
VCs Think My Boobs Need An Algorithm - sindhya
http://www.os-fashion.com/vcs-think-my-boobs-need-an-algorithm/
======
sriramk
[disclaimer: I'm married to the original tech/product co-founder who is no
longer with the company]

For the first time, I see a HN thread on a startup I know very well from the
inside, how can I resist jumping in.? :)

First, the OP is factually incorrect about one thing - True&Co doesn't have a
subscription model. You get a bunch of bras in a box when you order from the
site, you keep what you like. This is the same as the Warby Parker model as
well as other successful startups where you need to physically experience
things.

Second, I'm not sure why the OP feels such animosity towards the company or
the team. There are many snide comments in there, especially around funding,
which seems out of place.

Having said that, the women's intimates business has a few big incumbents and
a huge addressable market. In the beginning, True&Co took a very 'software
eats the world' approach and tried to use machine learning to fix a problem
that a lot of women have.

I'm not sure whether they still use a algorithm or whether they focus on tech
anymore but at the time, I liked the algorithm Aarthi and her team had built
out - it had great results.

~~~
borlak
The article was very poorly written -- I couldn't even finish it..doubly
surprised to see it at the top of HN.

~~~
drjacobs
> "..doubly surprised to see it at the top of HN."

It has "boobs" in the title.

sad but true

------
ChuckMcM
Ok, what did I miss? I ran that whole rant through my "What are they trying to
say" filter twice and the best it could come up with was "Those poopie-heads
won't fund my great idea."

Paragraph by paragraph here are the thesis statements:

VC's funded a bra company with an algorithm VC's didn't fund my idea/company
based on things I think are important

That other, funded company, really has no idea, consumers are idiots and
clueless companies benefit.

Companies I don't understand, think poorly of, and aren't me are getting more
money thrown at them.

Funding is all back channels and who you know because companies that are
horrible are getting funding while mine is not.

If VCs would just wake up and see what was going on I'd get funding and those
crappy companies wouldn't.

I've got a great idea in a really big market, if only those stupid VCs would
take their blinders off and fund it we could all be happy.

It is pretty clear that Sindhya doesn't agree with the way various VC's are
investing their funds because she spends a lot of ink complaining about what
she thinks they want to hear vs what is really important in her space (the
whole boob algorithm concept), but skims right over the whole "they have money
and you don't" market reality thing. It isn't easy but you have to ask
yourself, what is going on here that I don't understand? And work through
that, rather than call an industry that has been pretty damn successful
creating companies over the last century a bunch of idiots.

~~~
mbesto
> _rather than call an industry that has been pretty damn successful creating
> companies over the last century a bunch of idiots._

Is this actually true? (note - I don't know) My understanding is most VC firms
_aren't_ successful. Just a few are.

I've thought about writing a post almost identical to the OP and came to your
same conclusion: "At the end of the day they have the money". The other harsh
reality is that VCs are no different than the enterprise companies of today's
world...they are all about reducing risks at scale. One of their scariest
risks is failing to instill confidence in their clients. For example, if the
market dictates that the hottest thing right now is photo sharing, you better
be damn sure that a VC is going to invest in a photo sharing app. The VC is
going to say "Dear client, we aren't going to invest in the next big photo
sharing app, even though all of the analyst say its the next big thing.
Instead we're investing in 21st century pig farms!" The client will say "but
what about Instagram!" No matter how risky you personally believe it is (for
example - photo sharing apps have no revenues) the market still is throwing
money at it (i.e. Instagram).

So, conclusion - I blame media hyperbole and people's natural biases, not VCs
on the amount of funding put into "good" startups.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Oh its true that VCs come and go, its almost apocryphal the stories of some
guy who joins company A and gets rich, leaves and becomes a VC and then
becomes poor. (well not poor but significantly less wealthy :-) But like any
market those things auto-correct. And its a small enough industry that its
hard, perhaps impossible, to hide the failures. The partner who seems to
always make the wrong call on companies eventually ends up not a partner any
more.

So at any given time, there is a chance you'll get a brand spankin' new VC who
doesn't have a clue and he'll fund anything that strokes his ego or makes him
look cool, but those folks flicker in and out of existence quickly :-)

But by and large the question of whether or not its worth handing over someone
else's money to make your business happen boils down to really basic things,
like "Who are your customers?" "How do you find them?" "What does it cost to
reach them? Capture them?" "How do they compensate you and for how much over
what timespan?" and "How does that money you get feed back into the business
to grow it?"

You need to know those things, and know them with certainty. Sure you can say
"I have the secret knowledge of the ancients and can make a perfect bra for
any woman!"

And even if it is completely true and provable it is only one half of the
picture. What if the cost to make them is $150, and their specialness fades in
3 months? Suddenly it doesn't matter that they are perfect, very few people
will invest a couple thousand a year to keep a stock of perfect bras on hand.
Or these bras are so well made they are indestructible! How cool is that,
except if it costs $100 to 'fit' the person, and they buy one bra over their
lifetime. Well that doesn't work either. So you really need to have a model
for what the revenue is, what the costs are, and how you'll go from 0% market
share to x% (where x represents actual profitability).

Something I'm fond of is the quote "All startup ideas are risky but funded
ones are not random." There is very little randomness in the initial funding
of a company, it has a strategy to take an investment and turn it into a large
return in 3 - 5 years. It may not succeed in doing that, and there may several
alternate paths that don't work, but the paths are there.

------
eof
I think your boobs can use an algorithm. I am without them myself, but, I have
heard complaints about bra sizing forever, and am aware of the (now common?)
knowledge that most women are wearing non-ideal bras.

It doesn't matter if "most women" don't buy bras every month, if 1% of them
do, and True & Co captures 10% of that market then that 2M seed funding will
be a great investment.

Your boobs don't need an algorithm that doesn't work, of course. But if some
smart people are able to ask you three minutes worth of questions, and then
provide you with support that will make your life significantly better.. who
cares?

I think the idea is that they are trying to turn a product that 'needs to be
felt' into something that doesn't, because "it just works". Anything "that
just works" is good, and VC money will chase after it.

