Fashion Tech · Founder & Lead Developer · 2013–2016
Pippip Fashion Tech
A VR dressing room and social commerce platform. It won Best Product Design and made the Top 100 BSSC, and then it died. This one is here because of what it cost to learn.
- BSSC 2016
- Top 100
- Product design award
- Best
- Runway burned
- 3 years
- Product-market fit
- 0
The idea
Let people try clothes on virtually before buying online. It started as a prototype built in a Ho Chi Minh City apartment in 2013, and it demoed beautifully: VR try-ons, social commerce, a curated marketplace.
What went wrong
I over-engineered it. Time went into 3D rendering fidelity and computer vision accuracy instead of into finding out whether anyone would change how they shop. The technology got more impressive while the business question stayed unanswered.
The product won awards for design while I ran out of runway chasing perfection. Those two facts are related.
Why it's on this page
Every engagement I take now is shaped by this. Ship the simplest thing that answers the real question, measure it, then iterate. Scope hard, validate before building, and don't fall in love with the technology over the problem.
When I push back on a feature or tell a founder their v1 is too big, this is where that's coming from. I have paid for that opinion.
Built with
Worried your v1 is too big
That is the useful version of this story. Tell me what you are planning to build and I will tell you which parts of it can wait until real users have answered the question.