(This post is a continuation of my prior posts on the transition from Riya 1.0 to what comes next. The previous episodes are:
12 , 11 , 10 , 9 , 8 , 7 , 6 , 5 , 4 , 3 , 2 , 1 .
Episode 13 – Oct 16 to Oct 22 – Jimmy Chew
We continue to struggle for yet another week. Tension is mounting. We still don’t have a working and stable build.
Dan and Tanvir return from India, get off the plane, go through customs, and come straight into the office. Azhar lands two days later and does the same.
Mark, Ann, and Brian who recently joined Mark’s team – are busy securing the last of the merchants and advertisers. Beth is busy trying to get her team hired so we can really market this thing once we launch – but so far no luck.
Our new search works best for aesthetic items like clothing, shoes, handbags, etc. Most of these items are purchased by women – 65% for shoes for Zappos by the way. As guys and certainly as engineers we don’t know much about these items. This leads to some situations which make us all laugh.
At one meeting, Azhar types into the search bar “Jimmy Chew.” Beth just starts laughing hysterically. Azhar’s says, “What is so funny?” Burak starts laughing too. He says, “Man Azhar for a guy with a man purse you should know how to spell Jimmy Choo. Even I know that.” The rest of us are rolling. For those of you who don’t know Jimmy CHOO is a famous female shoe brand/designer.
Azhar strikes back the next day. He says jokingly, “Okay what is a wedge shoe?” We all look at each other with blank stares. I say, “I don’t know.” Again Beth starts laughing. Azhar very proud of himself and goes on to show us. He says, “My wifey is so happy with our new business strategy and my new found interest in women’s shoes.” He is right, we are all getting brownie points at home….;-).
It gets better. Our India team changes the algorithm to classify all shoes with red shoe laces as women’s shoes. They figured that men don’t wear red shoes laces. Just as they are discussing this – Azhar walks in …. With his trendy shoes with RED laces.
The office filled with super nerd and Ph.Ds is now filled with Cosmo, Lucky, Jane, Instyle, and People magazine. Beth buys them all and forces us to learn more about aesthetic shopping and design. They are scattered throughout the office. Watching Ph.Ds flip through them as they are eating lunch is hilarious. My sister-in-law Janet comes in and help us. Zainab, Azhar’s wife comes in to help us. We are getting a crash course in the world of women’s designs.
Our office is filled with the smell of female perfume from the inserts in the magazines. Local fashion school students, who are helping us to find tune the algorithm by generating ground truth (technical term for right answers our learning algorithms are trained on), are constantly coming and going from the office. You can clearly see that Riya is transitioning from just a technology to a product in every way.
The development process goes on….we work through yet another weekend…. Albeit with a little more humor and fun. People blow off steam on the ping pong table. The company is buying everyone lunch and dinner.
For the first week – my running suffers. I only get out 2 days this week. I don’t see Deven much – things are super crazy… but I am generally I'm okay.
Let me add another classic moment. It was when Azhar did a text search for "PERL" and meant "Pearl". But he has the shoes down cold now. :-)
Posted by: Beth Kirsch | November 05, 2006 at 07:50 PM