~~~
mbell
Wanted to more or less say the same thing. For whatever reason I've run into
the issue of bra sizing numerous times over the last 6 months without
doing/reading anything that would promote the discussion. Personally I think
part of it is that there is a general increase in the open chatter of women on
the web due to sites like Pinterest.

I don't know if there is a technological solution to fix it, but if there is
it seems like a very real way to improve life for a large amount of the
populous. Whomever can make a significant dent in it seems poised to profit in
a big way.

~~~
mnicole
A more technical solution would probably do wonders for this problem - both in
initial measurement and custom solutions thereafter. Even going in for a
fitting won't yield you the right results, and a lot of women are just too
self-conscious for one to begin with.

Human fitters are trained differently at various locations, and VS in
particular doesn't seem to adequately train their employees (or maybe because
most locations are in malls, working in intimates isn't exactly her career
choice so she's are more lenient/awkward about it). I was grossly misfitted at
a VS like many others I've met, and the girl was pretty careless about the
whole thing (didn't take her time, was 100% sure she'd done it right despite
telling her I wasn't quite sure - ironically citing the fact that most women
are wearing the wrong size to begin with). Additionally, well-made bras that
last easily run into the $60-100+ range, so a lot of women pick up the cutesy
bargain-bin ones that aren't shaped well to begin with.

And depending, it can end up being a lot like jeans where sizing will vary
with different brands and styles even though it shouldn't.

~~~
mbell
I can think up ways to approach the problem, but I don't see any of them being
adopted.

The best technical idea that comes to mind is using a kinetic or similar
device as they become more widespread to just scan the person's form and
return a result.

