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Chris Kontes shared thisWe’re hiring a Senior Product Manager at Balto You’ll own meaningful problems end to end, from customer discovery and strategy through prototyping, launch, and results. We’re building the next generation of product management with AI at the center. That means using AI to analyze feedback, speed up research, pressure test ideas, create prototypes, and improve the entire product process. Balto has guided 500M+ calls and was recently named the 2026 Cloud-Based CX Solution of the Year at the CCW Excellence Awards. You’ll work with sharp, kind, low-ego teammates who move fast and care about outcomes. Come build with us: https://lnkd.in/gvn82dvN
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Chris Kontes reposted thisChris Kontes reposted thisI'm hiring a Demand Generation Manager to join my team at Balto! I'm looking for a partner as we scale our demand gen engine: someone who's genuinely fired up to rethink how things have always been done and always focused on what actually drives results. This is a "build-it-from-the-ground-up" role. You'll launch new channels and programs while using AI to create smarter workflows and automate processes. If you're someone who gets excited about a challenge and wants to be part of an incredible company culture, I'd love to hear from you. And if someone immediately came to mind while you were reading this, please send this their way!
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Chris Kontes posted thisIt should cost us about $10 in tokens to monitor a single 6-minute phone call. That's with OpenAI's standard pricing. Balto runs an LLM on every single conversation, every 800 milliseconds. To give you a sense of how wild that is: a 6-minute call means 450 LLM runs. And it's actually more than that, because we run dozens of prompts per cycle. A typical call can easily exceed 3,000 to 4,000 runs for just a couple of minutes. Across our customer base, a slow day is hundreds of billions of tokens. At GPT-5.5 rates, that's millions of dollars per day. Obviously we don't pay that. We have our own agreement and our own proprietary models. But making those economics work took years of engineering. I bring this up because I'm a actually a huge believer in vibecoding. Contact centers can now build useful tools internally that they never could before, and I encourage it. Just know that building something and running it are different problems. A vibecoded dashboard costs nothing to operate. Real-time AI on every conversation is a meter that never stops. The industry is still learning how expensive that difference is.
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Chris Kontes reposted thisChris Kontes reposted thisThe best feedback happens during the call, not after it. Balto's agent assist shows up in the moment, not in a scorecard three days later. Here's what changed for this Balto customer.
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Chris Kontes shared thisNearly ten years later, the mission is the same. Build AI that helps humans win. Balto
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Chris Kontes reposted thisChris Kontes reposted thisBalto won Cloud-Based CX Solution of the Year. This isn't an award you can just pay for. Look at who we were up against. Finalists for Cloud-Based CX Solution of the Year *8×8 *ASAPP *Balto *Cresta *Gladly *Sprinklr 100% not trying to punch at the competition. It's just... at Balto, a lot of the time, we're too damn nice and don't tell our story well enough. The story behind this award is: -400+ applications were submitted for CCW Excellence Awards -6 finalists were selected for the Cloud-Based CX Solution of the Year -The finalists in this award are well-funded, well-run companies, with super respectable solutions that Balto competes against every day -A panel of judges reviewed the applications and selected the winner -AND BALTO WON One of the judges came up to us afterward and said, "Just wanted to share that Balto's application really stood out. The customer love you received was truly over-the-top and uncommon." I'm incredibly proud of the Balto team and our truly special group of customers (not just saying that: our customers are legitimately special) that made this possible. This award is for you.
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Chris Kontes posted thisToday's the day. RTG3 — Balto's 3rd-generation Agent Assist — is officially live. And it goes way, way, WAY, beyond agent guidance. Marc Bernstein is demoing it live on a webinar at 12 pm CT, and honestly, it's unlike anything in the agent assist space right now. Worth a look if you want to see where Agent Assist is headed. Link below. 👇
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Chris Kontes reposted thisChris Kontes reposted thisPeople are not horses. You've heard the analogy: "Remember how the car disrupted the horse-and-buggy? That's what AI is going to do to human labor." But here's the thing... *Horses don't vote *Horses don't give viral takes on social media *Horses don't run the consumer economy We talk about AI displacement as a one-sided phenomenon: people sitting idle, apprehensively waiting for AI to take their jobs. But you know what I think? I think people are going to be people. They're going to advocate for their interests. They're going to shape politics and markets. They're going to exercise consumer preference and buy from people-first brands. People aren't just going to sit around like cows at the slaughter, waiting for their livelihoods to get snatched. People are not horses.
