In Conversation with ANTrepreneurs: Lucretia Williams on Entrepreneurship

Thanks to UCI ANTrepreneur Center for this valuable information about entrepreneurship:

Interview with ANTrepreneurs: Lucretia Williams

In this interview, Ryan Foland, Director of the UCI ANTrepreneur Center, sits down with Lucretia Williams, co-founder of Cosign Reviews.

Together, they talk about her startup and her best advice for early-stage entrepreneurs.

2023 was a huge year for Lucretia Williams. Not only did she graduate from UC Irvine with her Ph.D. in Informatics and begin working as a Senior Research Scientist at Howard University, but she also saw her startup, Cosign Reviews, gain some serious traction.

During her time at UC Irvine, Lucretia shared her entrepreneurial expertise by serving as a Grad Scholar at the UCI ANTrepreneur Center. In this role, she worked with student entrepreneurs to support their entrepreneurial aspirations and helped them develop their business ideas. To learn more about her startup and her best advice for early-stage entrepreneurs, Ryan Foland, Director of the UCI ANTrepreneur Center, met with Lucretia to gather her insights.

Ryan: Ahoy Lucretia! Thank you for sitting down with me today.

Lucretia: Happy to be here, Ryan.

Ryan: To start us off, can you tell me a little bit about Cosign Reviews? What’s the main idea behind the company and how did you and Alanna come up with this idea?

Lucretia: My co-founder Alanna Walton and I love to shop online, and we recognized a significant void in the online shopping experience. Particularly when supporting small businesses, it’s challenging to find authentic and constructive reviews for products. You often have to search on multiple platforms and social media sites while deciphering which reviews are incentivized or fake. Online shoppers often lose the joy of shopping due to the extensive research required to distinguish between high-quality items. Deceptive reviews from brands compound the issue, making it challenging for consumers to differentiate between authentic and fake businesses.

As we have careers in responsible AI and human-centered AI, we sought to bridge this gap by creating an innovative solution. Cosign Reviews uses AI to help e-commerce consumers write constructive reviews for small and medium-sized clothing and apparel brands. Our solution aims to restore the joy in online shopping by providing a platform for genuine and constructive reviews, helping e-commerce consumers make informed decisions effortlessly. Cosign Reviews offers a win-win solution where businesses receive valuable feedback for improvement and consumers gain a deeper understanding of products, fostering trust and transparency.

Ryan: What long-term vision do you have for your startup? Where do you see it in the next five years?

Lucretia: We aim for Cosign Reviews to be more than just a place where you can go for clothing and apparel reviews; it’s our way of making a kinder internet. We are exploring what we call the “blank-box theory,” which is what happens when you give people a blank box to fill out online, and this just gives users a blank space to express strong feelings without any guidance. We think review sites that utilize the blank-box theory miss out on the chance for thoughtful conversations for helpful reviews. With Cosign Reviews, we want to change the current pattern of communicating reviews online.

Ryan: I think this is a really awesome idea, and I know that Techstars also recognized the potential when they accepted Cosign Reviews into one of their business accelerator programs. What was the Techstar application process like?

Lucretia: My startup was accepted into the Techstars Founders Catalyst program. The application for the Founders Catalyst program consisted of providing general information about our team and business, and attaching our pitch deck and a short pitch video. The key element of the application was...