That sounds interesting. Have you compared your service to pouchdb and gun? Is it possible to use icepeak in offline mode and automatically sync when getting online again?
PouchDB is CouchDB-Protocol implemented in javascript so you can run it wherever there is javascript, not just as a client. If you want to have a backend, you can use any DB that supports that protocol (there are several), which includes using a PouchDB instance run by node.js.
That depends on your use case since Firebase is more than a database. Since CouchDB is from 2005 and Firebase is from 2011, it is in comparison a very mature product and protocol worth trying.
As an engineer, isn't life in Asia more luxurious because you can easily afford a maid and other amenities? Seriously, what's the benefit of moving into Western Europe?
Imagine Steve Jobs having to pay Steve Wozniak. The trick of the startup is that the key engineers are the founders.
Startups are not a place for an MBA to get engineers for free but a place for engineers to make bank if their egghead managers in their corporations don't get going with an interesting business idea of which they know that it is a missed opportunity.
Thank you for so succinctly responding. I'm going to expand a bit and ask the GP (rhetorically) - if you want 500k-1M engineers (R&D I'm presuming) to work for you, what are you bringing to a table?
If you are failing to attract these high-end engineers to a low paying job, perhaps it is because they dont see what unique skills the "business person" is bringing to the table to balance the risk.
As an extreme example, I'd guarantee if the "business person" was Elon Musk, people would flock this startup. What high-end Engineers do not want is to give away a lions share of equity in exchange for a pay cut with no real upside, that would make no sense.
The typical procedural founder with "business skills" may have solid business skills, but those can be hired anyway, the business founder needs to demonstrate equal 500k-1M level of skills/background/trackrecord/etc.
>“Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.” [2]
If you call your company magic then the product most likely is not just at the brink of your understanding but so far out that it is impossible to close the gap by hard work alone.
Steve Jobs mentioned in a very early interview somewhere that he wants to build a computer for everybody. He waited years and decades patiently until every duck was in line and he could launch the iPhone.
This thought doesn't lead to a meaningful point. I am just wondering why he and Apple (e.g. the A7[3]) got the timing right several times but many others push too soon or wait too long.
On Apple (as opposed to Magic Leap), I believe a lot of it is figuring out a customer need and audience that can be satisfied by a set of technologies that are just at the edge of mature, and then not shipping the product until it actually satisfies those needs. This means not shipping a technology as a product just because it may be useful in the future, and it means resetting a products at the prototype stage often.
Both are hard for startups to take on. The former because many of the founders are heavily focused on a technology they came up with and attempt to shoehorn it into products that don't quite make sense. The latter because it requires either very patient investors or a big bank account.
Both are also hard for established, mature companies to take on. The former because they seem to believe that innovation for innovations sake is a useful thing to do, and for whatever reason the tech press seems to encourage them. The latter because they are focused on delivering quarterly results over building long term platform and ecosystem value, and because politically a cancelled project can be career ending.
Looking at your own brand homepage, my impression is that it is too technical. I had expected to see many instagram-like pictures of people who demonstrate that they have managed to dress better by using your product. Isn't your value proposition that people can dress better?
Maybe I have overlooked it but I think you have the perfect software to run an online shop. Pay influencers to use your product and viewers who like the results will want to buy clothes from you. The profit margins of the sold products should be higher than anything that can be made from selling an app.
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.
Hot take: You need a woman to design this website. None of it screams fashion. When I think fashion, I think instagram influencer not "Omnichannel Personalization."
Your killer app could be a simple FB quiz. People give you their FB/insta and you spit out what looks that they'd think are wicked sick. Ideally culled from Instagram.
This web page sounds like nerds talking about fashion rather than fashionistas. I'm fairly sure that the Kardashians can't spell ontology.
Edit: Also why isn't this app hooking into the hauling subculture? This would totes perfect for folks and YTers planning hauls.
I would say they need someone with real marketing experience. Someone who can define a target market and write for that person.
I could be the target market here. I have a desire to look good for work and casual situations but absolutely no fashion sense. I hang out on HN. ML powered fashion sounds great! But then I go on their website and it looks like it's for 13 year olds who can read at a college professor level.
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 want to see nice clothes that look good on me.
I have to second this. The Chicisimo (how do you even say this by the way) site should be the b2b one. Way too technical and verbose for consumers, yet completely misses the visual aspect of showcasing what it actually can do with clothes & people.
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.
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...
That is a very sought-after feature and yet not mentioned in any of your pages. Patagonia made waves a couple years ago with software to find matching sizes alone.
As an investor, won't you pull this move just to get better conditions? The founders are fixated on closing the deal so they will put up with almost any condition that you throw at them?
How can you escape survival of the fittest? With 8G people, it's a numbers game. Even if one or the other is driven by interesting motivations, is that a strategic advantage the competition for the fittest business processes?
>What is it that you want to do that these technologies are preventing you from doing?
It's a spiritual thing. What does it mean if something is private? What do you allow yourself to do if nobody is watching? E.g. do you eat more sloppy when you are in private than in a restaurant?
If everything is public, there is no privacy. This comes with its own spiritual benefits but some people don't like that.
[1] https://pouchdb.com/
[2] https://gun.js.org/