But, I can only compare the experience to that of a man as that is my gender,
I can't see myself posing nude in front of such a device to get the perfectly
fitting jock strap (or male bikini, etc). I just can't imagine doing it. I
have no clue if the comparison is valid, it's just as close as I can imagine
personally and I just can't see myself doing it.

~~~
icambron
I don't think the pose-topless-for-a-scanner thing is ridiculous at all. You
could even imagine the device being video-based, something you run on your
laptop (which obviously doesn't actually upload or even record pictures of
you). If you can stand topless in front of a fitter, you can stand topless in
front of a device.

A less intense approach, though, would be doing a better job of statistical
modeling women's breast shapes and how well different kinds of bras fit them.
If you sell bras for a while and different women return different ones, you
can start to build a sense of what customers' ideal fits are and refine what
bra shapes and styles get sent to them. Whether that data can be accumulated
fast enough to make the service useful is an open question, but it at least
doesn't sound crazy.

------
jonnathanson
I think you raise a valid point overall, which is that a lot of VC money gets
invested very quickly into businesses with unproven models. That, in and of
itself, is a real problem. Ralph Lauren started his multibillion-dollar
clothing empire as a door to door tie salesman. He built his business one
store sale at a time. Why can't today's entrepreneurs in the clothing space
start small and grow organically? Is a startup in the bra market _really_ in
need of tens of millions of dollars in order to hit necessary traction? Is
rapid, overnight growth _really_ the best way to build a clothing brand? All
very reasonable inquiries.

That said -- and I say this as respectfully as possible -- you're applying
20/20 hindsight in many of your examples. Fact: many women in this country,
perhaps even a majority, have bras that don't fit correctly. Fact: women's
boobs are highly variable, and do not actually fit into the standard cup size
/ chest size system that we've been using for the last 50 years. (An algorithm
may be an over-engineered way to approach this problem, but the current model
is far from perfect). Fact: men's razors are ridiculously expensive, and the
razor & blades model is ripe for disruption. Theory (perhaps more viable than
you might think): curated boxes of goods may, indeed, drive lead-generation
and discovery, opening up new markets for apparel and home furnishings
businesses.

I don't think it's remotely fair to look at the present-day struggles of
companies like Dollar Shave Club or Trunk Club and declare, ipso facto, that
their business models are fundamentally unsound. Perhaps their business
_operations_ are unsound. Perhaps their business _strategies_ are unsound.
Perhaps even wildly so. But the addressable markets seem reasonable in both
cases.

Finally, I think you're cherry picking some examples and using them to draw a
larger condemnation of the whole system. If we're going to declare that the
system is rotten, then we need to begin with a macro-level evaluation of the
system.

~~~
jspthrowaway2
> _the razor & blades model is ripe for disruption_

Bordering off topic, but the smart people realize that you don't need to throw
away your blades every time they get dull; that model is only successful
because people don't realize you can restore a set of blades to service with a
few minutes and some jeans.

So, you could say I've already disrupted it just in my own life, and the wider
dissemination of that knowledge would just disrupt it further.

~~~
jmillikin
A pack of high-quality razor blades costs $0.25 per blade on Amazon[1]. Is it
really worth learning to properly strop a blade to save twenty five cents once
a week or so?

[1] <http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RWTQTS/>

~~~
dfrey
Shaving with a DE razor is also empirically more badass than cartridges.

~~~
jspthrowaway2
I hope you're kidding, because the only person that sees me shave on average
is me, and then what's your alternative? Touring your bathroom for guests to
show off your straight razors?

Amuse yourself, I guess...

~~~
Domenic_S
A true badass is badass when nobody is looking.

~~~
rdl
I'd rather have ~1-2 more minutes in the shower with nice hot water in the
morning, vs. spending my first minutes after waking up standing in a cold
bathroom in front of a sink with a serious blade. Dropping $3 on a Fusion
Power ProGlide Mega Absurd N-Blade Extreme Hairkiller cartridge every week or
so (when purchased in bulk at costco or amazon S&S) is worth it to me for
that.

------
marquis
Review from a girl on this business:

I went to see how the site was, found it more or less friendly and designed
well enough to keep me on the page. Wanted to know how much the bras cost -
they won't tell you until you login. Easy, quick login not requiring email
confirmation so they kept me hooked. I was provided with some well drawn
pictures of women's shapes and asked to choose - I clicked through a few
questions and felt they understood my exact problems and concerns when buying
bras (I usually go to an expensive professional fitter so the questions were
welcome and relevant). Along the way they kept telling me I was normal and
gave some comforting stats about women. Made me feel like I was in the right
place to keep buying. Finally got to the buy page, prices are good compared to
the high-end shops though they don't have the really good hand-made items I
look for, nor the higher-end makers like La Perla (surprised at that).

Now did I sign up for the 5 bras they'll send me to try, and free to send back
what I don't want? No, because a) I'm not in the U.S. and b) I'm spoilt with
my personal fitter who has my card on file and knows my fit really well. But
that's because I have access to her shop, in a huge city where they can afford
this luxury. If I was living in a smaller city, definitely would sign up, no
questions. It's Zappos for bras, and I don't see why they can't easily apply
this model to other clothing types like shoes and shirts (also hard to fit).

I wish them luck, great service in my opinion.

 _> Where are the panties in True & Co.’s business model?_

You can't ship and return these items safely.

Further: I went back to see what happened on checkout. They do something
clever here: you choose 3 bras and they choose 2. This is another reason I go
to a store: I ask the expert to choose me something from the rack that she
thinks will work well on me, after learning about my tastes. I badly want to
order those 5 bras now just to find out what the other 2 are, and they just
take a deposit of $45. I think they have some quite brilliant ideas here that
will work very well on their target market.

