In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Steven Nelemans, the CEO of Luna.ai, to delve into the intriguing story and vision behind Luna’s groundbreaking AI-driven sales platform. Join
WebsitePlanet as we uncover the inspiration that led to the creation of Luna.ai and explore how this innovative platform is revolutionizing the world of outbound sales. Steven Nelemans, the driving force behind Luna, provides unique insights into the company’s mission, services, and its place in the ever-evolving landscape of AI technology in sales.
Please describe the story behind Luna.ai. What sparked the idea, and how has it evolved so far?
With my co-founders, we established a Digital Sales agency a few years ago. Through this agency, we assisted over 100 startups in finding product-market fit and developing scalable growth strategies. During our tenure at this agency, we experimented with numerous SaaS tools available in the market. However, none of these tools effectively addressed the needs of these startups. We were aware that many business owners and salespeople were actively seeking a solution to their challenges.
They were constantly trying to strike a balance between personalized and automated outreach. Personalized outreach required substantial manual research, taking between 20-30 minutes per outreach, while automated outreach involved sending template messages to 1,000 people with the hope of receiving a positive response. It was either one extreme or the other for years, until we discovered the potential of Generative AI. This pivotal moment convinced us that we no longer needed to compromise; we could create a new platform that offered the best of both worlds.
What is the mission of Luna.ai?
Our mission is to level the playing field for companies with innovative ideas. In today’s landscape, bringing a product to market often demands a growing sales team and an array of costly sales tools. Luna.ai is in the process of developing an AI-powered platform that will manage every stage of the sales funnel. This platform essentially serves as an AI salesperson, making the sales process highly scalable and autonomous.
What services do you offer?
Luna.ai is an all-in-one B2B outbound sales platform that leverages AI to discover millions of verified leads, extract information from company websites, social profiles, and news events, and craft highly effective cold emails. Luna.ai’s proprietary LLM has been trained based on input from thousands of sales professionals, eliminating the need for generic opening lines like “I hope this email finds you well.”
Luna.ai operates as a proactive platform, meaning that you train the AI to compose emails in your style by providing feedback on its suggestions. Once Luna.ai is confident that it can mimic your behavior and preferences, you can activate Autonomous Mode, where Luna.ai will reach out to highly targeted prospects on your behalf. It essentially becomes your personal AI Sales Development Representative (SDR)!
What sets you apart from other similar companies?
The market Luna.ai operates in is highly competitive, especially since the emergence of ChatGPT. However, many of these companies fail to truly understand the needs of their customers. Simply having AI generate emails is not enough to provide added value, as access to Generative AI has become commonplace.
That’s why, from the inception of Luna.ai over two years ago, we’ve been dedicated to training Luna.ai to handle all top-of-funnel tasks for our customers. Instead of merely supporting SDRs in their prospecting efforts, we’ve been building technology that can take full responsibility for lead generation. This approach has shaped Luna.ai into the all-in-one solution it is today, with top-of-funnel activities being just the beginning.
Who are your typical customers, and what main challenge does your product address for them?
Our typical customers are innovative tech companies, particularly SaaS companies, that develop excellent products capable of solving real problems. However, to bring these products to their customers, they require sizable sales teams engaged in manual and repetitive tasks. SDRs spend their time researching hundreds of companies each week and crafting numerous customized emails, which can be tedious and contributes to low job satisfaction.
Luna.ai can assist these SDRs and their employers by providing AI SDRs that handle all top-of-funnel work. These AI SDRs can be scaled infinitely, allowing their human counterparts to shift their focus towards qualifying customers and guiding them through the sales funnel, which is more rewarding work.
How do you envision the future of your industry?
We anticipate that AI will have a substantial impact on our industry. Generative AI, exemplified by ChatGPT, is proving to be a game-changing technology that simplifies the design of software platforms, making them more user-friendly and functional. ChatGPT is leading this transformative change, with no other software platform in the world offering as much functionality and ease of use.
Furthermore, Generative AI will enable companies to employ AI alongside human employees. This will not only reshape the work performed by human employees but also impact the companies themselves. As operational responsibilities are delegated to AI, companies can allocate more capacity to growth and innovation, marking a significant shift in the industry’s landscape.
