided to go all in on Winkly. **Gokul** What does a showcase like that actually feel like? **Claire** It was originally more of a pitch competition, but the program I was in is geared toward earlier-stage businesses, so it became more of a showcase of participation, business ideas, and traction. It was my first time ever pitching to anyone. Going into that program, there were two things I wanted badly: to pitch in the showcase, and to ask a question at a fireside chat with their special guest, Mark Cuban. I got both. **Gokul** How was meeting Mark Cuban? **Claire** Very surreal. I honestly didn't think it would happen. He'd originally been scheduled for October and canceled twenty minutes before, so it got pushed to December as a fireside with Ryan Holmes asking the questions. Partway through, they opened it up to audience questions, and right as I thought the session was ending, they said, "we have one last question coming from Claire." I got to ask him about AI and med tech, which connects to his pharmaceutical work on drug pricing and my own background in health and safety. Getting to actually talk to him, rather than pitch him like almost everyone else in the room wanted to, felt like a genuinely rare opportunity. **Gokul** Did you meet other interesting people through the program? **Claire** They're phenomenal at bringing in speakers. We got to meet Harley Finkelstein, cofounder of Shopify, and Brian Scudamore from 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which the sustainability and recycling side of me loved. Tara Bosch from SmartSweets came out of that same accelerator community. I haven't met her yet, but I know she'll be around. ## Community as moat, and the daily reality of solo founding **Gokul** A lot of the founders I talk to think community is becoming the real moat, especially now that AI can spin up a product fast. How do you see that playing out? **Claire** Completely agree. We live in such a fast-paced world now, AI, social media, that it's genuinely hard to keep up, and it can feel like you're being dragged along by it. A lot of people want to build something successful because they want users and revenue, so they rush to slap something together and go to market as fast as possible. With Winkly, I've taken the opposite approach, and it's weighed on me more than I expected. You see everyone's highlight reel where AI isn't just building their app, it's writing the content announcing they built it. But I keep coming back to the fact that AI, as impressive as it is, isn't quite what its own marketing claims. Good tech has to be intuitive, solve the actual problem, and have as little friction as possible, and that's not something you get from a single prompt or a weekend. You have to actually understand the problem, test it, and go back to the people you're serving to see what they like and don't, and keep iterating until they're happy. And yes, community is the moat now, but so is your own story and background as a founder. I think that's the real linchpin of building a community in the first place, and why storytelling works so well in business today. Founders now give up their time, money, savings, and relationships for a problem that's weighing on them. We're a relentless bunch. **Gokul** What do people around you not see, day to day? **Claire** As a solo founder going all-in on Winkly, I've stepped back significantly from consulting, I kept only two small legacy clients. A lot of what people don't see is research, trial and error, long hours stuck on a bug, and reaching out to friends for expertise. And underneath that, the constant, quieter question: how do I actually make an impact, how do I build something substantial, how do I make the world better. It's hard to remember the bigger picture day to day. Honestly, when I started Winkly, I believed AI was further along than it actually was. I thought I could spin up an MVP in about three weeks. I'm over a year in now, just getting to beta users on an MVP. It's felt like a long, slow road. ## Five years out **Gokul** What would it look like for an average lash tech, five years from now, if Winkly works the way you want it to? **Claire** I want them to feel genuinely empowered, like their business isn't a burden on the operations side. Lash techs are hands-on and passionate about their craft, but the admin work pulls them away from it, and their clients aren't just customers, they become close friends, even a kind of therapist. I want every lash tech's business to run and present itself the way they want it to, with clients who trust the technicians on Winkly. Right now, most lash techs have no website, don't use any real platform, and have nothing beyond an Instagram account, so finding one means using Instagram like a search engine, which is one of the worst experiences I've ever had trying to book someone myself. I want people to be able to browse lash techs locally, see real ratings, and actually connect with their business and their brand, because a personal brand is basically the new business card, and I think that's true even outside of tech. ## The secret goal **Gokul** Last question, and it's the one I ask everyone. I don't think anyone who builds something is really doing it for the money. What's the real goal underneath everything for you? **Claire** Honestly, I just want to make a mark in this world, do something substantial, and help entrepreneurs, business owners, and especially women feel empowered to support themselves and live the life they actually want. It's easy to get caught up chasing scale, an exit, a million users, those vanity metrics are exciting, but there has to be a real reason behind them, or hitting them just feels empty. I want to help people live their best life and support themselves, and I want clients to feel beautiful and trust the process. Time is the one thing you genuinely can't get back. Money comes back, friendships can too, but time spent is gone for good, and none of us actually know our balance. I just don't want to waste mine. **Gokul** That's actually a beautiful place to end it. Making the world a better place and making the most out of your time. Thanks so much. --- Back to the [episode page](https://useful.ventures/podcast/claire-taschereau-winkly) · [[podcast|All episodes]]