Danielle Cohen-Shohet developed a tech platform to help spa, studio and salon industry owners manage their operations. She had seen firsthand the challenges of running a small business as a freelance makeup artist, one of her jobs while she was a student at Princeton.

So taught herself how to code, launched in 2016, raised $2.8 million in pre-seed funding from Techstars and angel investors, and bootstrapped her company, GlossGenius, for five years before closing a $16.4 million round last November.

GlossGenius has over 40,000 customers in the beauty and wellness space today and sees about $2 billion in annualized transaction volume on its platform, CEO and founder Cohen-Shohet told TechCrunch in an interview. The platform aims to be a vertical software "business-in-a-box" for beauty professionals, a goal Cohen-Shohet has previously likened to what Toast did in the restaurant industry.

GlossGenius founder and CEO Danielle Cohen-Shohet Image Credits: GlossGenius

After seeing "triple-digit" year-over-year percentage revenue growth since its last fundraise, GlossGenius has raised another round of capital, according to Cohen-Shohet. The New York-based startup nabbed $25 million in financing led by Imaginary Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Left Lane Capital, which brings its total funding to $44.2 million since its launch back in 2016.

Cohen-Shohet said this latest round marks a 3x markup over the valuation the company earned in its November 2021 fundraise, and while she did not share the actual valuation number, she said it is in the "hundreds of millions" of dollars.

Over 70% of GlossGenius's customers are women and a significant portion are underrepresented minorities, according to Cohen-Shohet. This is partially a feature of the industry -- ownership in the salon and spa space comprises "more than two times the private sector average when it comes to women, African American and Asian business owners," Cohen-Shohet said.