iVenture10’s second summer featured many talented teams who spent 10 weeks developing their ideas while having a good time in the process. We want to keep you updated on how the companies are doing now as well as any additional projects our alums are working on. In addition, our alums are looking forward to sharing their own memories of their iV10 summer with you. I was fortunate enough to speak with Sanketh Shetty, co-founder of Fashion Latte about his experiences in the program.
For those who don’t know, Fashion Latte is an online apparel search engine that uses computer vision and machine learning technology to organize catalogs from top online retailers. On the website, you can shop by color, pattern, and specific aspect of style. These features allow you to find items you want quickly and items that are visually similar.
Below are some excerpts from my interview with Sanketh:
What are you up to now? Are you still with your company or have you moved onto something different?
My team and I are still working on the company while simultaneously pursuing our PhDs.
If you’re still with your company, describe what happened after the program ended? How did you get your funding, how has it evolved since you left iVentures10?
We slowed down after the demo day last year. Our responsibilities as researchers and entrepreneurs was taxing. We focused on new redesigning our website and reworking our business plan. We worked with the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership and submitted new business plans to a couple of competitions and won at one of them. We also received a $5000 IECN grant and have invested the money from the winning and this grant towards hiring a UI and web design expert.
What was the most challenging part of the summer?
Our team probably epitomizes what iV10 is about. We did not have a line of code written on the first day. All we had is an idea and a semblance of a business plan. Going from that idea and actually implementing a complicated system in 10 weeks was exciting. The challenge was really scaling the idea appropriately to something that could be achieved in 10 weeks. We were not completely at home when it came to web technologies and were a little nervous about how we would showcase our final product. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I learned from the other teams during the course of the summer. I personally enjoyed working with the guys from Next Big Sound and Cisco and Anton from Stanford. They are bright young people and were very helpful with some of the coding issues we had.
Describe any mentoring or guidance you received during your summer in Champaign.
Amit was always on our case and did a good job of keeping everyone motivated. We are three ECE grads so it helped to have him around to guide us with our web technology choices. It was really cool that they brought people over to look at what we had done. It was always fun to show off the visual search technology. It was also nice to have Rob drop in and give us his assessment of where we were. He has a pleasant and calm way of interacting with us which we found very comforting especially in the periods we had doubts about things working. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I learned from the other teams during the course of the summer. I personally enjoyed working with the guys from Next Big Sound and Cisco and Anton from Stanford. They are bright young people and were very helpful with some of the coding issues we had.
Do you feel your iVentures10 experience has helped you get a job or in interviews?
I haven’t interviewed anywhere yet. And I hope I don’t have to.
Please visit fashionlatte.com for more information and to check out their amazing site!
Stay tuned for more alum interviews and interviews from the newest crop of iVentures10 teams. The program just kicked off today for the summer so there will be plenty of updates!