How a solo founder used Codex and ChatGPT to launch a fashion brand without engineers | Yana Welinder

Yana Welinder is the solo founder of Yana Bana, an AI-native fashion brand built with AI as her technical co-founder, starting from hand-drawn sketches and ending with runway photos, CAD files for 3D printing, and a live Stripe-connected pre-order site—no engineers required. A former product leader, she brings an operator’s rigor to her creative process: her “fashion prompt” is a detailed spec covering silhouette, volume, fabric behavior, movement, and sound, and watching her use Codex plus computer use to navigate 3D design software that’s entirely new to her is a clarifying demo of what today’s toolset actually makes possible. What you’ll learn: How Yana uses a custom fashion prompt as a technical spec to get consistent, realistic, on-design outputsWhy ChatGPT Images 2.0 outperforms other models for fashion designHow she uses Codex plus computer use to operate CAD and fashion software she’s never personally learnedThe workflow for taking a garment from hand-drawn sketch to product photo, runway photo, and influencer shot in a single sessionHow she ran vendor outreach end to end using deep research and browser useHow she built a full e-commerce site with voting, databases, and Stripe integrationWhy she’s testing human patternmakers and Codex in parallel— Brought to you by: Merge https://www.merge.dev/howiai—Connective infrastructure for production AI Jira AI SDLC https://jira.dev—Get your tokens’ worth with Jira — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Introducing Yana Welinder and Yana Bana (02:38) Tour of the Yana Bana site (05:20) The fashion prompt stack (07:39) Live demo: generating a jacket from a prompt in ChatGPT (10:01) Why Image Gen 2.0 beats other models (11:51) The “prompt as spec” principle (14:02) Iterating the design (17:12) Using Codex and computer use to build CAD files in 3D software (20:50) Vendor research, outreach emails, and Superhuman browser use (23:34) Building the full e-commerce site (27:40) Quick recap and what’s still hard (30:05) How Yana prompts when AI pushes back (31:15) Where to find Yana and how to vote on her garments — Tools referenced: • ChatGPT (Images 2.0): https://chat.openai.com https://chat.openai.com/ • Codex (OpenAI): https://openai.com/codex • CLO 3D (fashion pattern software): https://www.clo3d.com https://www.clo3d.com/ • Vercel: https://vercel.com https://vercel.com/ • GitHub: https://github.com https://github.com/ • Stripe: https://stripe.com https://stripe.com/ • Superhuman: https://superhuman.com https://superhuman.com/ — Other references: • Ruth Asawa: https://ruthasawa.com https://ruthasawa.com/ • SFMOMA (Ruth Asawa): https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/Ruth_Asawa/ — Where to find Yana Welinder: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ywelinder/ X: https://x.com/yanabana Website: https://www.yanabana.com https://www.yanabana.com/ — Where to find Claire Vo: ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ Website: https://clairevo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ X: https://x.com/clairevo — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Normally I would hire a technical team, like engineers. I didn't, right? I sort of just came to Codex and asked it to build the website. The idea is to use AI really anywhere in the process where that makes sense. Literally my technical co-founder.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  There's so much you couldn't do before practically from a cost perspective, even from an execution perspective, that is now totally possible. And so you can like unlock your creativity in a way that wasn't possible before.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  Really does unlock so much creativity. A lot of my designs start from a hand drawn sketch. But the other piece of this is I sort of developed the fashion prompt that's behind it. And it describes a lot of sort of what goes into garments. So it has like the silhouette, the proportion or the volume of the dress, like kind of like the fabric, how it flows, how it behaves, the construction details, how it moves, even how it sounds. The other piece that is still unsolved and I'm sort of still banging my head against the wall is to get it to create patterns based on my design. And there I'm kind of running humans and AI in parallel. So I am working with human pattern makers, Codex, and just seeing who's going to get to making my thing fastest.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Welcome to How I AI. I'm Clara Bava, product leader and AI obsessive here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Today I have Yana Wellander and she is building an AI native fashion startup. And she's going to show us how AI can intersect art, creativity and real world production, and why computer use plus software means SaaS really isn't dead, at least not yet. