141–150 of 209 posts
I've heard of Basque, off of Northern Spain. Also isn't there a bit of France involved?
Good luck for the future.
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Funds make money on failed investments too. I'd be happy to throw away someone else's money, if I got to keep 20% as a management fee - and a slice of the profits in case one of my lottery tickets is a winner.
Typically they'd get 2% of assets under management, not 20%.
For the patent section, I don't understand how any of the 3 are worthy of a patent or were able to be patented. I'm not sure of timelines, but for the 3rd[1], isn't that what Instagram integrated ages ago with circles linked directly to a checkout - prior art? [1] system to automatically match an item in an image, against its equivalent in a database with ecommerce links to purchase that same product.
As someone who is interested in one day starting my own business, I have nothing but respect for someone who has the guts to follow through with that and pursue their vision. That being said... why did you (or if anyone else can chip in) decide to chase funding when you didn't have a business model? Maybe I'm being naïve here, but isn't it kind of crazy to raise 3.5M in funds for a business that has no plan but to be…
> Maybe I'm being naïve here, but isn't it kind of crazy to raise 3.5M in funds for a business that has no plan but to be acquired by someone else? Not exactly. A lot of startups can function as R&D for larger tech companies: Big tech companies have lots of money but aren't great at innovation. They might spend 10s of millions of dollars just to get a lesser quality version of what they could own if they just bought…
I empathize completely with this team because my company was in a very similar situation in 2018. We had two very technical computer vision products, had found traction and a growing enterprise user base but revenues didn't grow fast enough and all of the major companies were entering the market. We were lucky enough to find an acquisition off ramp last year but all of the feels are the same. The big takeaway I learn…
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Google didn't have a business model when they started but they were sure they were building something useful. I don't know much about fashion and I don't know if what they have is truly useful, but I respect them a lot and will see if I have contacts I could introduce them to.
Google's initial funding, when they did not have a business model, was around 1 million dollars. By the time they got a significant chunk they had decided to use ads to try to monetize. Not all useful things make sense as income generating businesses.
> "We are a team of 8. We are 2 full-stack, 1 iOS, 1 Android and 4 product people." And that leaves 0 for business + marketing + sales. Maybe you didn't find the right business model during 5.5 years because you had nobody working on finding the right business model?
I empathize completely with this team because my company was in a very similar situation in 2018. We had two very technical computer vision products, had found traction and a growing enterprise user base but revenues didn't grow fast enough and all of the major companies were entering the market. We were lucky enough to find an acquisition off ramp last year but all of the feels are the same. The big takeaway I learn…
Would you say that building technology with the hope of being acquired is probably a bad strategy? It seems to me it should be safer to try to build some kind of product/service using that technology, that way you have at least your product as a revenue channel, and your product can make a business case for the technology you're developing as well (as well as server to increase awareness).
Resources may be better spent checking the boxes of a potential acquirer instead of working on real problems except if and when they intersect. Like valuing people with acquisition experience from the other side more than the producers of tech or solving a real problem.
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Have you ever thought of targeting by size? As a tall person dressing and fashion in general SUCK! Online has made it easier but selection is still limited and cost is outrageous.
In our case, size is a property in the ontology. For some players (second hand for example) size is the number one "personalization" requirement. Imagine you see a feed of products, and none of it is your size...
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Thanks bumblebee4 - fashiontasteapi.com is a the b2b side of the company and the value prop is that we can help retailers automatically classify clothes and understand/classify people. It is for technical and business people, not the end consumer. This is a line of business we were just starting, and hopefully will continue. The consumer website is chicisimo.com :)
Actually I have looked at chicisimo.com. The page is full of tag clouds. If I am looking for clothes, why should I install the app? I don't know your market well, so this is not deep advice. I just think that people who care about their look don't want to deal with words. They want to 'see' why your app helps them to look better. To convince me, show me before and after pics. I don't care how you label stuff, I just…
Did you edit the site to make it more attractive to prospective buyers? I can’t see how “Omnichannel Personalization Platform for Fashion Retail” being the first block of content on that page is going to help convince users to install the app. Both “outfit ideas” and “outfit of the day” buttons are broken, and they look disabled with the faded color. The text sells the technology and not consumer benefit. Why are the outfits of the day not shown here, with user profiles to give a sense of reality to it?
Someone already mentioned elsewhere, but I’m curious about two opportunities not mentioned in the post: building an online community based on the app, which could be a strong sales lead generator, or operating your own e-commerce platform to profit directly from the tech you created.