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- The shampoo and conditioner from two popular startups, $4 and $4, cost more than the average bottle ($18 to $38), but for good reason: they're personalized to your exact hair type and hair goals.
- Both use hair quizzes to figure out what ingredients to include in your custom formulation. They steer clear of parabens, sulfates, mineral oil, and GMOs when formulating their hair-care products, and instead defer to natural alternatives.
- Personalization and better ingredients are key components to both Function of Beauty and Prose's businesses, but differences like price, level of customization, and gifting options could make you choose one over the other.
- We broke down these similarities and differences in our comparison below.
Forget monograms and engravings - the future of personalization lies in data and algorithms, which are being used to make everything from personalized $4 to personalized $4.
In women's hair-care, $4, founded in 2015, and $4, founded in 2017, are popular startups hoping that you never settle for catch-all shampoo and conditioner (or, god forbid, two-in-one shampoo and conditioner) again.
By using your answers to a "hair quiz" to create a unique formulation filled with natural, effective ingredients, they both make hair-care personal, which, considering the multitudes of hair types and needs out there, is the way it should've been all along.
Function of Beauty and Prose share many similarities, including their basic business models (personalized hair-care, delivered), a ton of funding ($12.2 million and $25 million, respectively), and even founders utilizing their MIT smarts. So which one should you ditch your current shampoo and conditioner for?
To help you distinguish between these two leading personalized hair-care companies, we've put them up head-to-head on important factors like level of customization, customer experience, price, and ingredients. We've tried both $4 and $4's shampoo and conditioner, so we can attest to their quality. However, we'll let you make the final decision after comparing them below.
If you're not sure which personalized hair-care startup you should try, $4 or $4, we've cleared up their similarities and differences below.
$4
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