‍Q: For those who may not be familiar with Crescendo, can you give us your elevator pitch? What’s the big idea behind the company?

Crescendo is an AI customer service company—but with a major difference. We don’t just provide the AI. We deliver the full-service outcome, including the humans in the loop, the infrastructure, the quality assurance, and the optimization. That allows us to reduce risk for clients, deliver a consistently high-quality experience, and do it all at a lower cost than if they built it themselves.

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Q: The customer service industry is crowded—legacy business process outsourcing firms (BPOs) on one side, and new AI-first startups on the other. How do you position Crescendo in that landscape?

I’ve run large customer service operations, and most tech vendors don’t appreciate just how complex it is. There are multiple systems, teams, and processes involved. Transforming that isn’t something most customer service leaders are resourced—or incentivized—to do.

What many AI vendors offer is a narrow slice: “Here’s a bot, go figure it out.” But the burden of integration, quality control, and ultimately ROI still sits with the client. With Crescendo, we take full accountability for the outcome. Our customers focus on designing great service experiences—we handle everything else, including AI, staffing, QA, and constant optimization.

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Q: How have you approached pricing and go-to-market?

Traditional customer service models charge by the seat, which creates a misalignment between cost and quality. We flipped that model. We charge for outcomes—only when there’s a resolved, successful customer interaction do our customers pay.

Because we use AI and human QA to monitor every interaction in real time, we know when we’ve delivered a great experience. And if the outcome isn’t up to standard, we don’t charge. That kind of alignment extends from our clients’ customers all the way to our internal teams.

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Q: You’re effectively offering a turnkey solution?

Exactly. We call it a “network operations center” for AI. We’ve done dozens of deployments already, and our systems constantly monitor performance to keep AI and human inputs in perfect sync. That allows us to go live in weeks, not months, and adapt quickly when models drift or use cases evolve. Clients often start small, and then quickly expand with us once they see how well it works.

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Q: What kinds of companies are best suited for Crescendo right now?

Our sweet spot is mid-market and smaller enterprise companies—those with enough complexity to need sophisticated support, but without the scale to invest heavily in AI transformation. Think mid-sized apparel brands, component manufacturers, or services companies. We’re also seeing strong uptake from enterprise clients who tried building AI solutions internally or with traditional vendors and got stuck. They turn to us to get things live, fast.

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We’re not just selling software—we’re inventing a new way to deliver customer service. There’s a sense of mission that makes this incredibly rewarding.

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Q: You’ve grown quickly in a short amount of time. What’s been your approach to scaling?

We’re growing both organically and through acquisition. Traditional BPOs typically operate with ~15% EBITDA margins and trade at around 1x revenue. When we acquire a BPO, we migrate their book of business onto our AI platform, increase gross margins to 60%+, and turn what was a commoditized service into a high-value offering.

‍PartnerHero was our first acquisition and a key part of getting to scale quickly. We had already built the core Crescendo platform. With PartnerHero, we added the people and delivery infrastructure needed to provide full-stack customer service.

Six months in, we’ve been migrating their customers to our platform, refining our playbooks, and learning what it takes to do this repeatedly. It’s been a great fit—helping us serve global clients and achieve enterprise-level maturity far faster than we could have alone.

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Q: What’s next for the product? Any recent breakthroughs or features you’re especially excited about?

We’re advancing fast in agentic AI—deploying scenario-specific agents that are safe, scalable, and highly effective. These agents are already live with some clients and producing great results. What’s different from many “agentic” solutions out there is that ours aren’t overly constrained or parameterized—we can automate more, faster.

That improves margins, speeds up delivery, and allows us to share cost savings with customers. We’re also continuing to invest heavily in infrastructure—ensuring low latency, enterprise-grade security, and fault tolerance.

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Q: What led you to co-found Crescendo?

I’ve spent many years in tech—client-server to internet, internet to SaaS. I helped scale Zendesk from its early days, ran product and M&A there. When LLMs emerged, I felt a new wave was coming. Around that time, when Anand and Andy reached out about Crescendo, it checked every box for me—big opportunity, category creation, the right people.

The energy inside the company today is electric. Several leaders on the team have already “made it” and could retire if they wanted. But they’re here because it’s stimulating, it’s hard, and it’s exciting. We’re not just selling software—we’re inventing a new way to deliver customer service. There’s a sense of mission that makes this incredibly rewarding.

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Q: How can investors be most helpful to a company like Crescendo at this stage?

Two things: pattern recognition and amplification. The best investors help us spot analogies to other category-creating companies. That helps us avoid landmines and see around corners.

Just as importantly, they help spread the word. Before the category exists, you need help evangelizing. Partnering with investors who actively support that mission is hugely valuable.

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Q: What advice would you give to other founders of early-stage companies?

I think one key thing is to be yourself. As a CEO, you’re not expected to be the expert in everything—you’re expected to bring the right experts together and steer the ship. I’ve been lucky to have incredible partners, advisors, and team members. For me, the joy is in tackling something new every day and learning through the process.

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Q: Any good books or podcasts on your list right now?

I’ve been reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, which is brilliant but definitely stretches my brain. Also reading Eleven Rings by Phil Jackson—our chairman Andy recommended it. It’s a great book on leadership and corralling talent toward a common goal, which definitely resonates.

As for music... my four-year-old has hijacked my Spotify algorithm, so let’s just say it’s eclectic!