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by Merge. Building an AI product is one thing. The hard part is everything around it. Connecting to the tools your team and customers rely on, letting agents take action with the right permissions and keeping everything reliable and cost efficient once you're in production.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Most teams end up piecing that together themselves. So instead of building the product you actually care about, you get pulled into integrations, permissions, routing and all the infrastructure underneath. Merge is the infrastructure layer for production AI. It connects to thousands of tools, gives agents secure ways to act inside them and optimizes model routing and spend without you building or owning any of it. OpenAI, Dropbox and Ramp already use Merge to move fast and build AI right. Visit merge.dev/hhowiai to start building for free. Yana, thanks for joining How I AI. I'm an art and fashion girl.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  You know this, there are like five of us AI art and fashion girls on Twitter and we all find each other, but I am one and I love what you're working on. So immerse us in this new thing that you're working on and then we'll talk about how you're using AI in this really unique fashion.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Cool. Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. I am building this AI native fashion brand. And the idea is to use AI really anywhere in the process where that makes sense. So obviously heavily in the design and production process, but also it's literally my technical co-founder. And so I, that's, that's what I use it for, everything.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  And can you show us, like, it's, it's probably hard for people to conceptualize what like an AI powered fashion brand looks like. Can you just like show us a little bit of kind of like some of the stuff that you're working on? And then we can get into how it actually, how you actually got there.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  So this is Yana Banana, the, the fashion brand. And you can kind of see like everything here is built with AI. And so you have some of the different garments that I designed. And I'll show later that like different ones starts from different, like from different aspiration or from different points. And so oftentimes I start from a sketch. You can see that when you hover over some of these. So I start with, with a hand drawn, humanly, manually, you know, old school hand drawn sketch. And then I use AI to turn that into different types of fashion collateral and kind of technical specs and everything along the line to ultimately get to a garment.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  And I kind of use AI for all the things to visualize it, to create photos, to create videos of some of these garments. There are a lot of them kind of allude to different like technical, you know, computer things in a lot of ways, because I feel like that should be really part of the theme. It should be obvious that, that what it comes, comes from. And so the fabrics will use a lot of kind of the punch card, like computer punch card patterns and things like that. So that you can really see that on the other, the other way in which it sort of appears. So you can see, for example, for this like post keyboard T-shirt, which I'm wearing myself right now.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  It also is alluding to the fact that now we are not going to be using keyboards and, and a lot of this stuff. But can we now have, like, give it a second life essentially? And to make sure that it's like obvious, the world we live in and the world we're entering.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  And I just want to pause because when I first saw this, I was like, what a fun like little art project. Like I once made this, like I vibe coded this app, which was anthropic as an anthropology website. Cause I thought it was very funny. But you're actually bringing these designs to life. Like you are actually wearing this keyboard shirt, which is super cool. And so what, you know, I hear a lot of people who are in the creative fields be really fearful of AI, because I think it is like displacement in a lot of ways. Like let's, let's all be honest here. There's like videos and sketching and all sorts of stuff that AI can do. And yet, if you step on the other side of this like post keyboard future,