~~~
jessaustin
_> >Where are the panties in True & Co.’s business model?

>You can't ship and return these items safely._

Also it's not as though panties are as difficult as bras to purchase. T&C is
trying to do the hard work; doing relatively unrelated easy work alongside
that might be a distraction.

TFA is a woman and all, but it's still tempting to consider her one of those
'old boy' industry stalwarts who are so afraid of disruption from outside that
they can't imagine what it would look like. If she can find one, she should
ask a travel agent what he thinks of "algorithms".

[edit: formatting]

~~~
Domenic_S
> _Also it's not as though panties are as difficult as bras to purchase. T &C
> is trying to do the hard work; doing relatively unrelated easy work
> alongside that might be a distraction._

We call that "add-on sales", and it's a good thing. If there were a way to do
it on the site they'd probably 4x their profit instantly.

~~~
mbrubeck
They actually do sell panties as add-ons on the site:

<http://google.com/search?q=site:trueandco.com+panty>

------
smacktoward
_Where are the panties in True & Co.’s business model? True & Co. launched in
May yet they are still not selling any panties to go with the bras they sell.
For every bra a woman buys, she probably buys at least 5 pairs of panties.
Also, panties have much better margins than bras. This is basic business
strategy that has evaded the founders of True & Co. as well as the VCs who
backed them._

I wonder if this sort of thing isn't a symptom of the way the VC sphere is
playing in places outside the players' experience. By any reasonable measure
True & Co. is a retail business, not a tech business. (An online questionnaire
does not a tech business make.) Neither of its founders are retail people,
though -- one was a Bain Capital accountant, the other a program manager at
Microsoft ([http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/04/smallbusiness/true-bra-
lam.f...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/04/smallbusiness/true-bra-
lam.fortune/index.html)). And their experience in the lingerie business
appears to be limited to spending two months chatting up existing Bay Area
lingerie vendors (<http://mashable.com/2012/05/30/true-and-co/>).

If someone told me they were about to Revolutionize An Industry other than
their own based on two months of research and a web form, I would be highly
skeptical. It sounds too much like the most ridiculous dot-bombs of the 1990s.
But these issues don't appear to have hurt their funding any -- probably
because it's not like the VCs came out of retail either. To them it's just
another Industry To Be Disrupted (insert details here).

------
ig1
Not only can an algorithm provide you with a better fit, but it almost
certainly already does. Bra designers already use sophisticated algorithmic
models on breast shape and movement when designing bras:

<http://discovermagazine.com/2005/nov/physics-of-bras>

It's not unreasonable to think that it's feasible to design an algorithm that
can result in better bra fitting. Most bra fitting at the moment is done
incredibly badly, many women are too embarrassed to get professionally fitted
so often use adhoc methods when it comes to bra fitting. That's what an
algorithm has to beat.

The exact same arguments that that article makes about shape, touch, etc. were
long applied to the clothing market as whole. People argued "who would want to
buy shoes online ?" - then Zappos came along. People argued "who would want to
buy glasses online ?" - then Warby Parker came along.

The online share of the bra market ($5-$7bn/year in the US) is almost
certainly going to increase. The question isn't whether people are going to
buy bras online, the question is who they're going to buy them from.

I think the OP is making the mistake of thinking "I wouldn't use this service
so no-one will".

------
nedwin
While I agree that the proliferation of subscription based consumer product
services looks crazy, I think this post includes too many assumptions about
how and why VC's are funding consumer startups.

