Chema Sanroman, Kuona | Selling Artificial Intelligence to Large Companies: MVP, Value and Pricing

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

Successes are like icebergs. Everyone sees them and says “wow, they came out of nowhere” without seeing that under the surface there are years of hard work to get there.

This is the case of today’s guest. Chema Sanroman cofounded Kuona in 2014 and, in the last 3 years, its growth has been explosive. But it would not have been possible without the previous 7 years of work.

Kuona is an artificial intelligence platform that lets large retail and consumer goods companies such as Oxxo and Coca-Cola optimize their prices, promotions, and product inventories.

In 2022, Kuona raised a 6 million dollar round from funds such as Cometa, Seaya Cathay Latam, and FEMSA Ventures.

Today, Chema and I talk about:

How to build a minimum viable product for corporate customers
How to sell software to large companies
How to show your customer the value of your solution
And pricing strategy and pilots, among other B2B sales lessons

I’ll leave you with this great interview with Chema Sanroman of Kuona.

Youtube Timestamps*

[01:30] - Intro to Kuona

How did Chema arrive in the fascinating world of startups?

Kuona is a case of “an overnight success is ten years in the making”.

In the last 3 years, the business has exploded in growth, but Chema literally started Kuona in 2014.

How does he keep his motivation?

The Kuona of today is a Software as a Service for consumer goods brands and retailers, but they started as a consumer app that let people get the best prices at the supermarket.

Chema has reflected that they took too long to pivot to the new model and that, if they had implemented it earlier, they could have saved time and capital.

What wrong decisions did he make in that pivot process that kept Kuona from finding Product Market Fit faster?

Before Kuona, the access to price information that existed through solutions such as Nielsen and Kantar was very unfriendly.

What is the problem Kuona solves? Who suffers it inside the corporates they serve? And how did they solve this problem before Kuona?

[14:27] - How to Build Products for Large Companies

Let’s talk about the origin of the product. Founders usually have a picture of the product in their heads, but launching straight into building software for large companies is risky because the sales cycles are longer and an MVP is not that “minimal” for a corporate:

What is the right way to approach “customer discovery”? How do they make sure they are talking to the right potential customer in the first place?

It is interesting when a large company has a problem so large that it is willing to open its doors and collaborate with a startup to build a solution for its problem.

What did the first version of the software look like? How much co-creation was there with these large companies?

On the tactics of how to co-create with these companies:

What kinds of questions did Chema ask them? How often did he show them an iteration of the product?

One of the advantages of selling B2B software is that it is relatively easier to estimate how much value the solution generates for the customer. For example, if the customer invests $10,000 a year in the software, but it saves the hours of 10 additional employees they would have to hire, or it saves them 5% of the budget of a given area.

What role does this concept play in their product development and sales process? How does it show up in their decisions?

[28:50] - Selling to Large Companies

In the first sales (or even conversations) with corporates, where the product is in the MVP phase, incomplete:

How important is price? How does Chema think about the balance between maximizing price and the probability of closing the customer?

The marginal cost of software is very low, which is incredible, but it also creates the dilemma of having too many alternatives for setting prices.

Beyond the first sales: what has he learned that could be useful for other founders who have not set their prices yet and who are thinking about their strategy?

Talking about go to market and positioning yourself as an expert.

What practical tips would Chema give a founder who is just starting out, to position themselves as an expert in their area?

Sometimes you have to sell to middle management instead of selling to the Chief Technology Officer.

What is Kuona’s go to market strategy? How do they reach their customers? What is their sales and marketing method?
How do they think about what impact marketing can have on enterprise B2B sales, and at what moment do you start doing it?
When they had an MVP and the partners were the salespeople, what experiments or tactics worked for them to close customers?

When you sell software to large companies, the “name of the game” is not necessarily customer count, but the ability to expand from pilots into large contracts. The expansion of Kuona’s contracts has been world class.

How much of that expansion do they attribute to Product Market Fit itself, versus their sales team’s ability to upsell?

Rafa: “Selling to revenue management. It is hard to sell them innovation. Chema’s ability to bring in people from CPGs or consultancies”.

What role does talent play in unlocking these contracts? Do they depend on a specific salesperson profile to scale your sales?

It is often recommended that one of the founders be the sales leader at the start.

How has Chema’s experience been? What percentage of his time did he spend selling at the start, and what percentage does he spend today?

[48:13] - Quick Questions

If Chema looks 10 years into the future and puts on his dreamer hat, what is the most extraordinary vision for Kuona?