- Street Interview
cfo.ai: street interview ad for SaaS
A street interviewer on a startup conference floor asks founders how they handle their finances, hears “11 Google Sheets, don't ask,” a chatbot and a part-time CFO, and finds one founder who uses Ari.
01
Brief
cfo.ai sells Ari, and the founder who uses it sums it up in one line: “I ask it about forecasts, cash, hiring plans, and it shows me how it got there.” The ad ends on the name, asked and answered: “Wait, what's it called?” “Ari, cfo.ai.”
The ad speaks to startup founders who handle the finances themselves. Each answer names a workaround the viewer may use: a stack of spreadsheets, a chatbot whose answers they “double-check,” a model that “breaks every month,” a part-time CFO with “never enough hours.” In 43 seconds the ad has to make four answers sound familiar and the fifth sound like the fix.
02
Format and style
A street interview staged on a conference floor, with concrete pillars, glass walls, escalators and a crowd in lanyards holding coffee. An interviewer in a striped shirt waves five founders into a huddle and moves a black handheld mic down the line. A title bar at the top sets a POV for solo founders doing CFO work, and under it a row of five empty circles fills with a cross for each workaround.
The tracker turns the interview into a count a viewer can follow with the sound off, and the last circle fills with a check when Ari comes up. White captions sit mid-frame a few words at a time. A street interview suits AI SaaS video ads for founders because a group of peers can name a shared habit in seconds, and each answer lands as a confession the viewer recognizes.
03
How it was made
I open behind the interviewer as he calls “Hey, founders, two seconds. Come in, come in, squeeze in,” and the group gathers for “How do you handle your startup's finances?” A founder in a navy vest holds up his phone for “11 Google Sheets, don't ask,” and the interviewer's “11?” marks the first cross. The mic moves on to a founder with an iced coffee who asks a chatbot, a founder with a mustache who “vibe-coded a model over a weekend,” and a woman in a navy blazer with a part-time CFO, and someone in the group adds “Same.”
The woman in the olive bomber jacket answers last with “I use Ari from cfo.ai,” the cfo.ai mark on screen and a check in the fifth circle. On “Show me” she holds out her phone, the crowd blurs behind a chat window, and a question about how long the cash will last types into Ari, which answers with a runway chart. The founder in the vest leans in for “Wait, what's it called?”, she answers “Ari, cfo.ai,” and the end card puts the cfo.ai mark, three checked benefits and a free-trial button on a navy-to-orange gradient.
04
Deliverables
One street interview ad, vertical 9:16
Runtime 0:43
Built for Meta
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