Open up your mind and say, ahh...

There’s something special about entrepreneurs whose startups take off and those whose stay small–starting with how they begin.

In studying successful entrepreneurs for my new book, Breakthrough Branding, I was struck by a series of contrarian habits that set them apart. Here are five contrarian lessons that I learned from them.

1. Think “small” rather than search for a “big idea.”

Contrary to everything we’ve heard about finding a “big idea,” there’s a fundamental paradox in business. Big ideas are small–simple, focused and different so they can occupy a specific niche and dominate their category. Kevin Systrom was building a location-based mobile business like FourSquare, but found that only one piece of it, the photo app, was different and had real traction with customers. So he focused on the photo app, named it Instagram, and became insta-rich. If you can’t write your business idea on the back of your business card or explain it to a ten-year old, you probably have a big, bad idea.

2. Use the start-up phase–the so-called Valley of Death–to take risks and experiment.

Rather than follow conventional wisdom and be cautious at the beginning, brand-building entrepreneurs use the “the Valley of Death” to experiment and tweak their fledgling idea. You can die in the valley, yet growth entrepreneurs realize this starting period is the most valuable time because you can create tremendous value out of practically nothing. When Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, he thought small and experimentally. He began with students at Harvard and tinkered and experimented with the site to create a different user experience and then started expanding.

3. Realize that when people say, “You’re starting what?” that you’re on to something.

Most people will tell you that you’re crazy when you present a fresh idea, so you have to be a contrarian to forge ahead anyone. You need to realize that you have a viable business idea when you find the “white space,” which is just a new need in the marketplace that no one is filling. In 1980, Fred Carl Jr was designing a new home kitchen and his wife, Margaret, wanted a heavy-duty range like her mother’s 1947 Chambers range. They weren’t made anymore so Carl looked into restaurant ranges; but they weren’t suitable for homes. So Carl decided to make one. All the major manufacturers told Carl that no one would want a commercial-style range for the home. Everyone thought he was crazy. That’s when Carl realized he had a good business idea, and named his range, Viking, because it was strong and enduring.

4. Listen to their heart and emotions as much as their intellect.

Successful entrepreneur want to make money, sure, but your goal has to be more than just making money. Finding your business idea is about finding your purpose. Your goal must be tied to your deeper story, your sense of destiny for yourself and your business. Innocent was launched by three Cambridge University graduates who quit their jobs in 1998. The small idea behind Innocent is authenticity, as their tagline says, “The fruit, the whole fruit, and nothing but the fruit.” Its brand personality is playful and interesting, and in the early days Innocent experimented with labels listing ingredients such as “banana, orange. and a lawnmower” that got them tremendous publicity. After a few years Innocent became the top smoothie brand in the United Kingdom and recently sold a stake to Coca Cola.

5. Create a new trend or category rather than fit into the market.

Growth entrepreneurs keep a pulse on what’s happening but don’t try to fit into the market–they try to appeal to where their customers are heading. They have what I call an “outside-in” orientation. They begin with the larger context–the outside–and work inward. After getting his MBA from Stanford, Joe Coulombe acquired a convenience store chain called Pronto Markets. In the mid 1960s he was intrigued with an article in Scientific American about how many baby boomers were going on to college. That article gave Coulombe his small idea. He speculated that those well-educated boomers would want a more sophisticated–but offbeat and fun–food-shopping experience. His name was Joe, so he decided to call his high concept grocery store Trader Joe’s.

These five lessons are simple but contrary to the way most business owners operate. They’re not obvious to many business owners because they are counterintuitive. That’s why they are so important.

Image: Flickr user Zorin Denu

Image: Volvo Cars

The Highway Loss Data Institute, a division within the automaker-supported Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), released findings on how active safety systems help drivers when their vehicles are fitted with crash avoidance technology and adaptive headlamps. But interestingly, lane departure warning systems aren’t living up to their claimed potential. And in some cases, the tech may be increasing the number of crashes.

The study examines property damage liability (PDL) claims, meaning claims filed by a driver who’s been involved in a collision with another vehicle.

Unsurprisingly, vehicles fitted with collision avoidance systems that automatically alert the driver of an impending crash – and in the case of the Acura, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo vehicles involved in the study, automatically brake to avoid a collision – saw declines of up to 14 percent. The Acura and Mercedes vehicles lead the list, with Volvo’s autonomous braking system reducing crashes by 10 percent. However, the Volvo system the Institute tested also included lane departure and fatigue warning systems, and the IIHS hedges its findings by saying the inclusion of those systems could have an effect on the results.

