Casestudy
How Tavus cracked the Holy Grail of marketing and landed $6.1MM of seed funding w/ Sequoia
Client
Ok, thought exercise
Think of a Loom video. Think of how long it takes:
Dressing up, getting the lighting right, checking for nose hairs (or maybe that's just us)... and then when you're fiiiiiiiiiiiinnally recording, you have to start the whole thing over because a dog barks in the background. Uhhh.
Got that picture in your head?
Good.
Now imagine you don't just have to record one Loom video, but fifty Loom videos, every day, for the rest of your life. Miserable, isn't it? But such is the struggle of salespeople, real estate guys, and desperate startup founders trying to fill their sales pipeline.
Ok, now let's take you to your happy place:
In this magical realm, three ex-FAANG engineers have made it possible for you to dress up and record a Loom video one time, then clone this video an infinite number of times but with variables to personalize each one for your prospects. In said parallel universe, you now have so much free time you're thinking you might start playing golf.
Sounds neat, huh?
Well, funnily enough, that's exactly what Quinn Favret, Risadh Dhar and Hassaan Raza have made possible with their startup, Tavus. Think hyper-personalized lead-gen, but on steroids, thanks to customizable, AI-generated, talking-head videos that're so realistic nobody will ever know.
How to sell cutting-edge tech to non-technical people
So here's Tavus, having invented the Holy Grail of marketing, but with a problem:
How do you sell cutting-edge AI tech to people who are completely non-technical?
(This was before ChatGPT made AI mainstream).
The answer: design. Specifically, a crystal clear landing page to sell the value proposition, and super simple interfaces to make using the tech a breeze.
Pre-DesignMatch struggles
To execute the design, Tavus first went with a design agency. Alas, while they provided great visuals, they didn't have the UX thinking the AI-tech required, forcing Tavus to hire a freelancer. As it turned out, he didn't even speak English. (Think Looms are bad? Wait till you see Looms ft. Google Translate).
The result?
A landing page that didn't do their product justice, an interface that left prospects scratching their heads, and mucho time & runway burned.
And that's when Tavus came to us.
The Matching Criteria
(1) A design ‘vet’
who’d lead the project from start to finish
(2) Hi-tech UX skills
to translate Tavus’s high-tech cutting edge Ai cloning into interface non-tech types would “get” first time around
(3) A fit for Tavus’s team
who moved fast, love data, thought big but didn’t take themselves too seriously
The Match
We matched Tavus with four great designers. After watching the pre-interview videos on their profiles, one “clicked”, and in just 6 days Tavus had their hire: an experienced product designer who’d designed for one of the largest health tech companies in Canada.
Tavus weren’t quite ready to take on a full-time designer, so they started on a quarter time retainer of 10 hours per week.
Time to hire
The design he delivered
(in less than 6 weeks)
A landing page that speaks to salespeople
Gone is technical jargon & imagery that lay people don’t understand. “In” is design that communicates Tavus’s main value prop: the Holy Grail of lead-gen that doesn’t require a rocket-science degree to use.
Silky smooth onboarding frames
…that teach prospects how to use Tavus, without slowing them down and killing the conversion.
First, create your digital twin and generate a video with the template message you want to share
An interface a 5-year old could use
…so that every prospect who made it this far in the funnel could make their lead-gen dreams come true in a few simple clicks.
What the design did for Tavus
Raised $6.1MM in seed funding led by Sequoia
With the revamped design, Tavus was able to raise a massive $6.1MM in seed funding in a round led by Sequoia at the end of Y-combinator.
Landed Google & Salesforce as clients
Obviously, we can’t take all the credit - Tavus’s tech is the best in the world, after all - but we’d like to think our designer helped.
Where Tavus is now
Raised in Series A round (led by Scale Venture Partners)
Quinn, Risadh and Hassaan named in Forbes 30 U 30
Growth rate
Monthly Site Visits
How much Tavus saved with Design Match
7 hrs
Reviewing
portfolios
5 hrs
Interviewing
candidates
12K USD
Paying
recruiters
1,8K USD
National payment compliance
A truly dreadful idea?
Hit the blue button
(it almost never bites)
Type in your goal
MVP, PMF, pitch deck, you name it
Get a shortlist of A-list designers to get you there
in 2 minutes most
Zero commitment, and it won't cost a peso.