Julie Bornstein thought it might be a cinch to implement her concept for an AI startup. Her résumé in digital commerce is impeccable: VP of ecommerce at Nordstrom, COO of the startup Sew Repair, and founding father of a personalised purchasing platform acquired by Pinterest. Vogue has been her obsession since she was a Syracuse excessive schooler inhaling spreads in Seventeen and hanging out in native malls. So she felt well-positioned to create an organization for purchasers to find the proper clothes utilizing AI.
The truth was a lot more durable than she anticipated. I had breakfast lately with Bornstein and her CTO, Maria Belousova, to study her startup, Daydream, funded with $50 million from VCs like Google Ventures. The dialog took an surprising flip as the ladies schooled me on the shocking issue of translating the magic of AI techniques into one thing individuals truly discover helpful.T
Her story helps clarify one thing. My first publication of 2025 introduced that it might be The 12 months of the AI App. Although there are certainly many such apps, they haven’t reworked the world as I anticipated. Ever since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, individuals have been blown away by the methods carried out by AI, however research after research has proven that the expertise has not but delivered a major enhance in productiveness. (One exception: coding.) A research printed in August discovered that 19 out of 20 AI enterprise pilot tasks delivered no measurable worth. I do suppose that productiveness enhance is on the horizon, nevertheless it’s taking longer than individuals anticipated. Listening to the tales of startups like Daydream which can be pushing to interrupt by means of offers some hope that persistence and persistence may certainly make these breakthroughs occur.
Fashionista Fail
Bornstein’s unique pitch to VCs appeared apparent: Use AI to unravel tough style issues by matching clients with the proper clothes, which they’d be delighted to pay for. (Daydream would take a reduce.) You’d suppose the setup could be easy—simply hook up with an API for a mannequin like ChatGPT and also you’re good to go, proper? Um, no. Signing up over 265 companions, with entry to greater than 2 million merchandise from boutique retailers to retail giants, was the straightforward half. It seems that fulfilling even a easy request like “I want a costume for a marriage in Paris” is extremely complicated. Are you the bride, the mother-in-law, or a visitor? What season is it? How formal a marriage? What assertion do you need to make? Even when these questions are resolved, totally different AI fashions have totally different views on such issues. “What we discovered was, due to the shortage of consistency and reliability of the mannequin—and the hallucinations—generally the mannequin would drop one or two parts of the queries,” says Bornstein. A person in Daydream’s long-extended beta check would say one thing like, “I’m a rectangle, however I want a costume to make me appear to be an hourglass.” The mannequin would reply by displaying clothes with geometric patterns.
In the end, Bornstein understood that she needed to do two issues: postpone the app’s deliberate fall 2024 launch (although it’s now obtainable, Daydream continues to be technically in beta till someday in 2026) and improve her technical group. In December 2024 she employed Belousova, the previous CTO of Grubhub, who in flip introduced in a group of high engineers. Daydream’s secret weapon within the fierce expertise warfare is the possibility to work on an interesting downside. “Vogue is such a juicy house as a result of it has style and personalization and visible information,” says Belousova. “It’s an fascinating downside that hasn’t been solved.”
What’s extra, Daydream has to unravel this downside twice—first by decoding what the client says after which by matching their generally quirky standards with the wares on the catalog aspect. With inputs like I want a revenge costume for a bat mitzvah the place my ex is attending along with his new spouse, that understanding is essential. “We’ve this notion at Daydream of customer vocabulary and a service provider vocabulary, proper?” says Bornstein. “Retailers communicate in classes and attributes, and customers say issues like, ‘I’m going to this occasion, it’s going to be on the rooftop, and I’ll be with my boyfriend.’ How do you truly merge these two vocabularies into one thing at run time? And generally it takes a number of iterations in a dialog.” Daydream discovered that language isn’t sufficient. “We’re utilizing visible fashions, so we truly perceive the merchandise in a way more nuanced means,” she says. A buyer may share a selected coloration or present a necklace that they’ll be sporting.
Bornstein says Daydream’s subsequent rehaul has produced higher outcomes. (Although after I tried it out, a request for black tuxedo pants confirmed me beige athletic-fit trousers along with what I requested for. Hey, it’s a beta.) “We ended up deciding to maneuver from a single name to an ensemble of many fashions,” says Bornstein. “Each makes a specialised name. We’ve one for coloration, one for material, one for season, one for location.” As an illustration, Daydream has discovered that for its functions, OpenAI fashions are actually good at understanding the world from the clothes viewpoint. Google’s Gemini is much less so, however it’s quick and exact.
