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 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.
The Conversational Pop-up was born. This innovation increases opt-ins, conversions and zero-party data collection to help Shopify merchants build personalized relationships with their customers.
We raised $5M in a funding round led by Javelin Venture Partners to continue building solutions that enable Shopify merchants to own their data and stop renting their relationships with customers.
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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.
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.
Alex Gurevich
VP of Finance and Operations
Alex brings decades of finance and operations experience at high growth companies. He led Business Operations at Credit Karma for four years through its acquisition by Intuit.
Alex also has two IPOs under his belt, with Zendesk and Google. At Zendesk, he spent six years running Business Analytics, FP&A, Strategic Planning & Operations and the Office of the CEO. He also spent four years at Google and a year and a half as a McKinsey consultant in the Moscow office. Alex holds a BA in Economics and International Relations from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard University.
Vince Silvey
VP of Engineering
Vince brings over 20 years of experience as a software engineer, manager and executive. He has built highly engaged software engineering teams across financial services, automotive, education and marketing companies like J.D. Power and Campaign Monitor.
Working with engineering teams of <10 to 100+, Vince has applied his leadership approach in ways that have enabled cultural transformation through greater collaboration, reflection, learning and business predictability. He has an MBA from the University of Missouri, with an emphasis in Organizational Behavior.
Supported by top tier investors
