1. To scale, you must first become recruiters. And then, unless you're careful, you are become Shiva, a recruiting agency. And then you can't scale because you hired a bunch of in-house recruiters (maybe you're clever and call them "talent advocates") and are forever constrained in the best case to linear growth, growing as a function of how many recruiters you hire.

2. AI-based recruiting solutions that claim to match candidates to companies don't work for the same reason you can't use ML to engineer bras. The data isn't there. Scraping LinkedIn and GitHub doesn't do it, and then you have to bespoke "measure" a bunch of candidates. The hard part of that venture, in this market, isn't doing the ML. It's getting candidates (who have more leverage than you and don't need you) to give you interesting data about themselves.

3. "I thought that the likeliest outcome of launching is to end up like Peach/Zyrra, in which they launched their patented custom-made bra service, pivoted to a traditional lingerie product, and now sell women’s apparel loungewear. While the concept sounded promising, they were in the end unable to turn the concept commercial with the capital they received"... How many recruiting marketplaces have pivoted to do SaaS hiring assessment tools? I can think of at least 3.

Automating stuff by hand is hard. It's even harder when you don't have data and when it was never done well by hand in the first place.

Archive link to the post, is down at the moment: http://web.archive.org/web/20191223180103/http://bratheory.c...

Even companies trying to custom-make suits without multiple individual fittings are apparently still very much wandering in the wilderness, so it's not surprising (though of course disappointing) that an effort which started futher behind didn't succeed. Maybe this also relates to Boeing and SpaceX's parachute challenges https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21850831 : it seems fabric remains hard.

* You've got a data capture problem - how do women securely and privately obtain and transmit shape data in a way that is culturally acceptable?

* You've got a modeling problem - how do you determine how much structural support is required on a case by case basis?

* You've got a manufacturing tech problem - how do you create bespoke products cheaply?

* You've got a culture problem - how do you address the fact that a large portion of the population is by definition going to be smaller than average?

There are probably a series of other things I'm not thinking of but each of these are non-trivial.

Full disclosure: I am the FreeSewing maintainer

This November I got my first cholis; it took two fittings for an expert tailor to make them fit correctly to my form factor.

Our biggest challenge was not the technology, but the underlying methodology.

We could not automate that which we did not know how to do by hand.

I like applying the inverse of this. If I don't know how to do something, I try to automate/simulate it, and this creates for me an organic path to the knowledge I seek by creating problems which can be solved. Perhaps your algorithm simply needs further refinement.

I was brash, and thought that with the right team, we could accelerate centuries of learning into six months and a trade secret

Ah. You didn't give yourself enough time. A research project like this is 2 years minimum, 10 years on the long side. But it has to be done if we are ever going to push the envelope.

Perhaps scaling down the company to just research and consulting for the time being would provide a way to continue in your spare time.

Basically it is a 3D problem and I think you didn't take a sophisticated approach because you are likely not knowledgable in that area.

You tried to apply tailoring to it, but tailoring is not body fitting nor shape changing as a bra is, nor is tailoring about stresses and weight distribution (which is comfort.)

It is a solvable problem, but your approach was not the correct one, it was simplistic.

It is an incredibly interesting problem though.

I mean, it wasn't my money to spend, but I'm curious as to if it's ‘normal’ now to form a startup while having only a goal and no expertise. That's a dream of every ‘idea man’ out there, including me.

Someone i was with for a long time used to always complain how all manufacturers are different and that even using stuff like a bra that fits(reddit thing) did not work in Asia as manufacturers here have different sizing. She still hasn't found her perfect fit size.

There is an algorithm for man suit?

AR is improving 3D measurement, material modeling and property inference, and VR motion and force sensing. So we might imagine a much richer input stream becoming available.

Welcome to App. A video mirror. Let's go through your bras. We'll scan the fit of each. What do you dis/like about it? Point out where. Let's apply force measurement device X over here, yes, that's it, ok, got it. Move like so. Apply manipulation like so. Adjust X. Let's do a motion scan when you do X. Does X feel like X?

Virtual access to an expert fitter via "video phone", without direct touch and manipulation, isn't ideal, but with enough tooling, might be sufficient. And has advantages, like "watch bra fit during an entire workout". Or "today was an unusual day - here's what chafed, and the current exact adjustments". Or "here's real-time and prompted reporting over a month".

I wonder if there might also be a role for inexpensive prototypes or test objects. I'm reminded of an optical trial lens set, with its very clunky eyeglass frame, into which one inserts a variety of interchangeable lenses. One might imagine buying properties of "highly adjustable" and "transparently instrumented", with "clunky" and "doesn't last".

Basically, use tech to permit an expert fitter to succeed remotely, augmenting and perhaps eventually automating them. In a setting of long-term collaboration with the user. And perhaps input-side development might be decoupled from manufactured output, by doing product recommendations?

Then this data could be mapped to a simplified model which, in turn, could be used to figure out measurements of the bra.

The best product startups have a both curious perfectionist scientist and a commercial sales person working together.

Tesla has been unable to automate wire harness installation because it's super flexible with many effective degrees of freedom (they hope to solve that using a stiffer flex cable that consolidates the wiring). Even moving some fiberglass fluff with a robot was an unreliable bottleneck they eventually removed.