• 6:03Speaker 01

  there's so much you couldn't do before practically from a cost perspective, even from an execution perspective, that is now totally possible. And so you can like unlock your creativity in a way that wasn't possible before. So I want you to show us step by step, kind of what goes into creating a garment like this, creating and imagining a design like this, and then actually getting it to production and getting a website like this up.

• 6:31Speaker 00

  I think, I think you're absolutely right, that it really does unlock so much creativity. A lot of, a lot of my designs start from a hand drawn sketch. But the other piece of this is I sort of kind of developed this technical, it's essentially a stack, but I've, for the purpose of visualizing what it looks like, I have this sort of set up as just like the, the fashion prompt that's behind it. And it describes a lot of sort of what goes into garments. So it has like the silhouette, the proportion or the volume of, of the dress, like kind of like the fabric, how, how it, how it flows, how it behaves,

• 7:12Speaker 00

  the, the construction details, how it moves, even how it sounds. And I can, I can show in one of the pieces, it kind of has this really interesting kind of sound as you're walking in, in, in the dress. And I take all of this and put it together in, in essentially kind of when we, if we take it out of my, my, my flow, you can see that it's at, at the core of it, there's sort of this, this prompt that we could take and plug into ChatGPT. And oftentimes, and when, when I'm working with this, I will also have an actual sketch of what I want. And I sort of am then defining this in addition to the sketch. But just for the sake of us kind of playing in real time,

• 7:57Speaker 00

  I just thought it'd be cool to just, just use prompts to start with. So, so here we have a sharply tailored waist defined jacket with exaggerated shoulders and blah, blah, blah. Right? So now we're putting this in. Oh, I should have told it to make an image, but maybe it'll figure out to do that. Yeah, there we go. Sometimes, sometimes it's smarter than you think, even on instant. And so now it's going to generate an image. And oftentimes this will give me kind of like a product photo. But usually what I then want to do with this is to then take it to kind of the next level. And I will have very specific types of like collateral that I want to get out of it. So once we have this ready, I will ask it to generate a Vogue style runway photo.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Oh, there we go. So this is kind of like the product photo of this. So it has these exaggerated shoulders, the waist, a lot of kind of the stuff that I asked it to. And if I had a specific sketch, it would really adhere to my sketch much more so than, than what was in the prompt. But then if we go to, here we say, I'll like now make it into a Vogue style. Can you tell that I normally do not type anymore? And so I usually just use voice for all these things. So it's just like so hard.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  It's easier for our podcast guests when you use voice, because they don't have to imagine what you're typing. So she's, you know, you're typing, make it into a Vogue style photo.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Of a model walking down the runway in this outfit. And so then I kind of just like iterate on this. And there's, I go to, to photo, that's a runway photo. Then I go to like a influencer photo. And you kind of see this in a lot of, from a lot of different angles. And also iterate on it based on kind of what you're seeing. Now make it, you know, red, make it shorter, make it longer and all those different things. But I usually just start from, from a specific point and then iterate from there.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  I have a question for you, which is why ChatGPT and why ImageGen 2 as the, as the model you're using? There's a lot of ImageGen models out there. Why that particular one?

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I've done a lot of experimentation with lots and lots of different image models. And what I found was ultimately Nano Banana and Image 2.0, really Image 1, 1.5 was already pretty good at this, are the best at following visual directions. And often I'm not doing this. Usually I'm sort of, as I mentioned, I'm mostly giving them a physical, like a sketch that I want them to turn into a picture. And what Image 1.5 did better than Nano Banana and Image, Images ChatGPT, Images 2.0 does even better is it really well follows the sketch.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  In fact, it follows the sketch sometimes a little bit too precisely. And so you get something that doesn't look like fabric anymore. And you have to kind of be like, no, no, no, no, no. You gotta like, it's gotta flow. Like this is kind of why I have this, this very detailed kind of prompting where I tell it how the fabric should flow, because otherwise it can get into the mindset of, oh, she really wants it to look like paper, you know? But. But the flip side, though, with all the other image models that I've tried is that they will make it look beautiful and realistic, but it will look very, very different from my design. And obviously, when you're designing fashion, you you need it to look new and different. You don't need it to look like the most similar thing that's walked the runway