You also seem to have a fairly negative attitude towards the teams behind
these startups but I can't seem to see why this is justified.

Far from being without product innovation or branding, dollarshaveclub.com are
changing the way we purchase razors and the price we pay. That video is their
brand statement.

The fact that dollarshaveclub.com hasn't released a new product since
receiving funding, or had another big viral video, doesn't mean all that much
in itself. Perhaps they're selling so many razors that they're still
fulfilling that market. Or perhaps they're working on a new launch with a
longer product cycle.

~~~
adrr
We recently launched in Canada and Australia. Also we are hiring:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4859122>

------
DanielBMarkham
This has to win the linkbait title of the week award. Very nicely done. (Not
that it's not a good article. I'm simply commenting on word choice in the
title. A less brave soul might have been more boorish or more prudish.)

Building a technology business means deciding whether you're a service
businesses or a product businesses. Here's a product that traditionally has a
service model -- and it looks like a high-touch service -- trying to be sold
as a product. Kind of has that feel of something a bunch of guy nerds would
think would fly but actually not so much. So I can buy the thesis of the
essay.

The interesting thing is that there _is_ a market here. What I'd love to know
is how they're finding the subset of women that are comfortable using the web
to buy undergarments. Are they running ads on specific sites? Leveraging
social networks like Pinterest?

Instead of the "works for me" versus "I hate it" conversation, I'd be much
more interested in how the company actually found their MVP and proved it out
-- and more critically the size of each segment. Much more informative than
blanket generalizations.

(I realize my comment was loaded with puns. They were not intentional)

~~~
ig1
Bra sales are only high-touch at the high-end, and even then only partially.
Buying undergarments with a service model is socially awkward whatever gender
you are.

I'm 100% certain that online bra sales have a future.

Why ? - the largest lingerie retailer in the US is Victoria's Secret. I'm
guessing your brain automatically inserts the word "catalog" after their name.
The biggest lingerie retailer built their business around a _mail order
catalog_ (although they obviously have stores now too).

The women who buy bras online are the same as women who buy other clothes
online.

------
MichelleLam
[Posting on HN since comments on the original post are closed.]

Hello Sindhya- I'm Michelle, CEO/Co-Founder of True&Co. I started the company
to create a great personal shopping experience for women because for most
women, bra shopping sucks - going to a store, spending hours in a fitting
room, still not finding a bra that flatters you.

Women told us a great shopping experience is about delivering your personal
bra shop to your house. We give women 5 bras to try at home, risk-free. Pay
for what you keep, return the rest. All returns go through a 65-point
inspection to make sure the bra hasn't been worn.

The algorithm determines which bras we suggest for you - the best bra for you
may not be the best bra for me. So far, over 100,000 women have taken the
True&Co quiz, We keep getting smarter on what works for each of our 2000
individual body types. Once you tell us which bra you’ve kept, we offer
matching panties in your personal shop.

A great shopping experience is NOT about contractually obligating customers to
buy every month so no, we are not a subscription service. Our customers return
to us over and over again because they've discovered a better way to shop for
all kinds of intimate apparel.

Sindya, I hope you try our service and give online bra fitting a chance!
Please email me at hello@trueandco.com or visit <https://trueandco.com/>.

------
natrius
Dollar Shave Club got ~$10M of their ~$11M funding _two months ago_ [1]. This
makes the argument that they've done nothing with their funding a bit silly.
It also indicates that there might be plans they have that we haven't seen
yet, but are worth funding.

Overall, this sounds like venting about how other companies in your industry
are getting funding when you presumably aren't.

