316. Meet the CTO of the AI creator-led growth partner for top global brands w/ Sagar Shah | Tano

0:00Yeah, it's great to be on the show. My name is Sagar. I'm the co-founder and CTO of a startup called Tano. In essence, we're building this like creator-led growth engine for consumer brands. What that actually means is we're building a services company which uses influencers to do marketing on behalf of like consumer brands, like direct-to-consumer. You know, like some of our customers are like Skin and Me, Bloom and Wild, those sort of like type of brands where, you know, you might buy flowers for your mom or, you know, skincare for your girlfriend, that type of vibe. So you only started last year, right?

0:30Yeah, yeah, February.

0:31Amardeep Parmar:And there's some pretty big name clients already. Yeah. Talk us through that. How did you get those clients so quickly? So I think the most interesting story is probably our first two customers, which was Lovable and another company called Bolt. I know I mentioned we work with direct-to-consumer and they're not, but I feel as though when you're early stage, you almost take all the revenue you can get. So Lovable was fortunately one of my co-founders' previous colleagues who then worked at Lovable. So that was our entry point that way. The Bolt story, even more interesting because we were using AI agents in essence to reach out to influencers to basically work with Lovable.

1:05One of those influencers was the friend of the head of marketing at Bolt.new, which is a similar product to Lovable. And so the Bolt CMO was basically like, oh, who's this random Charlie guy? Because we name all our AI agents Charlie when we're reaching out. He went on the Lovable's LinkedIn page and said, oh, there's no Charlie working here. Then he realized it was us. And so our AI agent reaching out to a friend of the marketer at Bolt basically led us to get Bolt as a customer. Probably the most non-scalable way to acquire customers, but it worked for us, which is kind of insane.

1:39Amardeep Parmar:But even at the beginning, right? So you said you had an in with Loveable. To convince them to obviously take a chance on a new company, how did that work? What made the trust there? Is it just the previous relationship or how did you sell it? I think it was more like the excitement of what we were able to provide. I think conventionally, the solutions that people had to choose from is either they use the old school SaaS tools to do all the influence marketing themselves, and they have to do all the manual work, or they have to work with a really clunky agency that typically has high fees and is almost very black boxy, so you don't actually know what's going on.

2:11But we provided this third middle layer where we actually do all the work, but all the work is also super transparent because it's all in the tech and it's all in a SaaS product. But the SaaS product is merely a reporting page and not like something that the customer would have to actually come in and do stuff in. And because we were saying we're going to do this all with AI agents, Lovable being a company that helps people build websites and stuff without needing engineers, I think they found that really exciting. We're like, yeah, let's pair with these guys to work on it. And then what made you kind of now prioritize DTC?

2:44So what we discovered when working with those customers specifically, that it's much harder to generate sales through influencers purely because of the types of product they're selling. I say that, but we also do work with companies like Granola today. So it really depends on the type of product and the way you're marketing. So back in the lovable era, we were purely just doing an affiliate play. With Granola, we're actually doing paid influencer marketing. So our agents actually negotiate on prices and contracts, which we didn't have the capability back then, but we do now. So that works. But the main reason we're doing D2C is because they're the type of customers who really care about driving down their cost per acquisition.

3:23An influencer is like a great channel to help them do that. And so if they can do it at scale with agents, then it's super cool for them. So obviously, you've got some background in this beforehand, your team has.

3:31Amardeep Parmar:What made you, like, where did this come from? Like, what made you build this? Yeah, so I guess I, instead of coming from the marketing side, I came from the influencer side. So when I was at university and my early few years working as a software engineer, I had my own YouTube channel. So I talked about tech and so on and grew that to a few thousand subscribers. And so I knew the influencer space from doing brand deals as the influencer. And so combining that with my skills of building AI agents at the previous startup I was at, I was like, okay, this makes sense to do. And funnily enough, my co-founder journey of how I met Will, my current co-founder, was that he saw a TikTok of mine, reached out on Instagram.

4:09And that's how we met each other, which was in September 2024. And so it was very like social media focused company from the get go. Did he reach out to you to build a company or was it just general? It was so he was exploring stuff on his side because he had a sister who had a social media channel. And so he was helping her with that. and he was already working at like an AI startup but mostly focusing on the sales, go-to-market side. So he kind of knew the space from that angle and we were both like, we both wanted to start a company in this content creator space, didn't really know what. So it was very much like, you know, how you would typically go on a date with someone but it was like that but with co-founders.

4:47And so that's the way in which we met and sort of started Tano.

