she explains<\/a>. \u201cBusinesses today no longer start by creating a website or having an email address; they start with an Instagram account.\u201d<\/p>\nThat shift has created a gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the past year, we\u2019ve seen social commerce grow at an unprecedented rate, but the infrastructure hasn\u2019t followed,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Hotbox is designed to fill that void. The platform analyzes activity across likes, comments, and direct messages, researches the profiles behind those interactions, and surfaces high-intent leads. It can then \u201cagentically engage\u201d with those prospects\u2014bringing the structure of a traditional CRM into a social-first, algorithm-driven environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese tools already exist for an email-based world,\u201d Bagri says. \u201cBut they don\u2019t exist for the algorithm one we\u2019re shifting to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea was born from firsthand experience. While leading growth at Respell\u2014since acquired by Salesforce\u2014Bagri built viral AI content that drove significant inbound interest through her DMs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy DMs exploded, but not just with buyers,\u201d she says. \u201cSome messages were a single fire emoji\u2026 and just a few were serious leads worth six figures each, buried in the noise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hotbox aims to surface those opportunities automatically, helping founders and businesses turn social engagement into structured pipeline.<\/p>\n
Bagri\u2019s background spans both deep technical research and growth execution. She previously built algorithms used at Canada\u2019s national particle accelerator, TRIUMF, published AI research at NeurIPS, and earlier worked with MILA on research into social media behaviour.<\/p>\n
Now a solo founder, she says Hotbox is just getting started.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re the first to build sales tools for social media,\u201d Bagri says.<\/p>\n
The company is preparing for Speedrun Demo Day on April 14 as it continues building out its platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Surrey-born founder is building what she believes is the next generation of sales software\u2014one designed for Instagram,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[212443,49,48,212444,87674],"class_list":{"0":"post-544768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-surrey","8":"tag-andreessen-horowitzs-speedrun","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-hotbox","12":"tag-surrey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}