No Pitches, Just Real Talk: How We're Building Chili Piper's Future, in the Desert

3 people. 1 week’s notice. 150+ SaaS leaders.

How we pressure-tested our product vision in real life, in the desert, with no slides and no fluff.

Since launching our Demand Conversion Platform in June 2024, we’ve been asking:

Where do we go from here?

We kept hearing the same pain points from marketers and revops practitioners:

• Too many channels, not enough signal.
• Can’t find the right people.
• Sales and marketing still don’t speak the same language.
• And the kicker: “I need to do more with less.”

That led us to one idea: Demand Orchestration, a smarter way to turn intent into action. Automated marketing workflows that help GTM teams convert their pipeline like their lives (and bonuses) depend on it.

One platform. Personalized workflows. Activating the right people, at the right time, in the right channel.

The Problem: a big vision, and no clue where to start. “Demand Orchestration” sounds great… but what does it actually mean?

What do teams really need?

And what are the biggest gaps in MarTech today?

Then, out of nowhere, came our shot: ChiliPalooza, our first in-person event, packed with Marketing and Revenue leaders.

The catch? We had ONE week to turn ideas into something we could test live.

Chilipalooza - 150+ MarTech and Revenue Leaders in the desert

As our product team explored different visions of how orchestrators can help automate painful processes, our Marketing team was organizing our first-ever in-person conference: ChiliPalooza. 

We saw an opportunity to help us build the future of Chili Piper with our community, but had a few challenges to overcome:

• We had 1 week to prepare everything and fly to the desert in Arizona (from 3 different countries).
• Our involvement had to be carefully crafted, as the event had an explicit 'no-pitches' allowed policy.
• We had to fit our research within an already established schedule.
  

Spoiler alert: we made it work and &%*$ing crushed it. 

How did we do it? 

We knew we were going to Chilipalooza to conduct research, but we weren’t quite sure what we would be researching. 

First, we had to create alignment with stakeholders on what we needed to learn, and then decide how to do it. The team had multiple concepts and ideas for the future of Chili Piper. Instead of picking just one, we decided to test several ideas and see how people react to them.

We selected our 4 strongest concepts and outlined:

• A short summary - what does the product do?
• Value Proposition - what problem was it solving?
• Use Case - how and where would people use it? 
• Storyboards outlining the use case with a real example

Our goal was to focus on ideas rather than designs, so we kept it simple with wireframes and storyboards rather than fully built-out prototypes.

ChiliPalooza encouraged digital disconnection and human connection. To match that spirit, we decided to print our storyboards, on paper, to discuss with our participants.

Who would have thought that in 2025, we’d be showing ideas for software. Printed on paper. To actual humans physically in real life. 

The Setup: People Over Pitches

ChiliPalooza was about connection, not selling, which meant we had to play it cool.

We handpicked 30 attendees we wanted feedback from:

• CMOs and Marketing Execs
• Individual Contributors
• Revenue + Ops leaders

We DM’d them a few days before the event.

Our mission: walk them through each idea, get gut reactions, and rank what mattered most.

The days of the event

We had a small but mighty team of 3 on-site at Chilipalooza to conduct our research: Andre, a Product Manager; Mauricio, a Product Designer; and Taylor, a Researcher. 

We had to be flexible, since we were a late addition to the event and didn’t want to take away from the attendees’ experience. Gathering our insights was important, but even more so was fostering authentic human connection and learning.

We ran 1:1s and small group sessions over 3 days, wherever and whenever possible - in the restaurant, the hotel lobby, and the terrace during lunch, basically anytime we could secure 30–45 minutes between already scheduled sessions.

Mid-event, one of our co-CEOs pulled a power move. He set up a bonus session with 4 top sales execs.

Why?

To pressure-test our ideas from the GTM side: messaging, positioning, real-world sellability. It gave us a whole new angle we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

What We Learned: Way More Than We Expected

In just 3 days, we ran 18 sessions, recorded 12+ hours of feedback, and filled notebooks with insights. 

We went to Chilipalooza expecting to learn about our 4 concepts and the future of MarTech from the best in the business. What we didn’t expect was just how powerful it would be to be in person with the people we build products for. 

The people we met are helping us build the future of Chili Piper, but they also reminded us of one thing: tools and systems are built for people. There’s an actual human behind the interface you design and work on every day. That was perhaps the most profound learning of all. 

As for the future of MarTech, here’s what stood out:

1. People want help, not control.

They’re comfortable with AI doing routine tasks (such as account or contact research), but they don’t want it to make major decisions without a human involved.

2. First-party data is underused.

Handled right, it’s a power tool. Handled wrong, it’s noise.

3. Workflows > Dashboards

People want fewer tools, not more. But what really matters? Seamlessly fitting into their existing stack.

4. AI = Assist, not Autopilot

Smart suggestions and nudges = yes. Black-box magic = nope.

What’s Next?

We’re taking what we learned and building the next version of Chili Piper: smarter, simpler, more connected.

The specific ideas we’re moving forward with?

👀 We’re keeping that under wraps for now.

But if you’re curious…

👉 Want in on shaping the future of MarTech? Become a design partner and get early access. Sign up here.