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Chris Kontes shared thisLast week, Balto won Best CX Platform at CCW. That's the big one — the award basically every vendor is eligible for. We’ll take it! As much as I'd love to slap Balto's name on a NASCAR, a blimp, or sponsor a golf tournament (I've already named it the Balto Open in my head), the reality is we will never be the flashiest vendor in the room. Ever. It's just not in our DNA. But we take enormous pride in what we do. We're very much a "what you see is what you get" kind of operation, and our customers seem to like it that way. On the partner front, it's been a blast to really dive in and meet so many of you in person this year. Thank you for continuing to back us. You know how to reach me if you ever need anything. And a final, special shoutout to our engineering and R&D teams who have worked relentlessly to get Balto to where it is today. Every bit of this traces back to you. Let's go! #CCW #CustomerExperience
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You're a legend Erik Smith - thank you so much for everything you've done for us; you're a huge reason that the partnership turned into something big. Really excited for what's next.
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Chris Kontes liked thisChris Kontes liked thisToday is bittersweet—it's officially my last day at Convoso. I'm incredibly grateful for the past 2.5 years and for the amazing people I've had the privilege of working alongside. Thank you to everyone at Convoso for the support, friendships, and opportunities. The culture is filled with genuinely caring, kind, and gracious people, and I'm thankful to have been a part of it. Special thanks to Darrin Koehler for being a great leader and better person! Thanks for giving me the chance to work here 2.5 years ago. As for what's next, I'm excited to share that I'll be pursuing a longtime dream: becoming a PGA Professional. Not many people get the opportunity to turn something they truly love into a career, and I don't take that for granted. Golf has been a passion of mine for many years, and I'm excited to begin this next chapter doing something I love every day. Thank you again to everyone who has been part of my journey so far. Here's to new challenges, new opportunities, and what's ahead.
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Chris Kontes liked thisWe launched the builder pack a few weeks ago and the response was incredible. Every subscribers old and new signed up to use the builder pack to build what comes next. Today, we're launching partnerships with Mobbin and Paper for all the design/builders. Over $2,000 in additional value bringing The Builder Pack to over $9,000 and the best tool for AI powered builders (and designers).Chris Kontes liked thisLAUNCHING TODAY: The Builder Pack just got bigger. Two new partners are joining the pack: Mobbin and Paper. Mobbin recently launched Mobbin MCP—a way for agents to search and reference more than 600,000 real product screens. All Access members get one year of Mobbin Team for up to 10 seats, worth $1,920. Paper is the connected design canvas for teams shipping with agents. They’re also fresh off a $34M Series A from Accel and ICONIQ. All Access members can now get two months of Paper Pro. The Builder Pack now includes $9,000 in credits and free usage to the models + tool stack we use at Every. All Access subscribers get: - $1,000 in OpenAI Codex / ChatGPT for Work credits - 10 seats of Mobbin - 2 months of Paper Pro - 12 months of Cursor Pro+ - $4,000 in PostHog credits - 1 year free of Framer Pro - 6 months free of Notion Business - One month free of Anthropic Claude Max - Three months free of Google AI Pro - One month free of FLORA Max - $300 in Render credits - Six months free of AgentMail (YC S25) If you read Every and keep thinking, “I should make something,” we built this for you. Come build with us: https://lnkd.in/gjh2-K7J
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Chris Kontes liked thisChris Kontes liked thisI'm excited to be growing my team at AmaWaterways! We're hiring Business Development Representatives who are passionate about reconnecting with travel advisors and helping them succeed in selling river cruises. At AmaWaterways, we believe in the power of personal interaction! 🫶 We lead with passion, positivity, and a genuine commitment to supporting our travel advisor partners. If that sounds like you (or an amazing person you know) I encourage you to apply or share this opportunity. I'd love to welcome you to my team!
