A conversation w/ PRE founder Parham Aarabi
Parham, thank you so much for taking the time to chat, we're really excited to have you share more about PRE so let's dive right into it:
What inspired you to start PRE? What challenge were you eager to solve?
The main inspiration was my frustration with the uncertainty in the design and development of e-commerce sites/apps. I saw how they were designed, updated, and developed based on guesses and gut feelings which often turned out to be incorrect. I wanted to replace random guesses with AI based solution that tried to predict performance outcomes.
ELI5 (Explain like I'm 5) the technology behind PRE?
Let's say you have a site that sells products. If your site has too many steps or is too cluttered, fewer people will buy products. If your site promotes less popular products, you will have fewer sales. PRE first learns how humans on your site act, and based on it runs millions of shopping sessions using robot shoppers instead of actual users. It then tells you how good (or bad) your site is, and what could be improved.
What are the best use cases you've addressed for PRE thus far?
The best use cases so far have been performing a PRE A/B test for a Fortune 500 CPG brand website, which turned out to be accurate within 92%, performing a simulation of a very large retailer's e-commerce site, performing a very detailed simulation of a major fashion brand's app, and, getting competitive statistics for a CPG brand on their competitor's app/site (PRE can be run on competitors to collect and analyze their performance).
To the extent you can share, what new features or solutions will you be rolling out?
We are working to integrate PRE into design tools, so you can immediately get simulation data as you create or update a UI/UX design. We are also improving the underlying machine learning models so that training of user behaviors can be done more efficiently.
You've been successful in frontier/emerging tech for quite some time, what are some of the more creative and and some of the more practical applications that you're excited about? (can be any technology from VR to GenAi, etc.).
I am very excited about Generative AI, but ultimately I think it is a step into more advanced AI capabilities. I am extremely excited about modeling and simulating of human action and choices, and I think this has significant potential (with PRE being one of these).
TL;DR What’s the bottom line?
In an economic climate where brands are focused on profitable growth more than ever, leaders need to make key decisions with more clarity and confidence than ever before. Solutions like PRE leverage AI to eliminate guesswork by running Pre-A/B tests of user behavior models at the design stages of ecommerce and digital product development.
To learn more about how Winter Sun and PRE partner together to help brands drive growth, contact us here.