Adaptive headlamps, which change direction based on the angle of the steering wheel, also reduce PDL claims by as much as 10 percent.

What wasn’t expected in the study were findings that lane departure warning systems, which alert the driver when they begin to veer outside their lane, increased the PDL claims, although the IIHS would only say “the increases were not statistically significant and the results suggest these particular systems aren’t reducing overall crashes.”

The IIHS points out that the two vehicles it tested with the lane departure warning system – one Buick and another Mercedes-Benz – faired the worst in the study, with the Volvo tester doing slightly better, although that system also came bundled with the auto-braking feature and fatigue warning system, which could negate some of the issues.

Early IIHS research indicated that lane departure warning systems would prevent over 7,000 fatal crashes each year, but those estimates were strictly theoretical, and this recent study puts those claims into question.

“Lane departure warning may end up saving lives down the road, but so far these particular versions aren’t preventing insurance claims,” says Matt Moore, vice president of HLDI. “It may be that drivers are getting too many false alarms, which could make them tune out the warnings or turn them off completely. Of course, that doesn’t explain why the systems seem to increase claim rates, but we need to gather more data to see if that’s truly happening.”

Technical difficulties are your responsibility. They’re not always your fault. Those are two different things. But they are your responsibility. Famous author and management expert, Tom Peters told me he books two completely separate flights to events he’s paid to speak at, in case something happens with one of them. Sure, it costs more, he told me, but that way, I have done what I can to ensure my safe and timely arrival to satisfy my client’s contract.

I’m reminded of this today because I was working on a video interview I did and it collapsed. I didn’t do anything to cause it. It’s not technically my fault, but it’s my responsibility. The problem, of course, is that it’s an interview. And because I now have no file, I now have to sheepishly request a repeat interview. Sometimes, this can be accomplished, and I imagine the person involved will grant me another shot. Other times, not so much. I shudder to imagine what would’ve happened if my interview with Sir Richard Branson hadn’t saved properly. Well, I know what would’ve happened: I’d have been left with nothing.

The Three A’s Apply Here

In the restaurant business, I was taught The Three A’s: acknowledge, apologize, act. Acknowledge that something happened that shouldn’t have happened. Apologize (without making excuses). Act on the problem so that you can hopefully ensure no repeats. This is probably the most important part of what you should take away from this post today. When something goes wrong, it’s your responsibility (not fault), and you should practice the Three A’s as soon as you can. (I sent a letter to my colleague almost immediately after it crashed and I found that I wouldn’t be able to recover the file.)

And Then, Move Forward

Accept that something happened, see if there’s a Tom Peters approach to doubling down on mitigating the risk, if that makes sense, and work forward. That’s all you can do.

To that end, how often are you backing up your files? If you answer this with “I should” or anything other than “daily” or “weekly,” reconsider. And by the way, should you feel especially awesome that you’re an early adopter and have backed up to a cloud service, you might consider doubling that. Why? What if one of these businesses shuts down? If you’ve never seen the TechCrunch Dead Pool, it’s time to read up. Businesses close (sometimes abruptly) all the time. Back up.

Are we good on this?

And sorry for anyone I’ve ever caused frustration through a technical error. The more you use technology (especially bleeding edge), the more chances you have to fail.

The mysteries of this new world are many. If the old way to fame was to build a big audience while restricting direct access, the new way is to pursue a small audience and grant much more access. But those, friends, are two of the most important knobs to learn how to twist on this strange and futuristic machine. But let’s not forget that third knob over there, the Ghost A: advertising. Are you trying to do something in this new world? Does it matter that others see what you do? Then, it might be worth thinking about how these three particular forces work for you. And, for entertainment’s sake, let’s start with the third of these, first.

Advertising: The Ghost A

In the past, advertisers spent a great deal of money to access certain communities. These communities, by the way, gathered most often around some form of entertainment. Listen to the radio? There were advertisers there, hoping you loved Groucho Marx enough to tune into the Bird’s Eye Open House. Move to television? The Ed Sullivan Show had many suitors. The same rings true today. Advertisers still seek those who understand how to build a caring audience, dare we even hope for a community. But how does that work?