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Chris Kontes liked thisChris Kontes liked thisThe business model of venture is simple (in concept)...raise capital >> find amazing founders >> invest in them and help when can >> get liquidity when timing is right. Many parts of this model are under stress (liquidity, fundraising, data driven approaches to finding founder signals, etc). Perhaps more important than having a new fund announcement (step 1 above) is getting a better sense of where we are hunting (step 2)...take a read on a quick summary on our thinking, please connect with the Jump Capital team if you are building here, want to debate/chat on the nuances of these areas or are an investor and have a portfolio founder we should meet. More to come in detail on each of these in the coming weeks/months. https://lnkd.in/gnUR7-fr
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Chris Kontes liked thisChris Kontes liked thisNinety days ago, I cold-outbounded my way into a job at Balto. I sent the same intentional outbound I now send, except the prospect was Balto's SVP of Sales and the product was me. That origin story still shapes how I sell. It also made these first 90 days feel less like onboarding and more like proof that betting on yourself works. A lot has happened since I joined: 🏆 Balto won 2026 Cloud-Based CX Solution of the Year at CCW, against a finalist field that included 8x8, ASAPP, Cresta, Gladly, and Sprinklr. One of the judges told the team our customer love was "over-the-top and uncommon." ⚡ We launched RTG3, a rebuilt real-time guidance experience designed by sitting with agents and handing them real control of their screen. It reflects something our CEO Marc says often: Agent assist is the agent's tool, not a manager's surveillance layer. 🗺️ I have been building a six-state mid-market territory mostly from scratch, which is a beautiful blank canvas. To my Maryland connections: I will take any excuse to come see you and take a detour trip to my alma mater! To my closer Chicago connections: I will literally bike over to you and pull you for a chat! IYKYK. The best part has been the people. Dan Floyd took a chance on my cold outbound. My team, with special shout outs to Tyesen, Scott, Emilio, Ben, Mason, and Gideon (my daily slack collaborators), has made ramping and working remotely feel like a team sport. In a few weeks, I will be in person to see y'all at Contact.io in Denver. I am beyond excited to meet you face to face. If you run a contact center and are curious what agent-first AI actually looks like, let's lock in. And if you will be at Contact.io, I hope you will come find me. 😊 #ContactCenter #AI #Sales #CX
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Chris Kontes liked thisJump Capital officially closed Fund 8, $350M! Sach perfectly articulated what the goal of Fund 8 is - investing in the "leapfrog moments in legacy industries" which AI is enabling. If you're solving one of those backwards industries that Sach mentioned, my inbox is open, and I'll happily point you to the right person on our team. Read Yueqi's article here in The Information:Chris Kontes liked thisWe've closed our 8th fund at $350M. We'll use it to expand our investing in AI startups across applications, infrastructure, and cybersecurity, backing the leapfrog moments AI is opening in legacy industries: the places where decades of manual process and complexity kept better software out. Thanks to Yueqi Yang at The Information for the write-up, and to the founders and partners who got us here. If you're building in one of these three areas, we'd love to talk. 👉 Read the article here: https://lnkd.in/gEMWkQZJ
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Chris Kontes liked thisChris Kontes liked thisI've been reviewing hundreds of resumes over the past few days, and I wanted to share a few observations that might help anyone currently looking for a job. The biggest mistake I see... Too many people use the bullets under each role to explain what the job is instead of why they were exceptional at it. This is your chance to brag. Speak in the language the hiring manager cares about. As a marketing leader, I'm always looking for: • ROI improvements with metrics • Program volume and growth • AI workflows that increased efficiency • Creative ideas that made your programs stand out Less than 10% of applicants mentioned even one of those, less than 2% mentioned two or more, and only 4 people out of over 300 have reached out to me with a nice intro message on LinkedIn. One final thought... Don't get discouraged by headlines about thousands of applicants or AI resume screening. Hiring managers are still reading resumes. We notice the candidates who clearly communicate their impact. Make it easy for us to see yours. Good luck. You've got this.
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Chris Kontes liked thisChris Kontes liked thisAnything is possible in California. Great conversations, fresh perspectives, and the opportunity to exchange ideas on AI and innovation. Thank you, Jensen Huang, for taking a few moments to chat. A special thank you to Charissa Williams for the introduction and invitation. Looking forward to what’s next. #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Innovation #Leadership #AmaWaterways
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Chris Kontes liked thisChris Kontes liked thisBalto has always started from the same belief. The people on the phones are worth backing up. Togo comes from that too. There’s a whole set of calls that don’t really need a person. Booking a time. Checking on an account. Answering the question folks ask every single day. Togo handles those start to finish, morning or midnight, and doesn’t mind doing it at 2am. Which frees your team up for the tricky conversations. The ones a customer actually remembers. We didn’t build this to make teams smaller. We built it so good people can spend more time doing their best work. To see Togo in action, book a demo through the link in the comments. 👇
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