Solebrity is an Ashburn-based data science company that prides itself on reinventing the way that millennials shop. Co-founders Chris Petrakis and AJ Jaghori believe that each person is a social shopper who places more value on the honest opinions of their friends and family than the paid advertising used by social media influencers.
“If IBM Watson and Ebates were to incubate, you would have Solebrity,” says Jaghori. The free mobile app sets up a profile based on your preferences and allows the option to integrate it with your Facebook. The idea is that anyone can influence their network no matter how many followers he or she has. Each person has the ability to shop a database of 8 million products and 10 thousand brands, endorse products or share them with fans (followers). If a fan purchases a product you recommend, Solebrity will share half of its earned revenue from the brand with you. Another 1 percent of that revenue is donated to charity.
What makes Solebrity truly unique is the usage of artificial intelligence, cognitive computing and machine learning. The concept is based on the Social Genome Project, which Jaghori founded alongside data scientists at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University. The project used artificial intelligence to understand consumer behavior. So the more you use the app, the smarter it becomes.
Currently, the Solebrity app has about 50,000 users between the ages of 19 and 36. This fall, the app will provide the option to integrate other social networks, select a charity of your choice, pull products from virtually anywhere (e.g., by taking a picture and having the product identified through visual recognition) and work with an artificial intelligence-based personal assistant named Bella who will remain with you throughout the life of the app. // Available for ioS and Android mobile devices
