Hi!
A week in AI is like a year in other industries. I hope these issues become your weekly source of AI information, inspiration, and ideas.
If we haven’t met before, I’m Amanda Smith. I write about AI and the fascinating folks who are building in this brave new world.
Good morning. I still pinch myself every day that I get to interview founders across the entire AI spectrum. It’s never lost on me that I get to do this for a living.
This week’s AI founder story is one that will appeal to the masses. It’s a great example of an AI use case that everyone can get behind, even if you don’t “get” the tech.
Disrupting a sleepy industry? More of this, please. Enjoy!
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Company background: Ella Weddings
Founded: March 2025 beta, June 2025 public launch
Team size: 5
Funding to date: Self-funded
MRR: Not disclosed
Growth metric: 750 customers since launch and another 200 on the waitlist. “That $69 one-time sign-up fee adds up quickly.”
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How this founder built an AI tool that’s disrupting the $300B wedding industry
Peter Murphy Lewis’ path to entrepreneurship has been unconventional – but that’s just the way he likes it. From his early days running a “scrappy travel company” that turned into a luxury tour brand that was featured in Lonely Planet and led A list celebrities like Aerosmith, then onto his television and documentary days, Lewis got a crash course in disrupting “sleepy industries.”
His media work focused on the dignity of ordinary work which won him awards and helped shape policy in DC. And then, Lewis got married… in a zoo. As you can imagine, the planning of such a wedding was as wild as the animals they were surrounded by. “It was a nightmare of endless vendor emails, hidden fees, and SEO-stuffed directories that buried the real gems. “The $300 billion wedding industry felt stuck in the 90s, with couples dropping 200+ hours and thousands on planners, just to chase pay-to-play leads,” Lewis said.
It was a lightbulb moment.
Lewis saw the opportunity to use AI to surface authentic vendors via live social data and real-time APIs, so couples could focus on their story, not the spreadsheets. He teamed up with an engineering lead and a small crew of ex-fintech ops pros to build Ella, the AI wedding planner assistant.
Two of the co-founders, Kyle and Ali Kuderewski, shared features they wished existed when they walked down the aisle. Ella automates time-consuming tasks like planning the vision, venue sourcing, vendor outreach, logistics, quotes, and timelines.
Beta testing & the launch
Ella soft-launched in beta to a group of 100 couples the team intentionally identified via networks, before the full public launch before wedding season. Timing was everything.
“We kicked off with The Ella 100 – 100 beta couples sourced from my networks, wedding Reddit threads, and Austin bridal expos. No big ad spend, just hyper-personal outreach.”
Product-market fit clicked around month two, Lewis said. They looked for signals like positive reviews, vendor bookings, and wait list sign-ups. From the feedback, they beefed up personality-matching and added auto-quotes when manual outreach felt clunky.
“We’re still in that exhilarating early growth phase – with about 750 customers since launch and another 200 in the pipeline from our waitlist. Conversions are sitting at 40% from sign-ups, thanks to word-of-mouth from those first beta raves,” he shared.
The team consists of Lewis, an engineering lead, an operations manager, a designer, and a part-time community lead. Ella is self-funded through consulting side-hustles and early revenue. “It keeps us nimble, customer-obsessed and free from investor checkboxes,” Lewis said. While they’re open to future funding “if they hit escape velocity,” for now it’s all sweat equity and stories.”
Customers & regions
They started with a simple MVP: Voice/text input for visions like “vineyard outdoor for 100 in SoCal,” hooked to APIs pulling from Google, TripAdvisor, and social signals for vendor curation.
The customer base is a mixed bag, mirroring modern love. It’s 40% millennials/Gen Z couples juggling careers and budgets (think techies in SF planning micro-weddings), 30% destination dreamers (remote workers eyeing Bali or Tuscany), 20% professionals like freelance wedding planners, and 10% specific searches such as LGBTQ+ inclusive.
“A New York City teacher planner her 50-guest rooftop bash in four hours, saved $2,000 on a planner and found a hidden DJ from TikTok gold,” Lewis said.
60% of Ella’s customers are domestic, 25% international, and 15% cross-border elopements.
Scaling strategies
Some key growth levers included automated onboarding and drip sequences, affiliate partnerships with 20 micro-influencers, and SEO-light content such as “AI vs. human planner” guides that rank on wedding searches.
Ella’s marketing efforts include a mix of story-first, multi-channel mediums including LinkedIn, Twitter/X, guest spots on podcasts, and paid ads on Meta. They also feature anonymized “Ella Moments” such as “From prompt to I do in 72 hours.”
Lewis said short-terms plans are to double-down on multilingual voice mode, seamless integrations with tools like Honeyfund for registries, and planner certifications to lock in pro partnerships. Long term, he wants to expand to “Ella Events” for birthdays and cooperations but keep weddings at the core. Their goal is 10,000 users by the end of 2026, with a community hub for couple-vendor spotlights.
Takeaways
AI is a mirror, not a mask. “We realized very quickly that couples don’t want a smarter spreadsheet – they want to feel heard. We designed the AI to be a reflection of people’s personalities, culture and quirks, not just regurgitate options.”
Bootstrapping forces you to hear the truth. “No VC runway meant every dollar and every complaint came straight from real users.” The team shipped to 100 beta couples and rewrote the dashboard in two weeks, based on feedback.
Stories over specs. People remember how you made them feel. Lead with the why and follow with the how.
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