『Why Gifting Is Stuck in the Victorian Era (And How Prsnt Fixed It)』のカバーアート

Why Gifting Is Stuck in the Victorian Era (And How Prsnt Fixed It)

Why Gifting Is Stuck in the Victorian Era (And How Prsnt Fixed It)

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In Episode 65 of the E-commerce Leader Series, Bryan Kinghorn sits down with Omid Moallemi, Founder & CEO of Prsnt, the Brighton-based gifting marketplace on a mission to drag gift-giving out of the Victorian era. Prsnt lets you send a real, branded gift — a coffee, a pint, a Selfridges hamper — instantly, using nothing but someone's phone number: no address, no wrapping, no waste. Alongside the consumer app sits a fast-growing B2B business that powers digital gifting for enterprise clients like O2 Priority.A product designer by trade, Omid had the idea back around 2014: "why can't I just text a friend a pint on their birthday?" Texting had become how people marked birthdays and said thank you, but it was never built for gifting — Amazon was too slow and Moonpig needed an address nobody knew, while everyone has everyone's phone number. With co-founder David Parr, he built Prsnt during lockdown, and got humbled fast. The early versions asked for too much data; stripping the recipient flow back to one-click sign-up took conversion to around 98%.The turning point was a cold email (address guessed) to Ogilvy's Rory Sutherland, who not only replied but diagnosed Prsnt's cold-start problem — like a fax machine, useless until other people have one too — and designed the fix. M&S gave away bags of Percy Pigs (cheap customer acquisition for them), O2 gave its customers "the gift of giving," and every gift sent grew Prsnt's network. The result: 40,000 bags gone in 17 minutes and tens of thousands of sign-ups in a week — with Prsnt actually getting paid to acquire each customer.What surprised the team was that more than 60% of gifts weren't for birthdays at all — they were "just because" moments ("you seemed down, here's a meal"), turning Prsnt into a kind of love language. That authenticity, plus a relentless go-for-the-biggest-brands-first approach, won over major partners and, eventually, the Dragons. After a nerve-shredding three hours in the Den (and an app that broke the morning of filming), Omid and David won over three of the five Dragons.On AI, Prsnt waited rather than shoehorning it in. On the consumer side they've built a gifting-suggestion tool named Rory, after their advisor. Under the bonnet, they've wired Claude and MCP into their bespoke admin panel to pull data and build campaigns in a fraction of the time — soon letting B2B partners self-serve ("give away 100,000 chocolate bars in December, here's the budget, make it happen") using historic campaign and redemption data. As a founder, Omid uses Claude for cash-flow forecasts and gifting analysis straight from live data, turning a week of manual work into a day. His view: AI makes a good team excellent.Whether you're building a marketplace, cracking a cold-start problem, or working out where AI genuinely helps, this episode is full of hard-won, generous insight.🎁 What you'll learn in this episode:How Prsnt sends real, branded gifts with just a phone numberWhy gifting is "stuck in the Victorian era" and how to change the behaviourStripping a sign-up flow back to hit around 98% conversionThe Rory Sutherland cold email and the cold-start problemThe Percy Pigs growth hack that got Prsnt paid to acquire customersWhy most gifts are "just because" — gifting as a love languageGoing for the biggest brand partners first, and why it worksWhat Dragons' Den is really like behind the scenesUsing Claude and MCP to run campaigns and forecasts fasterBuilding a frictionless B2B gifting product alongside the app💡 Key takeaways:Remove friction relentlessly — one-click flows convertSolve the cold-start problem with partners who benefit from givingGenerosity is an underrated commercial tool, not just a nice-to-have"No is just a premature yes" — resilience is the founder's edge🤝 Connect with Omid Moallemi & Prsnt:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omidmoallemi/Website: https://prsnt.co.ukAbout LucaLuca is an AI operating system for e-commerce leaders — connecting marketing, finance, operations and data into a single intelligence layer that helps founders make faster, sharper decisions.🔗 Connect with Luca here:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ask_lucaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asklucaai/Website: https://ask-luca.com/🎙️ Listen to the E-commerce Leader SeriesA podcast exploring how founders and operators are navigating the future of e-commerce with AI, automation, and new technologies.Subscribe for conversations with founders, operators, and investors shaping the next generation of digital commerce.
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