• 11:39Speaker 00

  some other time. And that's usually what you get with a lot of other image models.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  What I love, and if you can go back to your prompt flow, what I love about this is this is just, okay, so people are gonna be like, I'm not a fashion designer. I don't have any use for this. What I think is the takeaway here, generally for folks, is write down your process and write down what a definition of complete or good is. You and I, like, we're product ladies.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  I'm product people. Yeah, it's a spec.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Once upon a time, we were like, official product ladies. And you need a spec, like, your prompt is a spec. And so if you can put into the effort of saying, like, what makes a really good garment? Like, what makes a really good photo? What makes a really good illustration? And come up with, like, five things that you can define for the prompt? You can get a really good output of AI. And then what I love, my friend Zach says, what's good for AI is good for humans. Like, let's just say you have, you were gonna have a human sketch this out or build this. This is the exact information they would need as well to do a good job. And so whether or not you're doing, like, fashion illustrations

• 12:45Speaker 01

  or coding, right? Like, this, the spec, the PRD matters, people, like, the spec matters. And so getting, forcing yourself to sit down and be a little bit more precise is gonna get you that exact outcome that you that you want. And, you know, to be honest, I think that jacket's pretty, pretty rad. I would, I'd wear it. This episode is brought to you by Jira by Atlassian. The teamwork graph in Jira delivers forty-four percent more accurate agent results with forty-eight percent less token usage. That's a huge difference when working with AI coding agents like Claude, Cursor, Codex, or Copilot. The hardest part of shipping with AI isn't the code, it's the context.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  What's the right ticket? What did the spec say? What got decided in Slack? The teamwork graph pulls all of that from across your entire stack, from Jira and Confluence to GitHub, and feeds it directly to your agents before they write a single line. You assign the work, the agent gets everything it needs, and a PR surfaces when it's ready. No digging, no context switching, no broken flow. Same team, smarter agents. Try them free at jira.dev. That's J I R A dot D E V. I love it. So you've created this, this image. I also love this idea, taking like

• 14:07Speaker 01

  a core image and iterating it through, like, runway photo, influencer photo, like, you know, standalone catalog, like, photo, product, product shot. What do you do next? Like, what's the next part of your flow?

• 14:22Speaker 00

  So a lot of what I do is kind of iterate on it. And so I have this, like, you know, change the color, change the, you know, change the fabric. And so I have, I have kind of a lot of these different ways to do that. But then the next piece really comes to kind of like, what is the production process? And the production process is gonna be very different, depending on what I'm doing. And so to give you an idea from one of these, so for example, I had this dress that actually did not come from a sketch. It came from, I had this one day where I was just being bombarded with Ruth Asavas artwork in different

• 15:06Speaker 00

  places. Like, I went to, I went with my son to this, like, like, kids event, and there was an exhibit across the street that I, like, accident, like, we were just early, so we went and watched it. And we're like, at the moment, there's like a permanent exhibit there. She had a piano recital, and the church had one of her pieces hanging, like, literally almost above my head. And I was like, I keep, I don't know. And so this was, this is literally from my phone. So I didn't have a sketch, right? Normally, I start with a sketch. But in this case, I was like, you know, make a photo of a model walking down the runway in a dress inspired by Ruth Asavas' loop-wired sculptures. And it was important that it had a beige undergarment, because otherwise, Chachi Piti will not, like, it's

• 15:51Speaker 00

  like, no, you're trying to make me make nude pictures, and I don't do that.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Very artistic nude picture.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  No, I didn't do that. Actually, I think, I think even here, I tried to make it to remove the sculptures in the background. And I was like, we're sorry, this violates our nudity guidelines, right? This like, happens all the time.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  I have to tell you, quick side, you know what, if I showed up to a date with my husband in this gown, I do not think he would be thrilled. I don't think he'd be like, ooh.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  It's not quite, not quite the erotic vibe. Exactly. It's not, it's not, it's not nudity. It's not, you know, it's not torn.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  But here we are. And so, so this one, right? Like, this is, and I think that a lot of garments, you would do, like, some garments, I will drape, right? Like, on, on, on the, on the model behind me. Or some, some garments go into, they become, you create a kind of a pattern. And I have different, some, some AI processes and some non-AI processes that I've done for patterns. But this garment is previously unmanufacturable. And so what I, and I ended, ended up kind of taking this and, and also creating a video of it. This is, this is kind of like, you can, you can see a little bit more of, of how, what

