Serene Gan is the co-founder and COO at Needle, a personal AI marketer for ecommerce brands.Needle analyzes data, recommends personalized marketing tactics aimed at getting the most ROI, and creates branded marketing materials such as emails and ads.

Needle recently raised $1.2M in a pre-seed round led by Iterative. 

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

I’m building an AI marketer called Needle to help young and ambitious brands on Shopify and WooCommerce sell and do more with the resources they have.

We empower brands with an AI advisor and AI assistant. The AI advisor recommends personalized, smart marketing bets to take, and the AI assistant creates marketing materials such as emails and ads.

As a COO, my job is to translate this vision into reality, and make sure the team creates a product that is well-loved! 

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🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

For companies in -1 to 0, the COO role is an ambiguous and ever-changing one. One day I’m doing customer success, the next day product and UX, the following day finance and people stuff.

I’ve not met another COO whose role looked the same. And that’s just the nature of it—you’re going to have to do different things, some you’ll be great at, some awful at, some you like, some you hate. 

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🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

One of my most fun projects is Project Merdeka! In 2016, a bunch of friends and I had this idea to raise public awareness of the then-growing tech scene in Malaysia. So in line with Independence Day (hence the name Merdeka which means “independence"), we took time outside our day jobs to build a platform that curated discount deals by local tech startups.

In 2 weeks we rallied 250 startups, even Grab was on it! The project was featured locally everywhere and it was a success both for the community and the startups.

Till today I love the spirit of the project because it started with a simple goal—to help up-and-coming startups in whatever we could do. It reminds me of why I’m building Needle—to help up-and-coming brands achieve more, with whatever I can do. 

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🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

Generative AI in marketing. Currently, at Needle, we are fine-tuning our AI-generated email designs. 

It’s exciting to see how tech has come a long way to a point where it is possible for everyday, non-designers like you and me, to create beautiful and visually attractive emails in half the time and effort. 

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry? 

It might be an unpopular opinion but if you’re thinking of starting a startup, I recommend getting a full-time job first and trying things on the side before jumping into it full-on.

There are fundamental skills you’ll learn in your first few jobs that will make you better equipped to take on the challenges of a startup founder. And trying things out on the side gives you space to experiment with things that interest you. 

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🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours? 

Feelings. Most people don’t like or don’t know where to start to talk about feelings but the truth is that feelings often tell you something important to you.

I believe in the power of vulnerability and to make vulnerability part of our company culture to create safe spaces for emotions and to push for honest conversations. As leaders growing a company, having empathy and creating environments where team members can feel heard and valued will go a long way. 

Tell me how you are feeling about something and I’ll gladly go down the rabbit hole for hours to unpack that with you!  

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

Oh, this is a hard one! For anyone interested or keen in tech who’s not seen The Playlist on Netflix, I highly recommend it. It’s the story about Spotify. 

I’ve been hooked recently on stories of how people got started in tech businesses and I enjoyed this one.

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Pistachio! 

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FYI. We've edited this interview for clarity.