4:51Amardeep Parmar:And what do you think makes relationship work? We have like different skill sets that don't overlap completely. I think, I guess like with any startup, you start with the minimum number of people who can actually start the company. And so me having a technical background and having knowledge from the influencer side and Will having the go-to-market and sales background, it's kind of like you have the inventor archetype and the, I guess, the salesman entrepreneur archetype. And both of those combined makes a great founding team. You did work at a startup before, right? Yeah. But working at a kind of smaller company like that really helped you in Newman's Boudreau.

5:28Amardeep Parmar:Yeah. And what were some of the kind of harsh adjustments to going from being an employee to now being a founder? Yeah. So if I actually like I tracked my whole career since I graduated and optimized it to become a founder. So I started out. So I graduated in Sheffield and was like, OK, I need to move to London because that's where everything is. So instead of trying to find like the most highest paying job in London or trying to make it hard for myself, I was like, OK, I'll just join like a large consulting firm. And so I joined Accenture as a software engineer. Pay was horrendous when I started.

6:02I don't know how I survived, but I think that was my in to London. And so I managed to get myself into London. I only stayed there for like a year and then I moved to a scale up, spent a couple of years there, then moved to a really early stage where I was the second founding engineer. And that was where I truly learned and realized that I could actually just build my own startup at this point. I felt like I was confident enough, had the skill, and also had the industry knowledge as well to know, okay, this is how I can go and build my own thing. And I think I charted it to optimize for different things at different stages.

6:36So Accenture was being able to live in London, move here, just get the feel of what it's like working in general. then the scale-up was okay like how how can I see startups grow at that middle phase when they're going from like really nothing to something and also still have the support system to become a better engineer and then this really early stage was okay like now I can actually build with AI learn the latest tech that's available also see what it's like to be in super early stage and then I was like okay with all those skills combined I was like yeah now I'm set to do my own thing. So it was very much a directed trajectory I had to become a founder.

7:12That's

7:12Amardeep Parmar:interesting because I think a lot of founders I know, they're almost like accidental ones, right? They didn't plan out in that way. What made you know so young that this is the path you need to say? I think it was just like, I know I wanted to do something ambitious and I feel as though being an entrepreneur is definitely like one of the most ambitious things you can do, especially if you're successful. I think there's also like that allure of like, I want to do something that most people can't achieve it, if that makes sense. It's kind of like the doing something that's hard to get because it is hard to get.

7:45And I think that definitely drives me. I know when I was younger, my motivation was to become an astronaut. That's actually why I ended up going to study aerospace engineering at university. And I feel as though the thread of wanting to accomplish and do hard things has always been there. The goals probably changed here and there, but I feel as though for the broad strokes, that's why entrepreneurship definitely attracted me.

8:08Amardeep Parmar:I think as well, so I'd say there's two reasons to come to entrepreneurship, right? If you're obsessed with a problem and that's where you really want to solve it, or you're obsessed with solving a problem, right? And it feels like you've got that part of you where it's just like, you just really enjoy the actual process of doing something that's hard. And I think a lot of founders actually like that and then sometimes as things scale out then like everything changes a bit but that bit about like having to enjoy that hardship if you don't really have that gene in your you don't have that way of thinking i think it's gonna be a really tough journey right for sure i was also going to say like on like it's it's inevitable that you'll pivot as well early on so i think being hung up on the core problem is is not always a good thing i mean it's always great if you are passionate about like an in into building a company but ultimately you might end up having to solve a different problem and so I think the the ability for you to actually care about solving problems rather than the problem itself is probably more important because you're more likely to build a successful company if you after talking to customers focus on their actual problem and not what you just want to solve and I think that's some some some mistakes founders make in a sense of like they have their hypothesis, but don't truly verify like, is this the biggest pain point that customers have?

9:21And often you have to detach from your original idea and then latch onto this new thing and realize, okay, this is what I need to build a solution for. Is there any pivots you've had to make so far with Tenet? There's been a few different ones. I think from broad strokes, we know that these brands obviously want to use influencers to generate like more revenue. There's definitely been pivots from the perspective we started off with, let's maybe build a SaaS tool for these people to use and realize, okay, maybe it makes more sense if we operate as a services company because we get revenue through the door quicker.

9:48So there's a few pivots like that. And even now today, as we speak, we're still exploring, okay, what is the core pain points we need to solve for these companies that we could productize and scale the company that way?

9:59Amardeep Parmar:And when you say influencers, is it mainly focused on, say, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or tell me a bit more about who you're targeting there? Yeah, mostly it's those three. Short form content is the more specific side, just mainly because that's the most popular that these brands want to work with. And we've seen like better results with short form, especially for the type of companies we work for. There are some brands that we do long form YouTube videos, but again, that's a whole different game in itself. Some of the hard parts with what we're doing is because we're operating as a services company with the tech behind, there's almost an infinite way to run these campaigns.

