🎤 Full Interview: Peter Moot, CEO & Founder @ Promi AI
"We saw just how impactful personalizing discounts can be. And the benefits of just even having some basic understanding of the price sensitivity for different customers allows you to really generate huge returns relative to just sending out a discount to everyone."
Founder Story & Vision
Who they are & what they’re building
Peter Moot spent five years as a Product Manager at Uber overseeing the discount and personalization systems that determined which users received targeted promotional offers. After witnessing AI-powered price optimization generate massive returns for Uber, he realized this game-changing technology was locked away from smaller businesses. Together with his Uber co-founder, Peter launched Promi AI to democratize enterprise-level price intelligence for Shopify merchants earning $500K+ annually.
Why now & what’s the big bet
While AI buzz floods the market with tools claiming to boost revenue, most small merchants remain skeptical that AI can actually move the needle. Peter's bold bet: proven enterprise pricing algorithms can be simplified and deployed at a fraction of Uber's scale to generate 50%+ revenue increases for SMBs. With Shopify powering nearly 10% of all e-commerce, the opportunity to transform how millions of merchants think about pricing represents a potential unicorn-scale market.
🧩 Real-World Use Cases
How it works in the wild
Supplements Brand: Implemented personalized discounts up to 25%, resulting in a 51% increase in average revenue per user, 39% boost in gross profit, and 24% store-wide revenue growth
Clothing Brand: Deployed dynamic pricing optimization that delivered a 67% increase in ARPU on targeted items and 30% store-wide revenue improvement
Cross-Industry Success: From bakeries to skincare brands to secondhand appliance sellers, Promi AI's price sensitivity models consistently identify the right customers for discounts while protecting margins from loyal buyers who don't need incentives
What you’ll learn:
How Peter transitioned from managing 40-person teams at Uber to leading a lean 4-person AI-first startup
Framework for building price sensitivity models without massive datasets or data science teams
Real tactics behind replacing junior roles with AI tools while maintaining quality output
Lessons on building merchant trust through rigorous A/B testing and statistical significance
How Promi AI is solving discount personalization for SMBs using neural networks instead of traditional regression models
Some Takeaways:
Ruthless prioritization: Skills from managing large teams at Uber become 10x more critical with startup resource constraints
AI-first operations: ChatGPT and Claude can handle code reviews, copywriting, and data analysis previously requiring junior hires
Proven over novel: Focus on democratizing enterprise solutions rather than building new AI capabilities from scratch
Platform strategy: Shopify's ecosystem provides unicorn-scale opportunity without needing to build integrations across multiple platforms
Trust through transparency: Combat AI skepticism by running rigorous experiments and sharing detailed performance metrics with merchants
In this episode, we cover:
00:00 Introduction & Problem Discovery
03:15 AI Benefits for Shopify
08:45 Uber’s Discount Algorithms
15:30 Neural Networks vs Traditional
21:20 Scaling with AI Tools
28:10 Case Studies & Results
35:45 Overcoming AI Skepticism
40:15 Fundraising & Team Insights
42:30 Shopify Ecosystem Strategy
For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email david@thehomabase.ai
Referenced in the Episode:
Uber's discount personalization platform
Shopify API and admin ecosystem
Linear project management tool
ChatGPT and Claude for productivity
Klaviyo (successful Shopify ecosystem company)
YCombinator accelerator program
Find Case Studies of all other episodes here.
