Moooore 😋

It's time for builders #51

My kid Marco is famous for his appetite.

It’s never enough.

Sweet or savory, warm or cold, from any veggie to pizzas and cakes - he wants it all.

His signature pose is lifting his clothes and showing his big belly.

With big pride, of course.

If he’s going to be like that in business, he’ll make a great entrepreneur.

It might sound like a joke, but yesterday Leonardo, one of our most promising SDR interns, told me something similar.

“What I love about Cato is that everyone wants more all the time - you ship a big feature, you close a major client, and after a few moments you’re like, ok, what’s next, how do I push harder tomorrow?”

Things are going well, but we want to take it to the next level.

There are two key ingredients to it.

1) The bets

Right now, we can grow in five directions.

• noisier: test marketing and GTM on more channels, such as SEO and fairs - we’re going to be at Exposanità later this month, for example;

• broader: expand to more sectors (this week we signed the first construction company) and to more functions within a company, especially salespeople;

• faster: try partnerships with different types of actors;

• higher: go upmarket and sell to enterprises;

• deeper: build features that lead to automatic upsells for our heavy users (e.g., a credit-based system for the agentic chat; connection with insurance providers specialized in public tenders).

2) The owners

Our founding team covers all key functions across the funnel, from hearing about us to getting a lot of value.

• Simone makes us known

• Saul identifies the right clients

• Matteo leads the charge in reaching out to them

• Andrea closes them

• Francesca onboards and manages them

• Nicolas refines and optimizes the UX/UI of our core features

• Giovanni makes sure the whole system is solid, fast, and secure

This is an abstraction - in reality, all tech people are full-stack, and Matteo and I are pretty active in the funnel.

But it’s important to know that all our initial hires are top-class in their respective areas.

This means they can take care of the “business as usual”.

Doubling down on what’s working.

Independently, with clear ownership.

And so I can focus on leveraging them for the different bets I listed above.

Like Andrea (Menny) and Matteo (Mengy) are taking care of going broader, while Matteo (Bossy) and I (Zorzy) work on the credit system, and I (Zorzy) on enterprises.

Clearly defining ownership and expectations solves most of the chaos that comes with fast growth.

Let’s celebrate together 🥳

Next Tuesday, Cato is going out of stealth and announcing our pre-seed round.

On Wednesday, the day after, we’re going to host an event followed by an aperitivo in our office - at Plug and Play near the Duomo.

Thanks for supporting me by reading this newsletter over the past year.

You did contribute to the journey.

So you are more than welcome to join.

Be ready to fight with my son over the refreshments.

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