Marketers of Technology
00:11:20 · Stefan Bader
[00:11:20] S0: Yeah. On the engineering side, it's probably what many companies out there try to do, lean in as much as possible. Most of the code is already written by AI. We're trying to get more and more into agentic coding where also the specs and basically the whole development process is completely handed off models and also agents like Devin. We're investing in tooling where we're also rethinking about like how the product architecture should look like in order to make it faster and make AI make faster sense of what they should be what one should be building. On the go to market side, we're trying to because we're a small team, we're trying to lean in as much as possible in any given category or department. So customer success for example, we're and support, we're managing all our customers in Slack next to Fin and email of course, But that gives you a pretty good playing ground to leverage LLMs in to assess the for example performance of the customers in our products and then feedback suggestions and updates in Slack directly. We're on the marketing side, content is obviously drafted by AI, making sure though it doesn't be it's not detected and it doesn't read and smell like AI written content, so there's a little bit of curation happening as well. Video production, all types of materials we're trying to do that. When it comes to outbound, we have a complete engine built around because we're quite industry agnostic, we're basically going through all G2 software categories step by step, enriching lists and then putting that into a sales sequencer, reaching out as many relevant people, especially via LinkedIn automatically. So if you have gotten any messages by us and now you know how it works, happy to get in touch. And then we have one of our colleagues based on The Philippines basically replying and booking meetings with our AEs. So quite a lean and energetic setup on the outbound side. Yeah, there's just so many things. I think we're getting a few percent points better each month and trying to do as much as we can but still keeping a certain quality bar which is important that it doesn't that you don't land in sloppland.
00:13:31 · Andres Figuera, Stefan Bader
[00:13:31] S1: It is man. And I really take away what you mentioned that you really need to curate and provide the AI with whatever it outputs to you or gives you as content or whatever it does. You need to make sure that you apply your own taste and make sure that it is aligned with the company's branding, with how you speak, and that it doesn't read or feel as AI just as you mentioned. Because whenever I receive, for example, a message via LinkedIn that I can clearly tell it was written with AI, it's like, I dismiss it quicker than I can read it. It's just that fast that you can notice it, that it really is a bit more counterproductive, even though with all the time you may save by using it. And Stefan, what does a customer's journey with you guys look like if they are interested and want to find out more to work with Cello, to use your services? Like how would that look for somebody that is looking to to what you provide? [00:14:18] S0: Yeah. You simply come to our website cello.so. We have a complete self serve process, you can get into the product, play around with it. If you are if that is something that is of interest of you, you just plug in our MCP into your coding tool, if it's like Cursor, Devin, Claude Code or whatever, and glue our system together with yours in pretty short time and then you go live. So it's I think AI is beautiful for infrastructure companies like us because it reduces that effort to integrate by quite a lot. Or you can just book a demo and talk to a real human that that helps you with anything.
00:14:18 · Stefan Bader, Andres Figuera
[00:14:18] S0: Yeah. You simply come to our website cello.so. We have a complete self serve process, you can get into the product, play around with it. If you are if that is something that is of interest of you, you just plug in our MCP into your coding tool, if it's like Cursor, Devin, Claude Code or whatever, and glue our system together with yours in pretty short time and then you go live. So it's I think AI is beautiful for infrastructure companies like us because it reduces that effort to integrate by quite a lot. Or you can just book a demo and talk to a real human that that helps you with anything. [00:14:56] S1: Amazing. Amazing. And, Stefan, as the CEO and co founder of Cello, what would you like to say you would be... You were able to accomplish towards the end of two thousand twenty six, which is only now two months away? Oh my goodness. It's flown by this year. [00:15:13] S0: Yeah. We have a lot... Invested a lot this year into making onboarding and integration as seamless and quick as possible because we understood that this is the biggest bottleneck for us to grow and for our customers to pick a tool up like ours and get going. Because usually you have, I don't know, head of growth, head of marketing or like an operator in these two departments that want to use us, but then there's always like the whoever has products that is protecting the roadmap and doesn't get you in if the ticket is large enough. And so we try to make the ticket as small as possible, it can enter any any any roadmap.
00:15:13 · Stefan Bader, Andres Figuera
[00:15:13] S0: Yeah. We have a lot... Invested a lot this year into making onboarding and integration as seamless and quick as possible because we understood that this is the biggest bottleneck for us to grow and for our customers to pick a tool up like ours and get going. Because usually you have, I don't know, head of growth, head of marketing or like an operator in these two departments that want to use us, but then there's always like the whoever has products that is protecting the roadmap and doesn't get you in if the ticket is large enough. And so we try to make the ticket as small as possible, it can enter any any any roadmap. [00:15:52] S1: Understood. Understood. And if you had to give a piece of advice to a entrepreneur who is co founding a company in the same style as Cello, or a CEO that is starting to work with a company in the same area as Cello, what would you tell them you think you... What would you like to tell them that you would have liked to known when you started?
00:15:52 · Andres Figuera, Stefan Bader
[00:15:52] S1: Understood. Understood. And if you had to give a piece of advice to a entrepreneur who is co founding a company in the same style as Cello, or a CEO that is starting to work with a company in the same area as Cello, what would you tell them you think you... What would you like to tell them that you would have liked to known when you started? [00:16:14] S0: AI pretty much changed the game. So many of the much of the old advice that you should probably not listen to. There are probably a few things we learned over the last like two ish years where AI coding became very relevant. So I think you need to manage your tech debt better than ever because the better your code base and the more clean and well written your code base is, the faster you can develop. I think you should think everything agentic and AI first. Instead of hiring humans, you should first of all try to see what's possible and then if you run into issues you should think about that as a second. Before that I think everyone was throwing bodies at problems and now if you're good in system thinking I think you can get a lot done with a smaller team. And therefore also the requirements to raise capital I think go down significantly. And yeah, just building software became so easy, so you should just build it, ship it, see what users say, iterate on it, and not waiting. I think now is the best time to build companies.
00:17:15 · Andres Figuera, Stefan Bader
[00:17:15] S1: It's true. No, and with this whole story that AI is gonna bring the biggest amount of single person, multi million dollar companies to rise up in this new day and age, I totally agree with what you're saying. People can find so many workarounds by being agentic, by finding the things that the AI can do for them instead of having to hire somebody and just have to, what's it called, just increase their recruitment budget. That is something that's gonna get lower each time, I believe. But I totally agree with what you're telling anybody who is listening to us. So just before I do let you go, Stefan, just wanted to say thank you so much, man, for your time, for telling us your story, and everything that's going on with Cello, and how you guys have worked through these four years that you've been active. Really appreciate it, man. [00:17:56] S0: Thanks, Andres. [00:17:58] S1: No. No problem at all. And to anybody who is here and listening to us, we appreciate you as well for hopping on these episodes to listen to the different personalities we're bringing on and learning about all the different industries that we are seeing. So with that said, have a good one.