Michelle Bacharach
Michelle Bacharach (5’3”), is the co-founder and CEO of FINDMINE, a technology that uses artificial intelligence to help companies automate the process of styling the items they have for sale in both the clothing and home furniture space. In doing so, FINDMINE has helped brands make anywhere from 4 - 7.5% more revenue which translates to $1M - $30M in extra cash. This might seem shocking but it totally makes sense; consumers will buy more when they can see how to use what they’re buying.
After graduating from UC Berkeley and going through a process of trying on different career ‘hats’ post-graduation, Michelle ultimately decided to go to business school and then move in the direction of entrepreneurship. She realized that when she shopped, she was able to find items she liked, but often wasn’t sure how to style them. She could pick out a piece of furniture or some articles of clothing, for example, but she couldn’t create an entire outfit or complete a layout for a dining area. She would find herself googling things like “what goes with a white leather couch?”. This problem, of course, isn’t unique to Michelle; many (perhaps most) customers struggle with this exact issue. But the solution to this in modern businesses is a manual process — furniture stores have featured layouts to show how to pair different pieces; clothing companies use mannequins to show how certain items can be used in an outfit. Michelle’s revolutionary idea was to automate this process instead, and thus, FINDMINE was born. Using artificial intelligence, FINDMINE allows businesses to style ensembles for every item they sell; a feat that would be virtually impossible to do manually for most businesses. This allows customers to find desirable items and then browse through all of the suggested combinations created by the FINDMINE algorithm.
Michelle and the FINDMINE team have worked with fashion brands like John Varvatos, Perry Ellis, Laundry by Shelli Segal, and many other household names. The success of their business is due to the passion that drives great innovation and the relentless efforts to continually upgrade the algorithm that sits at the heart of their business.