A college student with a passion for second-hand fashion has turned an idea into a growing business with the help of artificial intelligence. Hana Elster, a 22-year-old senior at Boston University, used Anthropic’s Claude AI model to build a vintage clothing marketplace called VYA during her winter break.
According to Business Insider, Elster created an early version of the platform in just five days and has since attracted hundreds of users and dozens of vintage sellers. Elster, who studies business law and will graduate later in 2026, said she had long dreamed of building her own company. She grew up around entrepreneurial communities in Boston and New York and drew inspiration from founders close to her age.
“I’ve always loved the idea of being your own boss and building something for yourself,” she told Business Insider.
Her interest in vintage fashion began when she was around 14 years old. Instead of buying expensive clothing from shopping malls, she discovered thrift stores where she could purchase several unique items for the same price as a single retail product.
“You’d go to the regular mall and find a shirt for $30, but I could find 10 shirts for $30 at my nearest Goodwill, and I’d be wearing something nobody else had,” she told Business Insider. Currently, she estimates that roughly 80% of her wardrobe comes from second-hand purchases.
Why did Hana Elster decide to launch VYA?
The idea for VYA emerged from a simple conversation with a friend. While discussing favourite stores in their hometowns, Elster learned about a popular vintage shop in Chicago that she had never heard of before, reported Business Insider.
That conversation exposed what she believed was a gap in the market. Many independent vintage stores had loyal local customers, but buyers in other cities often had no way to find them. “I realized there is space for a centralised vintage platform,” Elster told Business Insider.
Before building the business, she contacted numerous vintage shop owners to understand their biggest challenges. Many physical stores told her that despite investing time and money into websites, most sales still came from walk-in customers. Some owners said their websites generated only a handful of online sales.
Online-only sellers faced a different problem. Many relied heavily on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to attract customers. Several owners told Elster they spent hours creating content because marketing remained the primary way to gain visibility, reported Business Insider.
Many of those sellers also held full-time jobs and treated vintage sales as a side business. As a result, they often lacked the time and resources to promote products consistently.
VYA aims to solve that problem by bringing multiple vintage stores together on one marketplace, giving shoppers access to inventory from different locations through a single platform, reported Business Insider.
How did AI help turn idea into business?
Elster said artificial intelligence dramatically reduced the technical barriers that often prevent first-time founders from launching products.
Although she had some coding experience, she described AI-assisted programming as the key factor behind the speed of development. “To build the app, I started vibe coding,” she told Business Insider. “I have some coding experience, but Claude Code has let me move at a pace I would never have been able to,” she added.
After receiving advice from a friend who had previously built a fashion application, Elster began experimenting with AI-powered coding tools. She first used Cursor before switching to Claude for much of the development work.
The progress came quickly. She started building the project on January 9 and produced a mock website by January 13, reported Business Insider. “It got me so excited, thinking about how I was turning lines of code into something visual, with buttons and functions and everything,” she said.
Just five days later, she had a functioning website. Friends with technical expertise reviewed portions of the code and helped ensure the platform worked properly before launch.
The project required relatively little capital compared with traditional startup development. Elster said she spent less than $2,000 on technical and operational expenses. She funded the project through personal savings and support from grants provided by Boston University.
Over three months after launch, VYA has expanded to 38 participating stores. The platform has approximately 900 approved users, according to Elster. She said about half of those users visit the marketplace daily, reported Business Insider.
Her long-term ambition is to make VYA a regular destination for vintage shoppers alongside established resale platforms such as The RealReal. To generate revenue, VYA charges sellers a 7% commission on items sold through the marketplace. Elster said the average item sells for around $350, reported Business Insider.
The company also experiments with a service called “source for requests.” Under that model, customers pay a flat fee for help locating specific items, such as a rare vintage Chanel handbag. One of the marketplace’s partner stores often fulfills the request. If no seller can locate the item, VYA refunds the fee.
For Elster, the experience demonstrates how artificial intelligence is reshaping entrepreneurship. “I’ve always wanted to start my own business, but this was the first time I was hit with inspiration, and I could actually execute it,” she told Business Insider.
She believes AI has significantly lowered the barriers to launching startups. “So AI has definitely dropped the barrier to entry,” Elster said. “The biggest barrier used to be engineering, but now it’s getting people to hear about your brand and then convert and buy,” she said.
As VYA grows, she plans to focus on marketing and customer acquisition. She said her first major hire will likely be a chief marketing officer rather than an engineer, reported Business Insider.
After graduation, Elster intends to begin a consulting job in September while continuing to operate VYA. If the business expands successfully, she hopes to increase staffing, automate operations and continue growing the company alongside her corporate career.
“Being a young founder has changed me,” she said. “The other founders I’ve seen are super bold, confident, and courageous, and I feel like I’ve developed that side of myself, too,” she told Business Insider.