Audience: The Almost-Excellent Word

An audience forms when you entertain or educate (or perhaps both). A street busker knows how to play a few notes and draw a few eyes in her direction. Perhaps you represent yourself, and are a consultant hoping to book more clients. Maybe you are the manager of a marketing team, hoping to gather more interested customers to see your wares. Or perhaps you’re a true performer, seeking to gain attention (and the spoils of such) for your art. Then audience is your almost-excellent friend.

A quick aside: I say “almost excellent” because we all know that community is far more valuable than an audience. See also: the difference between someone who buys a Tiesto album and Lada Gaga’s army of Little Monsters

The requirement for audience used to be that it was very large. But this is the least true detail of this magical new world. We don’t need 1 billion users. We need some far smaller number (1000?) to satisfy our needs. Further, the audience has given notice: they aren’t interested in being called “you guys” any longer. They all have names, and they want you to know them. All of them.

That an audience cares is now quite important. That an audience understands matters in most cases. An audience is so much more important than ever before, but not in bulk. You need just enough. And they want access.

Access: The New Equation

In the old world, one of the qualities that made people successful was the inability of “normal” people to reach them. This exclusivity, this lack of access, for whatever reason also bestowed that person with magical powers that somehow translated into other kinds of power. If you were “big” or “famous,” no one should be able to reach you. This has shifted powerfully.

I have been blessed to meet and communicate with some amazing people from strange and varied walks of life. I’ve spoken with Sir Richard Branson, the owner of over 300 companies (and counting), with personal development guru Tony Robbins, with the former Chairman of General Motors, and with many other fascinating people. The picture that accompanies this post is from a visit Jacq and I had with James Norwood Pratt, the world’s foremost expert on tea, as well as a historian, a poet, a spiritualist, and many more titles. (Jacq and I interviewed him here, and you should check that out).

Granting access has become, for all of these people, part of the next chapter of their success. By learning how to interact differently with people, in person, and also via these social channels, these people are growing a whole new kind of success. And that’s just the beginning of what needs to be understood with Access, because you must also learn to use these platforms to grant access to those who seek to learn from you, as well. Ah, see how tricky this can be?

The Three A’s Require a Lot to Tune Them

Should you wish to find some level of success (and please use that word to mean whatever you seek: money, new church followers, new listeners to your great songs, someone to consider buying your soap), learning how to court an audience (shhhh: and also to help turn them into a community), how to work with the new rules of access, and to understand what works and what doesn’t in the realm of advertising are the vastly important Three A’s that should become your dials to experiment with and calibrate.

You’ll note that we didn’t talk much about the meat of what it is you choose to do. Though that would be the most important part of what you’re working on, the point is to consider how audience has changed, how access is now something far more important to work with, and how advertising is not nearly as effective these days without an audience who cares and feels that they have access to you.

The mechanics of this? I’ll cover that in my FREE newsletter that goes out every Sunday to those people who have the most access to me. Want it? I’d love to share.

But what else do you wonder about this? Does this resonate? How have you worked with these three levers?

When it comes to content creation–even in short bits and blasts on Twitter—the human touch is what will keep marketers relevant and real. A look at J.Crew, Wegmans, NASCAR, and other brands that are getting it right.

Last weekend I snagged a lounge chair at our community pool next to a friend and fellow marketer I haven’t seen in weeks. We’re both managing the demands of family and careers and rarely get a chance to catch up with each other or with our reading. I pulled out Runner’s World from my bag, she pulled out J.Crew. Before long we were swapping magazines, and, as like-minded marketers, our conversation quickly shifted gears to how J.Crew had snagged us (cynical shoppers that we are) to become advocates for its brand.

Consider the catalog–a source of poolside perusing–that is now called the J.Crew style guide. It’s less about the specs and more about the style. I had the opportunity to share a stage recently with Diego Scott, the company’s CMO. Our panel discussion was all about “moving beyond the ‘like’” to more engagement with stakeholders. He shared the story of J.Crew’s evolved thinking in this area and its recognition that the catalog is a catalyst for the brand to offer a point of view. The J.Crew created content, online and in print, shares ideas from in-the-know fashion and jewelry designers on current fabrics, cuts and fashion trends while remaining unmistakably J. Crew: polished and fresh and conversely, appropriately classic. The revamped catalog–disguised as a style guide–is an example of company-created content done right.