[1] <http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/dollar-shave-club-funding/>

~~~
orangethirty
Read her comment on that link:

Sindhya Valloppillil

Other than their video, Dollar shave club has nothing proprietary. Not a
single product person on their team, not a single industry person on the core
team, no real pipeline of innovation. the branding isn't globally appealing.
No way you can turn it into a lifestyle brand with that brand name. The irony:
Dubin said "too many other co's are primarily interested in the subscription
model b/c of recurring revenue, w/out really thinking through the problem that
they’re solving for users." I'm not sure what Dollar Shave has thought through
other than their videos. Great metrics and a video don't make a consumer brand
a success. Without question, I totally agree @tomreynolds. It's a ridiculous
valuation -> Yes, we're in a bubble.

------
Jun8
They absolutely do! If you have watched even a single episode of _What Not to
Wear_ you'd have known that most women, especially ones with breast sizes a
couple of sigmas away from the mean, have no easy way to buy a well-fitted
bra. They either have to go to a fancy store to do personal fitting (may be
expensive) or go to a place like VS and hope for the best.

A suitable algorithm, based on Kinect 3D models, say, would totally take this
market by surprise and make a _huge_ splash.

~~~
frossie
Well, maybe. The "wrong size" problem is only part of the story. Another is
that many bras are generally poorly constructed, lose their shape after
continued use, and sizing is not the only issue (fabric tolerance, flop etc).

But more than anything else, the problem is price. A "good" workhorse bra
(workwear, not lingerie fantasy stuff) will set you back on average, oh, say
about $65 ($100 is not uncommon). You probably need half a dozen. I have no
idea what the economics are and why they are so expensive, but I can't imagine
what price a "Kinect 3D" custom bra would come in at.

And the other aspect of "a good bra is hard to find" is that once you find
one, there's a huge lock-in factor. Women will re-order the same model for
years.

So yeah, while there is certainly a non-zero market for something like this,
it's probably not huge. Witness the fact that it is quite easy and even not
too pricey to get custom jeans made to measure, and yet the majority of the
population doesn't.

~~~
omegant
Now there is a disruption possibility in that market if someone took the time
to do actual biometric and customer search and some innovation in production
methods.

------
robotresearcher
"VCs think my boobs need an algorithm. My boobs don’t need an algorithm."

Horrible link-bait introduction. Algorithm is being used as a dirty word.
Algorithms are not soft, caring, touchable, feminine, according to the imagery
in the piece.

In the real world though, boobs and lives are saved daily by algorithms. I
want my family's boob cancer screening images reconstructed from tiny, noisy
signals by the most hardcore medical imaging algorithms available, thanks.

But "VCs Think My Bra Fitting Need A Questionnaire" wouldn't be getting those
views.

~~~
mikeurbach
Couldn't agree more. It seems like "algorithm" is starting to be used among
the non-tech world to refer to the computerization of everything in a negative
way. Really, an algorithm is a mathematical formulation of how to solve a
problem, albeit usually ran on computers. If True & Co. want to apply a little
machine learning to an old problem, fine. If people think that machines can't
learn, then we're going to have these sort of issues.

------
jimzvz
_The worst part of this problem is again that many non-crony, first-time
entrepreneurs, regardless of how compelling their business model is, how great
their margins are and how great their team is, still get a hard time and
struggle to get funding._

Who cares? I think the real issue is that there seems to be a large number of
entrepreneurs whose primary goal is to secure funding. If you can't find an
investor, make a plan. Change your business so you don't need external funding
(it should start out like that anyway), network, look overseas, work harder so
that your business is more appealing etc. If your business is so great, you
will find an investor. There is no need to play the victim and claim that
"VCs" only fund their friends and fundamentally flawed businesses. Even if, by
some wild stretch of the imagination, that is the case, who cares?

------
showerst
WRT Dollar Shave Club - "What are they up to now? Sucking"

Does anyone have any evidence of this? I'm curious about how they're doing, I
haven't seen anything online about them delivering bad news. Just because they
aren't offering new products (less than a year after launch!) doesn't mean
that they're failing...

------
JoshHenryKatz
It's very often that investors get wrapped up in the hot business method
rather than taking the time to think about how that might actually apply to
the specific industry. They've seen how subscriptions and algorithms are going
gangbusters for companies like Amazon, why not expand to an industry they know
nothing about? Most of these VCs are likely not coming from the garment
industry, so they might know absolutely nothing about manufacturing or
consumer experience. They try to pick based on things they know, and what
companies they think might be similar. Much of the time, that's a very poor
model for investment and they would be better of sticking to what they
understand. At the same time, how many original investors actually understood
what Facebook or Google were all about?

