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kiyanforoughi

126 karma · joined March 22, 2010

Founder of Needle www.askneedle.com

3x founder with 1 exit (Boticca) and 1 bootstrapped profitable biz (Electric8)

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kiyanforoughi··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2024)
Needle (Iterative S23) | https://www.askneedle.com | Lead AI Engineer | FULLTIME | REMOTE (US) | West Coast US timezone

About Us

We're Needle. We help small e-commerce brands compete with fewer people and less money using our AI marketing assistant. Brand owners pilot our assistant which connects to everyday tools, crunches data, recommends smart growth ideas, and creates marketing content and campaigns. The result: they cover more marketing ground with less. Our brands grow on average by 53% over 5 months thanks to Needle's ideas. We just launched and already have 100+ brands using us with revenue, traction, and even closed our biggest subscription to date at $2k/month last week.

Why It’s Exciting

Join us at a thrilling stage - small enough to feel like a founding member of a startup, but with clear traction/revenue and about to raise more from investors. We're defining what “AI co-pilots” truly mean in marketing for small brands. This is a team that's helped brands grow for 20+ years and had several exits before. Not random founders. Not a random problem. Not randomly playing around with "gen ai." In fact, gen AI is only part of what we do.

Who Are We Looking For?

An entrepreneurial Lead AI Engineer to help us innovate and scale our asset generation across images, video, and HTML generation. Key skills: AI/LLM models, generative technologies, React, and cloud platforms (GCP). Must be in the West Coast US timezone to overlap with part of our back-end/engineering team that sits in Asia (Singapore and Vietnam). Find out more here: https://tinyurl.com/needle-lead-ai-engineer

Perks & Benefits

Co-founder level equity, fair and sensible pay package based on you/where you at, early visibility and ownership across the business. Find out more here: https://tinyurl.com/work-with-needle

Interested?

We're not for everyone. If you want to build using generative technologies with actual use cases that people are paying for, be a sparring partner to founders, enjoy empowering small brands, or care about seeing a 1 to 1mm+ journey, then email Kiyan (CEO) at kiyan@askneedle.com.

kiyanforoughi··on Uber’s board wants Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to be its next CEO
All good points. I just don't think a merchant model would've worked in anywhere but the US. The market is just too fragmented elsewhere (especially Asia & Europe).
kiyanforoughi··on Uber’s board wants Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to be its next CEO
Fair. However, nothing stopped them from testing a hybrid (agency/merchant) as the agency model made way more sense to consolidate international hotel inventory as it is way more fragmented than in the US.
kiyanforoughi··on Uber’s board wants Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to be its next CEO
This is the guy who made a huge tactical mistake when Booking.com was challenging Expedia by choosing to stick to merchant model (i.e., buying inventory) as Booking went for the agency model (i.e., lead gen).

Expedia has moved to an agency model since but the damage was done. Booking managed to get far more inventory, capitalise on more search/PPC traffic and blow past Expedia.

Wonder if he's going to make a similar kind of mistake and misread the transportation market.

Props to a fellow originally Iranian though :-)

kiyanforoughi··on Do It For Denmark No one has solved Denmark's falling birthrate. Until now.
Japan needs one of these!
kiyanforoughi··on Ask HN: What do you call this style of front-end design?
Thanks! Very helpful.
kiyanforoughi··on Ask HN: What habit have you dropped or picked up that improved your life?
Switching off the sound my phone makes each time I receive an email, text or messaging notification.

I also stopped checking my email actively in the evening (only once before going to sleep to make sure there are no emergencies) and I try not to touch it more than once on Saturdays.

I have such a clearer mindset now these days.

Try it! You'll see.

kiyanforoughi··on Domainapalooza
The question is: why did they ever decide to buy batoota.com?
kiyanforoughi··on Ask HN: Where can I find a software job that helps society?
Watsi www.watsi.org YC-backed, crowdfunding healthcare treatments for high-impact, low-cost treatments in developing countries I'm an advisor there and came put you in touch if you'd like
kiyanforoughi··on Ask HN: How would you treat a VC who turned you down but now wants to invest?
See my response above. We don't actually need money at the moment. We just raised 2 months ago :-)
kiyanforoughi··on Ask HN: How would you treat a VC who turned you down but now wants to invest?
No resentment. We're in the situation where several VCs rejected us because they thought another player (who has raised way more than us) was the better investment. Now, "the better investment" is crashing and burning, and all these VCs are turning to us.
kiyanforoughi··on Time to Say: good bye WordPress?
Definitely linkbait.
kiyanforoughi··on MasterCard's Simplify Commerce
2.85% fees? Such a rip-off.... Braintree is much better/cheaper and offers so much more.
kiyanforoughi··on Poll: is your startup profitable?
The problem with this poll is that all the folks who are unprofitable will keep quiet and all those that are will share it proudly :-)

Useless poll

kiyanforoughi··on Three Things Men Can Learn From Women in the Workplace
Agreed!
kiyanforoughi··on Get Rid of the Bad Apples
"There is just no place in business for that kind of crap"

I completely agree!