MGMT Boston - W13, Q3 24 - OfferFit / Remen Okoruwa, Propexo
OfferFit / The Lantern with Jess Lynch, FoundersEdge and Remen Okoruwa, Propexo / Phil Rimmler on Junkspace
Welcome to MGMT Boston where we try to help 1,040+ of you manage your awareness of top Boston startups and local up & coming operators putting in the work. Glad to have you here!
TLDR:
OfferFit - building an AI Decisioning platform that enables lifecycle marketers to automate personalization at scale, taking the tedium & pain out of A/B testing
Recent episodes of The Lantern:
Remen Okoruwa, Co-Founder & CEO of Propexo - a fast growing proptech company with 30+ customers and hard lessons learned. Help them out with an intro to Yardi!
Jess Lynch, GP @ FoundersEdge - a new Pre-Seed & Seed stage venture capital firm providing an unfair advantage to exceptional founders at the intersection of AI & UX
Brought to you this September by Innovation Economy Banking at J.P. Morgan
(Operators Club Corner) We Live In The Junkspace Era of Digital Content by Phil Rimmler - authenticity & originality has never been more important. In a sea of boring, you can create opportunity
Other Resources:
The Lantern Short Form Video Series (YT / IG) - Intro Trailer / Jonathan Chang, Markit AI / Aniketh Mohanty, Wayfair / Setting the Culture / Amber Nigam, basys.ai / The Agents Are Coming / Alex Ewing, OneScreen.ai / Jess Lynch, FoundersEdge / What is MGMT Boston? And Why? / Remen Okoruwa, Propexo
MGMT Boston Operators Club - a community and opportunity engine for 80+ Boston based up & coming venture backed operators
2024 Boston Tech Big Board - 2024 Companies to Watch
The Endeca Effect: Overview / Markets / People / Products / Conclusion / Bonus - Steve Papa Alumni Learnings
Q3 Startups Highlighted: Sense, mabl, Customers.ai, Wicket, Form Health, EnFi, Crunchtime
Q3 Operators Highlighted: Greg Montemurro / Posh, Susan Roth / Quantified AI, Jason Jones / Klaviyo, Haley Wilcox / ezCater, Peter George / MX
2023 1H Recap / 2023 2H Recap / 2024 Q1 Recap / 2024 Q2 Recap
OfferFit
Founders: George Khachatryan, Victor Kostyuk
Founding: 2020
Mission: Accelerating the creation of knowledge
Employees: 100 & ~10% Local
Workplace: Remote
Stage & Capital Raised: Series B & $39M raised
Investors: Menlo Ventures, Canvas Ventures, Ridge Ventures, Harmony Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, Carbide Ventures, Burst Capital, Capital One Ventures
Key Customers: Brinks Home, Engie Resources, MetLife, Foxtel Group
Glassdoor Rating: 4.9
Valuation (estimated): $150M - $250M (assuming average equity dilution in the Q4 ‘23 $25M Series B fundraise)
^ this is a useless number from MGMT Boston. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!
OfferFit is building an AI Decisioning platform that enables lifecycle marketers to automate personalization at scale. They are taking the tedium & pain out of A/B testing using best in class technology and a technical services approach for enterprise marketing teams.
This growth stage startup was founded by George Khachatryan & Victor Kostyuk, two long time friends who met as Math PhD students, and enjoyed working together. Victor rows from the technical side and George pulls the oars from the business end.
They knew they wanted to build a company together but waited for the right idea. Victor was working at Boston Consulting Group building machine learning models to personalize marketing outreach for their existing customer base. Using “reinforcement” machine learning, he built agents (before agents) that learned through autonomous experimentation based on pre-determined KPIs. When Victor and George caught up, they both agreed it was a compelling opportunity productize externally.
The product lifecycle management market cuts a cross section across e-mail marketing ($10B+), mobile push, in app messaging, and more with 19,000+ customers who use lifecycle marketing tools according to 6sense (src). Full stop, marketers need better tools so they can spend less time on administration and more time on strategy.
If you’re a marketer, you want better personalization. That’s hard to execute. Traditionally, you would divide up segments and do A/B testing to continuously level up your results. Necessary work, but extremely slow that takes cross functional resources (and commitment).
OfferFit uses the same type of “reinforcement learning” pioneered by Victor at BCG, specializing in building AI agents that learn through experimentation. Their platform automates the process of A/B testing across infinite segments down to the individual recipient to conduct AI testing.
Their platform thrives on “owned” lifecycle marketing & CRM channels like e-mail, SMS, and push notifications which have the richest datasets and ability to personalize 1:1 to pursue the marketing holy grail: the right message with the right creative at the right time for the right person.
OfferFit plugs into customers’ data warehouses to ingest first party data, make daily customer level decisions, and tweak its approach continuously to drive better results based on predetermined KPIs as it learns. The essence of what they do is customizable for different enterprise KPIs and guardrails, working in collaboration with existing CDP (customer data platform) and ESP (e-mail) providers, in a similar way that a company like Palantir is deployed specifically for an individual enterprise use case.
