>> Narrator: Live from Austin, Texas, it's the Cube
covering South by Southwest 2017.
Brought to you by Intel.
Now here's John Furrier.
>> Welcome back everyone.
We're live here at the AI Lounge with Intel, #intelai.
This is the Cube, I'm John Furrier.
Our next guest is Michelle Bacharach,
who's the co-founder and CEO of FINDMINE.
retail start up out of New York City, entrepreneur.
Welcome to the Cube, thanks for joining us.
>> Thank you, thanks for having me.
>> So we're at Intel, Intel AI.
Pretty packed here, isn't it?
>> Yeah.
>> Pretty crowded.
>> I think it's the cover from the rain.
>> Yeah, it's a little rainy here, yesterday was hot.
You got a panel here later in the afternoon
about AI and retail and convergence,
but I want to ask you as an entrepreneur,
what got you into starting this company?
Was it an itch you were scratching,
was it a vision, was it something
that you felt compelled to do?
Give us the story of FINDMINE.
>> Yeah, it's actually a little embarrassing.
It kind of sounds like the most selfish reason
to start a business.
It's because I had a problem I wanted to solve,
but I think that's the best way to start a company,
honestly, because it means you're going
to be a passionate about it,
you're going to be a user of your own,
whatever you build, and for me,
that challenge was I would buy, you know,
like my silk bomber here with this big flower on it,
and I'd be like yes, I love this, this is great,
and I would get it home, but I wouldn't have
tried it on with, you know, the pants
and the shoes that go with it,
so when I'd get it home, I'd be like uh oh,
now I have to figure out how to put
an outfit together around this to wear it
and feel confident.
I think a lot of women, especially,
have this challenge where we feel pressure
to be stylish, but not everyone has
that kind of style gene where you can just see something
like this and be like oh, I know five ways to wear that.
So I struggled with that.
I struggled with that when I would buy furniture,
even when I would buy things like electronics,
like I was really looking into buying
a drone at one point.
I was like oh, that sounds cool,
I could fly a drone, I want to learn that.
I found the drone model that I thought I wanted,
but then it comes with all this stuff, right,
all of these peripherals.
They don't all plug in to the drone,
so the research involved to figure out
how to use one product in combination
with another product was way too much work,
and I figured someone should be automating that
and help a consumer like me answer the question,
how do I use this for any product
that I might pick up on the shelf.
>> And so that was the catalyst.
Where is it now today, what's the status of FINDMINE?
>> Uh yeah, that's a good question.
>> John: Solving all the problems, did it?
>> No, not yet, close.
No, but, so you know, that was like seven years ago
that I started noticing this problem
in my personal life, then I researched
and found that tons of other people have this problem,
customers will buy 170% more
if you show them how to use the product that they're buying,
but I didn't have the tools to solve it.
I have a product management background,
but I wasn't a computer scientist, a data scientist
to actually execute it, and so I'd met a friend,
a friend of mine's husband is a computer scientist,
and I sort of like, you know, suckered him in
with like this one little project,
and then he was like wow, this is really interesting.
He cares nothing about fashion, by the way.
Like he wears his Columbia sweatshirt
and jeans like every single day,
so he doesn't really feel the problem
the way I do, but what he saw was
this opportunity to use artificial intelligence
and machine learning and technology
to solve this really interesting problem
of like, can we make a machine replicate
what a human does, which is like figuring out
what's stylish, and then that's what hooked him in
and he thought the problem and the application
of the technology was so cool.
So that was, you know, in 2014 we started working on this.
Since then, we've, you know, launched a product,
we have customers on board.
We work with fashion brands and retailers.
We produce revenue, we raise money,
we have a team now, we have a real office.
We're not working out of our apartments anymore,
so it's going well.
>> So now you're in the middle of this AI world
and if you think about the data
your problem that you were originally solving
actually applies to a lot of things,
whether it's learning, healthcare,
so it's kind of like the data drives
more opportunity to collective intelligence.
