

How to Reapply to YC - mpenn
https://medium.com/@msjpenn/how-to-reapply-to-yc-f5aa6713e8ea

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petervandijck
Great story. Your pitch for the product on the medium article is better than
your pitch on your homepage, btw.

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jmckib
Agreed, from the home page I imagined I would have to do measurements by
myself and input them into the app, which sounds like a pain. This sounds a
lot more appealing, especially the accuracy claim:

> We sell men’s custom shirts by measuring you with your phone’s camera. We’re
> scientifically proven to be 20% more accurate than a professional tailor,
> and our shirts start at $69, half the price you would typically pay for a
> custom shirt of our quality.

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petervandijck
Exactly, edit that up a little and put it on the homepage, first thing user
sees.

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incision
Neat.

As others have noted, the product could benefit from promoting the "camera +
smarts = faster, easier _and_ better than visiting a tailor" aspect more.

I'd use this if it could do pants as well.

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mpenn
Marketing materials are always a work in progress!

We're very excited about pants; we don't have them yet, but it's most likely
our next product.

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temuze
This looks really neat! Here's some unsolicited feedback:

> "Scientifically proven to measure you 20% more accurately than a
> professional tailor."

This probably isn't a priority for you guys, but it would be cool to see the
data on this. You could easily make a white paper without releasing your
actual ML process - how big is your sample set, were your control groups
"blind" when they reported which shirt they like more, were the tailored
shirts the same fabric, how did you pick your "average" tailor, etc.

The biggest reason on why I don't try a new clothing store is A) I don't know
how well it'll fit me and B) returning things, even with prepaid slips, is
still a hassle. For me, any little thing that convinces me I don't have to
worry about returning goes a long way for trying a new store.

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mpenn
We've thought about releasing a white paper but haven't gotten around to it.
We brought it 35 people and 4 professional tailors. We had each tailor measure
the subjects and then we measured each subject. We compared the standard
deviation of the 4 tailors vs. the average of the 4 tailors vs. us. Our std
was 20% smaller -- for the stats people out there, we're 20% more precise.
Apologies in advance for anyone who wants to yell at me for the misleading use
of "accuracy."

I encourage you to give us a shot and see if we can nail the fit for you!

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lettergram
Interesting... I work in computer vision and I use body measurements to
identify people (as well as features). Its an awesome idea and wish I thought
of it!

Best of luck!

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mpenn
Thanks! The machine learning has been incredibly fun :-).

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pj_mukh
Good advice aside, this is some great use of computer vision techniques to
solve a real problem!

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burn
Great advice, just applied ourselves looking forward to receiving whatever
feedback we get.

