🎙 Consumer Rundown Podcast with Kiyan Foroughi, co-founder of Needle!
Penny & Dimitri
Intro
On today’s episode we’re talking to Kiyan Foroughi, the co-founder of Needle an AI-powered marketing platform based in Singapore. Needle helps early stage ecommerce brands optimize their marketing spending by providing personalized recommendations and automating campaign creation. Kiyan is a serial entrepreneur, who previously founded Electric8 and Boticca.com, he shares his thoughts on the future of AI within eCommerce and how AI can help early stage direct to consumer brands to identify and retain customers.
🎧 How to Tune In:
✔ Apple: apple.co/41XJ81G
✔ Spotify: spoti.fi/3NZmIHi
Episode Highlights
💪 Thriving in Direct-to-Consumer today: Kiyan explains how brands can leverage DTC channels to create a "tribe" of loyal customers who identify with their unique values.
⚡ How AI will transform marketing: Get ready for AI to revolutionize marketing in three key areas: 1) brainstorming ideas, 2) accelerating asset and campaign creation, and 3) speeding up decision-making.
⚖Product vs. Collateral vs. Tactics: If you had 100 points to invest, where would you put them? Kiyan breaks down his ideal allocation: 40% on product development, 30% on crafting brand aspiration and aura through quality collateral, and 30% on execution – and explains why.
🧠 👐 "Brain" and "Hands" Approach to AI: Kiyan dives into Needle's AI-powered "brain" and "hands" concept, showcasing real-world examples from fast-growing customers like Floof and Club. He also reveals how Needle helps brands achieve an average growth of 47% in just 5 months!
📈 Defining what is a Growth Practitioner: According to Kiyan, a growth practitioner is someone who "loves to find formulas to attract, convert, and retain customers." Discover why being a generalist and embracing a test-and-learn mindset are crucial to becoming one.
Quotes to Remember
On Building Customer Relationships
"Our whole thesis is that there's a shift towards direct-to-consumer channels because people want to have that direct one to one relationship with their customers, have the data that will allow them to personalize those relationships."
On Direct to Consumer Channel
"I think it's a channel among multiple channels, and it's a channel that needs to find its purpose within those channels. And that purpose might be different depending on the type of product, consumer product, that you're selling."
On Future of AI
“I think the brands that adopt AI... are going to have a pretty significant advantage in a hyper-competitive space…Brands that use five of our tactics within five months grow 47%.”
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About Us
We are Penny and Dimitri. Dimitri is an investor at Skyview Capital Ventures, focusing on early-stage food beverage brands. Penny is a product manager at one of the world's largest e-commerce companies. We co-host the Consumer Rundown and are angel investing through Consumer Rundown Ventures. Our combined experience as investors, founders, and operators in the consumer space gives us a unique perspective on the CPG industry that we’ll be sharing with you.
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