Building a virtual sales manager. How the Ukrainian startup CostCare AI was launched

In our recurring Who Are These People segment, Vector offers founders an opportunity to discuss their projects, covering aspects such as their products, marketing strategies, monetisation, investments, and business plans. The focus this time is on CostCare AI, a Ukrainian startup whose B2B SaaS offering deploys AI-driven agents that serve as virtual employees across customers’ social media platforms.

Editor-in-chief Yuliia Tkach interviewed Paul Wachtel, CostCare AI’s CEO and co-founder, about the product’s features, promotions, investments, and plans.

Conception

CostCare AI has two co-founders:

• Paul Wachtel, CEO. A seasoned developer, Wachtel has 10 years of experience predominantly engaged in front-end and mobile app development with a focus on React and React Native technologies. Wachtel has a strong track record of successfully launching his own projects. He started working with Large Language Models in 2022, achieving Prompt Engineer certification in 2023.
• Andrii Varenyk, CTO. Having started programming in high school, he has accumulated over a decade of experience, most notably as a Staff Engineer at Lyft. His programming stack features Python, Go, PHP, Java, and JavaScript.

The founders met in 2022 at a party held in Creative States, a shared office space where they both worked. During that period, Paul worked for the US-based SaaS product MediaSilo alongside one of his own projects, while Andrii was at Lyft.

«Reflecting on my first encounter with Andrii, I remember: we were in the company of friends when a guy came over and said, “Hi! None of my team members showed up to the party; can I join you?” Then it struck me, Wow, what a peculiar guy, but I want to be able to do that, too!», — Paul recalls.

From that point on, Paul and Andrii grew closer and soon became friends. Over the course of two years, they shared their entrepreneurial insights and achievements, contemplating potential joint ventures, but their discussions did not lead to any progress until 2024. At that point, Paul was working on AI outsourcing, and Andrii had divested from his previous business and was looking for a new opportunity.

He encouraged Paul to participate in the project he was working on at the time — developing an AI agent for a client on Instagram. They clicked immediately, leading to the start of their full-fledged partnership: «We had experience working as an outsourcer, where we integrated AI into a variety of businesses. Having researched AI agents for quite some time, we concluded that the technology was functional, which motivated us to narrow our focus and create it as a product».

Work on the product officially kicked off in September 2023. The CostCare AI team has started its hiring process and are currently looking for a Python developer and a Prompt Engineer.

Product and audience

CostCare AI is a B2B SaaS product that deploys AI agents across clients’ social media pages to operateas virtual employees. The business integration process is currently taking place on the startup’s backend, as the team develops a user-friendly interface designed to enhance client interaction with the technology.

«To put it simply, we design a virtual sales manager that operates within clients’ social media pages, autonomously managing all aspects of the sales manager’s operational processes, namely:

• engagement with clients;
• interpreting the context to determine when and which data needs to be entered into the CRM;
• booking appointments for consultations;
• generating links for payments;
• reminding clients to make payments, among other tasks», — explains Wachtel.

At this stage, the startup is focused on achieving Product Market Fit, testing its working MVP in multiple niches to discover the one with the greatest promise.

«The social commerce market in which we operate is actively expanding in both North America and around the world. In 2023, the social commerce market in the U.S. was estimated to be valued at $913 billion, with expectations of a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31.6% to a total of $6 trillion by 2030.

The team has chosen not to disclose any traction figures.

The startup focuses on businesses that sell their products or services through social media platforms. According to the co-founder, their product tackles several challenges:

• Speed — «Humans simply cannot match the response time of AI».
• Competence — «Our solution can be trained to function like a top-tier sales manager. We can upload a volume of information that is beyond the capacity of human memory: scripts, business information, product descriptions, domain specifics, FAQs, etc. As a result, we develop a virtual manager that maintains the performance level of a top manager».
• Human factor — «In our communications with clients, we noticed that people often forget or confuse details when they are handling multiple client messages at once. They lose track of conversations, particularly in the evening when they are tired, and may deviate from their scripts».
• The hiring issue — «Hiring a competent manager can be challenging, but we are offering a dependable employee who is available 24/7».

Business model and marketing strategy

CostCare AI operates under a B2B SaaS model. At present, our monetisation strategy is structured as follows:

1. A one-time installation fee ranging from $1,000 to $1,500 covers the integration of technology into the client’s business: this involves training the model with business information and integrating it into a CRM and Instagram.
2. Once the installation is complete and the client completes their one-month free trial period, they will start paying a fixed subscription of $300 for access to the technology.

«We are currently looking to focus more narrowly on a single niche and eliminate the installation fee, given that the client profiles will largely be similar, which will lower the entry barrier for our product».

Investments

This January, the startup attracted its first $500,000 in angel investment. The founders did not provide details about their equity share nor the amount they personally invested into the business.

Plans

«Our strategy is to perfect our MVP, using this opportunity to gain a clearer insight into our clients’ needs. While we prefer not to disclose specific figures, our goal for the next six months is highly ambitious, and we anticipate exponential growth. Following that, we intend to expand into other markets, although the specific locations are still under consideration».