Anabel Maldonado is bringing AI to fashion

Anabel Maldonado is the founder and CEO of PSYKHE AI, a next-generation recommendation tool for e-commerce brands powered by machine learning and psychology.

Anabel, who started her career as a journalist, talks about her rise in the fashion industry, her journalism career, and her transition to leading an emerging tech company.

For more information on PSYKHE AI, go to https://psykhe.com or follow the company on Instagram @psykhe_ai.

Follow Anabel on Instagram @anabelmaldonado or on LinkedIn here and the podcast @whatsnextwithumindi.

About Umindi

Umindi Francis is the CEO and founder of the award-winning global brand consulting firm UFCG. She has led strategy and marketing for some of the world's leading brands, such as Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta, and Bumble. Over the years, she has worked with celebrities and numerous brands, ranging from The New York Times to the United States Institute of Peace, as a business strategy adviser. Umindi has been featured in a number of publications, including Time, New York, and Vogue, and is the recipient of a United States Congressional Recognition for Business Achievement.

Follow Umindi on Instagram @Umindi360 and on Linkedin here. 

Creators & Guests

Host

Umindi Francis

Founder and CEO of UFCG, a global brand consulting firm

What is What's Next Podcast with Umindi Francis?

What’s Next Podcast with Umindi Francis is a new podcast that explores perspectives from executives, creatives, and thought leaders at the intersection of business, marketing, and strategy in technology, fashion, entertainment, and more.

Umindi Francis leverages 20 years of business strategy experience and relationships as an entrepreneur, and executive for some of the world’s leading brands, to discuss insights, and the next frontier of business, from the people that move their industries forward. The podcast also highlights their path to success to deeper understand their journey.

Listeners will gain insights into how our guests drive innovation. They will also walk away from each episode encouraged and inspired to tackle their own professional goals in business. As a result of Umindi’s connections, listeners can expect marquee guests each episode.

Anabel Maldonado
The conversation that I always have with buyers and merchandisers and people in the C suite is if anything, you know we take your your understanding of the consumer and what they like and the shopper and how they behave and we we work that into the AI and then we help you scale yourself. Right? Like no human is ever gonna merchandise 18,000 products.

Umindi Francis
Welcome to What's Next Podcast with Umindi Francis. We're here today with my dear friend Anabel Maldonado, the CEO and founder of PSYKHE AI. Let's get into it. Anabel, how did you get into this space? Who are you? What do you do? Tell us.

Anabel Maldonado
Umindi, thank you for having me. It's so great to be on your podcast. So I'm Anabel, the founder and CEO of PSYKHE AI. Essentially, we started I started out in neuro psychology, I was always really interested in brain science, why are we the way we are? What makes us tick? Why do we like what we like, while setting psychology? You know, there's so many theories, but I always found that anything in the brain was very tangible. You know, you could theorize all day who said Why? Why do you, you know, your parents did this to you. But if you stick someone into an fMRI and you know, the brain lights up, you're like, Okay, that's, that's the connection. And so that's where I started, I always loved fashion, lifestyle, travel, all those things, but you know, I wanted to study something, quote, unquote, serious, but you know, I couldn't stay away. As fate happened, I went to London on a gap year, and ended up working in luxury ecommerce for over 12 years. And, you know, it all kind of came full circle, because while I was working in fashion, I loved the industry, but I hated how we were always how we were promoting things, you know, it was always florals for spraying is you know, you know, on ironically, leopard is gone leopard, his back his best sellers, the editors are wearing, there was no inquiry into you know, I felt there was real depth behind when we see something like a pair of shoes, a dress, you know, we're we're like, I gotta have that that just feels like a part of you like a missing limb or something, and you'll just do anything and get it. It was such a deep visceral reaction when we see something where we're like, that's me, or that's absolutely not me, but no one was really looking into that. And that's when I sort of started looking to my psychology background to to establish why we respond to certain types of aesthetic developed a framework and then the tech application happened, which is essentially, you know, the framework of understanding why we where we were why we like what we like and we plugged into recommendation engine to to essentially recommend on a more personal level.

