Meet the founder of Phrasee
Parry has spent the majority of his career in digital marketing, working with countless brands and media outlets across the globe. Since founding Phrasee, he has been described as one of the world’s leading experts on email marketing and AI-powered copywriting. Parry is a published author of The Language Effect, a book draws on his experiences working with global brands like Dixons Carphone, Domino’s and eBay and looks at the measurable impact better language can have on a brand’s bottom line.
He is an immigrant hailing from Canada. His mother was a linguist and his father a physicist-turned-inventor who took an AI product to market way back in the 1990s. Perhaps it was no surprise that he built a company that combines language and technology!
What’s the most common problem your customers approach you with?
Producing marketing copy that is consistently engaging, creates impact, and drives revenue is the holy grail for marketers all over the world. This becomes an even greater challenge for a brand with millions of email subscribers worldwide. For example, eBay is one of our customers and has over 101 million of these subscribers in the US, UK and Germany alone.
Creating the subject lines for these campaigns requires a monumental effort and is extremely time-consuming for the internal team. Each week, they’re tasked with creating stand-out, relevant, and high-performing content - a repetitive and creatively draining process for any marketer. This is pretty much where we step in!
We work with organisations that require a technology solution that can help optimize marketing content at scale without compromising brand voice and personality.
Our technology takes the heavy lifting of email and content marketing away from marketers, and quite simply lets them get on with what they’re good at!
What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal?
The first time I thought about combining science and language was at university. However, it wasn’t until I met with my two co-founders that I realised the true potential of creating an AI-powered copywriting tool. When we founded Phrasee, men like Don Draper dictated the discourse of brand messages. However, with the proliferation of online marketing, more ads than ever were required. And so began a race-to-the-bottom of clickbait copywriting. Meanwhile, tech companies were pouring millions of dollars of research into applying AI to many facets of the marketing mix – segmentation, personalisation and the like. But copywriting? Nope. No one believed it possible for AI to write better than a human.
We saw the opportunity and pounced on it! Phrasee created a completely new market, new budget line, and skyrocketing results for customers. Household brands from the retail, financial services, travel and telecoms sectors use Phrasee to engage customers across four continents. Almost a billion people have received an email with a Phrasee-generated subject line. We now count brands like eBay, Domino’s and Next as customers.
With all the success stories around entrepreneurship and how innovative people have to be to take the leap. How do you think you’ve innovated your sector and why?
‘Innovative technology’ is often banded around with little thought to ROI. From the start Phrasee developed a world-leading natural language generation system that ensured we could consistently test and measure success. When Phrasee first started, it was assumed that it was a matter of time before other startups were founded in this space. However, five years in, there are no new direct competitors. There are other companies, both big and small, that have seen Phrasee’s success and tried to replicate it. However, no one has been able to rival its core Natural Language Generation system. Getting machines to write fluent, original and creative human language to communicate a specific message is amongst the hardest problems in AI research today. Phrasee is one of a select few that has successfully commercialized this technology.
What are your thoughts on failure?
Developing a new business requires strong leadership and persistence and not accepting failure in my view. This whole ‘fail fast’ mantra probably looks good in an MBA textbook, but its unintended consequence is that it rewards a lack of conviction. And without conviction, especially back when everyone was saying it would never work, my company wouldn’t exist. Moving ideas into action will always demand a level of risk. And where is any business without new ideas?”
What plans do you have for Phrasee over the next two years?
Growth, growth, growth. Of course, we will continue to invest in our product roadmap and development in the near future. Technology sits at the heart of the business, and it will continue to do so. However, global expansion is key to our future and we are focused on building a solid team in the US over the coming months.
How important is company culture and what is your top tip to get it right?
Culture and team mean a lot to me. The recent strain of the pandemic demonstrated this more than ever. At the start of the COVID outbreak, we were faced with some tough decisions and, after analysing the economic forecasts, had to quickly plan for the worse. At this point, the old adage “The first cut is the deepest” led us to consider making immediate cutbacks. An approach that we felt would be incredibly tough but could quickly stabilise the business. However, we felt it important to involve our entire company in how we wanted to manage this.
We had spent five years building a strong team and felt a deep responsibility and duty of care to the people who work for us. Something that was even more important given how terrifying the wider impact of corona was and still is. Jettisoning off members of the team felt callous and, quite simply, not how I wanted our company to be run. At a Friday company townhall (virtual of course!), we put it to a vote. Right there and then, the team unanimously agreed to take a salary cut for 3 months. It paid off. By July, our sales were not just picking up but exceeding our pre-COVID forecasts. It’s looking like one of our best years yet!
What’s the single most important decision that you made, that contributed to your business?
What I’m supposed to say here is something about “product market fit”, or maybe “minimum viable products”, or “optimizing CAC ratios”. But actually, the biggest decision I made was about fruit. See, when we were 15 people in a pokey office, we’d get fruit delivered weekly. But as we grew, and were moving to a fancy 8th floor office on the River Thames, I was looking at cost controls, and announced to the team we would be stopping fruit deliveries.
Well. What happened next was damn near a mutiny! Two team members – Joe and Jason, who are awesome and still with us – started the chant. Before long, the entire staff, about 35 at that time, were chanting “Fruit! Fruit! Fruit!” And I capitulated, and (up until we shut down the office due to COVID) we got not one but TWO fruit deliveries each week.
Now – why was that an important decision? Because it was at that moment, I realized that Phrasee was much more than me and my whims. It had become a living, breathing being, representative of the wants, needs and ambitions of dozens of people. And the culture would no longer be dictated by me, but by the team, by awesome dudes like Joe and Jason. And my decision to actively embrace the democratization of our culture has led to it strengthening in ways I could have never imagined.
So yes – the best decision I’ve made at Phrasee was the fruit, no questions asked.
How did you conquer those moments of doubt that so often affect entrepreneurs or stop many with great ideas – what pushes you through?
Leadership has changed dramatically since the onset of the pandemic. Many entrepreneurs have had a knee-jerk reaction to risk in a bid to future-proof their businesses, meaning that risk-taking has been, well…not so risky. However, bold moves and big decisions in times of crisis or uncertainty is an attribute you absolutely want in your team. It is what makes you move fast and respond first.
What’s the most important question entrepreneurs should be asking themselves?
At the start-up phase, there will often be moments where you struggle and it seems a long, hard slog! Ours was at the investment phase. However, we always knew we had something pretty special since we had the backing of CMOs from some major brands. We kept on pushing forward, and we’ve never looked back.
What would be your top marketing tip, to grow a business that is niche?
Never. Be. Boring. We’ve made sure that Phrasee’s own tone of voice has reflected this from the start. It’s this approach that has meant we attract and retain the best talent in our sector.
