Uwear.AI on Who Are These Podcasts

Welcome to Who Are These Startups?

podcast shorts featuring founder interviews of Canadian startups.

Welcome back to Who Are These Startups.

I'm the startup coach, founder of Front of Starts, and with me today is Reda and Axel, the co-founders of You Wear.

Welcome, Reda and Axel.

Thanks, Greg.

Thanks.

What does You Wear do?

You Wear is a tool for apparel and fashion online stores to generate photos of their products using simple photos with their smartphone.

So they can snap pictures and then they can describe the photoshoots they want and our tool we generated for them.

So no need to spend weeks doing photoshoots, finding models, coordinating the whole process.

Today, Jenner and Tv, I can do that for you.

Who is You Wear for in general?

In general, it can be for any type of fashion business that wants to sell clothes online.

It can be either for small businesses where it will be much more cost efficient than the traditional photoshoots, but it's also for big enterprises that want to speed up the photoshoot process.

So yeah, it's anyone that has an issue with photoshoots, which means any fashion brands in the industry, big or small.

What is your startup story?

We have met in November 2022.

Axel just moved to Montreal.

I've been here since 2016 and generative AI was booming.

The goals were launched left and right.

So we started thinking about products we could build around stable diffusion, which is a big image model.

We're thinking about how can we productize this for an industry to solve real problems, to create real value.

We ended up on this use case, which we have been working on since then.

And what drives you?

I'd say the innovation today is going at a really, really crazy pace that has hardly been seen before.

This is going to redefine a lot of things we are doing today.

And I think with you, we can really change something that is really painful today and make it much, much easier.

And that's really thrilling to be part of this change.

And how would you define success?

I would say you will succeed if we can make the fashion and apparel industry much more efficient.

That's what the core of every innovation, of every progress is to make us, is to make even being more efficient.

So the mission of you is really to unlock some new potential for the industry.

I don't think we will replace all photoshoots that exist on this planet.

But if we can bring a tool that can replace 80 of them, move the process from weeks to hours or even minutes, we will have succeeded.

What is your funding situation?

We have been bootstrapping since the beginning.

We're finalizing the MVP and we're talking to some friends and who can be our first team members.

So when we finalize our MVP and put it in the hands of users, we'll probably go out there to raise the first round.

What do you wish you knew before you started?

It's more about going in and being aware that nothing is going to be certain and embrace it.

It's something that continues learning.

I don't think you can say, "Okay, I have to know this before I start."

It's just go out there and start and you'll know what you need to know in the process.

Being an AI founder, what's your favorite productivity hack or AI tool?

Definitely chat GPT for us.

It enables us to save so much time.

If you know the right prompts and for instance, for our website, we relied a lot on chat GPT to help us speed up the coding part.

It was such an amazing tool to use.

You are currently in the Next AI program.

Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with Next AI?

Absolutely.

It has been fantastic so far.

So we've been here for a month.

The greatest thing about it is the cohort spirit among founders.

I don't know if you can see today, but this is the Next AI offices in Montreal.

Founders come here every day to work from here.

We've been making friends.

The Next AI program really put the emphasis of building this camaraderie around early stage founders.

For that, we're grateful.

Do you have any tips for founders?

I'd say if you have the opportunity to join a community of other founders, go and do it because it can be sometimes a lonely journey.

Being able to share that journey with other entrepreneurs makes it way much fun.

It helps in everyday life.

Really great tip.

What's one book every founder should read?

My number one book that I tell everyone about is The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch.

I would recommend every founder working in tech or science to just be an expert, like get it as an audio book, as a hard book cover, whatever you can get.

The thesis of this book is that humanity is on an infinite path of progress.

There is an infinite number of problems to be solved.

There will always be problems to be solved and problems are solvable.

It calls for everyone to be a rational optimist and to not fear progress or despair because there's something we don't understand.

It radically changed my perceptions of science and technology and why we're working this, whether on the business side or the technical side.

I highly recommend it.

As AI co-founders, what are your reactions to the current call to pause AI development and all the fear around it?

I understand the concern, but I think it can be a bit unrealistic.

The concern is it's going at such a fast pace and there are a lot of things that we thought would be impossible just one or two years ago and that are now possible.

Our regulation system is just too slow compared to the fast pace of the industry.

The idea of posing that to state guidelines makes sense in some way, but on the other side, it's kind of unrealistic and maybe unwanted because it's a global race.

If one country just stops right now, another country will continue and prevail.

It's going to take such a huge part in our life in the future that you don't want another country to be the main actor if you can.

We see it maybe a threat, but there's also a lot of things that will be beneficial for society.

You can think of health tech, for instance, that is going to be much more efficient with these tools and might save lives.

So if we can go ahead and continue this research and save lives, why shouldn't we continue?

Where can our listeners go and connect with you and you where online?

You are that AI.

You have our emails, our LinkedIn's, and there's also a waitlist online.

If you want to be the first in line to join our close beta.

I really appreciate you both taking the time to be part of Who Are These Startups.

Thanks for the opportunity.

This has been Who Are These Startups.

Find out more at WhoAreTheStartups.com and check out our live events at TorontoStartups.com/events. [music] [no audio] [BLANK_AUDIO]