Their biggest competition is “in house” custom builds and their emphasis on composability for “AI testing”, instead of A/B testing, sets them apart. Using modern APIs, OfferFit has a much cheaper, streamlined approach so marketers can extract best in class insights.
OfferFit has employees in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe & Australia and has a remote workplace. Their workforce leans really technical, both for engineering & technical employees, as their platform is a blend of an expert machine learning product and an accompanying service.
OfferFit is on pace to double revenue in 2024 across a customer base of dozens and, dare they say, have never churned a customer to date. When they deploy, they always run a control group of “business as usual” to show the value they’re providing their customers so companies want to continue working with them! OfferFit has prioritized great customer service too as a central piece of their culture.
Boston stands out as a location with great technical talent and dozens of first rate colleges and universities. As technology becomes more complex & sophisticated, they hope to continue to grow here and think Boston will have an increasing edge in the war for talent.
OfferFit is backed by top tier investors like Menlo Ventures, Canvas Ventures, Ridge Ventures, Harmony Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, Carbide Ventures, Burst Capital, and Capital One Ventures.
Operators to Know (Locally):
Anna Deitcher, RevOps Associate
Daniel Feist, ML Engagement Manager
Ginna Gomez, ML Engagement Manager
Alex Guo, Customer Success Director
Davin Lencz, Director, Strategic Accounts
William Palmer, Senior Manager, ML Implementation
Will Razen, Staff ML Applied Scientist
Haley Ruff, Director of Customer Success
Brandon Sorrow, Senior Software Engineer
My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the OfferFit team I know I missed many up & coming operators internally
Key Roles To Be Hired:
If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:
What are the key company milestones as OfferFit gears up for 2025?
What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team past 100 employees?
What is the long term vision for the company?
What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in 2H 2024 // teams that need the most help?
We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about OfferFit you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more marketers into the AI age. All growth hackers applaud your efforts. See you around town!
Remen Okoruwa, Co-Founder & CEO @ Propexo
The Lantern is brought to you by Innovation Economy Banking at J.P. Morgan this September
Welcome Remen Okoruwa, Co-Founder & CEO at Propexo on this episode of 🔥 The Lantern 🔥
Propexo offers a unified API helping technology companies integrate their products with property management software
🔍 What’s going on inside the startup? 🔎
Conference season is heating up. Remen is traveling to Vegas & D.C. for conferences to meet a ton of customers & prospects. Many new product opportunities & features will undoubtedly come from these meetings as they build to 30+ customers
🤔 What advice would Remen give to up & coming operators? 🤔
Trust your instincts, regardless of what people say. Propexo formalized partnerships after receiving feedback from their customers about how they were already informally helping them connect to these platforms
Embrace the hard times. Propexo’s current business is the result of a hard pivot that gave them exposure to how important property management integrations were. Believing strongly in the opportunity you’re attacking, talking to customers, and as you build you feel you’re heading in a direction where you’re creating value. As for the rest? Block out the noise.
🤝 How can we help? 🤝
Anyone who knows the team at Yardi out in SoCal, please introduce them to the Propexo team!
Or any IT / tech teams at large REITs in the multi-family space. They’re looking to better meet the needs of those customers in the quarters ahead!
With J.P. Morgan’s guidance, your startup can go from growing pains – to growing without limits. With tech that powers your growth and bankers across the globe to help you disrupt every market, you can go from seed to IPO and beyond.
J.P. Morgan. Let’s Build Your Future Together.
Jess Lynch, GP @ FoundersEdge
Welcome Jess Lynch, General Partner at FoundersEdge on this episode of
🔥 The Lantern 🔥
FoundersEdge is a new Pre-Seed & Seed stage venture capital firm providing an unfair advantage to exceptional founders at the intersection of AI & UX. They invest time and money into companies that make a difference.
🔍 What is Jess up to in her career & at FoundersEdge? 🔎
After being a Founder, Jess has become an early stage investor - watching this generation of founders build more with less and innovate in legacy industries
🤔 What advice would Jess give to founders as someone who has sat around the startup table? 🤔
The best advice on fundraising comes from founders who have raised from the investors or types of investors you’re trying to raise money from (and that have recently raised)
Building trust quickly with investors is critical. Ask investors for feedback and advice (and then take action on it) to build in a lot of interactions in a short period of time
🤝 How can we help? 🤝
If you know an investor or founder in Connecticut, reach out!
And when Jess is up in Boston (regularly) she would love to meet with founders building disruptive companies that reduce friction in user experience, solving huge problems for individuals and companies.
We Live In The Junkspace Era of Digital Content
By Phil Rimmler
Have you ever thought about how much time you spend in waiting rooms? It’s around 6 months of our lives.
For places that many of us spend so much time in the design of these areas often feels like an afterthought. Despite the obvious “mastering the art of the outward-facing chair arrangement” contribution to global design languages, most airport terminals feel dull, cold, and uninviting.
Today, the same can be said about content marketing. More here!
Any feedback for me? One thing you liked? One thing you didn’t? Local startups or operators to highlight? Just reply to this e-mail!
See you next week!
-Matt