I even saw a project once that attempted to automate cloth handling by first stiffening the cloth with starch so it could be more predictably moved from place to place.

Cloth is fundamentally hard. It's not impossible to solve these problems, but it's not at all trivial.

Pants actually illustrates the problem in a way that everyone (men as well as women) would understand. You can't just take a few measurements and expect success. You have to know how the measurement is distributed. Is the added inches on the stomach? Is it on the hips? Is it on the posterior? I won't go into the many crotch measurements - but they are also important.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876063

> Uniqlo heads towards full warehouse automation with groundbreaking robot that can fold and box clothes

They could have maybe had more success by being less ambitious:

Focus on one body type that has a relatively easy solution to make the ‘perfect bra’

Make custom bras that are close and require a single trip to a tailor for small adjustments — or one that enables the customer to make markings somehow and send it back to the company to adjust.

A “smart bra” for fitting that has sensors that send measurements about stress and weight distribution.

Try and figure out new materials and construction methods that cover up for inadequacies in the fitting algorithm. Make something that looks unusual but works — like crocs shoes. Some people will hate it but others will swear by it.

I intend this reply to supplement your list of challenges, all of which are valid. I hope this helps convey an additional depth of complications in designing women's elastic support wear that may not be immediately apparent.

> You've got a data capture problem

The missing piece here is the intersection of: clothing "fit" problem, where each person's body will interact with clothing at different points; the gravity "g-forces" problem, where the clothing is required to bear weight at every step without tearing apart; and the appearance "fashion" problem, where different shapes carry that weight at different points.

I'll take apart t-shirts first, and then switch back to bras.

Given several men of slightly different torso composition, a simple men's t-shirt can interact with their belly, lower waist (shirt length), ribcage, nipples (ask any runner), armpit, upper arms, neck. At each of those interaction points, the clothing must fit 'correctly' as perceived by the human being. Each human being has a preference for each of the listed areas, and will complain about poorly-fitting t-shirts if they do not fit 'correctly'.

I require loose armpit and long length shirts, among those seven options, and have more or less given up on ever finding a solution for my abnormally-shaped ribcage. So I typically end up in men's XL, because it provides enough 'airspace' to smooth out my torso and extends low enough to keep me from flashing people.

Someone else with the same torso length, torso diameter, and waist measurements might choose a Medium instead, because they have a decked-out bod and want to show off every curve. They'll need shirts made with more stretch than mine, or else they'll rip the armpits open waving hello to a friend. Shirts designed for a tight fit use a different 'cylinder' cut than shirts designed for a loose fit, so you can't just put them in my sized-down XL because I've been selecting for a different cut of shirt than is appropriate for their desires — and you can't just shrink all dimensions on an XL by 30% to get a M because human body parts don't shrink at the same percentage rate.

So, you can evaluate the 'fit' of t-shirts based on these criteria, none of which can readily be captured by 'shape data' alone:

* Does the shirt show off, or mute/hide, your physique to the degree you desire?

* Does the shirt rub uncomfortably, or rip/tear, when you move while wearing it?

* Does the shirt fabric irritate your skin, at your desired tightness?

You can custom-bespoke every shirt to a person's shape, but you'll still have to make fashion decisions ('drape', for example) that will include some and exclude others. If you end up deciding to print custom-fit "perfect mirror of your shape" fashion, that is fashion, too, and I would loathe it with all my heart because that is not what I want my clothing to express.

Moving on from the t-shirt analogy to bras, there are additional problems that bras have to solve for, that t-shirts do not:

* Bras are held with elastic against an extremely sensitive area of skin for hours at a time (sweat is a primary concern)

* Bras need to provide front and back appearances that matches the desires of the wearer (padded, unlined; demi, full coverage, balconette, push-up; longline, racerback, strapless)

* Bras need to provide support for 'weight' anchored to both sides of the chest (US average ~3lbs/side, K cup ~8lbs/side), that can cause pain every time you take a step, encounter small vertical G-forces (stairs, elevators, cars), or large all-directional G-forces (cars, subways, sports)

* Bra elastic loses stretch over time, due to wear and tear from the thousands of G-force events per day they intercept and reduce bodily impact of (adjustable straps, multiple rows of hooks, discard and replace occasionally)

So, not only do you need shape data, you also need "fashion" data, "fit" data, "fabric" data, and "gravity" data. You need data about composition — density for compressibility, shape for support and fashion, total weight for structural integrity — that you can't measure at home easily if even at all. You need material that can stand up to being punched from within a million times that also feels comfortable when held skin-tight all day. You need to make it fashionable, while keeping it fashionable across multiple size vectors (band size can vary from 24" to 48" or more, cup size can vary from 1/AA to 8/H or more). You need to transfer G-forces from the wearer's chest to the elastic while not digging into their skin more than they can bear (bralettes, underwires). You need to plan for elastic weakening over time (adjustable straps, multiple sets of back hooks).

Many men only see that level of tailoring in bespoke suits/tuxedos, and wear them once a year or less, and suffer no consequences the rest of the year. Many women have to wear one every single day, or else they suffer chest pain (F=m*a with only skin and ligaments to bear it) and/or societal outrage. It's a really intense market to try and serve.

I hope this helps.