- 01Embed inside the software your customer already uses daily
- 02Buy the exact trade language of your niche, not category jargon
- 03Give every integration its own landing page
- 04Lead paid creative with a trial, even when your real model is a sales quote
01 Snapshot
The one-glance read on who they are and how they grow. Each point is verifiable from the receipts above.
Voice AI that answers and manages phones for German Handwerker (skilled-trades businesses, specifically SHK: Sanitär-Heizung-Klima, or plumbing-heating-air-conditioning firms), launched via Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch.
Paid-search plus B2B software-integration-led, not founder-led or organic-social.
≈12,900 monthly visits (+1186.7% over the last 3 months) as of the observation snapshot, 7 of 8 Google ads active as of 2026-07-24 with a longest continuous run near 315 days, and 300+ SHK and electrical (Elektro) businesses as customers as of mid-2026.
Hey Telo's real distribution lever is getting embedded inside the trade-ERP software (pds, KWP, mfr) that Handwerker already run their business on every day, not a founder audience or a content engine.
02 How it unfolded
The order the channels came online. Sequence is strategy: what they did first, and what they layered on once demand existed.
03 Traffic & channel mix
Estimated demand, the channel split behind it, and the keywords and referrers doing the work. Directional modeling, not audited analytics.
Top search keywords
| Keyword | Volume | Weight | CPC |
|---|---|---|---|
| hey telo | 490 | - | |
| hey telo kwp | 480 | - | |
| telo | 6.1k | $0.57 | |
| allthethings gmbh | 180 | - | |
| hey carla | 170 | - |
The site draws roughly 12,900 estimated monthly visits, up 1186.7% over the last 3 months, though the evidence does not break that total down by channel, so no owned/paid/organic split can be stated without inventing numbers.
The keyword data instead shows what demand looks like. "Hey telo" (490 searches/month) and "hey telo kwp" (480 searches/month) are near-identical in volume, meaning the KWP trade-software integration has built its own branded-search pocket almost as large as the core brand name. "Telo" alone pulls 6,100 searches/month, but that is a generic term with meaning well beyond this company, so it is demand the brand is incidentally adjacent to, not demand for Hey Telo specifically. One more term rounds out the picture: "hey carla" (170/month), an unconfirmed similarly-named term that may be an adjacent voice-AI product searchers weigh against Hey Telo.
04 Channel map
Not traffic share. How much weight the growth system actually puts on each channel, with a one-line read on the role it plays.
What drove growth
05 The motions doing the work
For founder-led SaaS the breakdown shifts from ads to traction: where the first users came from, how the founder grows it in the open, and the compounding organic surface.
Hey Telo's traction traces to a mid-2025 pivot into voice AI, a Y Combinator batch, and a November 2025 embed inside an incumbent's software that put the product in front of a ready-made customer base.
The company's legal entity, Admyral Technologies GmbH, originally built an open-source cybersecurity and compliance-monitoring tool called Admyral before pivoting to the Hey Telo voice AI product in 2025 and joining Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch.
Seven of the company's eight Google ads launched within a two-week span from September 12 to September 26, 2025, an unusually fast paid-search buildout for a fresh pivot, with an eighth ad added February 9, 2026.
Dig deeper+2▾
pds GmbH announced on November 17, 2025 that it had integrated Hey Telo's AI phone assistant directly into pds's craftsman software, opening native access to pds's existing user base and giving the young product an instant embedded channel.
A hiring post cited 200+ Handwerker using the product daily with 40% month-over-month growth, and the company's own site now claims 300+ SHK and Elektro businesses as of mid-2026, suggesting continued expansion off that partner-plus-paid base.
There is no evidence of a founder-public audience-building motion here; Hey Telo's growth instead runs through B2B software integration partnerships and sustained paid search.
No verified X, LinkedIn, or Reddit posting activity for co-founder and CEO Christopher Grittner or his brother, co-founder and CTO Daniel M. Grittner, appears in the evidence, and the only sourced comment from Christopher Grittner sits in a partner blog post on pds's own site, not a personal channel.
