It all started with affordable haircuts. But there’s more to feeling good than looking good. So astute entrepreneur Michael DeVore decided to combine haircuts with healthcare to create a potentially life-saving mobile app known as Live Chair Health.

Seven years ago, DeVore won an OZY Genius Award for his initial idea — a scheduling and booking app that connected barbers with low-income clients. But he quickly spotted an opportunity to take this app to the next level by including more than just a shave and a trim. Leveraging the confidence and familiarity that exists between barbers and their clients, the entrepreneur adapted his app to encourage Black men to get basic medical checkups by starting a conversation with the man holding the scissors.

“The intent of this project was always to help people and now save lives,” said DeVore. “I am hoping that we can help millions of minorities connect and reconnect with healthcare providers.”

Health disparities run deep between African Americans and the rest of the population. DeVore’s program works in two ways to reduce that gap. First, it encourages collaborating barbers to initiate conversations with their clients, talk about health risks, and raise awareness about the Live Chair Health app. Clients can then enroll in the app and earn reward points by engaging in healthy behaviors, such as seeing a primary care provider or signing up for health insurance. These reward points then count as shop credit toward future haircuts.

By encouraging minority men to get routine checkups, Live Chair Health aims to boost the life expectancy of African Americans, who have a 1 in 2 chance of being diagnosed with some form of heart disease. The idea is to spot the early signs of illness before it becomes more serious. “Some loved ones have even lost their lives due to a [health] issue that could have been treated much earlier if they knew about it,” DeVore said. “Discovering health issues early on will allow us to help people be treated effectively and live longer lives.”

The Live Chair Health program offers enrolled clients access to free health resources, which “will also help them save money” in the long run, DeVore said. “We have all had a family member or friend who has dealt with an expensive health issue.”

Since winning the OZY Genius Award in 2015, DeVore has raised an additional $3.5 million in funding for his Live Chair Health app, taking the young entrepreneur closer to achieving his dream of expanding the program beyond its current markets of California, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania. “Success five years from now means that Live Chair Health has a presence in all 50 states,” DeVore said, adding that he’s seeking additional investments from financial institutions and healthcare providers to make that happen.

While financial backing has certainly given the app needed fuel, DeVore recalls the value of receiving mentoring from OZY CEO Carlos Watson. “The $5,000 cash prize was great,” he said of the OZY Genius Award money. “But the advice I received from Carlos was worth way more.”

As well as funding and mentoring, DeVore has built a solid network of people who “share the same passion for helping people as I do.” He says that in his “wildest dreams,” he hopes to someday sell Live Chair Health to a healthcare company that sees the value in his program.

DeVore said his humble beginnings drove him to create his healthcare app. “I grew up in a small rural town located in Hampton, South Carolina,” he said. “I knew that I had to overcome many challenges to put myself in a position to earn a better life.”

But he says creativity and innovative thinking have always helped him “pull out a win.” He brings that same spirit to healthcare reform. DeVore knows that what he’s trying to do isn’t easy, but he’s facing the challenge one haircut at a time.

—by Sarah Brown

Very few successes happen overnight. But with diligence, a vision and a large dose of patience, big successes are indeed within our grasp. That's the experience of Daniel Kang, who, at 27, recently raised $3.4 million in investment for his startup Flowbo, which helps small, promising companies secure the funding they need to succeed.

How did he get there? It seems the very circumstances that might at first have been a disadvantage provided the impetus Kang needed to succeed.

Growing up in a lower-income family of South Korean immigrants, and becoming his family’s breadwinner at an early age, Kang set clear goals for himself to find a path forward. He was determined to go to college, applying for more than 120 scholarships to fund his tuition at McGill University, where his vision for the future began to take form.

During a visit to his native South Korea during his junior year in college, Kang witnessed his grandmother gathering recyclable cardboard to meet her daily food needs. Seeing how so many seniors struggled, Kang thought, “Why not tackle pension reform?” On the strength of his idea, he won a $10,000 OZY Genius Award — his first big boost toward his ultimate goal.

“When OZY funded me in 2015, they were the first investors who really said to me, ‘Hey, you actually don't have to be 20 years into your career to act and do something; we believe in you,’” Kang says.

Though his research was not ultimately adopted by the South Korean government, Kang was content with the fact that, “the problems I pointed out in the paper turned out to be correct.” And with the wind in his sails, Kang set out to find other ways to make an impact.

To gain work experience after university, Kang joined Softbank Vision Fund, one of the world's largest venture capital funds, and began working with companies in Brazil. His goal was to make loans — which are very expensive in Latin America — much more affordable to help smaller companies obtain financing.

“The mission was, ‘how do I provide people with fairer access to capital?,’” Kang wondered. By collateralizing assets, he says he was able to get interest rates of 110% down to about 15-20%, “which allowed people to borrow more — either for education or for starting a business.”

Kang realized the tangible difference that affordable loans could make in peoples’ lives, as well as his own. “In the four or five years I was there, I had prepared a small safety net for my family, and I had built a network and skills that would allow me to start my own company.” So that’s what he did. In 2020, Kang went to graduate school at Oxford University, and while there he started his own company with the mission of helping people pursue their most creative and fulfilling dreams. Flowbo now provides an exchange “connecting investors to online creators to provide them with fast, frictionless, upfront funding,” says Kang.

“If we use the framework of jobs, careers and callings, I want fewer people to have jobs and [instead] have more of a career or a calling,” Kang says. “Success for me would be if people could be what they want to be without being limited by money.”

What advice would Kang give to those who want to realize their dreams? “Doing something every day toward what your goals are not only builds internal confidence but allows you to take that big opportunity when it comes your way,” he says. It’s like playing basketball, he adds. Hitting a game-winning free throw might look easy, but it took “hours and hours of practice to build the stamina and focus to be able to take that shot successfully … I'm a big believer that overnight success is a rare exception — there's a lot of progress that was made before that ‘overnight success’ happened, before that shot was taken.”

—by Jennifer Ladonne

Do you have a genius idea? Are you ready to take it to the next level? Apply now for an OZY Genius Award and let’s make it happen.