Amazon sellers now run their businesses across a growing number of systems. Ads, inventory, orders, catalog, rankings, finance and fulfillment each hold part of the picture. Pulling that data together often means exporting spreadsheets, taking screenshots and switching between browser tabs. As AI tools move into daily operating work, the gap between what a seller asks and what the AI can actually see has become a real problem.
Prosper 2027 brings together the people who feel that gap every day. The two-day event at The Wynn in Las Vegas gathers founders, operators, agency leaders and capital providers who run marketplace businesses. Exhibitors come to meet operators who are ready to spend and ready to solve specific problems.
One of those exhibitors is Agent Central, founded by Christian Verhoeven. Verhoeven built and sold Big Fudge, a consumer brand for vinyl-record care and storage products, before turning to software. Agent Central connects the AI a seller already uses, such as Claude or ChatGPT, to their Amazon Seller Central account, giving the AI structured, current, account-specific data to work from.
Prosper: Walk us through your core offerings and any new products or features. Where are e-commerce brands getting the most value from them?
Christian Verhoeven: Agent Central connects the AI you already use to your Amazon Seller Central account. I built it after years of operating Amazon brands, so the product starts with a practical test: does it solve a real seller workflow? A seller can connect Claude, ChatGPT, or another AI to the information that normally lives across Ads, inventory, orders, catalog, rankings, finance, and fulfillment. The important part is that the data is structured, current, and account-specific, rather than a collection of screenshots and CSV exports. Brands get the most value when their team can ask a follow-up question and have the AI work from their actual Seller Central data. They still decide what to do; Agent Central provides the facts, history, and controlled paths for changes.
Prosper: What was your first job in e-commerce, and what lesson from it still shapes how you work today?
Verhoeven: My first real job in e-commerce was building Big Fudge, a consumer brand for vinyl-record care and storage products. It taught me that the work behind the listing matters as much as the listing itself: supply chain, customer feedback, inventory, advertising, and cash flow all affect one another. That experience gave me a clear view of what a seller needs from a product: it has to be useful in the day-to-day operation, not just look good in a demo. That lesson still shapes how I build.
Why Building Brands Before Software Shapes the Product
Prosper: What do you enjoy most about your role and the e-commerce industry as a whole?
Verhoeven: I like the proximity to the work. A small team can notice a problem, make a better product or system, and see the effect quickly in customer behavior or the operating numbers. E-commerce is demanding because the details matter, but that is also what keeps it interesting. Operating brands has made me appreciate how closely the product, supply chain, marketing, and customer experience are connected.
Prosper: Which recent innovation or strategy will set your company apart from everyone else on the floor?
Verhoeven: Most AI products stop at a chat window or a generic automation layer. Agent Central is built from the perspective of an Amazon seller who knows what it takes to run the business day to day. It addresses the missing connection: letting the AI a seller already uses work with the seller’s actual Amazon account. It brings the information that sits across Ads, inventory, catalog, orders, finance, and fulfillment into one connected environment, with scoped access and an audit trail for changes. The goal is practical: make an AI useful in the work of running an Amazon business without asking a team to build its own integration stack.
Prosper: What accomplishment in this industry are you proudest of, and why does it stand out?
Verhoeven: I am proudest of building and selling Big Fudge. It stands out because it was not a software story built at a distance from the work. It meant developing products, managing supply chain, learning the Amazon channel, listening to customers, and building a brand that another operator could take forward. That experience is a large part of why I care about tools that respect the messy reality behind the numbers and meet a seller where the work actually happens.
What Verhoeven Wants From Prosper 2027
Prosper: Why are you exhibiting at Prosper 2027, and what do you want to walk away with?
Verhoeven: We are exhibiting because Prosper brings together people who operate Amazon businesses every day. I want to meet sellers and teams who can tell us where their existing AI workflows break down once they need reliable account data, and to show them a more direct way to connect their AI to Seller Central. I also want to leave with sharper views of the operating problems that matter most now, not just the ones people talk about online.
Prosper: What kind of decision-maker do you most want to meet at Prosper?
Verhoeven: I would like to meet founders, operators, and agency leaders who are responsible for the full Amazon business, especially people who feel the cost of moving between Ads, inventory, catalog, fulfillment, and finance information every day. The right fit is someone already using AI in their work and looking for a dependable way to ground it in their own account data.
Prosper: What’s one shift in marketplace behavior, whether on Amazon, Walmart or TikTok, that most companies are underestimating right now?
Verhoeven: Companies are underestimating how quickly the interface for work is becoming conversational. People are already asking AI to investigate performance, compare periods, and assemble context that used to require a long chain of exports and browser tabs. The advantage will not come from the loudest AI claim. It will come from giving those systems trustworthy access to the right facts, while keeping commercial judgment with the operator.
Where AI and Marketplace Operations Head Next
Prosper: Which trends do you expect to reshape e-commerce over the next few years, and how are you preparing for them?
Verhoeven: AI will become part of normal operating work, but the useful applications will be grounded in business data and clear controls rather than broad promises of autonomy. Marketplace operations will also become more interconnected: an advertising question may depend on inventory, catalog state, fulfillment capacity, or financial outcomes. We are preparing by making it possible for an AI to work across those areas through one Amazon connection, while preserving scoped access, clear source context, and an audit trail for changes.
Prosper: What advice would you give someone breaking into e-commerce today?
Verhoeven: Get close to a real customer and a real operation. Learn the unit economics, the supply chain, the marketplace rules, and what happens after an order is placed. Tools can make you faster, but they cannot replace understanding why a customer buys or where the business makes and loses money. Start with a problem you can observe firsthand, then build the discipline to measure whether you are actually solving it.