Yoona founder: »It is still not normal to start a business as a woman

By Marlene Polywka | Jul 23, 2023 at 8:58 am

Artificial intelligence, design, sustainability, production, technology – with her company Yoona AI, Anna Franziska Michel brings these things together. TECHBOOK spoke to the Deep Tech founder about the industry and her personal experiences.

Yoona founder Anna Franziska Michel in an interview

TECHBOOK: A woman at the helm of a tech company remains unusual. How was your way there?

Anna Franziska Michel: I actually know a few others now and there is a nice community where you can exchange ideas. Originally, however, I studied to become a teacher; sports and art. Then I studied fashion design, did my bachelor’s degree, developed collections, added a master’s degree, founded a fashion company, then worked for other companies and realized for myself: I don’t want to work like that.

As a creative person in a fashion company like this, you think you can be creative there too. This is unfortunately not the case. And by the way, it’s not sustainable either. So I thought about what to do about it. It quickly went in the direction of IT. I wanted to learn to code, so I wrote software with a friend. The approach was to make designs more personal so that people would wear them longer.
That’s why I came back to my university, started my master’s degree, ended up in the field of business informatics and, together with Prof. Dr. Ingo Classen founded a research group and spent two years investigating with other master’s students how AI can be used in the fashion and especially in the creation area.

Where does your general interest in AI and coding come from? Was there a kind of initial spark?

My primary concern was to shorten processes, and through this I asked myself how everything could become more digital. Then I did a lot of research, had countless conversations, traveled through Germany, looked at the fashion companies, but also exchanged ideas with technology experts.

Then it grew organically. For example, we already had panel discussions on the subject of digitalization and fashion at Fashion Week in 2015. Everything is always geared towards the question of how to change the industry in the long term. In retrospect, I can now say that not only this industry, but also many others feel the same way.

For example?

For example the automotive industry, furniture industry, packaging – basically the areas where you have to create something and then produce it. So almost everything (laughs).

Processes have to become more efficient, a lot is still done manually. Especially when it comes to digitization, Germany is a bit further away and not in the top places in many rankings. My vision has always been to help small and medium-sized businesses. And it is precisely this that must also digitize in order to make progress and be more sustainable.

What exactly does the Yoona company do?

Can you please briefly explain how Yoona works and functions?

So the goal is, so to speak, to digitize this entire value chain of the product, i.e. from the creation process to sale. So we are a product, but also a research process. We started with a Neural Painter, there was “only” drawing. Today you can already create many variations of a design using generative AI.

Design is always figurative. We train the AI, either with inspiration from the Internet or with the company’s data. This is how the product evolves. The company also has an augmented reality app with built-in 3D technology to visualize the new designs.

In January (2023, editor’s note) we also launched the associated Metaverse, i.e. a digital space where you can also buy the products. For us, the whole thing is also a “learning verse” because it’s completely new to us. We can use it to find out how to represent things in such a space. Theoretically everything is possible: 3D products, video boards and much more. Our goal is to summarize the entire product chain in just a few clicks.

So far, Yoona has mainly been a B2B solution for business customers. But it would also be applicable for B2C, normal consumers, if you think about it a little further, right?

It would theoretically be possible, for example by bringing Yoona to the company’s website. That can make things a lot clearer. In theory, you can apply this to anything, clothes, accessories, etc.

What is Yoona’s team like at the moment?

We are currently supported by the HTW Berlin. We also sit there in an office, the business start-up center. That’s great because you still have the other start-ups all around. We are a team of ten, not everyone is here in Berlin, a lot is also done remotely. It is also very important to me that women are involved. For example, we have an expert in machine learning.

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Experiences as a woman in the tech industry

How was your personal journey as a woman to founding a company?

I founded the fashion company relatively early on. In fact, I was always self-employed and never really employed anywhere. Starting a tech company was something very organic, I grew into it. If I had had everything in mind when I was 20 like I do today, I would have done it all by the time I was 20. But that brings us to the issue that women are often brought up in a certain way, especially when it comes to entrepreneurship.

Even if it should be normal for a woman to set up a limited liability company, for example at the age of 20 and then still in the technology sector, it’s just not. I wish for girls and women that this is a matter of course. Incidentally, there are now some really young women who start a tech company in their early 20s. That makes me proud.

Did you have specific role models, especially at the time you founded the company?

Male (laughs).

Which is totally okay (laughs).

In fact, it was the classics right at the beginning. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, the greats. Then you say to yourself: “Now let’s do it the same way!” (laughs). But that was mainly at the beginning.

Now I tend to have female start-up founders as role models, there are just a lot more than before. The Bumble founder, for example, has since gone public. Such people are of course a role model.

Do you realize that you might now be a role model yourself?

In fact, yes, if I am a speaker somewhere, for example. A lot of young women approach me or write to me. This is also an important motivation to keep going and thus take away certain fears from others.

At that time I started with two other women, who both ultimately decided to have a secure job. So you didn’t go down that path. Maybe society has explicitly passed that on to women a bit too, so there’s a lack of willingness to take risks. You can see that at first in my own CV with the teacher training course.

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Sustainability thanks to AI

For you, the idea of ​​sustainability in the value chain was a major driver. Where do you see the greatest potential in this respect in the coming years?

For me, technology and sustainability belong together. For example, if you work with digital A/B testing during product development, you can determine more precisely from the outset which product is actually wanted.

This eliminates the need for prototypes that you no longer have to create. You get more precise design and product ideas and also counteract overproduction. This also includes the Metaverse, in which products are offered digitally. For me personally, that would also be a really cool solution: you click on a product, you get it three days later and it still doesn’t have to be pre-produced.

How realistic is that?

Then we come to examples like Shein, there was just recently another shitstorm. But if you were to implement Shein’s fully automated processes in sustainable companies, a lot would be possible. My wish would be for everything to be automated in the product area, from the backend to the production site. That would be both conceivable and sustainable.

But the topic of AI is also a hotly debated one. The latest developments around ChatGPT and Co. have fueled this. The fear is often expressed that such generative AI will destroy creative processes. What’s your opinion?

I studied art beforehand, so I come from a creative field. In professional life, I then found that actually only 20 percent of what was sold was “creative”. The other 80 percent are so-called basics that don’t have much to do with creativity. This can certainly be transferred from fashion to other areas.

However, an AI can map these 80 percent basics well because it is actually a data analysis. You can then apply your personal creativity to the remaining 20 percent. You can also use AI as inspiration there. I use ChatGPT, for example, when I give a lecture, for example. Or even with coding, such a program can be a real help.

Where do you see further development opportunities for Yoona?

We are in a good position to have been involved in many developments quite early on. The very metaverse I mentioned is a new possibility. We accompanied the entire Fashion Week with this, there were also panel discussions with avatars. Such hybrid or purely digital solutions are the future and I think we are doing real pioneering work. And even my children in the following generation see these things very differently than we do.

I was recently in New York and Boston to exchange views on 3D printing. I also see an opportunity to produce clothing on demand, so to speak, i.e. first digital product development and then 3D printing. This is one way to translate the metaverse back into the physical. There are already designers who are testing something like this, which is of course very exciting for us. Clothing is not an easy case, although material is also a general theme. Also, everyone needs clothes. This makes the industry one of the largest in the world.

Then I thank you for the interview and the exciting insights.