How Applied Labs turned founder credibility into a pipeline asset with Untold

"The hardest thing is getting prospects to understand what makes you different before they've worked with you. Untold helped us get that story out consistently and in a way that actually sounded like us. The content does the selling before we even get on the call." — Michael Woo, Co-founder and CEO of Applied Labs

Challenge

We first came across Applied Labs when we worked on their press release. Michael, the founder, had just announced their seed round, landing interest from Forbes. With new eyes on their vision, he wanted to compound the momentum into a deliberate marketing push.

“We’re in a competitive market, so we wanted want to kick off our marketing efforts by tightening up our positioning and differentiation, making sure we're growing our audience over time, and converting leads already in conversations.”

Even with strong results from early customers, prospects wanted to see more before moving forward: “it’s a rapidly evolving space and we haven't heard much about Applied Labs.” The product was ahead of the story being told about it.

For a company positioning itself around max reliability and max quality, they wanted to close the gap between internal credibility and external presence.

Solution

Every 2 weeks, we'd get on a call and get inside how Michael thinks.

The process was genuinely collaborative - Michael came with his own ideas about where Applied Labs was going, what's shifting in the market, and how to scale given his previous experience as an early employee at Scale AI, growing it from $1M to $500M. But like a lot of founders, he wasn't used to putting all of this out publicly.

So we built our system around extracting that perspective:

→ Biweekly calls to collect Michael's ideas, opinions, and experiences

→ 2 posts per week, built entirely around his voice and point of view

→ Consistent reinforcement of Applied Labs' core differentiation

→ Hands-on collaboration to ensure every post resonated with Michael and his audience

“I had strong opinions about where AI in CX was going. I just wasn't used to putting them out publicly. Working with Untold allowed me to do that consistently and authentically in a collaborative manner without it feeling performative.”

We were able to pull out specific stories around his early days at Scale AI, building AI agents and models for companies like OpenAI, and growing a team under him. These conversations became the foundation for everything we wrote, making the content resonate with his audience and build trust over time.

Results

Within a year of working together, Michael's LinkedIn presence became one of Applied Labs' most consistent growth levers.

• Follower count grew from 2,503 to 6,422 followers (+156%)
• Average engagement rate of 2.53% - above the industry benchmark of 1-2%
• 8 hours saved per week that can now be focused on sales, distribution, hiring, and customer relationships
• Increased credibility around Applied Labs’ core offerings

And, in Michael's words, pipeline is thriving: "Pipeline has been so busy lately. We’ve seen such a high reply rate as a result of the content engine we’ve built with Untold.”

The content motion we've built together is becoming a bigger part of Michael’s 2026 goals.

He’s leaning harder into content that tells the Applied Labs story more aggressively and making a more deliberate push on growth: events, outbound, connecting with the right CX leaders, and getting more rigorous about tracking what actually converts.