• 17:12Speaker 00

  it looks like. But the next step for this, this particular garment will be to take it and 3D print it. And particularly, these kind of big ball pieces will need to be 3D printed. And so I then went onto Codex and had it help me create CAD files for these balls. So I first prepped it and had it, like, I was like, okay, so I made, made that into sketch, then I made these pieces into, into kind of more sketch illustrations. Then

• 17:53Speaker 00

  I, it didn't do well. It still didn't do well. We had a bunch of back and forth. Eventually, it started doing something that was a little bit more similar. I had to do, this is a really, really long process. And then ultimately, I had it using computer use, go and build this in 3D software, so that I could create like an NDL file and send, send off to 3D print. So that's the process for this particular garment, to sort of to, to 3D print it.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  I have to, again, like, I have to pause, because if we're just talking about the creative, like, generation process, again, this is now a garment that would have been previously, like, almost inconceivable to make. Not just because it was, it's difficult to construct, but even if you were like, of course, we could 3D, we could 3D print that before AI, we could 3D print it after AI, that, like, tedium of creating the CAD models was so onerous, that, like, even getting to the point where you could execute on it is, is really hard. And so I just think this moment of, like, unlocking the previously impossible, whether the impossible was technically impossible, or if it was just, like, practically

• 19:06Speaker 01

  infeasible, is, is super important. The other thing that I love, bless computer use. And, like, Codex plus computer use, love you so much. Because I can just be like, I don't need to know how to use this software. Like, you go use that software, you do whatever you want. I've gone through this, like, trough of despair of, like, SaaS is dead. Maybe, like, we're never gonna touch a website again. You know what? Like, agents are really good at pressing buttons. So like, a software is back for, but agents are gonna use it. It's very, very, kind of like, interesting shift I'm seeing.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  I think that that's a great point. And one, one fascinating piece is that a lot of these things, like, for actual end product, like a CAD file, Codex, as amazing as it is, is not great at generating a final CAD file if you asked it to do it on its own. But if you use, yeah, if you use computer use and have it go and do it in a piece of software that's designed for that purpose, and I have both for, like, actually for 3D printing, and there's a, there's a fashion software called Clo that I've used as well. And it generates this, like, like, it generates patterns, and it, and it then fits them on a 3D model. And, and I tell Codex to go and use the software that I haven't learned

• 20:28Speaker 00

  how to use myself. And it does such a great job at something that it itself couldn't do. So it's sort of like SaaS in combination with. Codex works so well on a lot of these things that that don't. And I'm sure it's just a matter of time, but that's that's where we are today. And I want to do it today. I don't want to wait. I don't want to wait like a year. Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  I I love it so much. Okay, so you like generated an idea. We've sketched it. We've created images. We've even started to prototype the construction of it. How are you getting something built? And maybe not the gown, like maybe this like keyboard shirt that you're wearing. Like, how are we actually getting this manufactured?

