Ilan Cedillos

head of comms @uncorkcap. formerly ran comms at @segment, @attio.

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

@gregschoeninger @uncorkcap @Bandrew @amy @jeff would love to! just sent you a DM 👍

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

Very happy to share that I've joined @uncorkcap as their new Head of Communications!

I'll be working directly with our founders on how they tell their story to the world and also building the Uncork brand.

Grateful to @Bandrew @amy @jeff and the whole Uncork team. LFG!

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

@Bandrew @Bandrew 🚀🚀🚀

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

We just shipped the biggest product update in the history of @attio, and it's a complete shift in how CRMs work.

CRM has always been a system you maintain: you put data in, you read it, you figure out what matters, and then *you* take action. You basically act as the LLM.

Now, the CRM does all of that for you. Ask Attio is our conversational AI layer that understands your entire business in real-time - calls, emails, product data, everything - and then can actually act on it for you.

It sounds simple, but the implications are huge. A 10-person team can operate like a 50-person team. An early-stage founder doing sales alone can stay on top of everything.

This is the start of something bigger, way beyond just productivity.

When your CRM has full context and can take action autonomously on your behalf, the way you run your GTM changes completely.

"That would be impossible" becomes "Just ask Attio."

Ask Attio is live. Start using it today: https://t.co/we2YSVpIge

[Nicolas Sharp @nicolasosharp]

Today we're launching Ask Attio, and it's one of the biggest moments in our company's history.

When we founded Attio, we made a big bet that CRM needed to be rebuilt around unstructured data. Not structured fields or rigid schemas, but the messy reality of how GTM works.

Emails, calls, relationships, all the context that actually brings you the most clarity to make your decisions. We believed all of that should be inside and accessible in your CRM.

This wasn't a popular idea at the time. In fact, dozens of VCs we talked to told us we were wrong to even try. CRM was solved, so why bother?

But we kept building anyway. We spent three years building a data model and platform designed to hold the full context of how GTM teams actually operate and mold exactly to how your business works.

We call this Universal Context, and it's what makes Ask Attio possible.

Ask Attio is our new conversational AI layer that can reason over and act on everything in your CRM - emails, notes, calendars, product data, billing data, interactions, anything you've synced in.

You can understand what's happening across your entire business, search for anything, create and update records, trigger workflows and automations, all through conversation.

This is a fundamental shift in how CRM works. We used to input all our data, read everything, synthesize it, pull out what matters. Now, with Attio, your CRM does this for you at a massive scale. It pulls signal from the noise in ways that just weren't possible before, and acts on it with all that context.

Some of today's top GTM teams like @WisprFlow, @ListenLabs, @plainsupport, and @lightdash_devs are already using Ask Attio to unlock context across their entire business and act on it.

Ask Attio is live today. We can’t wait for you to try it: https://t.co/Yhn9aDYNK1

[Attio @attio]

Introducing Ask Attio.

A new way to work with your CRM. Search, update, and create across your entire CRM by asking. Surface call insights, draft follow-ups automatically, and get answers fast.

Powered by Universal Context, a unified intelligence layer native to Attio.

Now live: https://t.co/iCW1XoynGG

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

@ric0seq Made with Notepad 🫶

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

@WouterTeunissen @vladtenev @BaijuBhatt let's gooo!

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

@WouterTeunissen @eldsjal @MartinLorentzon Love it! You got this

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

@WouterTeunissen Love it! Let’s go! 🔥

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

London evening, customer relationship magic

@attio

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

Now showing: Attio x London.

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

@doctorbaytas @attio @alexjamesvale @nicolasosharp @dmytro_kondakov @milosboyk @rozazgiep @alex_krasikau @bb0rthwick congrats, you're killing it dude! we're lucky to have you.

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

@WouterTeunissen it's my mantra!

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

@nbaschez imo "the last piece of software" is actually a great mission statement for its intended audience: non-technical builders.

it's saying "we want to help you build infinitely without limits," which is bold and a great cause.

it's an ethos statement/posture to rally around.

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

A handwritten sign would’ve said more.

[simp 4 satoshi @iamgingertrash]

Text output from LLMs
Make human attention
Wane quickly

Often, Within the first
few seconds

There is no bot problem

Humans are developing
An immune response

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

Long-form podcasts might be the best way to tell your company’s story in its deepest and most human form.

With the right host, founders get space to show the true meaning behind what they're building, like you're in the room w/ them.

Enjoy this 2.5 hour masterclass 👇

[Wouter Teunissen @WouterTeunissen]

I sat down with @nicolasosharp, founder of Attio, to talk in depth about how his company is disrupting the $80 billion CRM market.

