“AI will not replace sales, but will make it smarter, more efficient and more personal.”

The sale of complex products is often associated with high friction losses: missed calls, lack of context, and repetitive tasks slow down processes and customer experiences alike. This is exactly where telli comes in. The Berlin-based startup is developing a platform that combines artificial intelligence with telephony, messaging, and CRM integration to make customer engagement and qualification more efficient and personal – an approach that paved the way for telli to join the renowned Y Combinator (YC) in 2024. 

In this interview, Philipp Baumanns, CEO and co-founder of telli, talks about how the idea came about during his time at Enpal, Berlin's special role as a location for global expansion, and the international momentum generated by YC. He also explains how companies are already benefiting from features such as smart calling and stateful agents, what concerns he encounters regarding AI in sales, and what telli's long-term vision is.

Hello Philipp, telli has developed a telephone solution in which artificial intelligence automatically makes calls and assesses potential customers in advance. What motivated you to go down this particular route? And how do you think AI will change the sales process in the future?

The idea for telli came from our time at energy unicorn Enpal, where we built up the heat pump unit. The biggest challenge was selling and installing a complex product in a scalable way. This required collecting a lot of information about the house and the customer while also personalizing the process. We automated numerous steps – from subsidy applications and data collection to quotes. 

But as soon as discussions became necessary, massive inefficiencies arose: lack of context, missed calls, duplicate coordination. This led to the creation of telli: with AI automation throughout the entire customer journey, we enable customers to be addressed in a personalized manner and companies to easily scale processes – in the optimal combination of humans and AI on one platform.

With your AI-supported solution for telephone customer contact and qualification, you have already won over large companies such as Viessmann and McMakler. You use various channels such as telephone, SMS, and WhatsApp. How do you ensure that the conversations sound understandable, pleasant, and authentic to end users?

Even though customers know they are talking to an AI system, we have learned that conversations are most effective when the agent sounds human, intelligent, and friendly. Everyone knows the feeling of talking to a robot on hold with Lufthansa – it's never pleasant. 

With telli, we have developed a solution that combines telephony, modern speech and text models, and a simple interface. Building on this, we develop our own voices with professional voice actors who give the telli agents their personality. Depending on the application, we adapt the voice profiles to create the best possible experience – for example, understanding after an accident or clear and competent in a sales conversation.

As AI takes on more and more tasks in customer communication, the question of replacing human labor often arises. How do you deal with these concerns?

With telli, we aim to simplify customer processes, reduce the burden on companies, and make customer experiences more personal. We believe that this is best achieved when people and AI combine their respective strengths. 

In many projects, we see how AI, through constant availability or automated appointment booking, ensures that people have more time for what matters most: genuine, expert advice. This shifts the focus away from repetitive, laborious work and toward activities where empathy, expertise, and creativity count.

Only one to two percent of applicants make it into Y Combinator (YC), one of Silicon Valley's most prestigious startup accelerators. You've been part of it since fall 2024. What have you learned from this selection process and your time in the program so far – and how is YC changing your view of growth and internationalization?

YC places extreme importance on momentum. Revenue growth and the ability to pivot quickly are key success factors here. We were able to win our first customers with our product even before YC – and YC helped us maintain that momentum. 

The program creates positive pressure, primarily through clear goal setting and short iteration cycles. The exchange with other motivated founders and successful alumni accelerates this process enormously. For us, this has developed a mindset that there are actually no limits to our growth – an experience that is still incredibly helpful today.

With Y Combinator behind you, you are now focusing more on the international market. Why is Berlin the right place for you to build on this momentum and achieve global success?

We are highly motivated to build a global company from Berlin and see the right conditions here – such as excellent talent, our own network, and access to the entire European market. 

Berlin is currently experiencing a kind of AI comeback: more and more startups are building global products here. For us, it is therefore clear that our headquarters will always remain in Berlin. At the same time, it may well be that we will also internationalize our go-to-market strategy by sending parts of the team to the US on a temporary basis.

Berlin is a hub for AI and tech innovation. How has the Berlin tech scene influenced your corporate strategy?

telli would probably never have been created without Berlin. As the center of the German startup scene, the city attracts exceptional talent and ideas. Our founders worked here at companies such as Enpal, Pitch, and N26, where they not only learned about entrepreneurship, but also developed the original idea for telli. 

Berlin continues to be a decisive factor today: in addition to its diversity and quality of life, the city scores highly in terms of access to international talent – some team members moved here specifically for this reason. In addition, the Berlin Startup Grant, funded by the EU and the Senate, made it easier for us to get started.

Automating sales processes can greatly help companies increase their efficiency. How do you see the future of AI in sales?

We believe that AI will play an even more central role in sales in the coming years. It already takes a huge load off teams today, but in the future it will take over entire process steps and facilitate workflows that we can hardly imagine today. 

For telli, this means that we are continuously expanding our platform – for example, with new channels such as email, WhatsApp, and SMS, which are seamlessly connected to AI telephony. Our customers' human colleagues will also soon be able to make calls via the telli platform. In addition, we are developing tools that companies can use to systematically improve customer experiences and conversion rates.

Our goal is clear: AI will not replace sales, but will make it smarter, more efficient, and more personal – and empower people in the process.

Thank you very much for talking to us.