StartUs Presents: GoWemy

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No more standing in fron of the closet and asking yourself what to wear! We spoke to Marin Zlataric of GoWemy about fashion, advice and their mission.

Describe GoWemy in 50 words or less.

GoWemy is a fun way to share your style ideas with fashion lovers from all around the world! It helps you with doubts on what to wear, what to buy, what looks good on you. The service provides you with the advice you need when it comes to fashion, so you can avoid serious fashion mistakes. Basically, it’s your own personal consultant.

How did you come up with the idea?

We’ve all been there: going out on a date or a business meeting and standing in front of a full closet wrapping your head around the big question ”What to wear today?!” Or trying on something at a store, shopping alone and not being, asking yourself ”Should I buy it?”, ” Does this look good on me?”. That is how the idea for GoWemy came to life.

Having an objective, unbiased personal stylist is now just a click away! It helps you get ready faster and be more confident with what you’re wearing. All you have to do is take a selfie in your outfit, post it on GoWemy and get a rating based on other users votes. You get the result in 60 seconds based on votes from all around the globe and you’ll also be able to connect with people whose style you’re into.

Why did you decide to pursue your own dreams rather than someone else’s?

GoWemy is not the first project Dino and Mirko developed together. Both of them have a long history of developing interesting apps and games as well as working alongside each other. Marin and Hrvoje also have entrepreneurial backgrounds in fields of marketing, information technology, and development. This team is more than filled with entrepreneurial spirit, the desire to create and bring innovative ideas and valuable products into the world.

Its rarely seen that employers are able to transfer their passion and love for their company to their employees. The ones that do it have astonishing enterprises. When the love for the work is burning inside you, you will do everything to share it with the rest of the people working with you.

None of the team members have a classical idea of 9-5 job and thus we don’t mind working overtime. We are working on something we love and enjoy doing it so we put our hearts and our time in to it as much as we can. Our passion is to create, to bring value and inspiration to others . Our goal is to keep learning and evolving with our projects that we are so very passionate about.

Our dream is not to spend our working-age period thinking about what might have been, we want to be driven my meaning and purpose, and to be able to learn from our experiences, continuing to evolve and grow while having the freedom to share our experiences with the world.

7 years from now: How did your startup change the world?

We can’t predict the potential magnitude of GoWemys’ success, but what we can say for sure is that GoWemy has exceptional potential for growth. We expect and believe that our project will surely grow and bring value to a lot of people.

Our focus has always been on the users – we listen to what they have to say, and we’re constantly trying to figure out what they need, want and like. We put a lot of time and effort into examining the user experience in order to give them a product they will absolutely enjoy using. The purpose of GoWemy is to be useful, exceptionally user friendly and fun. That is exactly what makes it so appealing to a large audience.

Seven years from now we see listet GoWemy as the number one online fashion service and fashion adviser. GoWemy will definitely be the app you turn to when in need of help with your fashion choices and when you want to avoid fashion mistakes. Furthermore, we see GoWemy as the ever-growing network of happy, satisfied users who will be able to stop wasting money on clothes that do not suit them, but rather spend this money on those they look great in. By trying on clothes in the retail changing room and posting a selfie of what you are wearing, you will be able to find out whether the clothes you are thinking of buying are right for you. By using the app, you will save a great deal of money and avoid making expensive fashion mistakes as well as be inspired by the style of other users.

In what ways do you measure your success and how do you make sure you don’t lose track?

We are fans of project management solutions, so we use BaseCamp to coordinate our team’s activities. Project management tools keep us on track and keep us focused on the tasks ahead of us. Our tasks are divided into development, customer service, community management, marketing and PR, finance and design. Every group has a monthly plan – divided into weekly or daily tasks and to-do lists.

We are an extremely well organized group and every one of our members is an expert in their respective field. That way we can absolutely rely on each other to get things done flawlessly on time. We consult each other about every task and regularly brainstorm about creative solutions to the problem at hand.

Describe your typical working day from coming to the office to leaving it.

We are still in the early stages of business so our working hours are flexible and we combine them with other activities.