Umindi Francis
Okay, okay. Annabelle, I want to talk a bit about your career and your journey before launching, psyche AI, you've been a journalist for wonderful publications such as Vogue, your your, your company has been featured in some of the top publications like TechCrunch as well. Tell me about your journey.

Anabel Maldonado
So I was in London working at the National Health Service. So it's like the government's health essentially system working with children under five was query autism. Super long story, but I don't know like just staying in London and Paris looking at you know, make people amazingly dress walking down the street, I had this feeling like okay, there's something here. And I got into the industry because they entered this competition that Marie Claire, the British Marie Claire was having offering mentorship there. It was like a mentorship competition. And one of the women that was on offer was the editor in chief herself. And you had to like, you know, enter by by doing a little little writing sample and explaining why you want it to be in the program. And I won that. So it was amazing. I had Trish, that's incredible. Who was the editor in chief at the time, mentor me and I wrote some pieces for them. They were actually about dating initially, you know, it was very, it was very Carrie Bradshaw.

Umindi Francis
At the time, every fashion girls Orly dream.

Anabel Maldonado
Yeah, exactly. We had a photoshoot, which was amazing. You know, they pulled some samples. It was amazing. And then did a few sort of editorial internships at Marie Claire and a few of the fashion supplements and some of the newspapers in London. So yeah, it was a really fun time. But obviously, like, you know, they don't pay very well. And so then I went into publishing. And I actually worked in a non fashion publisher for a while, but learned a lot about sort of editorial process and how ads are sold in print magazines. Then I ended up working at couture law, which was actually carbon was scouts, who was not in the massenet's first investor and Netta portait. She had this startup couture labs, a lot of the original team from Netta portait there and I got hired there to do as the web editor so doing the homepage, selecting what signups to show and but I did everything under the sun while I was there. I mean, there was a lot of the sexy stuff and working on the shoots and you know, product selections and writing mailers, but I was always also wearing like a high vis vest and some random factory looking for missing stuff. Talk. So it was really like going to like luxury calm University. Right. And that's kind of what where I started, you know, thinking that after the after couture lab, kind of my time in control lab finish, I was doing kind of more brand consulting, and working with brands to define their, their sort of message and there'll be other press releases and what they say about themselves. And that was really when I started to think I was also doing freelance writing on the side, and it was very much I started to then start started to feel that there was a depth missing behind how we were looking at your writing

Umindi Francis
for folk at both business, but business

Anabel Maldonado
and business of fashion. So fashion, I did a few op eds, around Seino by now. So like, that's when I started kind of looking more into consumer psychology. I think it'd be a laugh, they were like, yeah, you've got a really strong

Umindi Francis
voice, right?

Anabel Maldonado
And you know, and I decided I wanted to look at fashion in a more intelligent way. And that was psychologically right, which made so much sense given what I studied.

Umindi Francis
Right? I think it's so important that people understand the journey and know that, you know, you just don't arrive someplace in one shot that there's iterations and a pivot, and the bravery to pivot and try new things and not put yourself in a box is exciting.

Anabel Maldonado
It's so true, because you know what I would sometimes when it was there was inklings of this, like, oh, maybe we should talk about fashion psychology and why we were we were and I remember having a conversation over like, it was a Fashion Week, and I was sitting with this streetstyle photographer that I kind of become friendly with, we were like, tired and getting a coffee. He was really discouraging. He was just like, Oh, no one, very few people are going to care about something like that. Like, do you think that you know, these people, you know that he kind of wanted to maintain the status quo, that fashion would always be this fun? area, you know, fun, flighty, frivolous thing. And I was just like, No, it's more than that. It's not because I'm a deep person, and I see the value in it in a much deeper way. It's not just this fun, frivolous world, it's more than

