Charlotte-founded startup Botsi was built to provide an alternative model to one-size-fits-all app subscriptions. GrepBeat first covered the company in October of 2025, with co-founders Jacob Rushfinn and Jason Schubert explaining that they’d created an AI-driven platform enabling apps to tailor pricing based on user behavior.
In short, to provide an example, a user subscribing to a workout video app but only exercising a handful of times each month would automatically be offered a lower price than someone taking advantage of the subscription on a daily basis.
Recently, Botsi announced a $1.5M raise to further “replace one-size-fits-all paywalls with personalized offers that learn,” as the press release put it. In the process, the startup also made clear that it’s moved on (at least in part) from Charlotte.
We caught up with Rushfinn to dive into the news and get a full update:
GrepBeat: When we last wrote about Botsi, about a year ago, the platform was using AI to optimize subscription pricing on a behavior-based, per-user basis. Has anything changed significantly with that core idea? Is there a fresh elevator pitch?
Rushfinn: The core idea hasn’t changed. Not every user should see the same offer. What has changed is how we think about the product and how far it’s come.
A year ago we talked about AI pricing. Today we call it offer personalization, because price is only one lever. Trial length, discounts, plan mix and which paywall a user sees all matter too.
Botsi sits on top of the subscription tools apps already use, like RevenueCat, Adapty and Superwall. We take in what a user does at app launch and during onboarding, predict which offer they should see, and tell the paywall what to show.
The other big change: We launched publicly in Q4 2025. When we last spoke, we were in private testing. Now we have paying customers on both mobile and web.
The updated pitch: Most subscription apps A/B test their offers and ship whatever works best on average. Who wants to be average? Botsi picks the right offer for each user in real time and keeps learning. Our customers have seen revenue and LTV lifts of 15% to 75%.
GB: You were about a year in at the time of that first interview, but had past experience successfully building up mobile apps. Has that past experience accelerated your growth in the last year?
Rushfinn: Absolutely. I spent more than 10 years in mobile growth and monetization. I’ve been the person running pricing tests, waiting weeks for results, then shipping the version that won on average. So I know this problem from the buyer’s side, and I know how these teams make decisions.
The network has been just as valuable. Between Retention.blog and the Price Power Podcast, I’ve spent years talking with the people who run subscription apps. A lot of our early customers came out of those relationships.
GB: Botsi is now listed as being based in New York. Have you left Charlotte behind, or are there still NC ties?
Rushfinn: I recently moved to New York since my wife’s family is in this area, so we wanted to be a little closer. My co-founders live in Atlanta, so we’ll still make trips down to visit them and our friends in Charlotte.
GB: Getting to the headline—congratulations on the $1.5M raise! How did it come about?
Rushfinn: Thanks!
We believed in the vision of what we’re building, so it was about using our network to find the right people who also believed. We got introduced to our investors through some of our early angel investors and other industry connections.
It really came together once we had customers live with real numbers. At that point, investors didn’t have to just believe the pitch. They could see apps making more money.
GB: Among the named participants, was there one particular leader in the pre-seed financing?
Rushfinn: Telegraph Ventures and Luis Gutierrez Roy, one of their GPs, were our first commitment. They had invested in the mobile app space in the past, so understood the market, and also understood the opportunity with personalized offers.
GB: What does the raise mean for Botsi in the near term?
Rushfinn: Mostly, it’s about getting customers results faster.
Part of that is the models. We’re making them learn faster. We’re also expanding them beyond the first paywall a user sees.
The other part is onboarding. Right now it can take a month before a new customer sees results. I want that down to a week or two. So we’re hiring more engineers and data scientists and building the product so customers don’t need as much custom setup to get started.
GB: Is there a seed round in the works?
Rushfinn: Not yet. Right now we’re focused on putting this money to work. We’ll probably look at a seed round [toward] the end of 2027, but only if the timing makes sense. We don’t want to raise money just for the sake of raising.
GB: Is Botsi earning revenue?
Rushfinn: Yep! Our customers are consumer subscription apps on mobile and web.
We operate on a subscription model where clients pay a monthly or annual subscription for access. If our clients don’t see a revenue uplift from Botsi, they can get their money back, so it makes it low risk and easy to get started.
GB: Fundraising aside, what’s the next big step or milestone for the team?
Rushfinn: There are a few big things we’re focused on.
One is expanding Botsi into a full personalized monetization platform that covers lots of different offer placements. For example, a client could use Botsi for onboarding offers, winback, churn prevention or upsells.
Another is automated recommendations. Right now, our models are good at figuring out the right offer for each user and shifting traffic based on performance. But how does a client keep improving? We’re working on having the models recommend new offers, prices or packaging, so clients get a continuous cycle of improvement.
Lastly, we’re getting close to full self-serve, so clients can get started and launch with minimal support.
