Smarter Discounts - Bigger Margins
Today’s featured startup is helping brands ditch blanket discounts in favor of smart, personalized offers that actually boost the bottom line.
Project Overview
Discounts are a classic marketing tool. Offer 10% off, hand out a coupon, and you’ll likely see a bump in sales. But here’s the catch: every discount cuts into your profit. So the real question is — are those extra sales even worth it?
Monocle, a startup out of New York, believes that most brands don’t actually know the answer. That’s why they built an AI-powered platform that helps D2C sellers run smarter, more profitable promotions.
Instead of blindly launching discount campaigns, Monocle simulates how different offers would affect both sales and profit—and then automatically picks the ones that work best. Not just in general, but for each individual customer.
It’s a fresh approach to an old problem: how to grow revenue without leaving money on the table.
What’s the Gist?
Every time a business offers a discount, they walk a tightrope: attract more customers, but lose some profit per sale. It’s always a trade-off. Monocle's core insight is that AI can optimize this balance dynamically. Their system runs simulations—forecasting future sales both with and without discounts—and then identifies the sweet spot where total profit is maximized.
But Monocle isn’t just trying to prove that “no discounts” might be better. Quite the opposite: its goal is to help sellers design smarter discounts—ones that increase profit.
Here’s how it works:
Monocle plugs into the seller’s data and forecasts sales in real-time.
It identifies discount strategies that boost margins.
It personalizes offers for each individual customer—based on their purchase history, product preferences, and past interactions.
Thanks to integrations with major email and SMS platforms, the AI can send out tailored promotions automatically, at scale. Sellers simply set rules—like “max 15% discount on beauty products”—and Monocle handles the rest. Offers are continuously tested and optimized based on campaign results, all visible in a performance dashboard.
And the system works. Brands using Monocle report:
+20–46% revenue per user
+30–40% recovery of abandoned carts
Monocle launched just last year with a small seed round—and has now raised a fresh $7.5 million to scale up.
Key Takeaways
Monocle targets D2C brands and marketing agencies, especially those already spending big on coupons and promos. According to the founders, this segment spends around $400 billion annually on promotional activities—so there’s a huge upside if even a fraction of those campaigns can be made more profitable through AI.
The real innovation lies in individual-level optimization. Manual personalization is nearly impossible at scale—but AI can now analyze millions of buyer profiles and deliver dynamic, relevant offers that hit the mark.
Other startups are moving in a similar direction:
OfferFit ($39M raised) helps personalize not just the discount, but also the timing and format of each message.
Lancey (Y Combinator alum) runs micro-experiments on small user segments to fine-tune product marketing.
Subsets focuses on reader retention for digital publishers by adapting to each subscriber’s reading habits.
The larger trend? Marketing is shifting from broad audience segments to 1:1 personalization—powered by real-time data and intelligent algorithms.
You don’t need to invent a new trick to build a great startup. Sometimes, it’s enough to reinvent an old one—with better tools.
If you’re thinking about your next move in AI or marketing tech, ask yourself:
Where are businesses already spending heavily on direct user engagement?
Which tactics are they using—and how could those be optimized per user?
What kind of data is available to make that personalization smart?
Can AI do this better than humans?
The playbook isn’t new. But the tech to make it work smarter just arrived.
Company Info
Monocle
Website: usemonocle.com
Last round: $7.5M, 02.05.2024
Total investment: $7.5M+ across 2 round