Umindi Francis
different things for different people. There's a business behind it, you know, millions and millions of people are employed by the industry. And there's a creative side, but there's a business side. And there's folks that make it tick. And I think it's really wonderful when you've been entrenched in something, and have an opportunity to see beyond that and see how you can iterate and change and evolve and make things happen. But it's also brave to step out and do something,

Anabel Maldonado
ya know, 100%. And so, you know, I'll hang on to these snippets, when you would hear like, overall buzz once said that, you know, the best thing he can hear as when a consumer or a customer of his would say something like, You know what, Albert, I appreciated long van because the dress I had that you made, it gave me strength to go to divorce court and face my ex. Right. It's, that's, that's the power of fashion, right? Or it gives you the ability to, we say it a lot, but really to dream of an alternative future to dream of like to help you live into your best self. So that's what always drove me I would say,

Umindi Francis
amazing, amazing. Well, one thing, fun fact, I also have a degree in neuro psychology core. So we have that connection, as well. And so I find it so interesting that you took that the science of that and applied it to to this space. I mean, there's so many opportunities for this to kind of transcend the way, you know, we shop and the way things change. So how does it work? What What can a consumer expect? Take us through like, a moment, in instance, with the technology?

Anabel Maldonado
Well, I'll tell you a little bit about how we created psyche and how that understanding has been embedded into the tech and the consumer can come to expect. So, you know, when we first when I first sort of looking into the framework, I looked at the Big Five model of personality, which is, you know, when scientists look at what makes you who are we like, these five traits are essentially the most basic building blocks, right? So openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. They're basically spectrums, and where we fall in the spectrum, kind of, you know, basically, trend translates into a very specific personality code, right? And they're like, over 3000 combinations, which is why it's a good AI problem. It's not something that humans really going to be able to put together, okay, right, you're high in this and you're low in this and that's why you hate V necks and florals right. So when we train the models, which means you know, giving it lots and lots of information, so it starts to understand we fed it a lot of consumer personality data, which is proud of our proprietary data, and lots and lots of luxury fashion product. And, and essentially that the model itself assigns psychological traits to the products so that the AI understands, okay, this is my natural consumer, right, a Baroque couch gets a score, an oversized logo, hoodie gets a score, right? And it's, it's qualities that we use a natural language anyway, right? When you would say something's romantic or direction or avant garde, those are just qualities and this is a numeric way of describing that. And so that's a model that we've trained and developed in house along with five other non personality type models, neural networks. So essentially, I mean, if you think about how big tech works, Instagram, Spotify, you know, this is they're just large recommendation engines the way that that ours is so right, they rank products. If you and I were following the same Instagram accounts, we'd still see a different order of things based on our interactions, and the AI deciding that this is the most relevant thing for us. And so that's exactly what we do for retailers, we take their categories, and we re rank them in order to show the most relevant products on every page. And so for the consumer, really, when it's working, well, you wouldn't necessarily notice anything other than Wow, there's so much stuff I like here. Yes, that's what you want to see. Right? Like so. I mean, we're probably gonna like some probably gonna get fairly similar results, but you know, monochrome, black, white neutral in architectural detail, bold gold hardware, where someone else might like something a bit more softer, pastels, cleaner, The New

Umindi Francis
Yorker, in me always in Jet Black.

Anabel Maldonado
Which is the case today, but hey, when you go to Miami, you're gonna get different reason, then I

Umindi Francis
changed Yeah, change up. No, I love this so much. And I intimately understand it because in 2020, there was a shift in how I shop, when there was no way for me to go, I definitely spent time via e commerce, and I understood the value of having and, you know, being someone that's very tied to the fashion industry, you know, it's, it's, it's something that we do before we go to Paris Fashion Week, or London or something like this, you shop before the trip, right? And it's overwhelming to go on a website and not know where to go. There's so much to see so much to choose from. And I really shopped things that were curated for me on platforms, and that's where I shot. And so being able to have that reverberated throughout the industry in a more in depth way widespread is is really amazing. And so it's an exciting technology to see how do you think AI in general is going to affect the industry? You know, there's it's still early adoption right now.