10:32So we have to build a product to be able to handle all these infinite directions, which is pretty cool because you couldn't have done that like a few years ago, LLMs have almost unlocked the ability to build these almost dynamic pieces of software that you don't need to predefine every workflow or every way something is done. It almost figures itself out. And so I think that's pretty insane. I'm in this space myself, right?

10:54Amardeep Parmar:So I'm constantly listening to what's going on in the industry and how trends are changing. And so one little series I've set myself recently. So I do like a daily video, which is completely unscripted, one take only, and the idea is, like you said, it's hard because now they are you can edit things really easily. So I want to do it where I put myself in hard mode, even though I could make it better with other stuff, I'm gonna do it the hard way anyway. And part of that is looking at what's defensible now, right? In terms of influencers and that style. How are you seeing that on your back end of which influences are really making an impact for the companies you're working with?

11:30Amardeep Parmar:And is that changing or has that been quite consistent. Yeah, it's such an interesting one to look at because we run affiliate programs for some of these brands. And it's such a power law when you look at like which affiliates drive the most revenue. And I was actually whiteboarding this out on Sunday the other day. I was like, let's look at all our data and see what everything says. And it's like, for all these affiliate programs we run, about 50 % of the affiliates who actually drive revenue capture 80 % of the actual revenue. And so I think it's kind of like for us internally, it's like the challenge of, okay, how do we get to a point where we identify these high revenue drivers and use the data we have to understand how we can try and get some of the long tail into that select group.

12:13And through that, we have to analyze their content, see what are the common features that causes content to actually generate sales. And again, for the different types of campaigns we're running, there's like so many different optimizations. Some people want content that performs well through paid spend. Some people want it to convert through the affiliate program. Some people just want it to go viral for brand awareness. And so you're always adapting to very different goals and so on.

12:40Amardeep Parmar:And it's interesting too with AI because obviously some people are now trying to explore doing that purely AI content or AI influencer content. And my opinion that's probably unqualified is that it's going to be harder to get people to buy from something that's purely AI generated because part of it is trust. Yeah. And when you're working with an influencer, if the audience trusts them, that's what's going to make them buy. Yeah. As opposed to how jazzy the video is, right? And how are you seeing that right now? Are you seeing customers ask you about that or exploring that? So we actually ran the AI influencers as a test, like really early on.

13:12There was a startup called Convergence. They actually got acquired by Salesforce and we were trying to experiment with these AI influencers probably about a year ago. at the time, they didn't really work out that great. On TikTok, they got about less than 300 views each, which was horrendous for TikTok standard. And yeah, it's like the way we see it is we're positioned to capitalize on whichever direction the market decides to take. One, because we'll have all the data to know what type of influencers do convert. And so in a world where anyone can prompt anything to create the ideal influencer, we'll have the data to know exactly what to prompt.

13:48So we're in a position where we could do both. I think it's probably going to happen at some point where like AI influencers can create like conversions. And I think you kind of see like elements of that, especially when you look at TikTok, when almost a nobody can become famous and drive conversions because of the way TikTok's algorithm works. It's like you don't have to have a relationship with that creator, but maybe their content causes you to convert. Then I don't see why AI influencers can't infiltrate that side of things.

14:21Amardeep Parmar:And like Azure building as well, right? So you're building a space that's obviously hyper-competitive. I'm guessing there's other people who maybe had the same idea or similar ideas. What's making you guys win? I think it's, the biggest thing is because of the team's experience in building these types of tools, as well as our reputation with our customers, that definitely helps. I think the other thing is it's not a really easy thing to build. I think that there's a lot of elements where it's not like you can just vibe up a SaaS tool. I think there's a lot of pure like app SaaS layer startups that exist today which have a very thin I guess defensibility around them but because we're building a company that actually does the work and we're we're almost held to the output of our work not like just does it do the work I think it's a very different amount of optimization you have to do and there's a lot more like I guess difficult trade-offs you have to make and and things to build to actually know okay are you actually doing a good job for the customer or are you just spitting out content and it doesn't actually do anything?

15:22Amardeep Parmar:Hello, hello. I hope you've enjoyed the show so far. I'm Amadeep Parma, co-founder of BayHQ and the host of this show. For those of you who don't know, BayHQ is the community for high growth Asian heritage founders and investors in the UK. Over 7 ,500 people have attended our events, 200 people have been for our impact programs, and obviously it's been over 250 episodes of this podcast. If you want to join us and take part in the program and come to the events, go to behihq.com forward slash join. We also just released our first ever book called Startups for Outsiders, which you can get on Amazon now and the link is in the bio.