------
wamatt
"Boobs" + "Algorithm" = HN frontpage. Savvy marketing there.

~~~
super-serial
Yeah but if I post a story about my flawless "Dick Algorithm" no one cares.

Who says women don't have an advantage in tech?

------
ig1
Off the core topic, but the author seems to misunderstand what the Series A
crunch is.

The Series A crunch isn't anything to do with crappy companies raising huge
series As. Rather the crunch is caused by the huge growth in the number of
companies successfully raising angel rounds (both through accelerators and the
explosion of angels created by the IPOs of Google, Facebook, etc.).

While the number of Series A rounds done by VCs is going up, it's been growing
nowhere near as fast as seed funding so naturally the number of angel funded
companies who fail to raise Series As is going to go up. Hence the term Series
A crunch.

------
Mz
I read the piece and I don't understand how it relates to the article title.
As best I can tell, it is just a rant that some other company got funded. I
see no mention of what her company is, why it presumably did not get funded,
what value she thinks a company should be measured by, etc. Thus, the title
strikes me as pretty gratuitous, like "I think I will stick boobs in the title
cuz sex sells, then bitch about whatever the heck I feel like". So my thought:
Maybe she can't get VC money because she sucks at effective communication.

------
kaliblack
I hear this kind of sentiment a lot and it usually comes from a position of
subjective analysis, rather than actual knowledge. I'd be able to support an
argument that was based on first-hand knowledge about the product and the
reasons for investment. This is simply personal opinion, based on the author's
own context. VCs and the founders don't think _your_ boobs need an algorithm.
They think there's a market that do want one. Are they right? I don't know and
neither does the author.

------
sindhya
Please refer to the correction at the bottom of the article. I have no problem
admitting when I'm wrong. True&Co. doesn't not have a subscription. But isn't
the Warby of the bra world and they have not proven that their algorithm
works. 1) True does NOT make the process of bra shopping easier. That's what
Warby does best while offering a great product at a very affordable price.
Warby has great branding. In fact, True takes a traditionally feminine and
sexy product and makes shopping for it a BORING and painful experience. 3
minutes of questioning was boring. 2)There is no animosity towards the team.
My post is no different than an article on Pando - actually it's no where as
snarky some of the articles I've seen. Pando can be really, really snarky.
Check out this article: <http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/21/dominatefund-badly-
misses-t...>. 3) If True's algorithm works, they should really show proof.
Have they done any claims testing? That's what consumer brands do when they
have $ and they are trying to prove that their tech works. Otherwise, it's
flimsy, BS marketing ==> No true fit, no true fitting algorithm. 4) Where are
the panties? I could not find them after 10 minutes. It's worse that True says
they sell them, but I couldn't find them after 10 minutes. The founders don't
understand basic business, marketing or branding. That's key for a consumer
goods business like a lingerie brand. 5)It's a shame because I do know several
other BETTER lingerie startups that should have gotten funding which presented
at DecodedFashion Lingerie Startup Showcase. One founder is in serious debt
trying to get funding. Unfortunately she isn't a former VC, so fundraising is
a lot harder for her.

------
saumil07
Great title, terrible post. What a giant muddle of critiquing everything from
one company to a whole industry to a variety of tangential companies in the
space...without data. No one except for dollar shave club and their investors
knows how many subs they have. They may have very few. They may have a lot.
But trashing the for running a promotion in a month and for having a lot of
money? Thanks but no thanks.

I love a good rant but this was not one.

------
phibit
Maybe I am misunderstanding but it seems like this post is critiquing the
investments of a specific set of VCs.

Firstly, who cares? If VCs want to blow money on ideas that go nowhere, that's
their business. In fact, it's a business that they know and do well, they cast
a wide net of high-risk high-yield investments and deal with the average.

And if OP is attacking the validity of the product, great. That's your
opinion, but honestly who are you to say which ideas will succeed which will
fail. The true test is if the company succeeds. A company's primary goal is to
make money, they don't really give a damn about fitting bras. If they can make
money, even if their service is factually crappy and unreliable, they've
succeeded; probably in their own minds and the minds of their investors.

My personal opinion is that the idea is dumb but if they succeed good for
them, they were blessed with a vision that I lack.

------
rxl
The problem I see with this article is that it trashes one particular company
and the VC backing of that company and attempts to use that to make a larger
point about vc-backed e-commerce companies in general.

So OK, maybe that company isn't great. Maybe the VC's made a mistake with that
particular investment. Or maybe the founders and VC's know something that you
don't. Either way, one's observations about a company should be limited to
that company and not be generalized to the entire space the company is in,
unless of course there is sufficient compelling data.

------
ebbv
I love this post and it underlines a common problem I see being repeated from
the early dotcom days; people investing in things they find exciting rather
than things that actually make sense.