Anabel Maldonado
Yeah, I mean, just to comment on what you said first about, you know, shopping for a trip and being able to whittle things your own duration down. I think that's something that is industry professor, professionals we take for granted because we have such strong awareness, right? We're like, alright, you know, I'm going to I don't know, kind of Diana or Miami and I'm gonna want like these brands and these sizes and these colors and MIDI. You know, we can use all the filters, because we have that awareness. But what's interesting is most shoppers don't shop that way. You know, they're they don't know what they want with that kind of acuity, right? And so we're, we're unburdening them. And we're doing that for them. How will AI change the industry broader? I mean, I think it's going to automate a lot of things that should be automated, more than anything, it's going to make us a lot more intelligent through, you know, every part of through, you know, in every single area, right, the fact that we taking personality and aesthetics aside, I think even just being able to personalize on on sizes and price points, and being able to show the right things to consumer from that, from that perspective, and then also, taking the intelligence based on what we know is in demand to inform buying and creative decisions. So is this mostly for multi brand retailers or sole retailers? Mostly multi brand, we work well, where there's an inherent discovery problem, right? Some of the larger retailers that we're working with have like 18,000 products in one category. And that's like, 400 pages of product. And we know that the average consumer clicks through 2.5 Pay, and then we're done. Yeah, we want to make sure that they're still just product has never seen it, and you don't know why it's why didn't sell it at the right consumer actually even see it. And so that's what we're doing, we're reaching in and putting it in front of them.

Umindi Francis
And that's part of the value proposition as well as affecting the bottom line. I think, you know, retail has always been a big part of the GDP of and creating jobs and so forth. And so if you're creating a technology that allows a retail entity, to increase their sales in this climate, where, you know, things have really changed. You know, with the advent of social media, there's more ecommerce, more competition, it's really important to have new technology help you cut through the fray, and increase your bottom line. So that's why I think this technology is so important. I really wanted to sit down and have a conversation with you about it. But tell me a bit more about, you know, how you got started and where you began? What's your journey? How do you get here? Now you're a CEO and founder of a tech company, you know, has this always been a dream of yours? What are your challenges in business?

Anabel Maldonado
No, I never imagined that I'd be a CEO and founder of a technology company. I was always no, I never, I was always someone who just, you know, felt very intuitively whether I'm on my path or not on my path. And I, I always just followed my curiosity and my obsession, and you know, it was much like I've always much like I described it earlier, right. I liked. I liked science, and I liked the creative and, you know, in a way, I think it was always my mission to sort of join up these two To world I think part of the reason why this technology doesn't exist yet is the quantitative and the technical sits very far from the creative and the qualitative, right. And they don't know how to speak to each other. And I feel like because I've had this really unusual pivot, you know, studying neuro psychology and working in health, and then luxury e commerce. And the people that have sort of, you know, joined us now connect these two worlds. So that's where I got to where I am today.

Umindi Francis
Well, that's, you know, the important thing about fashion and tech, I think, for technology to influence and affect the fashion industry in a positive way. You need individuals who can be translators, who can translate and help others in the industry, the creatives understand how to move forward in a different space

Anabel Maldonado
100%. Because I think part of it is, you know, a lot of the recommendation engines that have worked well, in Amazon, where perhaps you are buying more functional things, when grocery were like, Hey, you bought this brand of toilet paper, we're gonna come back for more. It's not necessarily the same thing, right? Like, you know, you have this black fest, you've got one, you don't necessarily need three other black vests. But if we get the, you know, the quality of what you like about it, we could recommend so many other things, too.

Umindi Francis
Speaking of Amazon, and Google, in the Microsoft's of the world had our Is there any apprehension or consideration to how, you know being a small company compared to them? How that affects your growth?

