Mike Taylor — CEO
CEO & Co-Founder at AskRally.com, virtual audiuence simulator for synthetic market research. Previously co-founded a 50-person growth marketing agency called Ladder, wrote a book on prompt engineering for O'Reilly, and created the top prompt engineering course on Udemy, taken by 250,000 people. Ask Rally helps you create 5-100 AI personas based on your audience, so you can ask them market research questions for a fraction of the cost of a traditional study. We let you clone existing customers based off call transcripts or you can generate personas based on demographics or behavioral data. Previous to starting Rally I worked as a prompt engineer consulting with several AI apps, resulting in a book deal with O'Reilly and one of the top courses on Udemy on prompt engineering. I also launched several marketing courses with LinkedIn Learning and consulted on marketing strategy and analytics, specializing in attribution and creative testing. I also wrote a self-published book on marketing memetics. Ladder was a growth marketing agency I co-founded that grew to 50 people with offices in New York and London. We worked with startups like Monzo Bank, mature businesses like Time Out Magazine, and large enterprises like Booking.com. We worked holistically across marketing channels, from PPC to Social Ads, as well as Conversion Rate optimization and Email / CRM / Analytics. We were famous for our data driven approach to market research and testing ("Performance Branding"), and we built our own software including the Ladder Planner and tactic database containing the results of 8,000 experiments. Prior to Ladder I worked in various startups, including Efficient Frontier which was bought by Adobe and became the Adobe Media Optimizer product. I was always data-driven and technical, coming from an Economics background, though over time I developed an appreciation for brand and creative after seeing how much it impacted the numbers. Ladder was a growth hacking agency (when that was cool), but was in a unique position of being incubated by a Publicis Groupe agency. We were invested in by various larger agency CEOs personally so I got to see behind the curtain of how the agency business worked, and read all the old books from the glory days of advertising as well as doing formal training in Marketing certifications. This gives me a unique perspective as someone from the performance marketing / startup world who also understands the marketing literature and has a respect for brand.
Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS and EdTech expert with a strong focus on AI-driven marketing solutions.
Location: Liverpool, United Kingdom
Experience: 16 yrs 4 mos
Skills
- Artificial Intelligence (ai)
- Market Research
- Prompt Engineering
- Performance Marketing
- Marketing Mix Modeling
Career Highlights
- Co-founded a successful growth marketing agency.
- Authored a book on prompt engineering for O'Reilly.
- Created a top-rated prompt engineering course on Udemy.
Work Experience
Rally
CEO and Co-Founder (1 yr 5 mos)
O'Reilly
O'Reilly Author (9 mos)
Vexpower
Co-Founder (4 yrs 5 mos)
Saxifrage, LLC
Owner (3 yrs 8 mos)
Candor
Vice President of Growth (3 mos)
GrowthMentor
Growth Mentor (5 yrs 2 mos)
Ladder.io
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer (2 yrs 11 mos)
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer (1 yr 5 mos)
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer (1 yr)
Marketing Instructor (6 yrs 6 mos)
Sumo Group (SumoMe.com / AppSumo.com)
Marketing Sumo (3 mos)
ShopStyle by P✪PSUGAR
Digital Marketing Manager (9 mos)
Travelzoo
Associate Product Manager, Marketing (8 mos)
Marketing Executive (1 yr 7 mos)
Efficient Frontier
Associate Account Manager (1 yr 3 mos)
Travelex
Client Manager (8 mos)
Department for Work and Pensions
Economist (Intern) (3 mos)
Education
MSc at University of Nottingham
Mini MBA at MiniMBA
Mini MBA at MiniMBA
BA at Anglia Ruskin University