Since launching in June this year, Alta has consistently ranked in the US App Store charts and gone viral several times on social media. It turns out Wang’s vision for an AI-powered styling and shopping app that brings Cher Horowitz’s Clueless closet into the 21st century is resonating with consumers. It’s also fast gaining some serious fashion clout — including that of celebrity stylist Meredith Koop and luxury power sourcer Gab Waller, who partnered with Alta in August to give its members access to her Sourced By platform’s luxury sourcers, including her own services.
With a degree in computer science, Wang has a rare combination of deep technical expertise and an interest in fashion. She’s raised over $11 million from Menlo Ventures and Aglae Ventures for Alta’s seed round, served as a technical advisor to global luxury brands, and guest lectured for Stanford graduate-level computer science courses. All this means she’s got a front row seat for fashion’s current AI transformation. Crucially, she believes that rather than homogenising culture and quashing individual style, AI — used in the right way — can help us unlock our individuality more than ever before.
What misconceptions do people have about your work?
It’s that AI is taking away jobs. But in fact, we work very closely with stylists like Meredith Koop and others who use our technology as a tool to amplify their work. We have stylists who are power users on our platform, using it to log and generate outfits for their clients and for different lookbooks. It’s a tool that can be used by stylists, but it was also trained in collaboration with stylists — I don’t think we’re replacing stylists at all. You will always still want an IRL stylist for big occasions, for example, the red carpet or your wedding. But when it’s two in the morning and you’re stressed out about what to wear to your board presentation the next day or for a date night in the evening, AI is technology that can provide you with some help 24/7.
What’s the biggest career risk you’ve taken?
Starting a company is always a career risk. And I felt it doubly so as I’m an engineer by training. Engineers are always in high demand — there are so many great technology companies we can work for. Starting a company is a risk because it’s not just your time that you’re putting at risk, but you have no idea what the reception will be. When you start something, you don’t know if people will use it, purchase from it, or invest in it. You’re stepping into the complete unknown.
What change in the industry do you most want to help drive and why?
We see this from our data, but the vast majority of closets are made from the same top 10 to 20 brands. I’m personally friends with many emerging designers that I’ve got to know through the years and through the CFDA. Part of the issue with fashion is the discovery process and how algorithms work. A lot of it is pay-to-play on social media, and you may never see the up-and-coming brands or the emerging designers unless you’re specifically looking for them. So I’m really excited for Alta as a platform to educate, promote and introduce users and shoppers to new brands and designers.
What’s one piece of advice you wish you had ignored?
I feel like, in general, when I speak with investors, or even just with my community, friends and family, everyone has an opinion on what your product should do and look like. I think it’s important as a founder, but also as a builder of a product, to have your own intuition as to what should actually be built. There are a billion and one features, even within our own product, that people have suggested to me. They’re like, why don’t you have a feature where I can buy clothes from my friend’s closet? Why don’t you have a feature where I can put my child’s closet within my Alta closet?
Another thing that we get from investors all the time is, why haven’t you built a feature where I can click one button and post my closet to Ebay? It’s never-ending. You obviously want to please investors and make users happy, but the reality is that startups are so resource-constrained with people, time and energy that you have to only pick the things that are really, really important to the product roadmap. Otherwise, you can very easily get lost in the never-ending feature rolodex.
What’s one decision that changed everything for you in business?
Honestly, it would be to put the product out there before I thought it was ready. I believe it was Reid Hoffman who first said this on LinkedIn some years ago — if you wait until you feel like your product is perfect before you launch it, that means you’re too late. It’s such a fear. Your product is like your child, and you don’t want people to hate on it, make fun of it, dislike it. But it’s so important to put it out there — otherwise, if people can’t give you feedback and then you can’t prove it; you’re just building in a vacuum. You’re building in a vacuum, anticipating what you think people want, but it might not be what people actually want.
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