http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/fashion/mens-style/nas-tristan-walker-black-men-shaving-grooming.html 2016-09-05 16:47:33 A Budding Beauty Baron Gets an Assist From Nas The entrepreneur Tristan Walker has introduced an electric trimmer designed especially for black men. Now a famous fellow Queens native is on board. === For nearly four years, hip-hop fans have been waiting for In the song, Nas takes a swipe at Donald J. Trump, calling “Celebrity Apprentice” a “devil show,” before making a push for black people to support black-owned businesses. To bring the point home, the rapper name-checks a new electric trimmer designed to help black men and others with coarse hair avoid razor burn or ingrown hairs. Nas is an investor in Walker & Company Brands, which makes the trimmer, called Bevel, and he mentions it roughly halfway through the song, rapping, “My signature fade with the Bevel blade.” Walker & Company Like Nas, Mr. Walker grew up in Queens, where he listened to rap (including Nas’s essential “Illmatic”) and dreamed of a life beyond the projects. His father was killed when he was 3, and his mother raised him and his brother. From an early age, Mr. Walker said, he knew he wanted to do something big. The company was started about three years ago and now has 30 employees. To support its growth, Mr. Walker said he raised Asked how he persuaded Nas to get on board as an investor, Mr. Walker said, “I pitched him, and in two minutes he got it.” Mr. Walker had been building toward an opportunity like this since he was a child. At 14, he was awarded a scholarship to attend the “I had one goal: to get as wealthy as possible as quickly as possible,” he said. Mr. Walker took a Wall Street job. He hated it. He decided entrepreneurship was a better route, so he applied to the M.B.A. program at Stanford University. While a business student at Stanford, he interned at what was then a small company called Twitter and sent a cold email to the two founders of Foursquare, which resulted in his serving as the company’s director of business development. Between his time at Foursquare and Walker & Company, he was “entrepreneur in residence” at Andreessen Horowitz, the Menlo Park, Calif., venture capital firm. He met Nas through Ben Horowitz, a co-founder of that firm, which has also invested in Mr. Walker’s business. In July, Mr. Walker streamed through the office Sonos system the new Nas track with the Bevel line. “Our customers and potential customers have been saying: ‘Damn, Tristan. That’s the best line in the song,’” Mr. Walker said. “But I actually think the best line is immediately before, where he says we need to dig in our pockets to support black business. Nas’s principled view of the world is what we want to be about.” Charlamagne Tha God