Julie Bornstein
Founder and chief executive of Daydream
Julie Bornstein is an American e-commerce executive and founder who leads Daydream, an AI powered fashion shopping agent. Before Daydream she founded The Yes, which Pinterest acquired in 2022, and held senior digital roles at Stitch Fix, Sephora, Urban Outfitters and Nordstrom, making her one of the most experienced operators in fashion e-commerce.
| Role | Founder and CEO of Daydream |
|---|---|
| Organisation | Daydream |
| Seed round | 50 million US dollars (June 2024) |
| Public beta | 25 June 2025 |
| Previous start-up | The Yes, acquired by Pinterest in 2022 |
Who is Julie Bornstein?
Julie Bornstein is the founder and chief executive of Daydream, a start-up that lets shoppers search for fashion by describing what they want in natural language. Her career spans more than two decades of digital retail, and she is one of the most prominent voices on how generative AI could change fashion search and discovery.
Career
Bornstein worked at Starbucks in business development before moving into fashion e-commerce. She was vice president of e-commerce at Nordstrom and at Urban Outfitters, then chief marketing officer and chief digital officer at Sephora. She later became chief operating officer of Stitch Fix, leaving before its 2017 IPO.
She then founded The Yes, an app based shopping platform that used AI to personalise fashion assortments. It raised 30 million US dollars from investors including Forerunner Ventures, NEA and True Ventures and launched in May 2020. Pinterest acquired The Yes in 2022.
In June 2024 Bornstein announced Daydream with a 50 million US dollar seed round co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Index Ventures, with participation from GV and True Ventures. Daydream opened to the public in beta on 25 June 2025 with more than 8,000 brands, and its website now describes the service as a personal fashion AI shopping agent covering more than 10,000 stores.
Influence on the fashion business
Bornstein has worked on most of the major shifts in fashion e-commerce, from early online stores at department stores to data-led personalisation at Stitch Fix. Her start-ups have focused on a problem many retailers recognise: product discovery and search have not kept pace with customer expectations.
- Personalised assortments rather than generic category pages.
- Natural language search across many brands at once.
- Free onboarding for merchants to build breadth of supply.
Julie Bornstein and technology
Bornstein has been explicit about the role of AI. Speaking to TechCrunch at Daydream's launch she said: "Having worked in e-commerce my whole career, search has always been the forgotten child, and it never worked very well." She added that once ChatGPT launched, consumers started to get trained on how to think about the potential of prompting. Earlier, when founding The Yes, she said the whole framework underlying e-commerce had remained the same since the late 90s.
Why it matters
Julie Bornstein connects the history of fashion e-commerce with its AI future. Daydream is one of the most closely watched attempts to apply generative AI to fashion search, and her experience gives it particular relevance for brands and retailers.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Julie Bornstein?
Julie Bornstein is the founder and chief executive of Daydream, an AI fashion shopping agent. She previously founded The Yes, acquired by Pinterest in 2022, and was chief operating officer of Stitch Fix and chief digital officer of Sephora.
What did Julie Bornstein say about AI and fashion search?
At Daydream's launch in June 2025 she told TechCrunch that search has always been the forgotten child of e-commerce and never worked very well. She argues that conversational AI lets shoppers describe an occasion or need in their own words.