Perhaps misunderstanding what the D in All Things D stands for, online bra-shopping helper True&Co is demoing its product at the annual D10 conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. today.
As seen at the opening of every infomercial ever, sometimes the simplest tasks are actually quite difficult. Getting fitted for a bra in person, says True&Co, is uncomfortable, and doing it yourself at home is also difficult as “women today may not own a measuring tape.” The co-founders are taking what seems like a very analog problem and attempting to solve it Silicon Valley style: with code.
When you go to the site, which is launching today, you fill out a two-minute quiz about your bust size and how your current bras fit (Is the band too tight? Does the underwire pinch?). The site takes your information, crunches the numbers, and uses its database of over 2000 potential body types to whip up a customized selection of bras for you to choose from. Or as the company puts it in classic Silicon Valley-ese: “Our back-end technology leverages a simple two-minute quiz that combines user input with our translation engine to dynamically generate a personal bra shop.” The customer orders five bras, tries them on, and ships back the ones that are not a perfect fit.
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So why is an online intimates-shopping company taking the stage at D10? In addition to the geekier back-end operations, the company also has an interesting tech background. C0-founder Aarthi Ramamurthy is an expert on data modeling and algorithms and has worked at Microsoft on the Xbox platform and at Netflix. This is not her first startup — she was also the co-founder of photo-sharing app Bubblegum.
While Ramamurthy brings the math, her co-founder Michelle Lam has the money and fashion experience. Lam worked as an investor at Bain Capital Ventures where she worked on companies such as RentTheRunway and LinkedIn.
The company has raised $2 million dollars so far from First Round, SoftTechVC, and Softbank Capital, as well as Aileen Lee and Ellen Levy. Based in San Francisco, True&Co has 10 employees and stocks 20 major brands of brassiere.
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