When it comes to generating compelling content, fashion companies may have it easy. But, every marketer can take a page from J.Crew’s guide on how to create and manage a lot of content while maintaining a consistent voice across multiple channels. And, oh yes, to generate interest in your content in ways that drive actions that benefit your company. It’s that new nuance of paid, owned and earned media singing Kumbaya together.

Help is available. At a time when it is imperative for brands to communicate 24/7, a growing number of tech and media companies make it possible to automate content creation and curation. A few keywords typed in here and there and—voila!–content. The Huffington Post, for one, offers to create web sites for brands and use algorithms to repurpose relevant HuffPo content. Meanwhile, there are tech companies that can generate articles that look as if they were penned by real writers.

Like many of my peers, we’re exploring these tools and doing so with an eye toward simplifying content management while maintaining an authentic and engaging brand voice. Algorithms can do amazing things, including suggesting topics of discussion and identifying popular issues that will resonate with a target audience. But they can’t put together a style guide, say, that motivates customers to engage regularly and meaningfully with the brand. When it comes to content creation–even in short bits and blasts on Twitter—the human touch is what will keep marketers relevant and real.

The companies that are truly winning over audiences and driving consumers are the ones that are experimenting with a balance of automated aggregation and human-directed curation. It’s a process of out-sourcing and in-sourcing.

I’ve been following Intel’s approach. It recently launched iQ, an employee-curated digital magazine created to connect with a younger audience and share with them the bigger, living brand story. Not only does the site provide original stories about tech, it also aggregates top tech stories from other sites that Intel’s audience will find interesting. Readers and employees dictate much of the moment-to-moment interaction on the site, but it is all closely watched by editor-in-chief Bryan Rhoades, who spurs conversations by judiciously placing some stories on the iQ homepage.

NASCAR, too, is experimenting in this space. A partnership with Twitter includes a site that compiles #NASCAR-related tweets from popular drivers, who send 140-character blasts from the track or wherever they may be– along with those from sports writers and other industry folks. They pull it off by using a search algorithm and human editors who understand narrative—and appropriate content.

My friends over at Wegmans (I call them my “friends” hoping the Wegman family will open a store in Fairfield County, Conn.), were among the first to the table in using relevant content to connect with consumers. In 2001, way before Twitter and Facebook and before actor Alec Baldwin proclaimed his mom’s love of Wegmans on the Late Show, the company created Menu magazine. It’s a “tuck-in-your-pool bag” food guide that is sent to consumers free of charge and features practical, balanced yet appetizing meal ideas that even the most harried of parents (that would be me) can make with the help of a Wegmans’ shopping list, of course. The company is connecting shoppers with relevant content–among the many reasons Wegmans was recently named one of 16 brands with fanatical cult followings.

Bill Gates was right in noting that content is king. Today, we are all publishers. It’s a daunting prospect. New content curation tools make automating the job easier–but easy may not always be as effective. It would be a mistake to let algorithms do the entire job for you. No one knows your audience like you do. And, keeping the human touch in the process is more real, which is really important to today’s info-overloaded consumer. This begs the question, which brands are serving up content to you poolside?

Image: Flickr user Gwen Vanhee

Last week, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York kicked off a retrospective dedicated solely to VHS film. DVDs may have eclipsed videotape years ago, but we’re still nostalgic for the rickety plastic cassettes of yore. There’s something about the exposed magnetized spools–it’s like being able to see into your own body. And compact discs (or MP4 files) just don’t have the same I-taped-over-your-dance-recital-to-record-the-new-Beastie-Boys-video tactility.

VHS tape has fascinated New York-based Lithuanian artist Zilvinas Kempinas for a decade. “It’s supposed to be this safe container of the past,” he explained in this 2009 Museo interview. “But it is destined to vanish like a dinosaur, to become obsolete, pushed away by new technologies.”

Kempinas began his career working with microfiche and 35mm film, but soon graduated to VHS, seduced by the long spools of reflective, lightweight tape. In 2006, he began using unwound tape to create architectural space. In Parallels (2007), the artist strung thousands of lines of tape across the ceiling of the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius. He experimented with setting celluloid in motion: In Double O, a piece from 2008 (and shown at MoMA in 2010), two high-powered fans keep two reels of tape airborne in constant rippling motion. A residency at Atelier Calder produced Tube, a circular walkway of tightly threaded tape that produced eerie optical illusions.

