Interview

Jabeen Zaidi is the founder and CEO of Spring AI, a company she built after more than a decade designing user experiences across industrial, software, and enterprise products. Trained at NJIT in industrial design, she spent twelve years as a senior UX designer for white-labeled enterprise software before turning her attention to generative AI. In May 2023, months before Canva and Adobe moved into the space, she launched one of the earliest online platforms for AI image generation. Today, Spring AI sits at the intersection of visual production, retail analytics, and immersive commerce, with a new physical-digital product called Glass that lets customers try on clothing, jewelry, and even experiences in real time.

What follows is a wide-ranging exchange about buyer psychology, why Gen Z shops differently, how a touchscreen mirror at a New York holiday pop-up converted 20% of the people who used it, and why she believes the real value of AI in retail is not the content it produces but the gap it closes between wanting something and buying it.

Q: Let’s start with who you are and how you got here.

I’m the founder and CEO of Spring AI. For 13 years, my focus has been understanding customer and business behavior, how people actually interact with technology and products, and what influences the goals they’re trying to achieve. User-centered experience design, industrial design, product design, digital, basically anything that’s a product or a piece of software trying to solve something. I’ve been a problem solver, and that naturally touches marketing, messaging, audience, personas. So, I deeply relate to the angle of understanding users first.

Q: Walk me through the origin of Spring AI.

Over three years ago, when AI started hitting the visual space, I instantly saw a gap. In the public chat feeds of Midjourney, people were trying to design websites, logos, living rooms. I thought, this isn’t just for fun memes, people are looking for something professional. So I was the first, before Canva and Adobe, to launch my own online platform for image generation. That was May 2023. It took six or seven months of hiccups and mistakes before we finally launched the platform in December 2023. My principle was that it had to be intuitive and easy. Why do you need paragraphs and paragraphs of prompts? Spring started as a digital visual production software.

Q: How did Spring AI evolve from that initial product?

After helping brands create hundreds of thousands of pieces of content, visual, video, audio, I realized the gap wasn’t how much content you had or how appealing or realistic it looked. The gap was who was in that content and where it was placed. It was a physical gap in the customer experience and the buying journey. People relate much more to an ad if it’s them in it. Your face in the ad, versus a random person they scroll past.

So we built an entire immersive system called Glass. It’s our new product, launched three months ago. It’s a physical component but also digital, and it integrates into the brand’s buying decision space where they’re interacting with customers. For example, we have a digital touchscreen mirror. People take their picture, choose which products they want to try on. It can be apparel, makeup, jewelry, even experiences like golf or cigars. They can try on those experiences instantly and see themselves doing it. That leads to either a buying or engagement decision.

Q: What did you do before AI? Were you a techie? An artist?

I love that question. I went to college for industrial design, physical product design, at NJIT. I learned 3D modeling, but a major part of design is the step back: understanding who you’re solving for, the pain points, and how that defines the requirements for the solution. For four years we had to go into the field and interview users. What do you do, what’s difficult about this, where do you get stuck, how uncomfortable is this? I designed everything from furniture to flotation devices for lifesaving.

When I graduated, it was a tough market for industrial design compared to software product design, which paid much better. Turning from physical to digital was abstract at first, but I applied the same concept. A lot of UX designers actually came from industrial design, because the thinking is the same. You have to consider the human first, the product, the pathway, the customer journey.

“Everyone deserves to feel their best and live out their purpose.”

Q: Is that what defines success in this field?

Exactly. And something I love that Mike said: a pain point is just an opportunity. Is your business going to solve it, or is someone else’s? That’s what led me to this approach. For 12 years I was a senior enterprise UX designer, designing interfaces for white-labeled solutions, including banking. Very systematic. Templatized but intuitive. That’s what I applied to AI, because the thing people get stuck on is the prompting and the 50 different apps and tools they’re trying to connect in their own mental bandwidth.

Q: Walk me through the revenue model. You have physical products and SAAS. Where does the money actually come from?

Spring AI is infrastructure, not an app. One system connecting how a brand manages product, creates content, sells, and learns from its customers. Brands subscribe, upgrade when they want deeper integration — whether a website embed, a physical AI mirror, whatever fits their channel — and we take a performance fee when our platform drives a sale. We only win when they win.

The real unlock is intelligence. For the first time, brands know exactly what made a customer buy — or walk away. That data has never existed in retail before. That’s what we built this to solve.

Q: So the real shift is not content. It’s conversion. What did you change?

We introduced an experience layer. The gap between interest and purchase is imagination. People don’t buy because they can’t see themselves with the product.

We closed that gap. Now users can instantly visualize the product on themselves or in their space, directly inside the purchase flow.

Q: And that translates into revenue?

Yes. Once people can see it, conversion increases. But more importantly, we can now track what happens inside that experience.

We measure how many users try something on, how many convert, how many click through, and even what they do afterward, like following the brand or generating content.

Q: Give me a concrete result. What changed in numbers?

We tested this at a VIP shopping event using a large touchscreen mirror. Around 20% of users who tried something on made a purchase. Another 40% continued browsing the brand afterward.

We also captured contact data, which allows brands to follow up on abandoned carts and build long-term relationships.

The gap between interest and purchase is imagination. People don’t buy because they can’t see themselves with the product. We closed that gap.

Q: So this is not just conversion. It’s also data and retention.

Exactly. And it goes further. Users generate content themselves by trying products on, which becomes free user-generated content for the brand.

It also changes how brands tell their story. Instead of showing a product, they place the user inside a lifestyle. That’s how people shop now.

Q: How does this scale across stores and locations?

Brands can track performance across multiple locations. They can A/B test different looks, see what drives more engagement or conversions, and understand why.

The next step is removing friction entirely. We’re building a conversational AI layer where users can simply say what they need, like “I’m going to a beach club, show me outfits,” and the system responds.

Q: On the business side, analytics can be overwhelming. Are you solving that?

Yes. We’re adding an AI copilot for businesses. It analyzes their data, identifies trends, and suggests actions.

It can also pull in external signals, like events or seasonal shifts, and recommend campaign adjustments in real time.

Q: What’s your motive for being at Board of Advisors?

First, I came to learn. Being around people who have scaled businesses at a high level is valuable in itself.

Beyond that, I’m building relationships. I’m looking for capital, pilot clients, and strategic partnerships. But the priority is long-term alignment with people who understand how to take something like this and scale it properly.