• 21:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, so for something like that, what I've done, and I do this a lot, is I will go. And now now the same tool is becomes my research assistant. And I ask it to identify, like, you know, find 10 US-based custom apparel manufacturing companies that are similar to the one that I had liked, but I want to see if there's other ones. And then I just like, there's a bunch of things I want. And I kick off a deep research on extra high, so that it's extra high while doing it. And not in that way. And and then and then I get back a bunch of things.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  But usually, so so for for a lot of my work, I end up like I'm doing something else. So I'm like, I am kicking off this research and then I go and like drape fabric on on model. Or I do like I'm I'm on my sewing machine doing prototypes, like I'm doing something else. And so a lot of them, kind of the next steps, end up being via voice. And so like, like in this case, I came back to and I was like, well, do you see the? Because I'm talking apparel and using voice, right? Like the apparel manufacturers that I asked you to find. Now, can you like put together an email that I can that you can send off to them? But like you may want to make sure that you get my my approval to do that.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  And then I have and then I use browser use to let it go into superhuman and like set all of these up for me, but I really want to click the send button before. Just to check its work.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Again, like something that is just so tedious. And, you know, if if I was like, you're you're you're much more diligent at this than I am. But if I was like, oh, my gosh, I had this vision. We're gonna make we're gonna make these keyboard shirts. They're gonna be amazing. And then I'd be like, how can I make it? And they're like, oh, I have to like look up vendors. I would just practically give up because it feels so boring. But if you can, if you can get that work off to someone, again, like the next step and the next step and the next step. And then what you're gonna end up with is this like incredible business. And so I just am like so inspired by people like you that take AI and create like a niche.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  And like can can then take that and build out a business where maybe one wouldn't wouldn't have been available or possible before. I just think is is is super cool. Okay, so you're doing this vendor outreach. You're actually gonna get this thing, this thing produced. Side note for all the cool girls out there. When they're ready, we all want one. Put me on that. Put me on the preorder preorder list.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  There actually is. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna be that person, but you can preorder it.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Amazing. Perfect. Okay, and then last kind of kind of flow you have is like, again, going back to like preorders and how to actually run this business. How are you using it to like be your technical co-founder in all this?

• 24:08Speaker 00

  That's I I gotta say that that's probably like my favorite piece. Because this, I mean, apart from the fact that it is like, there's so much AI in this. But it's basically like an AI native like Everlane or something, right? Like normally I would hire like a technical team, like engineers. I would have possibly have it. I probably I probably wouldn't. Let's be real, I wouldn't have a technical co-founder. But like I could have had a technical co-founder. I'm a solo solo founder girl. Like this is just my my my nature.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  It's the life.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  It's the life, but but I would hire engineers. And and I I didn't, right? Like I I I had to build this website. And and I did it and I sort of just came to Codex, yeah, and asked it to build the website. There's a lot of pieces here that that aren't just like a static website in that it like you can can obviously preorder things. And I could like add Stripe to it, which is like in prior lives have been like a tedious big exercise. But I can go back and kind of show you the Stripe flow. But adding that was just like, you know, a second. I had to create like databases to be able to like track votes as people are voting on these different garments.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  So I can decide, kind of figure out which are the most popular ones to bring to life. And so like I had to do that. In in the earlier phase of this, I had to create a separate dashboard for me to track the votes in real time. And so I did that. Now I really just like I just use voice and I'm like, oh, hey, how many votes do I have for this thing now? Right? So like, why would I even have a dashboard?

• 25:51Speaker 00

  So I don't do that. But like just to kind of show you like the Stripe flow as as as an example of of like, yeah, I I came here and I was like, oh, yeah. Use browser to add Stripe to my site. It was like, oh, I don't know. You're like, I'm not signed in. I'm like, no, you gotta sign in in my in my own in a browser. I'm like, no, no, no, you got go to mine. I'm already signed up there. And then I was like, yeah, you gotta do it. I'm like, no, you can do it. I was just like, no, no, you can do it. And and yeah, this is it. And and then I had done.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  Everything's added and and now preorder is live. This is like a very, very fast process. And literally, whenever I like need to change something about like the the process. I can I can really just come here and just like list out all the things I wanna I wanna change. And and it goes off and it finds the result project. It's it has like finds the repository in GitHub and does all the things. I would say like this weekend, my son built his own websites. We're using like chat GPT sites. And I'm sort of just like sitting there going like, do I should I really like? Do I want to migrate off of first cell?