Anabel Maldonado
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting one, because they have access to obviously lots of data points. But you know, data alone isn't enough, you have to be able to build it the right way and ask the right questions, and have some particular understanding. So we're smaller, and we're new, but we've got this, you know, we've got a patent for a personality model, which is really exciting.

Umindi Francis
Really, that's amazing. Thank you.

Anabel Maldonado
For texts are our ability to to use psychographic data and, and personality traits, the way that we, we do that by assigning them to the products to recommend, right. So that's pretty broad. So huge win for us in the US. And so yeah, we've got the specialist knowledge, right, that, in this expert know, how bred out of my experience, that's gone into it. So that's what we have. That's, I think, unique.

Umindi Francis
So there's always this conversation about AI taking our jobs, you know, what are your thoughts on that, for better or for worse than, and what's next? I

Anabel Maldonado
think that you know, anyone that we're helping sort of in, in retail buying, merchandising, and the scale at which they're, they're working, there's absolutely no danger in that, if anything, what you know what I like, the conversation that I always have with buyers, and merchandisers and people in the C suite is, if anything, you know, we take your understanding of the consumer and what they like and the shopper and how they behave. And we, we work that into the AI and then we help you scale yourself, right? Like no one is ever going to no human is ever going to merchandise 18,000 products. And even if you could do it beautifully, you couldn't do it well for each person. And that's the right point of AI personalization.

Umindi Francis
Right, right. So what are you excited about in the fashion industry all together?

Anabel Maldonado
Think I'm excited about? Finally, like understanding individuality. I think the problem with trends always bothered me because it it really kind of perpetrated this very sheep like, you know, this is what's in this is what this is what's out. And the way that people that aren't in fashion, the broader public talks about is very much like that, right? I hated meeting friends who are in the industry. They're like, Oh, well, we look forward to meeting you. Because I want to hear about what's in Yeah, it's just, you know, like, think about what you react to forget about what's in I mean, because we do react to trends, but not every single trend, right? There's certain things really, you know, I really like what, you know, Daniel Lee was doing a bodega that really resonated, but not so much what so and so was doing and another house, or, you know, learning learning about you, and what makes you feel electric. And I think this, you know, before, even before the tech application, I always, you know, did a lot of work and fashion psychology to try to help people understand that better. You know, so there's less noise, right? You're buying stuff that you don't even really like because of marketing noise, right? Like, learn to invest more in the things that you like, black, white, right? Whatever the case may be. Yeah.

Umindi Francis
So who inspires you in the industry?

Anabel Maldonado
Good question.

Umindi Francis
Or in general, yeah. What inspires you what keeps you going? What gives you this drive? Because it's not easy building a tech company as a female founder, fundraising, managing staff, all the things having a family so what what inspires you and keeps you going?

Anabel Maldonado
You and I think back it's a consumer ultimately, right? It's, it's the consumer, I know that there's this conversation like you're either serving the consumer or the retailer, you're b2b or b2c, but, and maybe it's, you know, five, this kind of very utopian We envision that it's a win win all around, when we can kind of create that awareness and that understanding of who likes what I think that will really usher in this new wave of consumerism. And what inspires me is we had a pilot that was b2c, and 2021, we ran it for six months to try to train our data to validate consumer demand. And we had so many consumers writing in saying that, you know, this is something they've intuitively always felt. And now no one and no one talked about it, and they've been waiting for it. And now they think it's the future of fashion. And they're so excited. And, you know, the pilot was meant to run for six months. So you know, it kind of hurt, closing the closing that down to do something bigger to bring it to a much more. And so you know, I just, I want to be able to bring that back back to the consumer, it's very powerful to be able to kind of shop in a way that, you know, your money's going into something that's going to create a lot of value for you cognitively.

Umindi Francis
Right, so I know the part of the business is via e commerce. But tell us about the in store experience. I know there's what's the value proposition behind that. And how does that work?

