When Money Singh arrived in San Francisco from Punjab at 19, the American dream felt painfully distant. “I was [depressed] for that one year. I wanted to go back,” Singh told CNBC. “Socially, I was very alone.”
It was 2006. Singh had come to the Bay Area full of uncertainty, with no clear path ahead, only the pressure to survive. Today, at 38, he runs two profitable businesses generating over $2 million in annual revenue, owns three barbershop locations, and is already building his next startup.
Dropping out and starting over
Singh initially enrolled in college in the Bay Area, but things changed fast. Credits from his education in India did not transfer, and continuing school no longer made sense. His mother urged him to find work immediately.
He took whatever came his way, first at a local drugstore, then as a dispatcher at his uncle’s cab company, earning about $6 an hour, according to CNBC. It was not glamorous, but it paid the bills. That short-term job turned into a long-term industry.
What began as dispatching calls evolved into something much bigger. Singh spent more than a decade in the cab business, driving independently, building a five-cab fleet, running a dispatch company, and eventually launching Driver’s Network, an advertising and marketing agency for independent drivers.
The work was relentless, but it taught him everything he would later need, operations, marketing, cash flow, people management. By 2018, though, Singh felt restless. He wanted to build something entirely different.
A barbershop dream rooted in family
The inspiration came from home. Singh’s mother had run a hair salon in India and later in Northern California. Years earlier, Singh had pushed her to get her cosmetology license and helped market her business.
In 2019, encouraged by his partner Joypreet, Singh decided to follow that example. He teamed up with a local barber and opened Dandies Barbershop & Beard Stylist in Mountain View. Opening the doors, however, took far longer and cost far more than expected.
“You have to go through permitting. You have to go through dealing with the city,” Singh told CNBC. “It took me a solid year to get the license to even open the shop, so I was paying rent for one year before I could open the shop.” Startup costs reached $75,000, funded entirely from his taxi savings. Then came the pandemic.
Six months after opening, Covid-19 shut everything down. Singh’s business partner exited due to a family emergency. Dandies closed for nearly a year, but rent didn’t stop.
To survive, Singh did everything he could. He received two Paycheck Protection Program loans, $68,000 and $18,000, borrowed $20,000 from friends, pulled $30,000 from his life insurance, ran up $80,000 in credit card debt, and liquidated his stock portfolio.
The sacrifices became deeply personal. “I had to sell everything,” he told CNBC. “I had to eat less. I literally had to focus on eating $1 per meal to make sure the business stays open.”
Learning the craft to save the business
During the shutdown, Singh made a major decision, if the shop was going to survive, he needed to expand its vision. He enrolled in barber school. “As we got more engaged with the community, I had a lot of people from every aspect of life: Men, women, LGBTQ, kids. Almost everybody wanted to come to Dandies,” he told CNBC.
“So we started expanding into different skill sets and we wanted to cater to everybody.” When Dandies reopened in 2021, it returned as a more inclusive, community-driven space.
By 2023, Dandies finally turned profitable. Today, Singh owns three locations, employs 25 people, including 15 barbers and works there full-time. His other business, now called ATCS Platform Solutions, runs alongside it. Dandies generated $1.07 million in sales last year, ATCS brought in $1.18 million. Singh takes home about $7,000 a month, split between both businesses. Most of the debt is gone. What remains is manageable.
Singh says the mental strength required to survive those years didn’t come from business books, it came from his childhood in Punjab.
In 1988, his father was nonfatally shot by a terrorist. In 1991, a bomb exploded in front of his father’s convenience store, where the family spent most of their time. Floods later devastated the business. “I just don’t feel any different. I’m doing the same thing that I was doing 19 years ago,” Singh told CNBC.
“I still work 15 to 16 hours a day. I still work hard. I still do the things that I need to do … Those are the habits that I’ve developed since my childhood.”
Singh is not planning to slow down. He is already building Barber’s Network, an app that allows barbers and clients to reserve chairs and appointments nationwide funded using profits from Dandies. The idea mirrors platforms like Booksy or theCut, but with deeper industry insight.