Leadership: Steve Robinson, founder and CEO
Headquarters: Milwaukee, virtual
Website: ferritelabs.com
What it does: AI and data analytics platform for marketers
Founded: February 2017
Employees: Three
Next goals: Finishing product and getting more beta customers on board
Funding: Boostrapped. Completing gBETA program in preparation to launch seed round.
(Photo: Lila Aryan)
When Steve Robinson founded advertising agency Brilliant Metrics Inc. in 2014, he found available marketing technology tools were not up to snuff.
“Most of the technology that’s out there, it’s very campaign-based,” he said. “It’s primarily focused on digital. It tries to tell you where you’re getting your revenue from, but it ends at that point. It doesn’t help a marketer improve, it just helps them justify the spend on a project.”
Robinson wanted a tool that would go farther, telling the marketer how to improve and generate more revenue.
So in 2017, he created another startup, Ferrite Labs LLC, to build the platform he envisioned. The company’s three employees have now created a beta version of the software and are testing and polishing it before doing a bigger marketing push this summer.
The platform uses artificial intelligence and data analytics to help marketers optimize the tactics they use and bring continuous improvement methodology into their work. It provides three different metrics: the congruency, or whether the tactic used is reaching the intended audience; the statistical correlation between a tactic and a result to guide effective spending; and a comparison of multiple tactics to each other to see where to spend the most.
So far, Ferrite has one paid beta client, Milwaukee-based Hatco Corp., that generates its $2,400 in revenue per year, Robinson said.
“They had been a Brilliant Metrics client, and so they knew the power of data analytics and knew where our tools fell short,” he said.
Ferrite is targeting B2B clients that have a long customer journey, in industries such as automotive and health care. The platform is offered on a monthly subscription model.
The company is in the process of completing gener8tor’s gBETA program, which will help build its network of mentors, entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists and technologists.
“We anticipate at some point raising some seed capital, so we’re trying to leverage the program to get as investment-ready as possible,” Robinson said.
Ferrite plans to use the funding to scale its software beyond minimum viable product and ramp up its sales and marketing.
“This is a rapidly growing space with a huge addressable market,” Robinson said. “Most of the marketing service providers in this area are moving more into that attribution modeling. They’re zigging and we’re zagging and we’re going in the other direction and providing real diagnostic tools.”