Anabel Maldonado
Yeah, I mean, we really just thought online for a while, right? Because you know, talk you think online, but I myself had a few experiences where I'm like, you know, what we like shopping offline, everyone likes to go for lunch, right? Go shopping moment, have you put therapy eggs down, have a nice salad and a glass of wine, like, that's still great. But I think the problem is, you know, it's, it can be so inefficient, right, especially if you're shopping in a new area, like you don't know what stores to hit, you've got half an hour an hour to dedicate to it. And it's just you kind of just don't do it. Because I don't know if that's going to be time well spent, or you go to a department store. And it's like, there's two floors of women's wear. And it's overwhelming. And I just kind of thought because we possess this, you know, we have the pot and we have the psychographic understanding of the consumer. And we personalized on a per user basis, meaning every user essentially has their own model, we were very well placed to to roll out this consumer ID where they essentially are able to unlock personalization at any touch point. So the vision here of what we're offering in creating is that you would, for example, go to go to your favorite department store, multi brand retailer or be able to flash your, your personal ID, you know, it's like a QR code on a tablet or a screen on the wall. And then you can see narrow down selections there, which can immediately be bought for you to try on to the change room instead of wading through those rocks.

Umindi Francis
And so your Creek you're opting in because privacy is a big, you know, deal in conversation right now consumers, it's really affecting the way we move and sell via e commerce and, and on social media. So our consumers given the opportunity to opt out 100%

Anabel Maldonado
Yeah, you say want this if they want the value, then they opt in and they they have control.

Umindi Francis
Okay, got it. Got it. And so another hot topic right now is chat GPT. What are your thoughts on that? I

Anabel Maldonado
think it's incredible. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible. I would have to agree. I mean, I'm so happy that there's been so much noise around AI the past few years, because people are just, there's so many people saying they're doing machine learning, we're obviously not doing machine learning. And it's been really frustrating, you know, in fundraising, or when presenting your value proposition to to when you are really building a really sophisticated stock. So no one's actually seeing like I do anything that amazing yet until Chuck GPT kind of showed us showed us what it can do. And so it's a really great time, you know, it's aI Renaissance, as they say,

Umindi Francis
and let's talk about just building the company and fundraising. How is that experience? What is that like?

Anabel Maldonado
It's it's it's a wild ride. It's you know, it's a roller coaster, as they say, with high highs always

Umindi Francis
said there's no fun in fundraising, but it's an it's a necessary evil. And then you find folks along the way, but tell me yeah, definitely

Anabel Maldonado
in building the company and hiring all of that is all very similar. I think one thing you never imagined is exactly how how how high the high highs are and exactly how lows low the lows are. But yeah, it's just it's just, there's some fun and fundraising I would say because it's it's just like anything, you meet a lot of people and you find connection. Yeah, right. And whether it's fundraising or dating or not, because those analogies are often made, it's it's the same, it's the same thing. Obviously, it's disheartening when you expect to connect with someone and you don't, quite often you don't expect it and you do and those are amazing days.

Umindi Francis
And it's you know, it's so rewarding to find someone that really believes in your, your mission, and adds value and continues to propel and push you along. And you've been able to do that successfully, and continue to make strides which is so exciting to watch and see. That's really great because it's not easy. We know what the statistics are for female founders and you know, you're here as living proof that it can be done. It's really amazing to have a passion and idea prove your concept and keep going.

Anabel Maldonado
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's really just been about, you know, hustling in terms of meeting as many people as you can having many conversations and in many geographies, and that's definitely been sort of my advantage that I liked doing that I like having the conversations. I like meeting people, I know people from many walks of life. So you know, I have met some of my investors in kind of unconventional ways, but certainly the way to do it, just meet as many people as you can. Speaking of geography,

Umindi Francis
which you just mentioned, globalization, in business, in general is a big thing for me. And so how do you feel about, you know, global expansion? And are there any nuances in your technology versus the Western Eastern world? Because I know you're, you're ready to take it all.