Is that kind of where this is going?
Do you see that trend where it's the data
and the algorithms, or the algorithms and the data?
>> Yeah, I think that access to the data
is the big factor, so in retail there's tons
of data, right?
Transaction data, product data, user data,
all that kind of stuff,
and a lot of it is very easily accessible.
It's not all like private information,
customer information, that you have
to guard really closely.
Obviously there's some of that
because you're doing transactions,
so it's credit card information,
there's location data, you know gender,
all that kind of stuff,
but the product data is publicly available.
So we didn't even have to have
a customer live before we started doing cool stuff
with machine learning, with large data sets
because we would just go find products
that were live on the internet and use that data.
I think in different industries like healthcare
it's a lot harder to come by the data
and there's a lot more concerns around it.
>> Michelle, what are some of the learnings
that you've had, now if you look back
from where you from where you were.
What are some of the key learnings
with the venture you're building,
around what was surprising to you,
what popped out as value?
Was it the machine learning?
I mean, what were some of the learnings you can share?
>> I think in general, my best piece of advice
for start ups is just don't die.
And I say that a lot and people laugh,
but it's so true.
I've seen so many friends with startups
that kind of had a moment where they were like okay,
it's all falling apart, and they just,
they said okay that's it.
But if they had stayed around for like five more days,
10 more days, 50 more days, how their fortunes
could have changed is incredible,
and we've gone through that,
I've seen other people go through that,
so that's number one.
And the number two is, like don't wait.
Just do something.
So I think for a long time we were sort of like
waiting to get like the right data sets
in the right order and like getting it all perfect first,
and that's not the right way to approach it.
Just go.
>> So get a horse on the track and at least run the race,
get something going.
>> Michelle: Yeah, exactly.
>> And don't run out of cash.
As I always say, you can't go out of business
when there's money in the bank.
>> Michelle: Yup.
>> So, okay, so now on the tech side.
What has surprised you on some of the amazing things
that are now starting to come into visibility for you,
and what do you see as your vision?
So what's kind of obvious and that you're going after,
and what are some of the things
that you see in your vision that others might not see?
>> So what's really, what we're doing right now,
and every startup needs focus,
you can't do everything at once,
but you need to have this bigger vision
to make it, you know a billion dollar potential
kind of exit company because that's what
people want to invest in if you want
to take venture capital, and not every startup needs to.
You can self finance a business.
But for me, this rapid growth was really important,
and so I think what was really important
was that we kind of like built something
that could scale long term,
so this broad vision of like every single product
that you could pick up off the shelf
as a consumer, you know exactly how to use it.
For me, there is like a personal mission in that
because I hate waste.
I went to Berkeley, like we talked about before,
so I have a little bit of that like hippie mentality,
and I was buying all this stuff like in fast fashion,
and it just sat in my closet
and then I'd throw it out or I would never use it,
and that made me really bummed.
And the reason I was throwing it out was
because I didn't know how to use it,
and if I had just gotten that piece of information up front,
then I probably would have been able
to integrate it into my life,
and I wouldn't have thrown it out.
So doing it across all industries in retail.
>> So really efficiency too is key on this?
>> Yeah.
>> You could actually accelerate that.
>> Absolutely.
>> So on the fashion side, is that where
the focus is now on the retail side, or only still?
>> Yes, so we're B2B, we sell to fashion retailers
and brands.
They use our technology and then they figure out
where they want to get it into the consumer's hands,
so it might be on the e-commerce page,
it might be in the store, it might be
in the associate's phone, so that you as a shopper
don't even know that like a customer,
or that the associate is like kind of cheating, right?
They're looking at FINDMINE to find out
what outfits to recommend.
They might just be having an interaction with you
like a human does, but they're using
an assistive tool to get that efficiency
that you mentioned before.
>> So you have a panel coming up this afternoon.
Without giving away all the content,
what's the topic that you want to talk about?