We currently have a small office where we meet and where we spend most of our work related activities. The rest of the time we continue to work and communicate remotely through e-mails, phone calls, etc. We are always connected and do our best to be in sync every minute of the day.
The GoWemy team does not have a typical working day, but we make sure our tasks are carefully planned and carried out. When the business continues to grow – like it did until now – we will be needing a much larger office and much more people to work with. 

Already pivoted? Did customers use the app like you imagined it in the beginning?

Yes, we pivoted already, but not with the major things. We are in the lead generation pre-launch phase and the app is still not out. Nevertheless, we decided to start our lead generation campaign before the launch to get enough pre-subscribed users. To us, it was of most relevance to gather user impressions, and to release the best version of the app – the one users will instantly love using and that way enable it to grow organically and exponentially.

We also gathered information and listened to advice that many experts in the field had regarding our business model as well as marketing activities. We are always evolving and learning from our experiences. Of course, other changes can be expected when our app hits global markets.

Bootstrapped or financed: What fuels your startup now and what will in the future?

At the moment we are looking for investors and are contacting a lot of individual investors and startup incubators.

We’ve gotten some great feedback and some of the investors already found us through media. We still haven’t decided what type of investment is best suited for us. Most likely it will be seed capital to push the launch further. When our launch is completed and we have all the numbers in line we’ll be able to decide what to do next. If everything goes as planned, we won’t need any more investments.

With ferocious competition and a booming trend to build new companies: How do you make sure you don’t get lost in the shuffle?

Is there anything out there like GoWemy? There really isn’t. Although there are a lot of fashion and shopping apps on the market, no one has created an app that gives an objective and instant solution for choosing your clothes and accessories. With GoWemy you can snap a selfie and get an objective result in 60 seconds from people all around the world. And it’s not just high fashion – it’s for everyone.

We truly believe we have a great product in our hands. We are absolutely certain that GoWemy will help people all over the world to look their best, improve their style, save money and time on clothing, and will have a lot of fun in the process, as we had while making it for them.

How is your user acquisition going?

Now, more than a month has passed since our web version went online and we got good organic growth. We started with content marketing on our blog, social networks and strong guerilla marketing campaign on forums and discussion boards, including Reddit, and many other specialized forums. We have started placing adds on Google, Facebook, Remarketing and Bing. We believe that will give the app the extra push it needs for a successful release at the end of this month. We are also doing our best to build a strong community with good quality content on our fashion advice blog and on various social networks. The number of pre-subscribed users is constantly growing in a slow but steady pace, and we expect the biggest rush of users in a couple of weeks when the app is finally released.

What do you look for in team members?

Our team is our greatest advantage. A well functioning team is everything a good startup really needs. When searching for team members we look for the same passion in them that drove us to create GoWemy. They need to have entrepreneurial spirit, be individual thinkers, mostly creative, not bound by rules, friendly and cooperative with other team members and open to learning new things. Also, you can always rely on a good gut feeling about new team members and how they would fit in the current team, what qualities and knowledge they have, and how they can contribute to improving the team.

Why would a talent join your team?

I think you could get a good feeling about GoWemy’s potential through this interview. We are open minded individuals, passionate about our work and projects. Anyone who is out there looking to join our team has to have the same passion and must be self-driven.

We are all experts in our fields, proud to be part of GoWemy and there is a lot that one can learn from us. Nonetheless, we are also looking forward to learning from others. Our relationships are based on mutual respect, but we are also having a lot of fun along the way, like a big family. So, we are always looking forward to new people, ideas and points of view.

What was your most memorable moment so far?

This is a difficult question to answer. GoWemy is still young but there were more than just a few memorable moments. The first one was the idea realization for sure. But the most memorable was when we started our promotion in Facebook groups and forums and got huge feedback, many media interviews and a constantly growing base of pre-subscribing users. And of course, the first offers from investors were exciting. We think that the next big moment for us will be in a few weeks when we release the app. 

What advice would you give fellow founders for their startup?

There is no universal advice. You have to love what you do, be passionate about it and never give up! Don’t be afraid to step up and speak, share your ideas and know what you’re worth. No one can steal your idea or do it as good as you have envisioned it. For a startup – teamwork is crucial. There are bound to be some hardships along the way, and nothing comes overnight, but don’t give up and do everything you can to support each other every step of the way. You are all here for the same goal – to see your dreams come true.

 

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