Anabel Maldonado
Indian, you know, I think you have to, when you're when you're basically bring an innovative technology to life, you have to look for the Mavericks look for the early adopters. And again, just like with fundraising, there are going to be people in those businesses that are like, Yes, this is, this is what we need to solve our bleeding neck problems. This is a nice to have this is crucial, right? You know, we like to say personalized, and it's true, personalized will be the default state and the people that recognize that now. Can it be anywhere, right? And I think the words out on whether my bias is confirmed that often it's in North America or where you're going to find those Mavericks. But I also want to remain open minded that they could be anywhere. Yeah, yeah, I

Umindi Francis
think so. So in a utopian world, what would you love to see happen?

Anabel Maldonado
In a utopian world, it's it. You know, what I feel that the psychographic The best thing about what the psychographic data does. And you know, I didn't mention this earlier. Part of the reason why I really liked the Big Five is that there's so many studies in academia that proves like your Big Five trait correlations with so many things like from music preferences, to food preferences, if you could believe it to just everything under the sun, and I'm like, okay, to really anchor so much. And really, what that enables us to then do with the ID in this data is to connect things in a way that wasn't possible before. Because even now, we know we're rolling out personalization to x retailer, to y retailer to this vertical to that vertical, but eventually, what what the utopia that I see is that we're able to make inferences from things right so you book a boutique hotel. What examples Should I give your same far and then you know, the you go on Crate and Barrel we know you go on the coffee tables, we know exactly which ones to put at the top right, right. And then you you go do something else. You know you're listening to stuff on Spotify then like peloton knows what rides you want to take your dog to filter? What restaurant? Oh, my gosh,

Umindi Francis
yeah, he's you want to see your child care? Yeah, you

Anabel Maldonado
check into that hotel. They know what welcome drink to give you they know what music to play in your room.

Umindi Francis
This is exciting.

Yeah. You know, it's really exciting to my life.

Yeah, coming from a place of extreme convenience in New York City. It's just exciting to hear that there's more on the horizon to make our lives even more easier. Yeah. And he continues to iterate in a comfortable

Anabel Maldonado
way. In fact, yeah, in a way that I think it reduces friction for our real lives. That's the way I see it. Also, if you think about the Internet of Things like you know, this, this system that will make decisions for us, like homes that will be able to order things that we need that personalization factors into the the Jetsons coming

Umindi Francis
to life. Yeah, exactly. So what advice do you have for Fashion and Retail brands, trying to make sense of AI and its impact on E commerce?

Anabel Maldonado
I mean, I think, understand what kind of data you need to create the kind of intelligence you need. If you're a big retailer, work with us, if you're a smaller retailer, or starting small, or I think the first thing to find out because I think it everyone wants to know, okay, who is our consumer? Think beyond just the usual demographic data, right? I think you've, you know, as a consultant, you've probably sat in on ton of these meetings where they're trying to find out who their consumer is. And it's something like, well, let's call her Jane. She's, you know, this age. And she looked,

Umindi Francis
well, the information is here now.

Anabel Maldonado
Yeah, exactly. Try to think try to go deeper, and then start to collect data that can then you can create clusters with that data, right? Actually, we have two, two nuanced customers. And we know that based on something and you could start collecting that data in many different ways. You could put up a little questionnaire or you could not analyze mailers. But yeah, I mean, there's always Junior data scientists that can help. If you know the questions you want to ask and the framework you'd want to create. There's always a junior data scientist that can work with you to do that.

Umindi Francis
Got it noted. Annabelle, considering your background didn't start off in tech. Do you have any advice for any non technical people that would like to explore careers in tech?

