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Local tech executive R.J. Talyor, whose previous startup was acquired by New York City-based Shutterstock Inc. three years ago, is hoping to replicate that success with his new startup, Backstroke Inc.
Talyor is the CEO and one of four co-founders of Backstroke, an artificial intelligence-powered marketing tech company which publicly launched this week out of Indianapolis venture studio High Alpha.
Backstroke’s platform uses generative AI to create customized marketing emails at scale. That capability has only recently become available thanks to advances in generative AI, Talyor said. Otherwise there is no practical way for a company to send customized emails to thousands or millions of customers at once.
“You can actually tailor it at a one-to-one basis, and that’s kind of a step change,” Talyor said.
The company’s other co-founders are Talyor’s wife, Allyson Talyor, who serves as Backstroke’s lead data scientist; Egan Montgomery, vice president of marketing; and Tyler Hill, the company’s head of product and design. All four are locally based. The company also has one non-co-founder employee, Chief Technology Officer Sam Smith.
Backstroke has also secured a $2 million round of seed funding led by High Alpha and Indianapolis-based Ground Game Ventures, with participation from another local investor, Allos Ventures.
Talyor’s previous startup, another High Alpha portfolio company, was called Pattern89 Inc. That company, which launched in 2017, used artificial intelligence to help marketers predict how different variations of an ad will perform, eliminating the need to do real-world testing of multiple options.
Shutterstock acquired Pattern89 and two other companies in July 2021 for a combined $35 million in cash.
“What made Pattern89 a big winner was our data set and the ability to fine-tune or train algorithmic models on large sets of data,” Talyor said.
That’s the approach the team is taking with Backstroke.
In developing Backstroke’s technology, the Talyors signed up to receive email marketing from more than 10,000 brands. The resulting emails provided the raw material that Backstroke used to train its AI model on how to customize an email campaign.
As examples: An email from a discount retailer might include emojis and all-capitalized words, whereas an email from a luxury retailer probably wouldn’t, Talyor said. And a brand targeting Gen Z consumers will use different language than one targeting baby boomers. A message for an impulse purchase like blue jeans or lip balm will be different than one for a more considered purchase like a sofa.
After about two years of development, Backstroke began beta-testing its platform in February of this year and signed its first paid customer in March. So far, the company has six paid customers, including bicycling apparel company Pearl iZUMi, running gear and apparel company Nathan Sports, women’s apparel company Lyssé and Florida-based The Porch Swing Company.
Early results from those customers, Talyor said, show that messages crafted with Backstroke’s platform lead to between 15% and 65% more revenue than those created by human copywriters. Put another way: If a human-created email marketing message induces a customer to spend $100, a customized message created using Backstroke induces spending of between $115 and $164.
Backstroke’s founding team brings a variety of skills to the company: design, marketing, technology and data science.
R.J. Talyor joined Indianapolis-based marketing tech company ExactTarget in 2004 as one of the company’s first 50 employees. He left there in 2014, following the company’s acquisition by Salesforce for $2.5 billion in 2013.
Allyson Talyor, who holds a doctoral degree in analytical chemistry, was a data scientist at Beck’s Hybrids before going full-time with Backstroke.
Hill was principal product designer at Shutterstock prior to joining Backstroke, and before that he was the head of design at Indianapolis-based sports tech firm Upper Hand.
Montgomery worked in marketing at High Alpha for nearly five years before joining Backstroke, and before that he was director of marketing at Indianapolis-based marketing tech firm DemandJump.
About the company’s name: Talyor said he chose it in part because of his love of swimming. Talyor swam in college and holds multiple national championship titles with U.S. Masters Swimming. And as an extra tie-in to the swimming theme, Backstroke is holding a launch event Friday morning featuring eight-time Olympic gold medalist Matt Biondi, who is in Indianapolis this week for the U.S. Olympic swim trials.
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Congratulations to R.J. and the entire team!
Very exciting news! Congratulations!