Ditto also faced a second patent suit, from a company called Lennon Image Technologies. Lennon filed its case in the eastern district of Texas, a court critics have said is particularly friendly to people filing patent lawsuits. Endress laid off four employees and started looking for options.

Although her brush with the professional women’s basketball league was a short one in 2005, it’s one of several impressive accolades attached to the 29-year-old’s name in a quick Google search. Most recently, Endress has joined the big leagues in the business world as the CEO and co-founder of virtual fitting site Ditto.com, which allows customers to capture video of their face to digitally try on eyeglasses. Launched this past April, the new company head has been busy finding an operations site, hiring customer service employees, and acquiring top-of-the-line eyewear brands including Ray-Ban, Hackett London, and Persol for her online store. I am a huge online shopper but eyewear was one category where I just wasn’t comfortable buying online for a few reasons. Getting the right fit is so important for glasses, and I’m lazy when it comes to returning things. To combat this, we built technology that let’s people create a “DITTO”—our name for a video of their face from their webcam—to virtually try on glasses to see if they actually fit before they buy them. I couldn’t find any sites that had a good enough collection of designer products.

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After graduating from Stanford Business School in 2011, Kate cofounded DITTO.com, an ecommerce site selling designer sunglasses and eyewear which features cutting edge new video “try-on” technology. In the final tune-up before its Big 12 opener next week, KU placed five players in double figures.

• We had to build a native app to be able to use the iPad camera.
• Luckily, I had garnered enough attention prior to the injury to attract the interest of a few regional schools, and I signed a letter of intent with Ball State University.
• I’m a fan of Sheryl Sandberg and love the discussion her book has reignited.
• In addition, Endress’ 663 career rebounds made her one of only three players, male or female, in Ball State history to surpass the 1,800-point and 600-rebound milestones in a career.

I’m a fan of Sheryl Sandberg and love the discussion her book has reignited. She’s inspiring women to be strong and courageous and many of her stories resonate with me directly. That said, I do believe that it’s unrealistic for every female to have an extremely helpful spouse and the financial flexibility to have around the clock daycare when needed. I’d love for companies to take steps to fundamentally change the structure of the workplace to give better options to working mothers. I hope as DITTO scales, we can be a model for a company that can recruit elite female talent and offer flexible structures like 3 and 4 day working options for mothers. You can watch an interview I did with USAToday on Lean In here. Kate Endress Do your homework and listen to your prospective customers before you start.

Good Business

But her tiny startup, Ditto Technologies, and its 15 employees faced a problem, one that stung a little extra given Endress’s Hoosier roots. The patent infringement lawsuit she was Kate Endress fighting happened to be against Indiana’s largest publicly-traded company — WellPoint Inc., a health insurance giant with 45,000 employees and $61.7 billion in yearly revenue.

I could see my dream of becoming an All-American slipping away as major universities lost interest in me due to the injury. I endured countless hours of strenuous physical therapy, but the injury forced me to sit out during the most important recruiting season, and I lost the interest of hundreds of top schools.

Interview: Kate Endress of DITTO

DITTO’s product line included prescription and non-prescription designer eyeglasses and sunglasses. The company carried brands such as Ray-Ban, Persol, Chloé, TAG Heuer, and Vera Wang, as well as niche fashion and boutique brands like Jason Wu, Selima Optique, Alain Mikli, Anglo American, and John Varvatos. I always smile when I see a woman speak articulately and with conviction, confidently ask for raises and promotions, and raise her hand to run a project or lead a team because she knows she’s the best person for the job.

• Endress laid off four employees and started looking for options.
• Getting the right fit is so important for glasses, and I’m lazy when it comes to returning things.
• MUNICE, Ind. – The University of Kansas women’s basketball team recorded its first road win of the season on Thursday night as it defeated Ball State by a score of in Muncie, Ind.
• Junior Erica Hallman scored 16 points, while fellow junior Crystal Kemp recorded her fourth double double of the season as she posted 14 points and grabbed a career-high 18 rebounds.
• We then scale the glasses within a millimeter of accuracy and digitized the glasses photo-realistically, so you can see how glasses fit on your unique face.

I admire Anne Bonaparte, CEO of Xora, and Jessica Herrin, CEO of Stella & Dot, for being two great examples of women who prioritize their life very well. After my basketball career ended, I spent four years working on Wall Street and in private equity. I remember one day watching a coworker excitedly zip through a financial model for a potential investment and remember thinking “Wow, I just don’t feel like that about this work”.

Kate Endress DoerksenEducation (

WellPoint says Ditto is infringing on the patent, and Ditto says the patent is too “abstract” to cover Ditto’s product. Patent lawsuits can take years, and cost well into the millions in lawyer fees.

DITTO, a relatively new San Francisco-based company, has taken on this challenge by designing an interactive platform using high-tech facial recognition https://www.wave-accounting.net/ software which offers consumers an accurate fit for glasses. Skeptical at first, we made our own DITTO, and were really impressed with the accuracy.

Drawing from their extensive online inventory, we were able to try on hundreds of pairs of spectacles before finding the perfect match. Curious to learn more, we caught up with DITTO’s CEO and co-founder Kate Endress to talk tech, retail and their newly-launched iPad app available in the app store. DITTO is a company that sells software that aids eyewear companies sell their products online using virtual fitting. Recently retired from Crescent Plastics, where he was the vice president and general manager, Thom Endress jumped at the offer to help his daughter research a Midwest site for her business.

• He has also been called a “patent troll” — someone who doesn’t invent or produce anything, but uses patents to make money off of those who do.
• As a senior, she received honorable mention on the 2005 Kodak/Women’s Basketball Coaches Association All-America Basketball Team.
• The patent infringement lawsuit she was fighting happened to be against Indiana’s largest publicly-traded company — WellPoint Inc., a health insurance giant with 45,000 employees and $61.7 billion in yearly revenue.
• I spent countless hours watching and listening to people buying glasses in retail stores or optometrist offices.
• Kate Endress is the founder ofDITTO,a 3D technology that allows you to virtually try on eyewear.
• I am not a fan of the term “work/life balance” and the discussion of “having it all”.