From Fintech to Fashion: My Journey into AI

Full transcript

Okay, so welcome back to the podcast, guys. Today we're joined by Jay Rudman. Jay, welcome to you I appreciate your invite and I look forward to the conversation Why don't we start this, Jay, by you telling us a little bit about yourself and what you guys do. Jay Rudman CEO of Scistream I'm one of those crazy serial entrepreneurs I've had the good fortune founder or you. co -founder of a number of startups that I scaled and sold prior to Scistream I was also a hired CEO for an organization called Top Step which is a SEMTA funded business model and currently with Psystream which I've been with for the last four years as I mentioned I'm CEO and Psystream basically I'll explain the technology first and then I'll explain the business proposition so the technology is is that use your smartphone be it an iOS you.

or Android device or an iPad and you take a front photo and a side photo and from those two photos we can calculate over 240 -250 different body measurements so the technology is really cool because we can do very accurate and precise body measurements but really where the secret sauce is is in the business applications so we provide that software and two primary use cases the first one's in the apparel so you. the clothing world so we can do made To -measure clothing because we have a fully integrated solution where we can use those measurements to actually create configurable customized clothing we also do ready -to -wear sizing in the clothing industry so we can use those measurements to actually ensure that the clothing that you're wearing fits you properly so that's in the apparel use case and then on the second use case is really in the health and wellness arena we have a number of different clients in that you.

but let's just focus on one subset of that which is really in the pharmaceutical world pharmaceuticals are using our technique to monitor body shape changes as people go through diets go through bariatric surgery or maybe on a GLP -1 drug all of them are causing exercise all those are causing body shape changes and therefore the pharmaceuticals are using this in clinical research be it in a pre -release clinical study or in a real World evidence after you. the you. Thank so there's lots of different applications and those are just a couple Thank you. Thank you. you've And founded or co -founded multiple companies and all of them were acquired. Is there some sort of playbook you follow or does each exit happen on its own unpredictable all occur in their own unpredictable way it's remarkable that any transaction ever occurs regardless of how interested both parties are so just to clarify so the current business I am currently in it's with stream I'm not the founder of but I was a hired C -suite you know CEO of and same with the prior company but all my companies prior to that which you.

was four to five all grew and sold so my kind of playbook on that is if you are interested in scaling and selling you kind of have to have that in your mindset from the very beginning you are really trying to build an organization that can not only scale but also transfer to someone else's ownership so it can't just reside in your own brain you have to ensure that your leadership team and all your operators you. and individual contributors understand what you have accomplishing because as soon as the acquisition occurs oftentimes times you no longer have as the founder you no longer have a seat or you don't have a long term seat at least in the acquired company the second thing is that when you kind of get your head around that this is something that you want to do in terms of trying to scale and sell you have to start the relationships with especially the strategic acquirers you have to start those conversations you.

well in advance oftentimes theyre are partners or maybe you're a vendor too so they're a client of yours and you have to continually drop you know seeds along the way and let those seeds germinate over months years because if you're looking to transact in you know six months or less that's a really tough road to walk you have to kind of go for the long term and build a long runway towards whatever exit you're looking for And you already mentioned this, but SciStream uses 3D body scanning to create made -to -measure clothing, right? For someone who's never seen this in action, could you paint a picture? What does the experience actually look like for the customer? question so there's really two two different paths one would be for the at Home customers who's shopping you know in the privacy of their bedroom the other one is someone who walks into a store and wishes to purchase clothing let's go with the second one the someone who walks into a store so typically they walk in they're met by a sales associate the sales associate asks the question have you ever been through a process like ours before by the way it's typically white labeled it's not our brand we

like the look system basically license the technology and it's typically the customer? white labeled by the retailer you And the meters or the brand that is using it so the so we its tsunami a it Is single student almost associate names it whatever it's named it the full so sure it and the guides whatever imagine cannot could the individual into you. a fitting room the individual just robes just like if they were changing clothing they would still have something skin tight on so we're not looking for anything naked here a gentleman that's usually boxer briefs women that's usually bra panties if you're walking in in yoga wear or you know some other skin tight clothing that's perfectly acceptable as well because the system is that sensitive that it can actually see the contours of clothing if you're wearing something baggy so again you. the individual is now in the fitting room they're disrobed there's usually an iPad that's affixed to a wall the person puts in some kind of identifier typically an email address a phone number or something else similar to that and the system knows who they are and the individual would take as I said a front photo and a side photo the iPad kind of walks them through that experience and says you know turn and how to stand and provides a bunch of pose guidance and literally after that it's done the individual gets their clothing

you. back on walks out and now that information is on the associate's iPad and the associate can either do one of two things they can basically say hey you would fit perfectly this Ralph Lauren sweater or this Burberry jacket or whatever else it might be because we will do that size recommendation matching based upon the measures that we've seen or the associate can guide the customer through the made a measure process and that made a measure process is you know for shirts as an example pick a fabric pick a collar pick a cup type you can pick buttons threads trims you name it you have a completely customized shirt that will basically ship to either the store or the individual within a couple weeks yeah you. right now it's using basically so originally I used photogrammetry so our original system was a booth scanner and when I say a booth scanner

