blackbird
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David Booth and the business of being in the right room
From a teenage iPod venture in New Zealand to On Deck and a16z, David Booth keeps returning to one question: who could build something together, if only they met?
Instant
Instant is a Sydney-founded, AI-powered retention marketing platform for ecommerce brands. It identifies anonymous shoppers, recovers abandoned carts and sends AI-generated email and SMS at the moment of highest purchase intent. After starting life as a one-click checkout tool in 2021, Instant pivoted to retention marketing and grew fast - more than 1,500 direct-to-consumer brands now use it, and the company says its AI-driven flows have generated over $1 billion in incremental revenue.
Liam Millward
Liam Millward is the co-founder and CEO of Instant, a Sydney-based ecommerce retention-marketing platform he started at 17 with CTO William Gao. Instant helps online brands recover abandoned carts, re-engage shoppers and lift revenue through AI-driven email, SMS and audience tools. By his early twenties the company worked with hundreds of brands, drove tens of millions in incremental revenue, and raised an $18 million Series A led by Hummingbird Ventures at a roughly $100 million valuation, backed by Blackbird, TEN13 and Reinventure. Millward is known for a relentless focus on profit and execution speed.