Versable is a company that uses proprietary AI models to enhance, process, and transform product description data for the auto parts market. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Versable CEO and founder Christina Seong to learn more about the company.
Christina Seong’s Background
What is Christina Seong’s background? Seong said:
“I was born in Korea and my family immigrated to a small town in Canada when I was 12. I moved to California to start school at UC Berkeley and now live in LA.”
Formation Of Versable
How did the idea for Versable come together? Seong shared:
“I’ve played around with a few different startup ideas, but when I saw what was happening with AI last year, I decided to jump head first into it. I knew that there must be a lot of big problems in legacy markets that simple AI applications could add a disproportionate amount of value to, so I started doing my research.”
“I learned a lot of hard lessons early on, coming from the SF tech landscape. In place of discovery calls, I had to drive around Long Beach and literally knock on doors. But even very early on, I recognized there was a real and significant data problem in the automotive space and we started building a simple data processing solution immediately.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Seong’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Seong reflected:
“My philosophy in life is to just go for it, so when we started our automotive focus earlier this year, I cold-called a manufacturer and got an invite to a quarterly automotive aftermarket conference in Napa. Coming in cold, I didn’t know what to expect, and I found that the reception to an ‘AI outsider’ to be less than welcoming.”
“Since then I’ve done a lot of networking and studying about the market. Earlier this month, I attended this quarter’s conference and had the opportunity to actually present our newly launched product in front of the audience. A few people who had recognized me from the first conference came up and were in disbelief about how far we had come and so excited about what we were going to do for the industry. Moments like these, where you feel like you finally have a seat at the table, constantly inspire me to continue working hard.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Seong explained:
“We enhance and transform product copies for the automotive market. With just a part number, we are able to generate new product attributes, titles, marketing descriptions, and basically any other product data a manufacturer or retailer might need. When you are selling something that’s relatively undifferentiated like auto parts, product content is especially important, and we are able to generate unique, search engine optimized listings at scale.”
“We are able to also transform these descriptions to fit the best practices and content guidelines across marketplaces and distributors our customers want to start selling on, unlocking new channels of revenue with minimal manual work.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Seong faced in building the company? Seong acknowledged:
“I think the biggest challenge was to get my foot in the door in a legacy industry I never had any exposure to before. In the beginning I realized a lot of industry professionals aren’t chronically online like what I’m used to with my tech background, so I just drove around LA and knocked on doors in place of Zoom discovery calls. But putting myself out there, being proactive with our approach to problem solving, and not wasting time when something wasn’t working has opened a lot of doors for me and the company.”
Evolution Of Versable’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Seong noted:
“At first we bought a custom automotive dataset and were running on Open AI to do generic product description enhancements. Now, we have acquired millions of parts data in our database, which we interpret using Retrieval Augmented Generation to get the most accurate and nuanced understanding of each part listing. We’ve also ingested best practices and content guidelines for basically all major selling platforms, which allows us to be more precise with our data transformations.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Seong cited:
“We were in private beta for the last few months and just launched publicly!”
Funding
When asking Seong about the company’s funding details, she revealed:
“We raised $2.6 million in funding, by top investors like Y Combinator, Bling Capital, Soma Capital, etc., which gives us the capital to really accelerate growth and the support to make the most informed decisions for the company.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Seong assessed:
“The US automotive aftermarket is $500 billion and a lot of that is rapidly shifting to e-commerce.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Versable from its competition? Seong affirmed:
“Versable has the highest performance AI engine in the space, and we are trained specifically for the automotive industry. A lot of our competitors provide rule based enhancements to their customers, like changing the title of a product to under x characters, etc., but we are truly embracing generative AI to create something unprecedented.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Seong pointed out:
“We want to be a one stop shop for all things data in the space.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Seong concluded:
“When I first moved to California to start college, I was working 2 jobs, had no idea what a startup was, and was sending a hundred emails to land a small unpaid internship. I’m grateful for everyone in my life that helped me see my potential and what the world had to offer, and I hope eventually, I am able to get to a place where I can help others in my position also see that.”
