Kickoff Call — 2026-01-07

Initial alignment call between Asymmetric and AviaryAI covering tooling access, ABM strategy, ad budget, sales process, competitive landscape, and team roles.

Meeting link: https://fathom.video/calls/523447930

Attendees

Overview

First working session after contract signing. The call resolved several blocking access issues live, aligned on an initial $1k/month experimental ad budget, defined the tiered ABM list structure, walked through AviaryAI's sales process, and established communication norms. A product demo call was scheduled for Jan 9 so the Asymmetric team can experience the sales motion firsthand.

Key Decisions

• Ad budget: $1,000/month approved as an experimental ceiling. Any overage requires Justin's approval before spending.
• DNS: Aviary will evaluate migrating from GoDaddy to Cloudflare. In the interim, Justin will manually add any required DNS records (TXT, CNAME) upon request from Mark.
• Lead handoff: Asymmetric creates all new leads directly in HubSpot, then notifies Aaron via email or Slack. HubSpot is the single source of truth.
• ABM list structure: 100 Dream Accounts (top priority outbound), 500 Play Accounts (active outreach), and an "Other" tier (inbound-only). List is dynamic — definitive "no" responses are removed, new inbound leads are added.
• Content approval routing:
• Outbound / ads → Aaron Grossman (CC Justin Dwyer + Blessing)
• Site / social / blog → Justin Dwyer
• Call recording: Asymmetric recommended Fathom over Apollo for its native HubSpot integration (summaries linked to full transcripts). Aaron open to switching.

Topics Covered

Access & Tooling

Next steps on GTM: create GA4, Clarity, and Google Tag tags; remove legacy code from Webflow custom code section.

ABM Strategy

• Target universe: Credit unions with >$500M in assets (~2,000 total)
• List tiers:
• 100 Dream Accounts — highest-priority outbound targets, including any "starred" accounts Aaron identifies
• 500 Play Accounts — secondary outbound targets
• Other — inbound-only; worked if they come to Aviary
• Geography: No geographic preference; Aviary has large targets in every major market
• Data enrichment: Asymmetric will use ZoomInfo and Clay to enrich the list with contact details after Aaron delivers it
• Current pipeline: ~75 accounts already in HubSpot; Aaron to include these in the handoff

Sales Process

Aaron's current process:
1. Outreach: Email + phone call to schedule a meeting
2. Discovery call (30 min): Conversational intake — why are you interested in AI? What are you doing with proactive member outreach? Mandatory product demo included on the first call (the product must be heard to be understood)
3. Qualification: Modified BANT — Budget, Authority, Need (Timeline removed; AI adoption timelines are too fluid in this market)
4. Success signal: Prospect agrees to open the next meeting to a larger internal audience

Most leads today are outbound or conference/referral-driven. Inbound is limited. Credit unions are collaborative — peer referrals ("you should talk to Aviary") are a meaningful source.

Competitive Landscape

No direct apples-to-apples competitor currently exists. Primary threat is large financial services AI platforms (e.g., Eltropy, WithClutch, Financial Ops) that are building outbound voice agent features as add-ons to existing products.

AviaryAI's key differentiators:
- 100% focused on outbound voice AI for financial services — it's the core product, not a feature
- Deep credit union compliance and operational expertise
- QSO status (Credit Union Service Organization) — credit unions have invested in Aviary; "stay within the family" is a real closing argument
- 12+ months of production experience ahead of competitors who haven't launched yet
- Monitoring and agent management as a core competency, not an afterthought

Product roadmap focus: Integrations with the four core credit union system categories — Core Banking, Digital Banking, Lending Origination System (LOS), and Mortgage Origination System. Targeting the top 2–3 vendors in each category.

Content & Creative Assets

• Brand guidelines: Figma file shared; Asymmetric design team will reformat into standard brand guide template
• Logos/images: Justin to share Google Drive folder (currently messy; will clean up)
• Video: All primary videos hosted on Aviary YouTube channel. Some content is unlisted (internal demos, etc.) — Justin will send direct links to the relevant videos to avoid confusion
• Case studies: "Collections Journey" draft in progress; Justin offered to hand the draft to Asymmetric to accelerate publication. Waiting on ROI metrics from the partner institution
• Upcoming video content: 3 short-form videos/week (~45s–1min) for the next ~4 weeks, sourced from testimonial footage. Asymmetric design team available for creative support

Team & Communication Norms

• Day-to-day contact: Aaron Grossman (CC Justin Dwyer on everything)
• Asymmetric AM: Sebastian Gant — primary point of contact for AviaryAI
• Asymmetric Strategy: Mark Hope — available for escalations and strategy questions
• Invoicing: Blessing (Abraham Blesson) handles all invoice payments
• Cadence: Weekly call, Wednesdays at 3:00 PM CT
• Preferred comms: Email or Slack (Aaron has Slack despite Aviary being a Teams shop internally)

Action Items

Notes

• Aaron explicitly wants to use this engagement as a learning experience to build the right marketing foundation from scratch — not just get results, but understand the "why" behind each decision
• Justin flagged that Aviary's marketing is essentially non-existent ("indiscoverable") — there is significant greenfield opportunity
• The product demo on Jan 9 is framed as a mock sales call: Asymmetric plays the prospect, Aaron runs his real process. Goal is for the team to internalize the product and sales motion before generating leads

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