16:03Amardeep Parmar:Hope to see you soon at our event. Hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. Because I know like from our own program, people who had ideas was, okay, we're going to like make influencer marketing more effective, right? But they haven't really had, as you said, the background to have to make that. So they'll say like, oh, this is the idea, this is the problem. And I think with any founder Isaac, sometimes identifying the problem is one thing, but really having that problem founder fit is the fit that a lot of people don't really realize. And like, as you're kind of going through this as well, like, have you grown on the team?

16:32Amardeep Parmar:What's your kind of thinking around growing your own team? Yeah, yeah. So right now we're up to about eight people in total. And we brought in experts who've done this as a job as well before. And it's kind of interesting to see because they used to be the people who execute on these campaigns. Sure, they thought high level, but like now they're almost only thinking high level because all the execution is done by these AI agents. And so from their perspective, this is like so game changing and the ability that they can feed into product and engineering and say like, okay, this is how we should do things in terms of like the processes.

17:04And this is like the data we should capture. They would have done that already, but they do it through spreadsheets and just, you know, manual processes. And now they can influence, okay, how can we automate that? That makes the biggest difference. So we're looking at our team of like, okay, how can we build with the experts who can build the tech and the experts who've done this as a main job before? So we have like both sides, as you said. Do you also function like a marketplace? Are you having to find the influencers yourself or how does that element of it work? Yeah. So, we find influencers, but we don't, there's no concept of them signing up to our platform.

17:34The only interface they get is through emails. And so from that perspective, you don't have the friction of all these other normal marketplace tools for influencer marketing because they have to do their own marketing to get influencers to sign up and then also do the other side to get brands to sign up. And we almost skip out one of those sides because we're like, okay, with agents, we can just access whoever we want to. We just have to get the brands to sign up and be like, okay, we can run whatever you want to run. And so it makes it a lot more of an easier process to acquire customers without having to worry about this two-sided dynamic that you have to sort of like grow at the same time.

18:07Amardeep Parmar:Was it a conscious decision or how did you come to that kind of way of thinking? We were just like, these influencer marketplaces, they don't do that well because of the cold start problem. And we were like, now we don't really need them to sign up because we can just go out to them. So it's like, it didn't make any sense to build that side of the platform yet anyway. And how important would you say that the network side of things is for you? Like, because you've named some big companies, is that a big part of you getting other companies? or is it kind of each one is in its own individual? Yeah, I would say it has been.

18:37I think that's one of the areas where we're at now, where I think we've benefited from this network effect with companies that we worked at. We also make a conscious effort to go and visit the companies in person as well. They always find that makes a big difference and we always feel like we can understand them better as well by being in person. So we often go to the Skin and Meat office or the Blooming Wild office and even the Granola office as well. And so we go to all these offices and benefit is they're all in London. So super convenient. There are a few that have been further afield that some of the team have gone to, but it's one of the things that we think that we can differentiate on is if we can automate all the execution and so on, we can spend more time with the customers and actually build a relationship to make them more stickier to us and also help us understand their issues more.

19:22And so we can, you know, run their campaigns without any issues in that sense. So you said a lot of companies are in London, but I guess platform-wise it probably works for everybody anywhere, right? Yeah. So in terms of the influencers, they can live wherever they want. So our influencers have communicated in like German, Spanish, Italian, like whichever language that you're marketing for. We have the ability to now have a team, which is the agents that don't have to have any specific language skills. It just works out the back.

19:48Amardeep Parmar:And how are you thinking about, I guess, working with other companies in other countries as well? Because I imagine a huge amount of the DTT spend is probably stateside. Yeah. So we're trying to look at customers from the US. We have a few right now. I think it's always challenging trying to reach out to US customers from the UK. But my co-friend has spent time in the US as well just to do some of that initial scoping out to see what's around there. And so there could be a potential. We can expand in the US as well from a team perspective. But I think maybe spending more time in the US physically and splitting the time is probably the way to go initially.

20:25If you do want to break into the US, you have to have some foothold there. And I think it's been seen by all companies that whenever they do want to go out to the US, they have to have presence there. Otherwise, you don't really get the traction you need. But equally, the UK and the European market is massive as well. And so, you know, sometimes we can see it as a way like we can use the UK and the UK and Europe market to test things out before you have like a product that meets the US bar. Because typically, I think sometimes you see startups that go to the US too early. and and so sometimes that traction is lost so it's like better to spend your time here first trying to get to a level where then you can take it to the US and you're like okay we're good to go let's let's scale.