Browsing the internet often feels like a scene from the science fiction film Bladerunner 2049, minus the rain. Everywhere you look, your senses are assaulted by advertising curated to your profile.
Each year, companies spend billions (estimated at US$745.0 billion in 2022) on marketing both online and offline, but just how effective these efforts are can be difficult to calculate. This is particularly a concern for high-growth brands that make rapid growth a central part of their business model.
That’s where OutPoint comes in.
OutPoint is an automated media mix modelling (MMM) platform that helps high-growth brands calculate the effectiveness of each dollar spent. It allows users to input their costs and marketing spend and receive feedback on how best to diversify their marketing investments for greater impact.
The venture is the brainchild of Rob Palumbo, HBA ’14, and Sean Billings, who brought their respective expertise in marketing and machine learning to create the platform. As a testament to their early success, OutPoint announced a raise of USD$1.2M in pre-seed funding, which enables the company’s growth and hiring efforts, particularly with its research and engineering functions. OutPoint now counts a range of paying customers who are implementing recommendations and driving significant revenue and cost improvements.
While the theme of “optimization” is embedded in OutPoint’s solution, it has a deeper and more profound meaning for Palumbo’s own journey.
Optimizing for learning
Whether it’s a New York Times Best-seller, an ancient piece of literature, or a letter from grandpa, our personal journeys are shaped by written words.
For Palumbo, it was an email from Entrepreneurship Lecturer Eric Janssen, HBA ’09, MBA ’21, who was at the time the Chief Revenue Officer at Intellitix, a leading provider of technology-driven solutions for festivals and live events.
Palumbo was just starting out his career and eager to add various consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies to his resume. However, the initial experience left Palumbo wanting more opportunities to grow, and he reached out to Janssen for some sage career advice.
Janssen’s response didn’t disappoint.
Right now Rob you should focus on two things: 1) Convince a startup to take a chance on you, and then GRIND and prove yourself to leverage that 'chance' into the next thing, and 2) Optimize for learning. Don't worry about the LT viability, equity, or anything else right now. Optimize for learning.
“That email changed my life,” said Palumbo.
Soon after, Palumbo began seeking opportunities that allowed him to learn more about business and have a greater impact on the company.
He joined an innovative online lending company, Borrowell Inc., as a generalist but quickly found his feet as a marketing specialist. When he eventually left the company to join Properly, another innovative company changing the way Canadians bought and sold homes, Palumbo was a marketing lead at the age of 24.
Still, despite enjoying the impact he was having through his career, the idea of starting something new was always on Palumbo’s radar. After all, how best to optimize for learning than start your own company?
That’s exactly the opportunity Palumbo received through Entrepreneur First, a Toronto-based organization that pays talented individuals to leave their jobs and develop their own ventures.
However, it wasn’t a simple decision.
With the COVID-19 pandemic running rampant, Palumbo took the leap and soon found the perfect pairing with Sean Billings, a University of Cambridge Alum who had just returned from the United Kingdom. Combining Billing’s expertise in machine learning and Palumbo’s know-how in marketing, OutPoint was born.
From battlefield tactics to running a startup
Most founders have an early story that points to their entrepreneurial leanings.
For Palumbo, it’s not the lemonade stands or shovelling the neighbour’s driveway, but controlling vast civilizations in the popular Microsoft real-time strategy game, Ages of Empires.
The very idea of managing armies, balancing resources, gathering intel and devising strategy, gave Palumbo a glimpse into the world of being an entrepreneur, one of wearing many hats and responding to situations quickly.
He wasn't the first to stumble upon this view of entrepreneurship. CEO of Shopify Tobias Lütke has openly spoken about the impact of another real-time strategy game, StarCraft, on his journey.
Coming into Western University as an Advanced Entry Opportunity (AEO), Palumbo was drawn to understanding the expanding limits of new technology and media on business and society. At Ivey, he took the New Venture Stream with a close set of friends and learnt the basics of building a business. While the idea didn’t go anywhere, it reinforced his interest in launching a startup someday.
For Palumbo, that someday has begun.
And as a young entrepreneur, there will be plenty of opportunities to optimize for learning.