Needle co-founders (left to right): Kiyan Foroughi, Serene Gan, Rachelle Yee, Jeannie Nguyen
In an email interview with e27, Kiyan Foroughi, co-founder and CEO of Needle, explains the specific problem faced by e-commerce brands today that the company aims to help solve with AI.
“The average new D2C e-commerce brand must find and transact with customers on multiple platforms channels like Facebook, Google, Tik Tok, Shopify and Amazon marketplace–this is both time-consuming and costly. On average, they are using over ten tools to analyse and market their brand and products, which is a ton of data to make sense of and a lot of decisions to make. They are also spending up to US$3,000 a month for generic marketing campaigns with little-to-no ROI. All the while, this same D2C brand is competing with many others as customers have tons of options to choose from,” Foroughi writes.
This is why Needle aims to tackle the problem by helping D2C e-commerce brands prioritise, plan, and implement marketing campaigns and assets. It will eventually bring overall marketing costs down and drive ROI.
“Our solution helps founders analyse all of their data. It connects all the different sources of data you have (e.g. Shopify, Google, Facebook). Then, our AI gets to work by doing growth modelling, sensitivity analyses, and comparing against various models of companies with similar archetypes. This helps identify the most impactful goals for your business and marketing to grow,” says Foroughi.
After that, the platform provides personalised recommendations identified from its ever-growing tactics database. These recommendations are tailored to help users achieve goals more effectively.
“Lastly, we also assist in executing these recommendations using generative AI. We can create specific emails based on the recommendations and even prepare and set up advertising campaigns for you to review and launch,” the CEO says.
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“In the end, our customers, typically comprising a marketing team of one to two individuals, including the founder, can now accomplish the work of a team twice their size. Using Needle, our early customers have grown their baseline revenue to 1.5x over five months.”
Based in Singapore, Needle is co-founded by a diverse team of entrepreneurs, founders, and operators who have sat at the intersection of e-commerce, growth strategies, and capital for the past 20 years. Its founders are Foroughi, Serene Gan (COO), Jeannie Nguyen (CGO), and Rachelle Yee (Head of Product).
“Our co-founders originally met at a growth agency where our team helped hundreds of brands grow and reach millions of customers, including Razer, RedDoorz, and Tiket. As data became more accessible through APIs and AI technology advanced, we realised the potential to turn our service into a product that could help millions of brands instead. We decided to productise (i.e turn a service done mostly by spreadsheets using software and AI) and enhance our offering, and that’s how Needle came to be.”
Moving the Needle for young e-commerce brands
When asked about the profiles of their users, Foroughi says that they primarily consist of founders of young e-commerce brands, particularly in the fashion, home, and beauty sectors.
These founders typically lead teams of three to 15 individuals, with the responsibility for growth and marketing still largely falling on their shoulders. Examples of young D2C brands that Needle has been working with include August Society, Indosole, and Our Bralette Club.
“Currently, we are finding a lot of traction in the US. We have acquired most of our customers through community marketing efforts targeting Shopify entrepreneurs and word-of-mouth. Additionally, we receive referrals from partners such as design and development agencies who frequently work with the same brands we serve,” he says.
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In terms of revenue model, Needle expects to have a freemium subscription model as we find that it is a model that our customers are familiar with for products they use frequently.
“We see Needle as a product that brands will use daily as they ideate, plan, and execute marketing campaigns. The pricing for each subscription tier will likely increase with the amount of usage (e.g. the more data points and tools our customers use to connect, the more generative AI features used),” the CEO says.
“In addition to the freemium model, we may also explore other revenue models where we have a more vested interest in the success of our customers. This could involve taking a percentage of the revenue or a share of the uplift we have generated for their businesses. We are open to experimenting with different approaches to ensure incentives are aligned, and we have skin in the game as well.”
As AI becomes increasingly popular across various industries, Needle looks for opportunities that will allow them to help businesses simplify tasks.
“We also aim to assist in areas where setting up or execution requires a skillset not possessed by many of our target audience, such as more technical marketing-based advertising campaigns,” Foroughi says.
“Our current belief is that the companies that will succeed in AI are those that deeply understand their customers, possess extensive and high-quality data and have the agility to adapt to various use cases. We aspire to be one of those companies.”
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What is next for Needle
Recently, Needle has completed an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round of US$1.2 million led by Iterative with the participation of Ethos Fund and Goldbell Financial Services. Notable angel investors, including Rainforest CEO JJ Chai also contributed to the funding round.
“This funding will allow us to make hires in areas of engineering, data science and AI trainers in order to keep improving our product,” Foroughi says.
“Our primary focus for 2023 is to continue refining and enhancing Needle through our early customers. We consider our early customers during this pilot phase as ‘design partners’ with whom we collaborate closely to co-create Needle into the ideal AI marketer that meets the needs of their brands.”
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Image Credit: Needle
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