Attio has raised $116m, is 4x'ing ARR and is one of the fastest growing companies in Europe.

We talk about:

- Why Attio went against all conventional wisdom and spent years 3 years building the product before launching

- Why Attio doesn’t hire ‘Software Engineers’ and who they hire instead.

- How Attio chose investors who would back a long-term bet against multi-billion $ incumbents

- How Attio is building CRM from first principles for the AI era

-  Who should you avoid hiring at all costs, and who should you hire for your startup

And so much more. If you’re interested in learning about the story of how Nick built Attio into the incredible company it is today and is disrupting one of the most important software categories, you’re going to want to see this.

Enjoy // Timestamps

00:00 Intro
00:39 Why Attio spent 3 years building their product before launch
5:05 The Power of Building Systems, Not a Box of Features
9:05 How to know when it’s time to launch
13:30 Nick’s Playbook For a Killer Product Launch
18:09 How To Go From an Investor to a Founder
23:05 How Failure Led to Attio's Big Break
28:07 Why startups need to hire "Hidden Gems,"
34:05 Fundraising
49:36 Why Attio Invests In Inexperienced Talent
55:07 The Case For Not Hiring Software Engineers (& Who You Should Hire Instead)
1:02:46 The 8 Persona Hiring Framework
1:09:05 How Attio doesn’t use OKR's
1:27:11 Where does Nick's Ambition and Grit come from?
1:36:59 How Attio is Building CRM from First Principles for the AI era
1:45:29 How to Successfully Market In A Crowded Industry
1:51:10 Breaking Down Attio’s Viral Marketing Strategies
2:02:15 The Change That Had The Biggest Impact on Customer Conversion
2:05:04 Why Attio created A “Reverse Trial”
2:10:16 Why Nick is building from London, not Silicon Valley
2:22:48 The 10-Year Vision for Attio

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

we're building a generational product and company. come work with us!

[Nicolas Sharp @nicolasosharp]

Really excited to share that @attio has raised $52m in Series B funding, led by GV with participation from @Redpoint, @Balderton, @PointNineCap, and @01Advisors.

Over the past two years, we’ve seen rapid growth. 5,000 customers now run their GTM on Attio, including @lovable, @meetgranola, @modal, @replicate, @railway, and @public. We’re also on track to 4x ARR this year.

CRM is entering its most exciting era. AI is reinventing the interface, killing manual work, and finally capturing customer context in full. But that’s only half the story.

CRM isn’t just another tool. It should be the backbone of your GTM stack. If you want to scale, you need a CRM you can actually build on.

This is our vision for Attio. We’re building a true AI-native CRM platform that can run code, integrate anywhere, and give every team the freedom to build their own applications, functionality, and GTM systems. Fully programmable, endlessly extensible and built for scale.

If you can imagine it, you can build it.

Grateful to my co-founder @byteofbits, and to the support of our investors: @mcbmichael (joining our board), @alexbard, @wanderingvc, @ric0seq, and @dickc.

And most importantly, to our team, who’ve made all of this possible.

The journey is just beginning. Back to building.

[Ilan Cedillos @ilancedillos]

Three and a half years ago, I had a rule for myself: never work on CRM. The category felt broken.

Then I met @nicolasosharp, joined @attio, and everything changed.

Even three years ago, when it was in closed beta, I was truly blown away by the product and company.

Everything about Attio was against the grain:

- Instead of the typical early-stage playbook building an MVP and getting feedback, Attio was already two years in building out the data model first.

- Instead of just focusing on product marketing like most seed-stage companies, Attio also wanted to focus on brand and comms.

- And most important, the product was amazing. It was clear for me that Attio wasn’t just going to just be another another CRM. It was going to be a true platform.

So I took the leap. The early days were wild. I wore many hats and learned a lot along the way. A mix of scrappy early-stage resourcefulness and, paradoxically, patience.

Almost a year after joining, we finally launched publicly and announced our Series A at the same time.

Fast forward to today: we now just raised a $52M Series B, led by @GVteam with @Redpoint, @balderton, @PointNineCap and @01Advisors. We're building the AI-native CRM for the next generation of GTM.

Along the way we’ve grown to 5,000 customers, 4x ARR, with amazing AI leaders like @lovable, @meetgranola, @modal and @replicate building their GTM with us. And we’re still in early days!

We've come a long way and still have a long way to go.

If you want to help reinvent the largest category in SaaS and build the future of GTM, DM me - we're hiring!