80% of customers are more likely to purchase when a brand offers personalized experiences. The expectation that brands recognize customers has become commonplace. While there are many options for types of personalization, the most common are integrated search, product recommendations, retargeting, notifications, and incentivized pricing. Monocle is an AI-powered platform that uses behavior and customer data to provide real-time personalized incentive strategies. The platform offers no-code seamless integration that plugs into a retailer’s existing tech stack, offering a robust set of capabilities that allows companies to improve conversion without having to worry about building proprietary systems. Offers include personalized email and SMS campaigns along with on-site offers and the ability to develop custom display ads based on a customer’s sensitivity to discounts. Monocle has a robust pricing, predictive, and analytics engine that allows brands to use data to optimize customer engagement with increased certainty. Customers using the platform have seen a 30% lift in revenue, a 35% increase in gross profit, and a 3x higher ROI on promotional spending.
AlleyWatch caught up with Monocle Cofounder and COO Mark Lotman to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
The raise is a $7.5M Seed funding round, which was led by F2 Venture Capital. The round also includes investments from Tiferes Ventures and irrvrntVC and from founders at, Instacart, Everlane, Melio, and Chubbies.
ell us about the product or service that Monocle offers.
Monocle is an AI-powered promotion platform. The technology helps brands of any size automate the process of building incentive strategies with causal AI models to reach consumers on an individual, personalized level.
What inspired the start of Monocle?
We spent our entire professional lives working on incentive strategies and witnessed the potential of AI to transform promotion policies into personalized incentives that drive growth without sacrificing brand equity and margins. During our time across companies like Lyft, Instacart, and Stripe, we realized that these technologies require a lot of investment, making them accessible only to a small fraction of major consumer platforms. We wanted to give all consumer brands the tools that empower them to use AI to optimize and personalize their incentive strategies, regardless of size.
How is Monocle different?
Monocle is unique in our use of AI technology and models, which allow us to predict the incremental effect of discounts on a consumer level. This level of targeting unlocks significant value for brands who can offer incentives that customers care about. Our platform replaces the need to run A/B tests which are not personalized and fail to capture evolving consumer preferences.
What market does Monocle target and how big is it?
Our target market is extremely large since our platform is relevant for all DTC brands as well as omni-channel consumer brands that have significant activity online. In this market, offers and promotions have become ubiquitous, and we estimate the annual spend on promotions at $400B.
What’s your business model?
Our business model is software as a service (SaaS). Our platform integrates into a brand’s e-commerce and marketing stack and allows them to use their data to develop AI models to improve their incentive targeting.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
We are following a pretty standard approach for startups at our stage: we’re conscious of the velocity of our headcount growth and overall spend, while also keeping track of our burn rate/runway.
What was the funding process like?
We met our lead investor, F2 VC early on in the process and were really impressed by their support of the founders they work with, their vast experience with early-stage startups, and thoughtful thesis on the impact of AI on different markets. We’re also grateful to have other investors that have extensive experience with commerce such as irrvrntVC and Tiferes VC and the founders of Chubbies, Everlane and Privy.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
No major challenges come to mind for us – the stage at which we met our lead investor enabled us to have a process rooted in support and assurance.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
The factors included experience in the space of the team and the opportunity to transform with AI the way incentives are managed and optimized by consumer brands.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Over the next six months, we plan to continue scaling the business, grow our commercial team (we’re hiring in NY!), and execute on our product roadmap.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Every startup has its own circumstances/dynamics so it’s hard to give advice in broad strokes, but one of the takeaways from the past year (that I hope can be valuable for others) is the importance of getting as close as possible to the customers and prioritizing the elements on the product roadmap that would move the needle for them.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
Raku, Bonnie’s, and Frenchette.