• 27:09Speaker 00

  Do I really want like, you know, like, is this is this a whole you like now? Like now a nine-year-old can have his technical co-founder like do this or like build a build a company for him, right? Like, just it's it's just so cool to see this all evolve, you know?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Your your nine-year-old and my nine-year-old are gonna be best buds. We can create like a like a Codex Club for fourth graders.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  We should totally do that.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  This is a very sorry, we are doing San Francisco Silicon Valley moming stuff right now. I just wanna I wanna like go back to one thing because ripped from the headlines Codex prompting. I too am like, hey, Codex, do this thing. And it's like, nah, no, thanks. I can't. And I'm like, no, I'm pretty sure you can. And then like, after two, like, I'm pretty sure you can. It's like, you're right, I can't. I am. I'm gonna post about this later, but I have this like smart light bulb. You can see it's on my on my thing. And I was like, hack it. And it was like, no, I really shouldn't. I was like, you can do it. And I was like, done.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  So just being a little bit insistent. You know, and and you can get get stuff done. This has been so, so fun. Again, just like recapping for folks, a business that I think like would probably be inconceivable before AI. Fully stacked from the creative process, creating images, creating videos, imagining product ideas all the way through like hardcore manufacturing and sourcing vendors to just like being able to voice note your virtual CTO and update anything you need to do and have your engineering team on demand in chat GPT. Pretty incredible. I want to get through some lightning round questions and then we're gonna get get you out of here. You know, my first question for you is like, what is the hardest part of this?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Like, what is still maybe like what is still hard? What isn't solved? What where are you still feeling friction?

• 29:03Speaker 00

  So I'd say it's kind of two things. One is that like getting getting it to really do getting image models to do really unique things per your vision while still making it realistic. That it that has been really, really hard. I feel like I've solved it, like I've kind of cracked that nut, but it still is. And every now and again, I'm sort of still get something that is really two dimensional or whatever. And I have to really refine it. The other piece that is still unsolved, and I'm sort of still banging my head head against the wall, is to get it to create patterns. So to get get it to create like actually accurate patterns based on my design. And there I'm kind of running humans and AI in parallel.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  So I am working with human pattern makers and and Codex and just saying, who's gonna get to like making my things fastest? Like most accurate, like to my vision, you know? And so that's that's been really cool to see. I'm not I'm not there yet with either, actually, with either flow.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Okay, I love it. All right. And then my last question that I ask everybody, speaking of like when it's hard and when it fails you and not getting there quite yet, which is, how do you prompt AI when it's not working? What's your are you nice? Are you a nice mom or a mean mom?

• 30:21Speaker 00

  I can be both, but I I think I'm mostly a nice mom. And and the reason is that I find that I get better outputs. So like, I mean, I am very direct and I'm sort of like, yes, you can. You know, you go do that. Like, I'm not just like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna do this for you. But I'm I will be like very polite. I will still say please and thank you. And I do think that it's because like the the it's it's trained on body of text. And so if it sees poor text output, that is like rude and mean, it will like kind of get in the mind frame of that part of the internet, right? Like versus like kind of more professional business context.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  And then it'll deliver something that's a little bit more what I want it to be. So that's but I I do it for selfish reasons, not because I'm afraid of the future AI overlords.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Perfect. Well, this has been super, super fun and inspirational and just like a breath of fresh air in terms of a new use case, a creative space that we haven't seen before and something sort of like manifesting in the world. So where can we find you and how can we be helpful to you?

• 31:32Speaker 00

  You can find me on X mostly. I am Yanabana on X. I am now Yanabana at X. I I changed my handle to match the brand.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  But but yeah, the in in terms of just like helpfulness is getting feedback on all this stuff. Like you can come, you can come to Yanabana and like vote on the garments that you like. So I can get feedback on like what's what's working for people and what's not. Like, I'm all about user feedback and customer input. And yeah, tell me, tell me what you like.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  I love it. Well, I love Poppy Love. Let's smash that like button. It is very cool.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Awesome. Thank you. I will. I'll let you know when that one is ready to go.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Available for purchase. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining How I AI.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe here on YouTube. Or even better, leave us a comment with your thoughts. You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Please consider leaving us a rating and review, which will help others find the show. You can see all our episodes and learn more about the show at howiaipod.com. See you next time.