After Mehul explained his business idea and asked for feedback, I got him to tell me about current customers - he has ten ready to start a closed beta. This is a very promising sign - ten customers ready to pay is an excellent start on feedback. I worried a bit about competition from the likes of thread.com, but as we discussed the market it became clear that Mehul is aiming for a more affluent and time-poor market segment than thread - his customers are likely to be uninterested in choosing items from an email and then ordering them, preferring to have the choice made for them by the stylist. Mehul has clever ideas about how to grow beyond this initial group as well, so I think his idea is an excellent starting place for servicing this type of customer.
Mehul has a stylist on board and has so far called this person a co-founder. I questioned whether this was accurate since the stylist has not fully committed to the business - for example, he is keeping his day job. I suggested that Mehul consider thinking of this person as employee #1 (well-compensated with options of course) rather than a co-founder with all that entails (for instance, an equal say on business strategy). Mehul was also considering bringing on another co-founder with experience and contacts in clothing retail, chiefly to help negotiate brand discounts; I suggested that it was likely too early to do this, as no one would consider discounts for such a small clientele. It will likely be more useful to bring on a marketer when the business model is clear and the next step is scaling up to discountable volumes; at that point it is likely that Mehul will be taking investment and can use those funds in part to hire this person as an employee.
Mehul had some specific questions about technology choices but by this point it seemed clear that anything more than a static web page would be overkill now. I suggested that he just have direct email dialogues with each of the ten initial customers until it was clear exactly what they needed from the service, at which point he could start thinking about automation.