Pencil You In in the News

Tiffani Bell founded Pencil You In after she was tired of making appointments at 2:30 a.m. on her hairstylist’s salon voice mail. Her start-up allows businesses to book appointments 24/7/365.

When most people think of tech founders neither women nor Howard University usually come to mind first. Well, Tiffani Ashley Bell, a Howard computer science graduate and founder of Pencil You In, is making a name for the school and the gender inside and outside of Silicon Valley.

Despite the possible criminal fallout from taking Facebook public, and on paper making himself $19.1 billion in the process, you have to hand it to tech visionary Mark Zuckerberg — in a ruthless, Machiavellian kind of way — it’s quite an achievement to go from an idea in a college dorm room to a billion people logging on to your creation everyday.

When it comes to creating computer programming and Internet start ups, you’re more likely to imagine a socially awkward man with unkempt hair and thick glasses than you are a young, black woman from Howard University. But Tiffani Bell is that woman.

When she heard about the NewME Accelerator, Bell [...] headed to Silicon Valley to impress investors with her start-up, Pencil You In, a web app that allows hairstylists, barbers, and their clients to book appointments online.

Tiffani Bell is not your average computer whiz. Bell is a 26-year-old computer programmer who owns her own Internet company, Pencil You In, a website that offers scheduling services for hairstylists and their clients. She's talented, accomplished and well aware of how rare she is in her industry.

"Being a technical founder has helped me by enabling me to quickly act on customer feedback," she said. "I think investors are motivated by seeing a team with a strong technical founder -- one or more -- because they can be confident then that whatever vision is being laid out can actually be achieved in some form or another."

Tiffani Bell, 26, isn’t your typical Silicon Valley CEO. She’s a Howard University-trained engineer from North Carolina, who after missing one too many appointments with her hair stylist was inspired to create Pencil You In, a business that streamlines the appointments process for grooming-based business providers.

Rails developer Tiffani launched Pencil You In, the best online appointment book for beauticians and other cosmetology professionals.

The tech incubator was formed to help minorities get advice from successful executives and put their new Internet ventures in front of investors.

Pencil You In is like an OpenTable for salon appointments.

"My hairstylist and I played these lovely games of phone tag as I forgot to call him or I’d call him and his appointment book wasn’t at hand. Pencil You In was then conceived as my solution to my hair appointment scheduling woes.""

That's how I came up with Pencil You In: a site where people can book salon appointments online, making the process much easier for customers and businesses. We also help salons expand their social media presence on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

An all-star roster of investors and executives from Foursquare Inc., Path Inc. and Twitter Inc. will join entertainer and businessman MC Hammer in mentoring select tech entrepreneurs this summer as part of an accelerator aimed at paving the way for minority-led companies.