Kempinas was selected to represent Lithuania at the 2009 Venice Biennale. He reconstructed and enlarged Tube in a famed 16th-century church called the Scuola Grande della Misericordia. In Tube, Kempinas painstakingly strung thousands of feet of unspooled VHS tape between two white doorways, creating a featherlight portal of rippling black lines. Walking through the portal, the strings of tape dance and undulate around you. From certain angles, the strands disappear. From other angles, they reflect their surroundings.

What Kempinas is doing, in essence, is drawing with celluloid. “Videotape is inexpensive,” the artist commented in 2009. “It’s a container of visual information, data carrier, but you can perceive it like an abstract line.”

Images courtesy of Galerija Vartai; h/t Architizer

How L’Oreal uses games to find and hire the kind of smart leaders that rarely show up in resumes.

Every talent-recruitment executive knows how hard it is to make a good new hire. But L’Oreal, the French cosmetics giant, is making hundreds of successful hires each year from a pool of thousands of highly qualified young prospects who connect with L’Oréal through business games.

Hiring at most corporations begins with a job posting. Each posting draws a seemingly infinite number of applicants responding through websites, social media, email and (sometimes) even snail mail. To process the onslaught, technology is used to screen the sea of applicants.

But the typical Applicant Tracking System filters for keywords tied to relatively worthless data such as schools attended, previous work experience and personal affiliations. Any manager who trains new hires will tell you that one’s alma mater and previous work references are poor predictors of job performance.

What qualities do you really want in your next new hire? How about smarts? Not just academic knowledge, but the ability to think, solve problems, and be creative. But how can a corporation wade through an endless stream of applicants to identify that kind of much more complex criteria?

L’Oréal does it by inviting the world’s most promising students to play games. For 20 years, L’Oréal has been using business games to identify potential employees, and many students hired through L’Oréal’s recruiting games have now risen to management level positions.

L’Oreal launched Brandstorm in 1993. In Brandstorm, international undergraduate marketing students are challenged to function as brand managers in re-imagining one of the company’s well-known global brands. Last year, Brandstorm attracted more than 7,000 participants.

Now in its 20th year, Brandstorm is such a remarkable success that in 2010, L’Oréal introduced its second recruiting game, Reveal. In Reveal, players work through a simulated product launch. The game moves through three phases–development, production, and launch–and players solve a challenge at the end of each of 12 scenes.

L’Oreal spokesperson Laurence Balmayer says Reveal is “the first ever multi-disciplinary digital platform which allows players to undergo a professional career discovery experience within the context of an international business like L’Oréal.”

Brandstorm and Reveal have done a phenomenal job of elevating the L’Oréal name among the next generation of business leaders. More than 50,000 students from 43 countries have participated in Brandstorm, and in just two years, Reveal has attracted more than 100,000 students from 165 countries.

“These business games have successfully attracted a diverse pool of young talents and have opened up all these participants to the universe of L’Oréal,” Balmayer said. L’Oréal is consistently ranked among the most desirable companies to work for in the world.

The games have become the fast track for employment at L’Oréal. “Each year, there are about 150 Brandstorm players and around 100 Reveal participants that are recruited by L’Oréal,” Balmayer said.

Not only are hundreds of promising employees being hired each year, but some are now advancing to management positions, Balmayer said. “The best Brandstorm players who have been initially recruited by L’Oréal as trainees have accelerated into becoming marketing and commercial directors in the countries or regions in just a matter of six or seven years.”

L’Oreal’s recruiting games are excellent example of using recruiting methods that predict performance. Participants are challenged to demonstrate in the games the very qualities and capabilities that L’Oréal wants in its work force. So, it’s obvious that the real winner of these recruiting games is L’Oreal itself.

Image: Flickr user Ben Bunch

Architects may come and architects may go, but ol’ Frank Lloyd Wright will never stop influencing the next generation. French firm Influx Studio entered their Spiral Garden Museum in a conceptual competition to design the new Taipei City Museum of Art, and its silhouette is a bit familiar. “Of course, as shown in the diagrams, we’ve taken the idea of the Guggenheim but revisited it in this new context,” architect Mario Caceres tells Co.Design. Here, however, the views extend out and over sprawling greens and adjacent urban skyline.

