Marketers of Technology
00:00:00 · Stefan Bader, Andres Figuera
[00:00:00] S0: We're the one that sets the stage and throws the party, and then our sponsors provide the capital to do it well. We're doing all the logistics in the background. The jury is then the one that is picking the winners. [00:00:16] S1: Hey, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Marketers of Technology. My name is Andres Figuera, and this show is brought to you by Front Lines Studios, Silicon Valley's leading podcast production studio. If you're looking to launch your own show, we offer a full podcast as a service experience. You just show up and host, and we handle everything else. And with that said, let's dive into today's episode because today, I am here speaking with Stefan Bader, cofounder and CEO at Cello, a company that is the only all in one referral platform that lets you launch partner and user referral programs on autopilot. So, it's a pleasure to have you on the show, man. How are you doing today? [00:00:57] S0: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me here. [00:01:00] S1: No. No problem at all, man. It's a pleasure to us be able to host this for you. And just so that we can hit the ground running, Stefan, would you be able to tell us a bit more about yourself, your background, how you came to cofound Cello, or what was the igniting idea that led you to be a cofounder, and what Cello does in your own words?
00:01:18 · Stefan Bader
[00:01:18] S0: Yeah. Sure. Many questions in in in one. Let me maybe start with how we we got to start Cello in the first place. I was founding a company before more than a decade ago, which feels also that long ago. And like after going through the full cycle, selling the business, thinking about what I should be doing next, I actually didn't know and I joined another software company leading the commercial teams. And during that time, my growth team wanted to introduce a user referral program for the product we're all working for. And interesting enough, like they couldn't find anything. I pushed hard on this because I thought that there must be something out there but they were quite right with their research and this was basically the starting point for me to understand there's a wide gap on the landscape. There's something I or my team definitely wanted to have and I started basically to ask questions around that. Like other founders in the space, other growth operators and I kept hearing the same things that they either looked for something, couldn't find it, tried to self build it, was too complicated. Like there was a decent amount of interest, but no one actually found something off the shelf and this is exactly what we then started to build. Yeah, two or three sentences about myself. I'm Stefan, I'm based out of Munich, Germany. We started a company roughly four years ago. With that goal in mind, the vision has become more broad now over time. So we're not just providing user referrals as an easy to plug in channel that sits and runs inside your product, We have launched a second product around affiliates, so like acquiring, managing, paying out affiliates, which runs on the same infra. And now we're extending the platform more towards word-of-mouth in general. So it's always about incentivizing stakeholders, if it's partners or users, to help you grow your business. And they have quite a lot of leverage on that. So reviews will be one of the next things we're tackling, which is quite important for search engine optimization and geo, right, for LLM optimization, but then also UGC, like a lot of more things you can actually get out of users if you align incentives the right way.
00:03:29 · Andres Figuera, Stefan Bader
[00:03:29] S1: And in terms of the incentives, Stefan, what do you offer users or people that do UGC or maybe the ones that are writing reviews? What do they get out of that if they do it? [00:03:40] S0: Yeah, we focus on B2B software and user referral programs have been quite common in B2C land before and that was quite easy to tie it to the product itself, give free months, give I don't know features and stuff like that. In B2B world it's more complicated because the employer is typically paying for the license and therefore that doesn't really move people's behavior or change people's behavior. So therefore it basically comes down to monetary incentives which can be cash like payouts, can be vouchers or things like that, but it needs to be something that people care about and cash in the end is cash is king and is something that everyone understands and something that actually in the end changes people's behavior. On the other side, obviously, whoever, for example, follows a referral link gets something back. So because people putting their own social capital on the line, so it doesn't just help incentivising for referrals, it also helps like giving their friends and family and colleagues something in return back to make it a, you know, to make referrals also close and make people actually starting to share. It needs to feel fair for both sides. [00:04:46] S1: Okay, I understand that. I understand that. And, Stefan, do you work or provide this service to companies anywhere around the world or are you locked to certain regions that you work with?
00:04:46 · Andres Figuera, Stefan Bader
[00:04:46] S1: Okay, I understand that. I understand that. And, Stefan, do you work or provide this service to companies anywhere around the world or are you locked to certain regions that you work with? [00:04:56] S0: There's some countries we don't serve which are like the usual suspects, but besides that we're operating globally. So we the biggest markets we have are in North America and Europe, and then we have a bunch more companies spread across Africa, Oceania, and Asia. But the focus is North America and Europe. [00:05:16] S1: And although I did hear you mention that B2B, the way that you provide the service, but is there a certain industry that you've noticed that chooses you guys the most? Or have you noticed any patterns in that regard? [00:05:28] S0: Yeah, so there are some industries that tend to work better than others. I think we're quite industry agnostic from software is eating the world since a few decades, and you can see that we're offering software to companies, provide software to hairdressers, to construction workers, to teachers, to white collar workers, blue collar workers, whatever it is. We see that AI companies, because they have such great inbound and word-of-mouth that can be accelerated, This is working quite well, although retention might not be the best. We see that vertical SaaS is working really well. For example, accounting and tax software or software where you manage your flights you rent out and things like that. These are probably the verticals that tend to work best, vertical SaaS and AI.
00:05:28 · Stefan Bader, Andres Figuera
[00:05:28] S0: Yeah, so there are some industries that tend to work better than others. I think we're quite industry agnostic from software is eating the world since a few decades, and you can see that we're offering software to companies, provide software to hairdressers, to construction workers, to teachers, to white collar workers, blue collar workers, whatever it is. We see that AI companies, because they have such great inbound and word-of-mouth that can be accelerated, This is working quite well, although retention might not be the best. We see that vertical SaaS is working really well. For example, accounting and tax software or software where you manage your flights you rent out and things like that. These are probably the verticals that tend to work best, vertical SaaS and AI. [00:06:17] S1: Okay. Okay. Stefan, another question I do have is, do you feel that you're working in a saturated market where there's competition? Or do you believe that you guys are set up or going to be the leaders of this, what's called it, this market in general?
00:06:17 · Andres Figuera, Stefan Bader
[00:06:17] S1: Okay. Okay. Stefan, another question I do have is, do you feel that you're working in a saturated market where there's competition? Or do you believe that you guys are set up or going to be the leaders of this, what's called it, this market in general? [00:06:31] S0: Yeah. So we're trying to build a horizontal platform with multiple products. And I think every product has a different competitive landscape. So for user referrals, which is the space probably we initiated or we started alone out of the need because there was nothing there, we're the leader in that market. When it comes to affiliate management software, there's a lot more competition and it's more like orange or red ocean where we have a lot more companies to share the market with. And then for the future products that will be shipped, for example, in Q1 and Q2 next year, the the situation will be, again, different. But these are then rather greenfield markets we're moving in. [00:07:10] S1: Okay. And when it comes to marketing this type of product, have you felt that you needed to, I don't know, create different campaigns? Does your competition have more budget than you guys? Like, how have you been able to market what you do properly?