Aug 8, 2023

Stay Ai – a customer loyalty operating system for Shopify brands – recently announced that it has raised a $15.1m Series A, the company’s first funding announcement since launching in October 2021. And this funding round consists of an $8.6 million investment led by Telescope Partners with participation from Boulder Food Group, Riverpark Ventures, and Vanterra Capital. The previous investments total $7.5 million, led by Watchfire Ventures, alongside industry leaders such as Nik Sharma (Sharma Brands) and Adam Turner (Postscript). This funding round will build on Stay Ai’s rapid first-year growth, which concluded with 300+ merchants like Vita Coco and Momofuku choosing the platform over legacy solutions, as well as the acquisition of RetentionEngine, which is a pioneer in applying machine learning to e-commerce. The priorities include expanding Stay Ai’s product-centric 50+ team, driving an industry-leading innovation roadmap, and supporting acquisition strategy. The company is founded and led by serial e-commerce entrepreneurs Gina Perrelli (CEO) and Pierson Krass (President), who co-founded Lunar Solar Group in 2018, an award-winning ecommerce agency bootstrapped from $0 to $12m in ARR in under four years. Stay Ai’s platform revolutionizes legacy subscription tools in the Shopify ecosystem. And with Stay Ai’s marquee ExperienceEngine, brands can apply performance marketing tactics to their subscription programs to manage and personalize customer lifecycles in cutting-edge ways. These features have enabled brands like Olipop to drive a 35% lift in subscriber revenue within 90 days of moving to Stay. KEY QUOTES: “After building subscription and retention programs for 100+ brands, it felt crazy to me that we A/B test every other channel like email or SMS, but with loyal subscribers, we just set it and forget it.” — Gina Perrelli “E-commerce brands urgently need dependable, higher margin revenue, and subscription programs were ripe for innovation. The first half of 2023 was all about integrating proprietary machine learning models into our platform, both for more personalized experiences and to automatically improve outcomes. Next, we’re focusing on a variety of never-before-seen tools to help brands better reward and retain customers.” — Pierson Krass “Stay Ai puts brands and their consumers first and we’re confident it will become a leading subscription and loyalty solution.” — Amit Parekh, Principal, Telescope Partners Trending on Pulse 2.0