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Profasee raises $2.3M seed round, launches Amazon price optimization platform

Riley Kaminer
Riley Kaminer
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By Riley Kaminer

During the pandemic, e-commerce sales grew to $870 billion: up 14.2% from 2020 and 50.5% from 2019. Amazon continues to dominate the space, comprising nearly 40% of e-commerce sales.

Meanwhile, Miami has become somewhat of a hub of e-commerce innovation, from SellersFunding to Boopos to Okendo to OpenStore – just to name a few.

Profasee is far from simply another name to add to the list. The startup, which was founded late last year, has developed an AI-powered platform to help Amazon sellers more effectively set prices.

In an exclusive interview with Refresh Miami, Profasee CEO and founder Chad Rubin announced that he is taking the company out of stealth mode, with a $2.3M seed fundraise in tow. This round was led by Silicon Valley investor defy.vc. Profasee’s 11-person team plans to use this funding to supercharge its product development roadmap and make some strategic hires, including data scientists and a go-to-market expert, said Rubin [pictured above].

Prior to founding Profasee, Rubin successfully exited e-commerce operations platform Skubana and e-commerce marketing company Seller’s Choice. He also runs an e-commerce business of his own. 

Needless to say, Rubin is bullish on e-commerce. “We’re not only in the early innings of e-commerce,” Rubin told Refresh Miami. “We’re also in the early innings of applied data science and machine learning.”

Up to now, the platform has been in closed beta. However, they already have a handful of brands successfully leveraging the platform, including Marketplace Valet, Pavoi Jewelry, and LilyAna Naturals Skin Care. Rubin signaled that Profasee hopes to start opening up the platform to their ever-lengthening wait list soon.

After a quick onboarding process that links their Amazon storefronts with Profasee’s system, users tell Profasee the cost of their product, how much they typically sell the product for, their maximum price, and their minimum price. Profasee handles the rest, dynamically pricing the product in real time depending on a wide variety of factors such as demand, Amazon rankings, the time of day, and the day of the week.

So far, Rubin shared that beta users have seen a 10-12% increase in profit. Profasee charges a SaaS fee based on the seller’s revenue.

“Chad is inventing the next wave of e-commerce,” asserted Neil Sequeira, founder and managing director of defy.vc. “Profasee is taking e-commerce from a web-based version of walking into a store to a new, personalized shopping experience.” Sequeira had invested in Rubin’s most recent venture and jumped at the opportunity to invest in another one of his companies.

Both Rubin and Sequeira expressed excitement about the Miami tech scene. “I’m super bullish on Florida,” said Hollywood-based Rubin. “The community is thriving, and there’s a thirst to connect,” he continued, noting that fellow founders are particularly interested in meeting each other around town.

For his part, Sequeira called Miami “one of the more interesting markets for venture capital right now.” He is also a major investor in Boca Raton-based Honorlock, and underscored the network effects of having multiple portfolio companies in one region.

Looking forward, Rubin is particularly excited by the prospect of helping e-commerce companies and aggregators price precisely, autonomously, and at scale.

“We’ve become a force multiplier, enabling these companies to maximize profitability and EBITDA,” Rubin said. “The one lever that no one knows how to pull is pricing, and we are at a perfect place and time to support brands.”

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