Most AI email tools feel like they were built in the break room of a corporate ghost kitchen, bloated interfaces, stale copy, and the same recycled logic pretending to be personalization. That’s the thing about legacy martech: it’s Frankenstein’s monster in a fast-food apron, pieced together with genAI plugins and praying for engagement. Meanwhile, Backstroke is quietly training on millions of real emails and gliding past the noise with AI built for e-commerce, not enterprise slide decks.
Founded in 2022 by R. J. Talyor and Allyson Talyor, Ph.D., Backstroke just locked in $2.8 million to put even more distance between themselves and the cut-and-paste crowd. That brings total funding to $4.8 million, with this latest round led by Allos Ventures, alongside the repeat support of High Alpha and Ground Game Ventures. That kind of lineup doesn’t just happen, they earned it by doing what the big guys won’t: ditching legacy logic and building an AI engine natively tuned for commerce-grade performance.
Let’s talk numbers, because the receipts are loud. Since launching publicly in June 2024, Backstroke has seen 375% growth in customer count and 447% growth in ARR. Emails built with their platform drive 31% more revenue per send and cut creation time from 7 hours to under 5 minutes. Those aren’t tweaks. That’s tectonic.
There’s no fluff in this stack, just deep infrastructure and deeper intent. They trained their AI on millions of messages from over 10,000 brands, tagging performance across 200+ variables. That kind of dataset doesn’t come from a brainstorm; it comes from obsession. And that obsession is already showing up in campaigns from Pearl iZUMi, Nathan Sports, Lyssé, and The Porch Swing Company, with revenue lifts between 15% and 65% versus human copywriters.
The team is as dialed-in as the product. R. J. Talyor brings battle scars from ExactTarget and a win with Pattern89. Allyson Talyor, Ph.D. sharpened her AI blade at Beck’s Hybrids. Egan Montgomery (VP of Marketing) knows the GTM game from his time at High Alpha. Tyler Hill (Head of Product and Design) led product design at Shutterstock. Sam Smith, CTO, is the platform’s architect, and Jim Goldman, freshly appointed CISO, comes stacked with security muscle from Salesforce and the FBI Cyber Crime Task Force.
Backstroke isn’t “entering the chat.” They’re rewriting how the e-commerce inbox talks to customers, with better data, sharper AI, and zero legacy drag. And if you’re still building campaigns like it’s 2013, there’s a tidal shift coming your way.
