Thank you everyone who came to our recent meetup. We had a great turnout, with two very notable
guest speakers, Vik Venkatraman and Pete Wylie.
Vik, co-founder of Clothes Horse, talked to us about the importance of providing a personalized
experience for shoppers. His company determines how a retailers’ item will fit a customer based on the
inlbmiation that is asked about them online.
Several questions were raised about the efficiency of this model compared to the ‘brick-and-mortar’
approach (ie. being able to fit yourself in-person in a clothing store). Conccms were also raised that once
Clothes Horse‘s approach becomes mainstream, the brick-and-mortar stores could disappear altogether.
Vik countered the worry by stating that he was simply providing an altemative to the traditional model
“There’s an important pan that [traditional] shopping plays… in the social structure of our society,” said
Vik. “You’re always going to have that.”
Atter Vik, Pete Wylie took the stage to talk about GmdSavers, a lice platfomi that allows students to
help pay ofl‘ their student loans.
The discussion here was focused on the reliability of social networking websites such as Facebook,
Instagam, and Linkedln for reaching students who are looking for work. Wylie stated that of all these
websites, Linkedln was the least efiective in finding students. He also found that that Elance and Odesk
were “quite unstructured” in terrrs of hiring students ofl” these sites for work.
The most important point to take away fi’om Wylie’s experience is the ever- growing importance of
social networking websites to advertise your business and discover potential employees. One of the
attendees even pointed out how convenient it was to hire young gaduates because they were much
more knowledgeable about these websites than most of his employees.
Thank you once again to those who attended the Meetup! If you have any comments, please leave
them below. We hope to see you all next month