In place of a personal audience, the company built formal integration status with pds, KWP, and mfr, three ERP platforms Handwerker already run daily, turning each partner's own marketing, like the pds reel demoing the integration, into borrowed reach.
Dig deeper+1▾
The brand's own Instagram sits at 88 followers across 11 posts averaging about 15 engagements each, confirming organic social is not where this company is investing.
The visible content motion is thin: a blog exists but nothing in the evidence shows it ranking or pulling traffic, so the real acquisition spend runs through paid search and partner integrations instead.
The site carries a blog, but no keyword-ranking or top-page data in the evidence shows it contributing to the ≈12,900 monthly visits, so it reads as a dormant or early-stage surface rather than a demonstrated engine.
That longest-running ad spans both branded terms ("Hey Telo") and category language, one ad reads "Hey Telo, die Telefon-KI für SHK Betriebe" (the phone AI for SHK businesses), a mix of brand defense and category demand generation.
Dig deeper+1▾
That near-brand-level "hey telo kwp" search volume shows a dedicated ERP-partner page can capture demand on its own, separate from the core brand term.
06 Paid ads
This founder-led SaaS also runs paid acquisition. Here are the live ads doing the work, each with the X-ray and a play you can adapt.
- Running
- 311 days (longevity = it's converting)
- Hook
- Visual: A man in a blue work uniform and cap, smiling and giving a thumbs-up, with copper pipes visible in the background. Text: "Hey Telo" and "heytelo.com".
- CTA / offer
- Website besuchen
- Audience
- Small business owners or managers in the home services industry, indicated by the image of a tradesperson and the benefits like 'Mitarbeiter entlasten' (relieve employees) and 'Erreichbarkeit erhöhen' (increase accessibility).
Why it works. Puts a real-looking tradesman in uniform with copper pipework front and center, so SHK business owners see themselves reflected before any pitch.
Visual of a relatable professional (plumber/tradesperson) giving a thumbs-up, positioned prominently on the left side of the ad. Shoot or source a photo of an actual worker from your buyer's trade, in their real setting, rather than a generic office stock photo.
07 The playbook
The channels are not separate. They are one system where each stage feeds the next. Here is the read, then the plays to run tomorrow.
The inferred playbook
The loop starts with a Google search ad or an ERP partner surfacing Hey Telo inside software a Handwerker already uses, then converts through a free trial or demo request rather than self-serve signup.
Paid Google search (7 active ads as of 2026-07-24) and partner channels like pds's own announcement and Instagram reel are the two attention sources visible in the evidence, not organic social or a founder audience.
Ad creative leads with "Gratis Testmonat sichern" (secure a free trial month) and "KI-Testzugriff anfordern" (request AI test access) rather than a self-serve checkout, consistent with a custom-quote pricing model that has no published price list.
Dig deeper+3▾
Each new ERP integration, pds live since November 2025 plus KWP and mfr, creates a durable, low-marginal-cost distribution surface inside software these businesses already run daily, unlike an ad that stops the moment spend stops.
There is no founder-public presence, no community, and no proven organic content engine to compound alongside the paid and partner channels, so growth leans on continued ad spend and partner goodwill rather than an owned audience.
published pricing tiers or per-business ARPU behind the custom-quote model, free-trial-to-paid conversion rate, blended customer acquisition cost against the active Google spend, and how the 300+ SHK and Elektro customers split between the pds/KWP/mfr integrations versus paid search.
Embed inside the software your customer already uses daily
The proofHey Telo became an official integration partner of three German trade-ERP platforms, and pds's own November 2025 announcement plus an Instagram reel put the product in front of pds's existing user base at no ad cost.
The adaptationFind the two or three platforms your target customer already logs into every day, a vertical ERP, a marketplace, a scheduling tool, and pitch a narrow, single-feature integration to that platform's partnerships contact, offering to co-write the launch announcement so their audience becomes your channel.
Cost: $0 · Time to signal: weeks · Works pre-PMF: conditional, requires a working single-feature integration to demo before a partner will agree to co-announce.
