We may be leaving a golden age of digital marketing, with the rise of Facebook ads, e-commerce and other small businesses were able to find their niche audiences at a fairly reasonable price. But changes to iOS have had broad impacts across many industries. Our guest today, Shanif Dhanani, Co-Founder and CEO of Apteo is hoping to throw a lifeline to marketers of all sizes with his AI-powered platform that helps e-commerce brands personalize their marketing campaigns by predicting what their customers will buy next. Their recommendation engine identifies high-probability upsell and cross-sell ideas for each customer and syncs those recommendations to email and SMS tools.

About Shanif Dhanani:Shanif has been in and around the Startup world for his entire career. He was an early-employee and board member of a small startup in 2006 before moving to Booz Allen Hamilton. He went to Tap Commerce and was part of its acquisition by Twitter before he co-founded Apteo in 2019. He got his bachelor’s from the University of Virginia and his MBA from NYU Stern.

In this episode we discuss:

01:29 Shanif’s journey into startups and data science04:22 How Shanif views his own success05:20 Why Shanif is so public about sharing his life and journey07:08 How recommendations to consumers has evolved and improved over the years09:53 How AI and Natural Language Processing is improving recommendations13:19 Why e-commerce is waking up to the power of recommendations16:43 How Apteo works for e-commerce and some case studies21:48 What the recent changes to iOS are and how they are affecting e-commerce24:41 How Apteo can help fill the void left from the iOS changes30:17 How e-commerce sites can start with platforms like Apteo33:11 The longterm vision for Apteo

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