The Entrepreneur Experiment
EE502 - How He Turned 173 Salon Conversations Into a Startup That Raised €4.9M | Conor Moules
28 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: Why did Conor leave school at 16 to become a hairdresser?
I think all the good startups can be described as this. I say it when I'm interviewing people, like, understand what you're walking into. Like, this is a cult. This feels like a cult. This feels like a family meets a sports team and it's people that are all obsessed about the problem and looking after the people that we service at the end of the day, who are essentially all of our bosses, right?
Conor, welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me. Pleasure. I feel like we've done a mini pod. You had to sit and watch me and my lunch. Yeah, getting to know each other. Yeah. Well, welcome to the studio. This is the new setup. It's great to have you in.
Chapter 2: What unexpected lessons did hairdressing teach Conor about business?
What do you do?
I am the founder and CEO of a company called Bearspace. We started Bearspace with the simple mission to build a true operating system for hair and beauty salons. A system that once put into the company would allow the salon owner to almost run the company on autopilot with a system that was actually supporting the growth. I think it's really interesting when people look at hair and beauty salons.
They're one of the only kind of verticals where the business owner, generally smaller businesses as well, right? So the business owner is expected to work on the floor every day. Like if you go into Bear Market Coffee today, you're not expecting Stephen and Ruth to make your coffee. If you go into the hair salon, that salon owner is generally the MVP of the salon floor.
So we took the view that what was on the market at the minute, you either had a marketplace, which we believe is really corrosive to hair and beauty, or you had a management system that was almost like a system of record that was there to be used by the salon owner to run the business.
And what we've done is we've built the first two vertical operating system that's helping run the business on their behalf.
How does a lad from Wexford end up doing that?
It's crazy, right? A bit of a story. Well, I left school at 16 to become a hairdresser.
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Chapter 3: How did Conor's experience in sales shape his entrepreneurial journey?
So I left school and got an apprenticeship in Peter Mark. Interesting, like, you go home and you tell your mam... this is it. I'm done with school. Like I was never great with school, to be honest with you. Um, and you go home and you have that conversation around the table like this, like I'm kind of done and broke my mom's heart naturally. Um, and she was like, well, you need an apprenticeship.
And her best friend was, I'm not even sure, the area manager at the time for Peter Mark in Leinster.
And that's how it came about. That's how it happened.
Had you any desire or a growl or? I had a desire to leave school and I would have done an apprenticeship for just about anything. She didn't really care.
i didn't really care i thought interesting and like you could be on a building site breaking your back laboring all day which i'd done a good bit of in my preteens okay so i thought let's give this a spin okay because that would have been the logical kind of natural route you're kind of going oh yeah i'll get a carpenter or plumber so you already tried it with that and you're like what would be the better alternative here
yeah like and i think not i enjoyed doing those jobs and like i think like a lot of entrepreneurs i've done an awful lot of different jobs and different things you're constantly like trying to earn money um especially if you come from a background where like money isn't really prevalent so yeah i think the peter mark side of it kind of
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Conor face while rebuilding Bamboo during Covid?
It seemed like a bit of crap, to be honest. Do you know what I mean?
And what was it like, young lad, 16? You went not to be a barber either, to be a hairdresser.
Yeah, so colourist. Looking back on it, it was just mad interesting. You're getting to meet people all different walks of life. You're getting to meet people. When you think about people coming in, probably not having the best day, generally everyone left having a great day, if that makes sense.
hard work so you're on your feet it's very demanding and i just found getting to talk to people all day every day like just past today so fast you're a people person though are you i like to think so yeah i'm pretty people would say i've gifted a gab i guess so you get you get energy from being around people in chat yeah and i think when you're especially as you kind of progress on and maybe you're like doing color on the floor and you're getting to know people
It's kind of when you fall in love with the industry a little bit, because what you actually realize is, right, I'm a hairdresser, but I'm also like a therapist here. And I'm also like a coach to this person. I'm, if people coming in vulnerable at times, if people coming in, going through probably the worst.
breakup or situation or maybe a debt in the family and a you can make them feel a little bit better about themselves but b you're kind of especially if you have like an ongoing relationship with a client you're kind of
the safest conversation with someone you really trust that you can have because you don't know any of the sub characters in the story if you know i mean so you have a relationship with gary but you don't really know if he's giving out about his cousin or his relationship your relationship is with me you're not gonna i'm more if you tied in yeah you're not in the friend group you're not an aunt you're not a cousin you're totally independent and you're kind of that person's safe space as well yeah like i've had a couple really interesting situations
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Chapter 5: What problem did Conor and Glenn identify in the salon industry?
