Nina Vir may have gotten her start at the prestigious Babson College, a private business school known for its nationally ranked entrepreneurship program, but her success ultimately flourished thanks to her ingenuity and fierce perseverance.
Spending her days juggling between daily tasks and long-term projects, the recent college graduate is the founder and CEO of the internet company, Daily Dress Me.
Daily Dress Me, a fashion-forward re-imagination of the weather app, uses a proprietary algorithm to style trending outfits using clothes from retailers based on the user’s local weather forecast. Users simply enter in their preferred city and the website suggests outfit ideas according to the daily highs and lows for that week.
Since its start in 2011, the company has attracted a beloved audience worldwide. According to Vir, currently over 200,000 girls have started their mornings on Daily Dress Me, and the site makes over 1,000,000 outfit recommendations each month. Models and visual artists from France, Japan, and Germany have also caught on, lauding the site for its pure simplicity and creativity.
Vir explains how the idea for the company came to her candidly at only 16 years old,
“Every morning, for as long as I can remember, I would wake up, check the weather either by asking my mom, checking a weather website, or looking outside my window, then decide what to wear. I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be easier if the weather man just told you what to wear.”
Believing in the greatness of her fashion forecast vision, she realized that she had to put her business out there. Soon after launching Daily Dress Me, she built a dedicated audience and began monetizing through native advertising with various retailers, such as Macy’s and Topshop.
More recently in her senior year of college, Vir received the opportunity to lead a seminar for a small group underclassmen at Babson. “I’ve been fortunate enough to have some great mentors in my journey so far,” she expressed, “so I wanted to give back to students who were just starting out.” Attesting to her beliefs of learning by doing, she designed and instructed the course “From 0 to 1: Launching a Tech Startup”, running the seminar like an accelerator. For six weeks, students worked together in teams to explore various business ideas and different aspects of launching a startup.
The young entrepreneur, even now, continually inspires others to strive towards reaching a successful future in tech, advising those from all backgrounds to curiously discover their interests. As a minority herself, she notes that “diversity (of all kinds) breeds innovation and encourages creative problem solving,” and hopes that companies further emphasize genuine inclusivity in the workplace to encourage more people to pursue tech careers.
Looking forward, Vir is working hard to further popularize her start-up company as she spends her days tackling important tasks, external calls, and meetings with various retailers. Her mornings may be hectic, but she hopes that Daily Dress Me will quicken the morning routines of fashion enthusiasts everywhere in return.
“Now, getting ready in the morning is a one step process.”