PHOTO: GREAT MANY
Founder · Operator · New York
Michael
Michael
Pollak
He finds the appointment nobody enjoys and rebuilds it as a place you actually want to walk into. First the facial. Now the hairline.
PHOTO: GREAT MANY
He finds the appointment nobody enjoys and rebuilds it as a place you actually want to walk into. First the facial. Now the hairline.
In June 2024, on the ground floor of an apartment building on Mulberry Street, Michael Pollak opened a hair growth studio with blond wood paneling, concrete floors, deep green walls, and a lounge stocked with free snacks. A trade reporter called it a “disarmingly comforting Millennial dreamscape.” It is the kind of place that looks like a boutique hotel and quietly performs platelet-rich plasma injections in the back. That tension - hospitality up front, medicine in the treatment room - is the whole idea. It is also the second time Pollak has pulled it off.
The company is called Great Many. The pitch, in Pollak's words, is to make hair growth “an answer, not a question.” He runs it as co-founder and co-CEO alongside Steve Klebanow, who spent a decade at Estee Lauder and co-owned a high-end barbershop in the West Village. Together they raised an oversubscribed $3.6 million pre-seed in August 2024, led by BrandProject, with angels that include SoulCycle co-founder Elizabeth Cutler. They went from a workshopped idea to an open flagship in roughly nine months.
If that speed sounds familiar, it should. Pollak has done the awkward-appointment-into-warm-experience trick before, and at far bigger scale.
This is where skincare and Botox was maybe 10 or 12 years ago, on the precipice of being this thing that deserves specialization as a brand.
In 2014, Pollak co-founded Heyday with Adam Ross. The premise was almost suspiciously simple: take the facial out of the spa. Strip away the candles-and-mystery markup, the upsells, the guesswork, and offer a clean, expert, fairly priced version of a treatment that used to feel intimidating. He served as the brand's voice - chief brand officer, the person obsessing over how a customer felt the moment they walked in.
It worked. The express-facial category Heyday helped define drew serious money, including a $20 million raise, and the company expanded to dozens of outposts. Pollak stepped away in 2022, when Heyday had about 13 locations of its own; through franchising it later pushed past 35.
He left with a lesson he would not repeat. One of his regrets, he has said, was launching Heyday's branded products too late. So when he built Great Many, he led with the formula.
Ask Pollak how hair works and you get horticulture. “Hair is a lot like a plant,” he says. “The soil has to be great, water has to be right, sunlight has to be right, food has to be right.” It is a tidy way to explain why Great Many does not sell a single miracle pill. Thinning, he argues, is usually caused by several things at once, so the fix is several things at once: medical scalp consultations, PRP injections, prescription oral and topical medication, supplements, and a proprietary product line. There is also a telehealth arm for people who will never set foot on Mulberry Street.
The $3.6 million that launched Great Many was oversubscribed, which is founder-speak for “more people wanted in than there was room.” The round was led by BrandProject, with participation from Midnight Venture Partners and Tonic Ventures. The angel list is the tell: Elizabeth Cutler, who co-founded SoulCycle, and Megan Maupin of Atolla Skincare among them. These are operators who built consumer rituals into habits, which is exactly the company Pollak keeps.
It is also a signal about the thesis. You do not raise an oversubscribed round for a single clinic. You raise it for a category, and Pollak is betting hair growth is one that is about to grow up.
A first visit at Great Many is a 30-minute consultation plus a scalp analysis with an in-house clinician, which feeds a personalized plan. From there the menu spans PRP injections, prescription oral and topical medications such as finasteride and minoxidil, compounded formulations, supplements, and the studio's own branded topicals - part of the GrowthFactor Formula line Pollak insisted on launching early. For everyone outside Manhattan, the same logic runs through a telehealth consultation. The NoHo flagship itself is about 2,200 square feet with six treatment rooms.
Pollak did not start in beauty. He started in design, then migrated to the business and strategy side, working in hospitality design and concept development for boutique and corporate clients. He earned a master's from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration - which is to say his instinct for making a room feel welcoming is not an accident. It is a credential.
He also advises WTHN, an acupuncture company, extending the same pattern: take a traditional wellness ritual and make it feel modern and approachable.
His co-CEO Steve Klebanow spent ten years at Estee Lauder running global omnichannel and co-owned a high-end West Village barbershop. Complementary partners are a Pollak rule, not a coincidence.
“My first response is always gut. I will check data next, but I will always come back to gut to make final decisions.” Intuition gets the first and last word.
He says it about himself when he gets deep into researching a topic. The hospitality polish hides a founder who reads the footnotes.
“You're thinning on the crown. And you don't typically get to see your own crown.” A small, human observation that became a business.
Free snacks and beverages, a lounge, deep green walls. He wants Great Many to feel like somewhere you are “really taken care of” rather than “poked and prodded.”
From an investor introduction to an open NoHo studio in roughly nine months. He moves fast, but only after the partnership feels right.
Hair is a lot like a plant. The soil has to be great, water has to be right, sunlight has to be right, food has to be right.- ON HOW HAIR ACTUALLY WORKS
It's so important for people to feel comfortable coming into a space, especially when they're coming in for something that might be more emotional.- ON DESIGNING THE ROOM
My first response is always gut. I will check data next, but I will always come back to gut.- ON MAKING DECISIONS
This is where skincare and Botox was maybe 10 or 12 years ago, on the precipice of being this thing that deserves specialization as a brand.- ON TIMING THE CATEGORY
Pollak's stated ambition is to take Great Many past Manhattan - more studios, more cities, and new non-surgical modalities as the science moves. The bet underneath it is a conviction about timing: that hair growth, today, sits roughly where skincare sat a decade ago, just before it became a category people felt comfortable spending on, talking about, and being loyal to a brand for.
If he is right, the playbook that built Heyday runs again - find the cringe, strip the friction, brand the feeling - this time aimed squarely at the part of your head you can't see in the mirror.
There is a quieter ambition underneath the expansion talk, and it is about feeling rather than footprint. Hair loss has long been treated as something to hide - a problem you address in a fluorescent office, quickly, alone, hoping nobody notices. Pollak's whole career argues the opposite: that the setting changes the experience, and the experience changes whether people show up at all. Make the room kind and the brand honest, and a thing people used to avoid becomes a thing they are willing to start. That is the bet. The studios and the cities are just how he scales it.
Make hair growth an answer, not a question.