Our Mission is to Humanize the Shopping Experience

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 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", 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. 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 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.

Brian Shanley

VP of Sales

Brian Shanley is the VP of Sales at Octane AI focused on building and leading a global team to drive revenue and enhance B2C relationships for customers. Brian was previously 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 has a BS in Business Administration from 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 digital agencies and tech startups large and small. She has both B2B and B2C experience and is passionate about helping build and scale teams and companies 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.

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