Buy the exact trade language of your niche, not category jargon
The proofHey Telo's longest-running Google ad, the 315-day run covered above, bids on niche phrasing like "die Telefon-KI für SHK Betriebe" instead of generic voice-AI terms.
The adaptationWrite a Google search ad using your own vertical's exact trade language, not broad category terms, pointing to a single free-trial landing page, and let it run untouched for at least a month, since a niche-language ad only proves itself once it outlasts the initial testing noise.
Cost: under $500 · Time to signal: weeks · Works pre-PMF: yes
Give every integration its own landing page
The proofThe KWP integration alone pulls about 480 monthly searches for "hey telo kwp," almost matching the 490 for the bare brand name.
The adaptationFor every platform you integrate with, publish a standalone page titled "[Your Product] for [Partner Name]" with a specific use case and screenshot, then submit it to that partner's own integrations directory if one exists, since search demand for a partner combination compounds separately from your core brand term.
Cost: $0 · Time to signal: weeks · Works pre-PMF: yes
Lead paid creative with a trial, even when your real model is a sales quote
The proofHey Telo's ads lead with "Gratis Testmonat sichern" (secure your free trial month) and "KI-Testzugriff anfordern" (request AI test access), even though its actual pricing is a custom quote with no published price list.
The adaptationIf your pricing requires a sales conversation, still make the ad's call to action a low-friction "test access" step rather than "book a demo," since a trial framing lowers the click-to-lead barrier while the quote conversation still happens once the prospect is qualified.
Cost: $0 · Time to signal: days · Works pre-PMF: yes
Show up physically where your narrow buyer already gathers
The proofHey Telo exhibited at SHK+E Essen, a trade fair specific to the heating, plumbing, and electrical trades it sells into, rather than a general tech conference.
The adaptationFind the single trade fair or association event your exact buyer attends, not a broad startup event, and book the smallest available booth or a demo slot, since a narrow vertical audience at one show can outweigh a general tech audience at ten.
Cost: under $5k · Time to signal: weeks · Works pre-PMF: conditional, needs a working demo and travel budget, so it fits best once you have at least a handful of reference customers. Not transferable at an earlier stage: the 315-day Google ad run and the multi-ERP integration footprint took roughly a year of paid spend and partner-relationship building to compound; a pre-seed founder can run the same mechanics at the scale of a single ad and a single partner pitch, not all three ERP integrations at once.
You just read how Hey Telo does it. Tomorrow it is someone else.
Every morning we take one company that is actually growing and break down where its customers come from: the ads still running after a year, the channel doing the real work, and the play you can run this week.
Systemaic · directional intelligence. Traffic, spend, and reach figures are SimilarWeb-style estimates and qualitative reads of public data, not audited numbers. Built on real public receipts.
// teardowns with a similar GTM motion
sources & receipts (13)
Live ad libraries: google ad library
Researched facts: Founders and roles: Christopher Grittner (CEO/co-founder) and his brother Daniel M. Grittn · Product mission statement: Hey Telo builds voice AI that answers phones, schedules jobs an · Legal entity / founding story: Hey Telo operates under Admyral Technologies GmbH (Munich, · Co-founder Christopher Grittner background: Previously led Philippines expansion at Finant · Seed funding: Raised a $500K seed round (closed around Jan 2025) from Y Combinator and Zen · Team size: Small founding team, ~4 employees as of March 2026 · Customer traction (as of mid-2026): 300+ SHK (plumbing/heating) and electrical (Elektro) b · Earlier traction figure (job posting, undated but pre-mid-2026): 200+ Handwerker (craftsme · Software integration partners: Official integration partner of three German craftsman/trad · pds partnership announcement (major distribution/integration launch): On 2025-11-17, pds G · Co-founder quote on the pds integration: Christopher Grittner, described as co-founder of · Pricing model: No public price list; Hey Telo sells via a custom quote after a free consul
Traffic, spend, and revenue figures are estimates as noted in the report; the links above are the primary public artifacts.