~~~
jfb
Or investing in things they don't understand. Which seems like a pretty good
sign of dumb money to me.

------
olleicua
What is the point? You don't like this company's business model so don't buy
from them. Either you're right and nobody will buy from them and they'll fade
into obscurity or you're wrong and some customers do like this model. Are you
upset that VCs are being stupid? I hate to break it to you but the world is
full of stupid people and some of them are VCs. This isn't news. #downvote

------
teach
"For every bra a woman buys, she probably buys at least 5 pairs of panties."

I beg to differ. I'm a man, and have never bought either bra or panties for my
wife, but I _have_ watched at least 100 hours of QVC and HSN (competitor home
shopping networks).

I have seen MANY presentations of various bras, and virtually none for
panties. I'm quite certain that's no accident.

~~~
cowpewter
(I'm a woman) Bras are usually worn multiple times before washing. Good ones
are expensive ($60-100 a pop), and the less wear and tear on them the longer
they last, and the longer the fit that you bought them for is preserved.

Panties are changed every day, and are cheap in comparison to bras. You can
get a 6-pack of cotton Hanes at Walmart for less than $10. Individual panties
from a department store might cost $5-15 a pair. You can compromise on panty
quality in a way you can't with bras. Cheap panties just fall apart a little
faster. Cheap bras are daily torture.

I'd wager the average women most definitely owns 5 if not more pairs of
panties for every bra she owns.

Edit to add: I would say the issue (with not seeing panties advertised as
heavily on shopping networks) is more that panty quality is not so much of an
issue. That 6-pack of Hanes will do you just fine and there's no constant
_need_ to find a better panty like there is to find a better bra. Bras suck,
unless you've got small boobs. The balance of comfort, fit, and support is
delicate. It's easy to try to market the New! Improved! bra. There's not
really anything to improve about the panty.

~~~
icambron
All the more reason to build the business around bras instead of panties.

------
sagacityhappens
P

Pitch Deck for Shave of Month Club:

We been open for 2 Months and have doubled our sales!

We will double our sales at $1 a razor each month for 30 Months.

1: 1 2: 3 3: 7 4: 15 5: 31 6: 63 7: 127 8: 255 9: 511 10:1,023 11:2,047
12:4,095 13:8,191 14:16,383 15:32,767 16:65,535 17:131,071 18:262,143
19:524,287 20:1,048,575 21:2,097,151 22:4,194,303 23:8,388,607 24:16,777,215

------
DanBC
There's a reason Rigby and Pellor can charge £100 for bras. They don't have an
algorithm. They have well known name; great (apparently, I've obviously never
tried it) fitting; etc.

PS: If the blog owner is reading _please_ consider better contrast (off white
background and darker text) and larger font size.

~~~
3JPLW
Agreed about contrast, and perhaps even more importantly, please don't break
text zoom.

------
hayksaakian
It appears as though she's mad.

Anything intriguing or interesting was lost on me due to this.

------
jamiequint
This post reeks of jealousy.

------
greg7mdp
You obviously don't need an algorithm to find a catchy title :-)

~~~
sindhya
Or company name. :)

------
javert
Classic case of blaming a group of people (all VCs) for something some
particular people did (those particular VCs).

------
Havoc
Thread title mentions boobs...ranked #1 on HM. I don't really mind, but that
is kinda weak for std HN purposes.

------
ActVen
Sindhya raises some very valid points that help illustrate that a large
portion of the investment community simply can't tell the difference between
startups that are truly innovative and those simply clothed in the
accouterments of innovation. Tacking on the terms algorithm, social, mobile,
patentable, etc. seems to fool quite a few people.

------
runn1ng
He he, boobs.

~~~
mhurron
While your comment is going to get downvoted, appropriately I might add, I
still would like to thank you for voicing my similarly juvenile humour.