Following the curving pathways of the surrounding park, the ramp that circles the structure climbs at a low 4 percent grade–the maximum allowed for wheelchair accessibility–and there’s also a bike lane that goes from the ground all the way up. On the inside, the swirling, sprawling levels offer a bit of fun for the whole family, including three floors of children’s museum, and two each of the contemporary museum of art, and art gallery mall and plaza (all dictated by the competition guidelines). “The shape allows a great openness and flexibility,” Caceres says.

Atop it all is a sky terrace which, though stunning, makes the building look precariously top-heavy, a potential liability in earthquake-prone Taiwan. The submission didn’t place, but FLW’s legacy lives on (and on… and reaching even further back, a classics-loving reader at designboom referenced the visual similarity to Botticelli’s depiction of Dante’s Inferno!).

(H/T designboom)

Jordan Kushins

Jordan Kushins is a freelance writer based in beautiful San Francisco. She is an avid crafter, bicycle rider, and former associate editor at Dwell. Check … Continued

As competition in the fast-growing mobile web space continues to heat up, Amazon is working on a device to grab a slice of the pie currently dominated by the iPhone and Android smartphones, according to a Bloomberg report.

Interestingly, the hardware, cloud computing and e-commerce juggernaut is said to be working with Foxconn — which has come under intense scrutiny in the past year for working conditions in the Asian factories where it manufactures Apple gadgets — to create the Amazon iPhone competitor.

Bloomberg‘s report is based on “two people with knowledge of the matter.”

Amazon is also reportedly seeking to acquire a wide range of smartphone-related patents to guard against infringement accusations. That’s likely motivated in large part by Apple’s recent success in getting a U.S. District Court judge to grant a preliminary injunction blocking sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus — currently the only smartphone capable of running the Android operating system’s most recent version.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet has emerged as a very popular lower cost alternative to the iPad among consumers, so an Amazon smartphone does have some precedent for potential mobile success. A decent Amazon smartphone would also help it continue to reap profits through selling digital media including books, movies and music.

The future of the web is widely accepted to revolve around mobile access — and competition among tech companies is becoming increasingly fierce as hardware and software manufacturers jockey for position and profits in the next generation of consumers’ online lives. Last month, for example, Microsoft and Google announced tablet offerings meant to take on the iPad as smaller, more portable alternatives. In response, Apple is now said to be planning an “iPad mini” for release in time for this year’s holiday season.

Do you think Amazon would be wise to get into the smartphone market — or is that waste of time and resources for Jeff Bezos and company? Share your opinion in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tumpikuja

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Bombfell

Quick Pitch: Bombfell sends fashion-challenged gents curated clothing suggestions each month.

Genius Idea: Real live stylists use algorithms and personal opinion (like what color works best with your skin tone) to ensure the best possible fit and style matches for users.

Calling all gentlemen. Does your wardrobe need an upgrade? The free-to-try website Bombfell wants to turn you into the hottest-looking guy you can be, $69 at a time.

The name is short for “Bombfellow”, which is the male equivalent of a bombshell, according to the company. Those who wish to reach Bombfell status but lack the time and dedication need only create an account—a team of stylists will do the rest.

The concept for Bombfell came about when friends and former Harvard roomates Bernie Yoo and Jason Kim realized they were relying heavily on outdated wardrobes, and lacked the time and energy to hit the mall.

With the help of Sarah Lee, a fashion-minded stylist, Bombfell was born.

After users create an account, supposedly, the team of stylists makes sure they know everything they need to make you look as good as possible. Each month, users are presented with one curated piece of clothing. If it’s a winner, the item can be purchased for a flat $69.

“Users provide a lot of information about themselves – body shape, skin tone, favorite brands, style preferences and much more,” co-founder Bernie Yoo tells Mashable. “We employ an algorithm on the back-end that suggests clothing recommendations to the stylist.”

A human expert still has control, however. Each item is initially selected through an algorithm; the final decision goes to a stylist. If they don’t think a shirt will look absolutely rad on you, the company says it will be vetoed, algorithm be damned.

“We’re building an experience from the ground up that fully takes advantage of being an online service and leverages data to create a personalized, scalable and affordable service that anyone can enjoy,” says Yoo.

Bombfell carries a number of well-known brands, including Ben Sherman and French Connection.

Would you sign up for Bombfell? Let us know in the comments.

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.