Seven questions, seven answers. Munich Startup in conversation with Philipp, Christian and Pung from combyne.
1. Who are you? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
We are Philipp, Christian, and Pung, three good friends and founders of combyne. Philipp takes care of strategy, product, marketing, and changing lightbulbs. Christian handles operations and, being half-Swiss, also the cash register and numbers. Pung is the head of our technical team, a UX visionary, and captain of our soccer team.
2. What service do you want to use to change the world?
We make clothing mobile, dynamic, and interactive. With the app, you can mix and match your own clothes, those from all stores, and those of your friends in seconds. You can also access your friends in the app and ask them for their opinion. They can respond with text or a counter-suggestion.
Clothing is a very interesting product because it can only be used in one configuration. Individual parts are useless on their own. Billions of people use clothing every day, and everyone has to combine individual pieces into a configuration. We're addressing this reality. We're revolutionizing the static product presentation of the past 20 years and ensuring that from now on, you can not only passively look at or buy clothing online, but actively use it. After all, that's what each of us does with it in real life, especially with others. Our concept is therefore called "Mobile Reality."
Our users can do a variety of things with the app, such as planning what to wear the next day, getting inspiration from their friends or bloggers, trying on outfits and getting feedback before buying, shopping, or just having fun.
3. But that's been around for a long time!
Wrong! There seem to be a million things online that deal with clothing. The market is huge, after all. But almost all of them are shops or aggregators, and the rest are blogs and magazines. We, on the other hand, are a tool for interactively using clothes based on real-life models. We're also fully geared towards the mobile future. And that works completely differently than the web of the last 20 years. If you want to compare us conceptually, Instagram is the closest thing.
4. What are the three main ingredients for your recipe for success?
Focus on the user, focus on the user, focus on the user. Our primary goal is exceptionally high user value—that is, real added value in their lives. We save our users time and stress. We also encourage them to enjoy their own creativity and support them with perfect suggestions.
We are not copying an American startup, but rather creating something innovative from our own standpoint.
This also applies to our business model. We don't earn money through sales and click commissions, but rather by setting up a mobile shop for retailers on the combyne channel (on a subscription basis). This is not only (much) cheaper than a standalone app, but also significantly more attractive for customers.
5. Let’s get down to business: How is business going?
We have 25,000 users with our current beta version (As of March 10, 2016) and grow rapidly. The average session duration is 10 minutes and the 
The return rate is already more than double the benchmark for mobile commerce. We're very proud of that. And the product isn't even finished yet. Our goal is to break the benchmarks for social networks when we roll out the full version. We're also satisfied with other things; we have a media partnership with Axel Springer, many inquiries for our app-in-app offering, which launches in May, and even inquiries from IT giants like TCS and Tieto regarding technology partnerships. This is more than we can currently handle, so we're prioritizing hard and consistently taking one step at a time.
Soft Facts: In September, we won first prize at the Google Campus for Best New Fashion Tech Startup at London Fashion Week, and just recently, on February 22, we took the stage in Barcelona as one of only 16 global finalists at the Mobile Premier Awards. There, we took second place in the main category "Best App Award."
6. What does Munich mean to you?
Munich has a very active startup scene, which is incredibly important, because without constant interaction with other startups, investors, institutions, etc., you can't learn quickly enough. Furthermore, with its TUM, LMU, HM, and strong established companies, Munich offers a strong appeal for national and international talent. For Christian and Philipp, Munich also means home; Pung loves it; and for all of us, it means quality of life.
7. Helles or Prosecco?
The men on the team prefer Helles, the women prefer Prosecco, and our female users also mostly prefer Prosecco (we know this from in-house tests). So the clear answer: Prosecco.