everyone can close their eyes and imagine walking through kind of an x -ray machine at an airport it's about that size but it would have four posts rather than two posts and it would have anywhere from 14 to 20 cameras on it and you'd step into that and you can appreciate that's expensive that's you. cumbersome it's not mobile and so that system was really used by large commercial enterprises especially universities research facilities people who were really looking for a high degree of accuracy and precision so we essentially took that photogrammetry those pictures that were being used by a booth and brought it down to the mobile and the way we did that was first through machine learning so using very large training sets that basically say we've seen a body like this before and you. so we know kind of measurements and then trying to measure almost digitally by using that machine learning and coming up with what's called a silhouette it looks like a ghost of an individual and trying to measure around that now we kind of skip all that and we go straight with AI so it essentially and I know ML is kind of a subset of AI so not to confuse anyone but we no longer are required to kind of use all that I mean there's still tons and tons and tons of training data I don't want to suggest otherwise but basically we can calculate things without going through the actual you know here's what the body looks like here's how we would measure it etc. we can just almost skip right to the answer based upon

you. AI models that we've built That you. You went from fintech at Topstep, you already mentioned that, to body scanning at Sightstream. Those are wildly different industries. How did you transition from that? great question so I've been in a number of wildly different industries it's not just those two I've been in retail I've been in medical devices I've been in pharmacy I've been in a lot of different places and it's really you know business is incredibly complicated incredibly challenging but at the same time it really just boils down to some core basic principles I you. am a big believer in always starting with the foundation which is typically like mission vision and values you kind of have to have that as a foundation upon which to build you certainly have to start thinking about your product market fit and how your product actually works for the intended audience you certainly have to ensure that you hire incredibly well for what you're attempting to accomplish and people appreciate the vision that you're attempting to achieve and so it definitely matters what industry you're in but at the same time it doesn't because once you get these basic business principles a few of those of which I just touched upon those will certainly carry you forward and can generate tremendous success regardless of the industry

Mm -hmm. Jay, you didn't mention this, but you actually teach corporate strategy and entrepreneurship, I do right? What do you tell your students about the gap between what business school teaches and what actually happens when you start a real company? everything's different what's in the classroom and what the reality is is wildly different that's just because there's so many externalities right from the economy to the people to customers and vendors it's just everything can move at a very rapid rate and it's hard to keep up so what do I tell my students given that is Are that doing continue about good stuff? Copyright is space tell travel more. From that to classCHC. to to experiment right that going So, continue key to organizational success is basically try something build a feedback loop as quickly as possible as small as possible as tight as possible learn from that experiment and then adjust and move forward there's too many people that basically show up and say I did a lot today like I had a ton of activity and you'll ask them the question what did you learn ton a had limit

and that question often is unanswerable because they might not have learned anything from that activity so and I'm not talking about you know these macro learnings of I learned how to be a better leader or whatever else it might be those are certainly important but I'm really talking about the micro get down to the smallest pieces experiment experiment experiment get feedback and learn from those and then basically continue to adjust and that's how you really do in a small scale operation find that product market fit and then learn how to scale it because you're gonna to have to continually adjust as things change around you Hmm. Jay, the apparel industry is massive, but slow to change. What has been the hardest part about getting these traditional fashion brands to adopt new technology? everything you're right these big organizations are incredibly slow to change it could be the apparel arena it could be in Yeah.

a number of different industries what typically happens especially in apparel is is that it's driven by many things I don't want to you know point at anything singular but it's often driven by their supply chain right because it is so complex and incredibly sophisticated like these brands and retailers really have done years and years and years of optimization around their supply chain and that's everything from raw material to you know the mills and excited to and and change a more with to customer the get to that book the fabrics original? to you. the manufacturing to the shipping and then the distribution to the eventual end customer and to try to change that by basically saying hey everything you've done to optimize that we can do better through custom clothing that doesn't require inventory doesn't require locking up working capital doesn't require you to guess you know the alpha sizing of small medium and large it doesn't require you to guess what the fashions are you know 18 months in advance because that's typically the buying cycle season for the apparel space eliminate all of that and try it this different way and that's really challenging because again legacy systems it also requires some really strong senior leadership within our clients oh our prospective clients who say I see a better way let me give it a try

Jay, where can they find you? you can find our organization some stream by going www .sizestream .com which really cool is we have some free apps that are available for people to actually download and measure their own body and they can start to track their own body shape and a lot of people are doing that as they're on some kind of health journey that's a really easy one to go find it's called me ME360 you can find that on any one of the app stores be it you know Apple Google or elsewhere and if you want to find me personally you're welcome to go to LinkedIn and look me up and connect that way Great. Jay, thanks for coming on to the podcast, and we'll see you in the next one. very welcome been a pleasure Thank you. Thank you.