We’re on a mission to humanize the shopping experience
Leveling up the shopping experience requires human elements that customers love. We believe personalized ecommerce experiences, scaled by technology, are the future.
Our story
2016
Our founders Matt Schlicht, Ben Parr and Leif K-Brooks started Octane AI with the belief that for businesses, building personalized, two-way customer relationships are the future.
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We launched Octane AI for Facebook Messenger. Brands like CoverFX began building customer relationships at scale with automatic, two-way direct messaging.
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After powering personalized relationships for Warner Music Group, GoPro and more, Octane AI raised $1.5M led by General Catalyst.
2018
Our first customer surpassed $1M in revenue generated through Octane AI.
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We launched Octane AI on the Shopify App Store and within months grew to over 700 ecommerce brands using Octane AI’s platform on Shopify.
2019
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We built Octane AI’s SMS messaging platform, opening a new channel for businesses to build more personal relationships with their customers.
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Brands began using Messenger and SMS as a product recommendation engine that used data collected to personalize future messages. These insights led us to begin building the Shop Quiz.
2020
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We became a Shopify Plus Certified App Partner, committing to a level of product quality, service, performance, privacy, and support that meets the advanced requirements of Shopify Plus merchants.
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With ecommerce surging, we announced raising $4.5M in funding led by Bullpen Capital in order to continue helping more merchants humanize their shopping experience.
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We launched the Shop Quiz to provide an engaging on-site solution that helps brands collect powerful buyer profile data and personalize cross-channel shopping experiences.
2021
Shopify named us the Best Storefront App. It’s an honor to be chosen out of nearly 6,000 apps on their app store, and a clear indication that our mission is resonating and helping merchants grow.
Company culture is a key focus, and with a remarkable 100% of our fast-growing team responding in the survey that we are a great place to work, we proudly earned our first official Great Places to Work certification.
Our leadership
Matt Schlicht
CEO & Co-Founder
Matt is a two-time Forbes 30 under 30 alum, the creator of Chatbots Magazine, the #1 bots and AI publication in the
world with over 750,000 readers a year, and a TikTok expert with over 800K TikTok followers. Previously, with a focus on digital product design, Matt pioneered one-to-many online live video at Ustream (acquired by IBM), went through YCombinator, and helped grow rapper Lil Wayne from 1 to 30 million fans online.
Ben Parr
President & Co-Founder
Ben is an award-winning entrepreneur, investor, author, and journalist. He is the author of the best-selling
book "Captivology: The Science of Capturing People's Attention". He sits on the board of directors of Samasource. Previously, Ben was the Co-Editor and Editor-at-Large of Mashable, where he wrote more than 2,400 articles on technology, media, and startups. He is a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30. Ben is an alum of Northwestern University.
Leif K-Brooks
CTO & Co-Founder
Leif K-Brooks is one of the world's leading experts on scaling and building chat technologies and has
been building chat platforms for the last decade. He is the founder and creator of Omegle, one of the largest chat platforms in the world. More than a million people use Omegle daily and his technology has powered over 2 billion conversations. He is a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30.
Megan Berry
VP of Product
Megan is an expert in building communities and social products. Previously, she was VP Product at
RebelMouse, where she helped brands and startups drive organic growth from their content. She also ran a consulting company focused on early stage startups. Before that, she led community and marketing at social influence startup Klout, after joining as their fourth employee. Megan graduated from Stanford Phi Beta Kappa.
Brian Shanley
VP of Sales
Brian is focused on building and leading a global team to drive revenue and enhance B2C relationships for
customers. Previously, Brian was part of Klaviyo’s early founding team and held multiple roles including sales leadership. Prior to Klaviyo, Brian worked for the US startup arm of Equipos, which went on to be successfully acquired. Brian is an alum of The University of Vermont and an MBA from Suffolk University.
Heather Adams
VP of Marketing
Heather is a marketing and ecommerce veteran who has honed her skills working at tech startups large and
small. She is passionate about scaling teams with varied go-to-market models spanning self-serve and sales-driven. Heather delivered exponential growth that led to a successful IPO while at Carbonite and has also led marketing teams at Shoes.com, Shutterstock, Wistia and DigitalOcean. She is a graduate of Harvard University.
Supported by top tier investors
