Cello's GTM10 Awards are cross-financed by sponsors including Anthropic and Fin, with Cello running logistics and an independent jury picking winners.
Cello runs 24 people, writes most of its code with AI, and is moving toward agentic coding with Devin.
Bader says now is the best time to build, as AI cuts capital needs and lets small teams ship fast.
Cello sells B2B referrals and stages a sponsored awards show
Cello sells the B2B referral program that growth teams kept failing to build for themselves, and it now runs user referrals and affiliate management, with reviews next. Affiliate tools are a crowded market, so Cello competes on operating model and distribution rather than features. Twenty-four people, most code written by AI, and a sponsor-funded awards show that buys the attention ads no longer earn. That model shapes Bader's advice to ship with agents before hiring and expect far lower capital requirements.
Takeaways
Cello built the referral tool nobody sold. Bader's growth team wanted a user referral program and found nothing off the shelf. Other founders had failed to find a tool or given up building one. Cello launched about four years ago and runs inside the customer's own product.
B2B referrals respond to cash, not free months. The employer pays for the licence, so cash payouts and vouchers move behaviour where free months do not. Rewards must feel fair to both sides, because the person sharing the link spends their own social capital.
Cello leads referrals while affiliates stay crowded. Cello started alone in user referrals and leads that category, while affiliate management on the same infrastructure is a red ocean. Products shipping in the first two quarters of next year target greener markets, and reviews are next.
AI flooding GTM pushes Cello to owned channels. Cello spends on channels it owns where CAC payback works, so it makes money before it pays, and avoids ads. Content is drafted with AI and curated so it does not read as AI-written, because buyers dismiss obvious AI outreach.
Twenty-four people, most code written by AI. The team is heavily weighted to engineering and product, and most of its code is written by AI as it moves to agentic coding with tools such as Devin. Customers are managed in Slack, and outbound works through G2 categories.
Build and ship now, hire later. Bader says to ignore much of the old playbook, manage tech debt, think agentic and AI-first before hiring, expect lower capital requirements and ship quickly. Figuera predicts a rise of single-person, multi-million-dollar companies as recruitment budgets fall.
How the GTM10 Awards are staged
Sponsors put up the capital and cross-finance the campaign. Cello wants partners including Anthropic, Fin, PKI, EpiFi and LaGrosse Machines, which it sees as leaders in their verticals.
Cello runs the logistics in the background rather than judging, and five go-to-market categories produce 10 winners a year.
An independent jury picks the winners. Winners and category sponsors each get a few seconds on the Times Square billboard.
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On this episode 2
Show 1
Partners get brand recognition where they meet winners and jury. Cello held dinners in San Francisco, New York and London in the three weeks before the episode.