Othello
Building a desktop product from zero to 500 daily active users.
Image: othello.ai
Role
- Founding engineer
Year
- 2025
Type
- Professional
Othello (previously Cicero) builds an AI agent for sales reps. The desktop app transcribes calls and coaches reps in real time, prepares them before meetings, and automates follow-up by connecting to their calls, calendar, email and CRM.
As founding engineer I built the desktop product from the ground up, owning nearly everything outside the AI models. I architected and developed the app, including its core UI and backend integrations. I built the CI/CD pipeline, deployment process and app store distribution, implemented customer onboarding and browser-to-desktop authentication, and set up logging, alerting and product analytics.
The hardest part was a native-feeling desktop experience that doesn’t weigh on the system: interactive, semi-transparent UI rendered over other applications, while staying responsive and lightweight.
I took the product from zero to 500 daily active users across leading companies, with the infrastructure to deploy, monitor and keep improving it.
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