Anabel Maldonado
Yes, absolutely. So Three things. I'd say definitely immerse yourself in the industry read books about from other tech founders and things they've done, one I can recommend is the hard thing about the hard things by Ben Horowitz, who's now at Andreessen Horowitz, you just learn a lot about how technology can become valuable, Manhattan how it sells. The second thing is, definitely just try and think of like, even if you're not an engineer, what about your experience is going to make this tech valuable for me, it was the psychology and the neuro psychology and how, you know, in many ways, the brain is not dissimilar from creating AI because that's what we're creating, we're creating a thought processes. So that was my unique angle into the tech and three is you will be initially overconfident in terms of your ability to evaluate engineers that you bring into the team. You know, initially, you might think, like, Okay, sounds like he knows what he's talking about. Great. So, you know, your challenge will be to find really good technical talent to join you. And what really saved me was getting advisors that helped me evaluate those engineers and whether they were right for a startup, which is different from being a good engineer for a big, big company. And I found those on LinkedIn, just cold outreach, and they were happy to help. So the tech industry has actually been very, very kind to me.

Umindi Francis
We have another question for you. How was the process for you in selecting your advisors? Were they people that you knew before mentors,

Anabel Maldonado
or? No, I met them, I met them on different stages, you know, it was just very, it was kind of faded. They all came in at the right stage, you know, common Busquets was my probably very first official advisor, mentor, eventually investor. And then that happened organically. And then as we evolved, the more technical investors, I sought them out, but they liked what we were doing. And it was just very, um, very organic. But you know, I had to do my outreach. Sounds good.

So what do you spend most of your time doing?

Oh, my working life, no working. Little nonworking likes playing. Yeah, I'm trying to get the best deal. The transatlantic flight. Um, I spend a lot of time I think right now like refining, refining our go to market strategy, speaking to retailers, I think broadly speaking, and sharing the value prop, like we're coming, we're coming out to the world. That's that's what I spend most of my time doing. So refining, explaining it in a way that hits hits as deep as possible. And as clear as possible, working with the team, obviously, working closely with the tech team, I think when you run a technology company, it's not just like, Here, go build this. You have to communicate constantly.

Umindi Francis
Yeah. And ask this of everyone, like, how do you find balance outside of this? What do you what do you do to unwind to make yourself tick? It's really important, as a founder and a CEO to make time for yourself. So

Anabel Maldonado
what do you it is, I learned that lesson the hard way, you really do need to sort of invest in yourself, because otherwise, everything else just just goes down a bad path to things I have a daughter who's almost two, so spending time with her. It's probably very, it's kind of like polar opposite to anything you do in business. And so that quickly grounds you and kind of calms you. So I spend time with her or I really like fitness. So I like going for a run. hitting the gym. There's this gym that I like to go to, which has a really nice steam room. So I go on I steam. Yeah, steam away the stress. That's so to tap. I love the steam room. I try to cook. I like cooking when I can.

Umindi Francis
That's also therapeutic for me as well. I mean, it really is a luxury to be able to sit, especially when you're on the go and you travel a lot. It's so therapeutic to sit and create a lovely meal. Sure, and enjoy that. You know, when it's not a requirement? Yeah, when you actually have time you actually have

Anabel Maldonado
no set recipe but like you pick up some vegetables, do some chopping. I mean, that's yeah,

Umindi Francis
I have so much in common. So, you know, it's been so lovely to have you here and be in conversation with you. I'm so excited about this new technology. I think that being at the forefront of this is going to have a lot of impact on the retail industry in general. That's going to reverberate and make life easier for folks and I'm so happy to know that you're the face of that thing and making that happen in the world and best of luck to you and psyche AI as you move forward. How do we find you online? We want to let everybody know how to follow

Anabel Maldonado
you. We're on psykhe.com We have an Instagram psyche underscore @psykhe_ai and I can pretty active also on LinkedIn. Okay, can we share a lot there and on my personal Instagram on a bun Maldonado?

Umindi Francis
Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much, Annabelle, for joining us today. I'm your host, Umindi Francis and this is What's Next Podcast you can find me @Umindi360 on Instagram and Umindi Francis on LinkedIn. Take care.