I had one lady who, like when you're a trainee, you obviously have to get your own models. And I met this lady, she was coming into me in the salon for a period of about 18 months. And Along that journey, she fell pregnant and she was having a baby and it was obviously, she was absolutely delighted and like really sorry to say, but she unfortunately lost the baby.
I was the first person that she told that to outside of her immediate family. That appointment was basically the first time she'd left the house in like a month. And when you...
having that depth of conversation with somebody you kind of realize just how important it is to them to be able to have that conversation kind of the main reason why like marketplaces cannot win in this industry in the long term because that relationship between stylists and and between the client goes so deep. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I know what you mean. That's incredibly powerful. That's a lot of responsibility then for a young man to navigate that world. So how did that shape you?
Makes you a good listener.
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Chapter 6: How did Barespace raise €750,000 from salon owners?
I think with some... Obviously, that's an extreme case. But with something like that, you kind of just learn to...
obviously listen but you kind of learn that this person is going through something and your job is a to make them feel better about themselves in regards to their hair in regards to how they look make sure they have a nice um appointment but also it's just to stand there and kind of be a sounding board for them be like a safe space for them um and i'd be lying if i said
peter mark do a course on how to do that you kind of just learn to be able to do it and i think because of probably the relationship we would would develop because you're speaking back so along the journey of building up that level of trust you're telling her your story too so it's it's a natural shared space and naturally sometimes i might be having a terrible day and she can probably tell right so we're talking through it so it's just learning to actually listen and kind of
I'm a very reactionary problem solver. So if somebody comes to me with something, I'm generally trying to work out, right, how do we fix this for the person? And actually what kind of taught me is that sometimes you just need to sit and listen.
That's where you learn the most. That's really interesting insight because I would think over the years, I've got slightly better at asking questions because I've become a hundred times better at listening. Because as you become a good listener, you realize the vast majority of people aren't listening to hear. They're listening to reply.
They're waiting till you stop talking so they can start talking. And it's fascinating when you're in social situations. I'd be quite a quiet person, quite introvert by nature. I don't talk a whole lot in large groups.
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Chapter 7: What unique features does Barespace offer to salon owners?
One-to-one, love it. Love that. Absolutely love it. But when it comes to large groups, because most people are just talking and talking and talking, whereas I kind of want to have proper depth conversations.
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Chapter 8: How does Conor view the importance of resilience in entrepreneurship?
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So how did that evolve then? What was next for you on that journey? Because it's already been a wild start.
Yeah.
So that was like 2006 to 2008. I was in Peter Mark. Obviously, the recession came. I kind of didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I kind of didn't feel like it was going in the direction I wanted it to go in. Obviously, the recession came. And it's interesting now when you speak to especially younger founders who don't quite remember the recession of 2008.
But for me, anyway, it felt like the lights went out on a Tuesday and the sun didn't come back out for like eight months. And Australia seemed like a pretty decent option. So I went to Australia and was very lucky to be able to find myself landing a job that I'd never kind of expected to do. But essentially, I was doing door-to-door electricity sales.
A ton of Irish people were kind of doing it at the time over there. That sounds rough. of all jobs to land, that sounds rough.
Yeah.
Rough in Australia, I would say, because obviously it's pretty hot over there. So you're door to door every day. Um, I hit the ground running with it in a way that I wasn't expecting.
I was very lucky because the people that I was generally selling to, not to generalize, but the people who were at home during the day overwhelmingly were women who I had been selling to in Peter Mark, obviously, and servicing there. So same demographic, different conversation. Same demographic, different conversation.
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