Elevating the Customer Experience with True Fit Co-founder and Chief Customer Officer Jessica Murphy

10/11/20 • 40 min

Stephanie (@stephr_wong) and Carter (@carterthecomic) are back this week with TrueFit Co-Founder and CCO, Jessica Murphy. TrueFit is revolutionizing online clothes shopping experience utilizing a data collective of size, fit preference, body shape, gender, brand preferences to precisely pinpoint the customer's true size. When retailers personalize every part of the journey, customers gain confidence in the seamless online shopping experience.

Co-Founder Jessica Murphy starts the show explaining a little more about how TrueFit came to be and how the program collects customer information and product information, analyzes the data, and brings the customer to the perfect fit in each particular brand. With this data, TrueFit goes a step further, offering style recommendations for your size and shape as well. Standardization between brands is a benefit of the program, helping customers find similar products across brands.

We talk a bit about data security and why building trust with companies and shoppers was so important to the growth of TrueFit. Jessica describes how her lack of technological experience at the beginning was no hindrance, explaining that a lot of the logic behind the algorithms now used was developed by her early on. Jessica and her Co-Founder, Romney Evans, learned software as they went, hiring friends and developers along the way.

As the company migrated to Google Cloud, important decisions had to be made, and Jessica tells us about this journey. She describes challenges they faced, including the rapid growth they've seen since the start of the global pandemic.

A first-generation Colombian in America, Jessica reflects on how family and cultural traditions shaped her as an entrepreneur. We touch on diversity in SaaS companies and why it can be a crucial component of a successful business and is vital to a successful AI model.

To wrap up the show, Jessica gives us her thoughts on the future of data, AI, and internet companies and offers some great advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Episode Links:TrueFit

To wrap up the show, Jessica gives us her thoughts on the future of data, AI, and internet companies and offers some great advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Episode Links:TrueFit

Previous Episode

Understanding Consumer Behavior with Quantum Metric CEO Mario Ciabarra

Welcome back to How I Launched This, A SaaS Story. This week, Stephanie (@stephr_wong) has the pleasure of speaking with Mario Ciabarra, Founder and CEO of Quantum Metric. Quantum Metric specializes in collecting, analyzing, and understanding real-time consumer behaviors with regards to technology.

Mario, an entrepreneur from childhood with a background in molecular biology and biochemistry, has used his extensive skills as an engineer and computer scientist to advance the goals of four start-up companies. His main passion is with enterprise clients, identifying potential problems and solving them with new business ideas. In his latest entrepreneurship adventure, he has created Quantum Metric to help enterprise companies better understand their clients and adjust their offerings to maximum client retention. As people depend more and more on technology to fulfill their shopping needs, it's vital for companies to gauge consumer interactions with technology. It's equally important that this data be easily read and interpreted by businesses so the proper steps can be taken to optimize customer experiences, and Quantum Metric is making this a reality.

We talk more about Mario's time at Quantum Metric and his appreciation for the great company culture they've created. He tells us about continuous product design and the importance of creating a business culture that empowers people to make decisions, allowing the company to change and grow quickly. By essentially taking the idea of DevOps and transposing it on the functions of a business, both the technology side and business side can run quickly and efficiently.

Later, Mario gives us great examples of customers using Quantum Metric and continuous product design to take their companies to the next level. Stephanie and Mario dig into the tech side of Quantum Metric and share which Google Cloud products they utilize.

Mario wraps up the show with a look ahead at the future of SaaS companies and offers some advice for other new businesses.

Episode Links:
Quantum Metric
Continuous Product Design
BigQuery

Next Episode

Reversing the Dropout Rate of Underserved Students with Upswing.io Founder Melvin Hines

Stephanie (@stephr_wong) and Carter (@carterthecomic) are back with a new episode of How I Launched This: A SaaS Story. This week, they welcome a Google For Startup Accelerator participant and a Google Black Founders Fund recipient, Melvin Hines, Founder and CEO of Upswing.io. Upswing.io began as an online tutoring platform to assist underserved students and has since scaled to create a full service, 24/7 online student support system that empowers underserved and nontraditional students to complete their education.

With a strong focus on online and non-traditional students, Upswing is harnessing the power of the internet to create a level playing field in the education space. Melvin's strong parental role models encouraged him to attend law school, where he began to raise awareness of education inequality. Later, while earning his MBA, Melvin began planning Upswing.

Melvin explains how Upswing works, giving us an overview of Upswing's three Rs: Reach, Relate, and Retain. Reach means Upswing meets the student where they are. Upswing provides a virtual assistant, Ana, to help organize schedules and check in with student progress and mental health. Relating to the problems nontraditional students face, Upswing helps Retain students by providing tutoring services and facilitating other student support offered by the education institution at no cost to the students.

Later, Melvin tells us about Upswing's evolution to a full-service system, describing the early struggles and how they were overcome. He talks about the importance of finding good partners that share the vision and can help advance the mission. We touch on how race can affect entrepreneurship and how minority mentors and celebrities are working to level the playing field.

As a member of the Google Accelerator Program, Melvin tells us how the mentorships and connections have helped grow his business. We talk about how Covid has created a world of nontraditional students and the ways this has changed Upswing. Upswing continues to evolve, and in the future, will offer enhanced mental health aid through a partnership with Metta and better online support for financial assistance.

Episode Links:
Upswing.ioGoogle For Startup Accelerator ProgramGoogle for Startups Accelerator: Black FoundersGFS Black Founders Fund BlogGFS Black Founders Fund RecipientsMeta

How I Launched This: A SaaS Story - Elevating the Customer Experience with True Fit Co-founder and Chief Customer Officer Jessica Murphy

Transcript

MUSIC UP
Jessica Murphy [00:00:06.26] With so many of the conversations going on in the world today, my part is to recognize that I have a part to play, and I have to play a deliberate part as a female founder, as a Latina founder, in helping to make this world more diverse and to make our business practices mirror the societies that we're serving.
MUSIC DOWN

Stephanie Wong [00:00:25.03] Hi, everyone. This is "How I Launched This: A SaaS Story from