>> So the panel is artificial intelligence for good,
and ours specifically is autonomous world,
so it's about the automation that's kind of
all around us and becoming more ubiquitous,
and how artificial intelligence is making that possible.
>> So I always get, I'm so amazed by autonomous vehicles
because I think, you know, it's so obvious,
mental models, we all have cars.
>> Michelle: Yeah.
>> Or you'd have been no transportation,
but it's pretty radical when you think about
the impact of autonomous vehicles,
and this is a pretty amazing trend.
I mean, smart cities is also mind blowing as well.
You think about what's going to happen
for the digital citizen.
>> Yeah.
>> Like what are those services?
So there's some amazing potential
but also work that has to get done.
What's your thoughts on those two trends
and the impacts, you know, 10, 20 years down?
Will there be cars on the road in 25 years?
>> Yeah, so actually on the panel coming up
it's going to be myself,
kind of from the retail perspective,
there's going to be someone
from the smart cities perspective,
and someone from the autonomous vehicles perspective,
and I'm kind of like what am I doing here?
Like those trends are so much bigger
and more like amazing and life changing
than what we're doing, but I actually think
that retail is so ubiquitous and like we're all,
we all shop all the time, whether it's through Amazon,
whether it's a physical store,
and so it's a little bit more accessible, almost,
whereas like the idea of having like a driverless car
is harder for you to picture.
>> Yeah.
>> And one of the things that I'll be talking about
probably a little bit later is how like
you don't actually realize how much
of this is going on around you all the time,
whereas seeing a car on the street
without a driver in the left hand side like drivers seat
is like a shock, right?
We're so not used to.
>> John: Yeah, it's mind blowing.
>> Used to that.
>> Be it worry, let me ask the retail question
because one of the things you're close to
as a retail is that you're seeing
a lot of the brick and mortar sites
becoming destination oriented,
not so much day to day shopping.
E-commerce is obviously exploding,
it's becoming what it is,
and there's some tie in between digital and analog now,
and a converging.
What's the big takeaway?
What's the state of the art right now in retail?
Is that the vibe right now
that it's a combination of destination based
or is there something else going on?
Can you share some color on what's happening
in the retail world?
>> Yeah, so everyone talks about like oh my god,
like no one's going to shop in stores anymore.
Well we're a long way away from that.
Over 90% of all commerce is still done in a physical store.
It's just that all the growth is in the e-commerce
and that's why everyone talks about it
is as like this huge disruption because it is,
like all of the growth is in e-commerce,
which is incredible, so at some point maybe
it will completely take it over,
but I personally don't feel like that's the case
because we're humans, we crave social interaction,
and part of shopping is that social interaction,
that consultative nature of selling
that I just don't, I hope won't be replaced completely
by a screen.
>> So you're having fun here at South by Southwest?
A little bit of rain today, you got drenched
as you were walking over here.
What's this show like been for you?
>> I got here this morning, came straight
from the airport to one event
and then went to another event with my suitcase
like trying to get around,
so the rain definitely put a damper on that,
but I'm hoping it clears out.
>> What do you think about
the Intel AI booth here, AI lounge.
What do you think, pretty impressive?
>> Yeah, you actually can check out FINDMINE
in that corner over there.
We're on that wall, and it's a live,
it's a live website.
It's actually showing John Varvatos,
which is one of our customers.
They're a high end fashion brand for mens
and we show the complete outfits,
so you can go actually like shop right there,
FINDMINE would get credit for that,
and Intel has been an awesome partner to us
and just really innovative,
and I love Rainey Street.
I think it's so cool, like these are all houses
converted into bars converted into an Intel experience.
It's very meta.
>> Yeah, very meta, it's a meta of meta.
Michelle Bacharach, thanks so much
for spending this time in the Cube.
We're here inside the Cube inside
the AI lounge here with the Cube.
I'm John Furrier.
We'll be right back with more coverage
from South by Southwest.
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