Parry Malm is the co-founder and CEO at Phrasee – a scaleup who combine natural language techniques with AI and deep learning to optimize marketing across all digital channels in over 20 languages.
Funded by Albion VC, Galvanize Capital and Next 15 Communications, Phrasee’s solution is truly revolutionary and delivers major ROI for blue chip clients like Ebay, Virgin Atlantic and Superdry.
We explored the underlying problem that Phrasee set out to address - lots of companies focus on optimizing the operational efficiency of a marketing campaign: "You click a button and a million messages go out to a million people. But what if that message sucks?!”
We discussed how Phrasee has placed ethics front and centre – in terms of the way the company is run, the solutions they offer and the clients they work with - for example, Phrasee recently rejected the opportunity to work with a US client who sold guns and ammunition.
And we critically examined the VC ecosystem:
- “For all that VCs say about backing innovators – what they are actually doing is backing incrementors!”
- Many entrepreneurs are obsessed with the meaningless paper valuations of their private VC rounds - what ultimately matters is what you can do to capitalise your value for founders, employee option holders and investors
Parry explained how startups like Phrasee can begin by dominating a narrow market and then expand into complementary areas.
And we discussed why it's so crucial for founders to ensure "you have a killer management team at the top", set them guidelines and boundaries, and then "get the f*** out of there and let them get on with it!"
We also discussed how Phrasee responded proactively to the pandemic and Parry's view that the winners in every global crisis are always the ones who adapt and don’t suffer from institutional inertia preventing them from moving forward.
Finally we discussed Phrasee's brilliant naming taxonomy for each product component and each project team - based on the characters in The Simpsons!
For more insights into Phrasee's digital marketing AI solutions check out https://phrasee.co and for guidance on recruiting rockstar executive talent for B2B SaaS start-ups and scale-ups head over to https://alpinasearch.com
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