August 3, 2023

Before and after going from zero to one

We have Chiara Pastorelli, founder of Applicate, to share some of the pains and some of the excitement a solopreneur finds in her journey.

Clarisa Guerra

Clarisa Guerra

Lead Marketing at Z1

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Before and after going from zero to one

Building a digital business from scratch all by yourself might feel intimidating, but we get you covered.

We talk about:

  • The importance of finding a partner you can collaborate with in building your business. Not someone who just follows your instructions, but someone who understands “the why” behind everything.
  • How sometimes there are features you have envisioned that you need to compromise to launch the first V1 of your product. If you don’t have a technical background, you’d need to properly transmit your pillars and trust in the design process and your team of engineers.
  • The vibrant startup ecosystem in Dubai, where the “can do” attitude is contagious and empowers you to take risks and move forward with your ideas. The Dubai Technology Entrepreneur Campus is an example of a vibrant community in the area.
  • The challenge of solving privacy issues by design when you have a product that’s accessing and managing data and images on somebody's personal device. How to make the user know that they have control over what's happening while using the app.
  • The constraints on designing products for the new AI age. Trying to find a good balance between going hyper technical or 100% design driven.

Get to know our guest

Chiara Pastorelli, founder and CEO of Applicate.

Italian-born, Chiara grew up in Bahrain before moving to the UK to study Textile Engineering and Design. After over a decade at the sharp end of the fashion and interior design industries, she knows first-hand how difficult it is to organise your saved images, find them, reference them, and use them. Tired of not being able to find that crucial image, she was inspired to create Applicate, a mobile app designed to radically improve how iPhone users store, organize, and share images and inspiration thanks to machine learning and smart folders.

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