Zack Peng: From Software Engineer to Building an 8-Figure AI Returns Platform in 5 Years

This episode features an in-depth conversation with Zack Peng, founder and CEO of Seel, discussing the company's remarkable journey from a software engineering background to building an eight-figure revenue AI-enabled service platform. The discussion explores Seel's evolution in the e-commerce returns management space, tackling the significant problem where merchants spend 25% of GMV on returns, refunds, and post-purchase services. Zack shares candid insights about early technical challenges, operating at -200% contribution margins, discovering surprising behavioral signals like the impact of human models in product images on return rates, and the strategic transition from SMB to enterprise clients. The conversation covers founding philosophy, product-market fit discovery, the advantages of AI-enabled services over traditional SaaS models, scaling from minimal revenue to approaching nine figures with a lean team of 30 people, and contrarian views on the future of agentic shopping in e-commerce. Zack discusses how Seel uses proprietary underwriting algorithms with hundreds of signals to predict return probability, enabling merchants to offer risk-free shopping experiences while protecting their margins.

00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:42 - Pre-Seel career and algorithmic underwriting origins
00:01:29 - Early experimentation and proof of concepts
00:02:25 - Discovery of e-commerce returns opportunity
00:03:21 - Early algorithm development and behavioral insights
00:05:22 - Business model evolution and AI-enabled services
00:07:20 - Building vertical-specific applications at scale
00:09:21 - Growth strategy: SMB to enterprise transition
00:11:46 - Founder-led sales and learning enterprise motion
00:13:29 - Building with modern technology and lessons learned
00:15:13 - Current product offering and value proposition
00:18:22 - Team growth and hiring across functions
00:20:30 - Ideal customer profile and market positioning
00:21:42 - Future of e-commerce and agentic shopping
00:24:50 - Closing thoughts

SEEL
Website - https://www.seel.com/

Zack Peng
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/zackpeng/