Our Mission Is to Improve the Shopping Experience for Merchants and Their Customers
At Octane AI, we build technology every merchant and business can use to improve the customer experience and increase their sales and revenue. We believe that conversational commerce and personalized communication between merchants and their customers improves the shopping experience.
Our Values
We are dedicated to our customers and to fostering a positive, creative work environment.
Create a shopping experience customers love
Accomplish something every day
Altruism is a competitive advantage
Win as a team
Be self-aware and constantly improve
Empathy makes for better products and teammates
Leadership
Matt Schlicht
CEO & Co-Founder
Matt is an idea engine, community builder, and our fearless leader. He created Chatbots Magazine, the bot industry's leading trade publication. He was the first head of product at Ustream, is an alum of the Y Combinator startup accelerator, and was an advisor to Socialcam (acquired by Autodesk). He has been named to the Forbes 30 under 30 twice.
Ben Parr
CMO & 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", named the top marketing book of 2015 by multiple publications. He sits on the board of directors of Samasource, whose mission is to reduce global poverty through impact sourcing and outsourcing digital work. He sits on Lufthansa Airlines' advisory board and is a columnist for Inc. Magazine. Previously, he 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 and 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 has focused her career around 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 helping early stage startups achieve momentum through community and social products. 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.
Nike Gurin-Petrovych
Director of Engineering
Nike is passionate about performance optimizations, big data and AI. He was previously CTO of RebelMouse, where he led an engineering team of more than 40 people located across the globe. Before that, he was an engineering lead at Huffington Post, which grew to over 1.7 billion page views a month when he was there.
Rodrigo Garcia
Lead Designer
Rodrigo Garcia is an experienced UI/UX designer who believes good design doesn't just look beautiful but solves a problem and exceeds performance goals. Previously, he was Head of Design at RebelMouse where he led a world-class team of 6. He was also lead designer at Huffington Post for 2 years and part of the team that took the company to a $315 million acquisition by AOL. He's also consulted on user-experience and social-first designs for Lerer Hippeau Ventures portfolio companies including Newsle, NowThisNews, Popdust, and Grovo. He is based in New York and is originally from Mexico City.
Backed By Top Investors
Octane AI is backed by a group of respected investors, led by General Catalyst Partners and Evernote founder Phil Libin.
General Catalyst
Investors in Stripe, Warby Parker, Snapchat, Demandware, and Airbnb.
All Turtles
AI Studio led by Evernote founder Phil Libin
Boost VC
Investors in Coinbase and Pillow
M Ventures
Founded by former Washington, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty
Dimension 6
Angel investor collective
John Kim
CEO of Homeaway
Allan Grant
Founder of Hired and Talkable
Clara Shih
CEO of Hearsay Systems, Starbucks Board Director
Octane AI in the News
We’re lucky enough to have been recognized for our work with L’Oreal, GoPro, Maroon 5, and online stores all around the world.
Help Us Build the Future of Commerce, One Bot at a Time
We’re a fast-growing team of smart, driven and fun-loving people living all over the world. We are a remote team — you can live anywhere and be part of Octane AI!
We are led by a team of experienced entrepreneurs who care about the mission, company culture, and the personal growth and happiness of every member of the team.
If you’re talented and filled with positive energy, we want you to join us.
View Careers